The voice could only give a rough direction, but the smell of blood was the real guide. Walking toward the hall’s slanted side, there were splattered bloodstains all along the way.
“At a time like this, what are you saving it for? Hurry up and use a healing item!”
The speaker’s voice ahead carried urgency.
Su Er and Ji Heng exchanged a glance and quickened their pace.
It seemed to be Xu Yangyang speaking, which meant Zhu Yu was still alive. Even so, they dared not lower their guard, staying alert as they advanced, until they saw a severed arm at the corner.
To avoid a “friendly fire” situation, Su Er gave a light cough.
“Su Er?” Xu Yangyang sounded unsure.
“It’s me.”
Xu Yangyang appeared holding a talisman, not rushing over immediately but first judging whether this was some illusion created by a demon.
Su Er didn’t explain, instead going straight to check Zhu Yu’s condition. It was tragic—her wound was jagged and uneven, with a flap of skin still hanging, and several bloody holes in her shoulder. It looked as if something had bitten her arm clean off.
He sighed. “If I’m not wrong, the egg you were trying to smuggle out was hidden inside the severed arm.”
Pain at its peak brings numbness. Despite her grave injury, Zhu Yu looked up in surprise. “How did you know?”
Su Er: “Teams of three, yet the monster specifically targeted you. That can’t be unrelated to your attempt to sabotage the game.”
Zhu Yu’s forehead was drenched in cold sweat. Indeed, had she been a moment slower, she would have lost her life.
“Honestly, even without the game, we might not have lived much better.” Su Er’s voice was calm. “Many instance worlds are twisted to the extreme—anyone with even a sliver of personality feels life is worse than death… The game only gives us a choice.”
“So I’m grateful, and I’d like to repay it as best I can. The only question is—would I be lucky enough to join this warm and united family?”
“......”a
The first half still sounded human, but the second half… why did it sound like he was pitching himself for a job?
Xu Yangyang swallowed hard. Confirmed! This had to be the real Su Er, not an illusion.
Zhu Yu couldn’t listen anymore. From blood loss, her mind was growing sluggish. With no choice, she used a healing item—instantly growing a brand-new arm.
She stood up with a helpless look. “What a pity.”
That item had originally been saved for a life-or-death moment.
Su Er asked about what had happened.
“We came in through the back door. Not long after, we ran into what felt like a ghost wall. Soon after, I was ambushed.” Zhu Yu frowned. “But looking at it now, it wasn’t a ghost wall—it was some kind of trick.”
Xu Yangyang: “I had a strong bout of dizziness then.”
That explained why, when he saw Su Er, his first instinct had been to check if it was real or fake.
The skylight’s design could only be seen clearly from the main hall. There was no reason they should have run into trouble immediately after entering. Su Er retraced their path and finally focused on a distinctive peacock lamp on the wall.
A peacock with spread tail feathers—the “false eyes” were each a small bulb.
Su Er didn’t dare look too long. Returning, he asked, “Earlier, did you notice the peacock lamp on the wall?”
Zhu Yu nodded with clear memory. The lamp was beautiful and rare in design; she had looked at it more than once. The others had as well.
They were all veteran players and quickly understood. “The lamp is suspicious?”
“The problem is the peacock itself.” Su Er thought for a moment. “My personal suggestion is—anything here related to peacocks, we should treat with caution.”
As he spoke, he suddenly remembered something and lifted the little clay figure onto his palm.
“Eyes.” The clay figurine described vividly, “Through… through the eyes, it’s all eyes.”
Those without context couldn’t make sense of it.
Faced with their puzzled stares, Su Er explained, “I had it climb onto the skylight to look inside the museum through the peacock’s false eyes.”
Xu Yangyang tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Specifically, which parts had eyes?”
The little clay figure put on a stony face and ignored him.
Xu Yangyang smirked bitterly… playing aloof now, huh?
Su Er gently poked the clay figure’s belly. “I’d like to know too.”
The clay figure gestured wildly. “Walls, floors, ceilings… a-anyway, there were a lot, that’s for sure!”
The words made everyone’s spine go cold. Xu Yangyang, who had been leaning against the wall, instantly stood straight, goosebumps rising all over.
Zhu Yu’s scalp tingled as well. “We’d better find the alien probe quickly.”
Xu Yangyang agreed, but asked one more question. “Split up, or stick together?”
Zhu Yu thought a moment. “First sweep the first floor together, then split up for the second and third.”
Since they hadn’t yet found the peacock’s pattern of attack, and the situation remained unclear, moving as a group was safer. No one disagreed.
They began their search from the southern exhibit hall. The alien probe couldn’t be too small, so a cursory glance was enough for some spots. What they really needed to look for was any hidden chamber.
Xu Yangyang was lying under a display case, reaching out to feel along the wooden panels for a hidden mechanism, when dust choked him into coughing. “Plans never keep up with changes.”
He had thought the real danger came from people—before entering the museum, he’d been all cautious and jittery. Who knew the first floor would be wide open with no traps at all?
Just as he was about to exchange a few words with Su Er, he crawled out and saw Su Er talking to Ji Heng instead.
“Something feels off?” Su Er asked. “You look distracted.”
Xu Yangyang quickly perked up his ears to listen.
Ji Heng: “Every monster appears for a reason. Take Feng Peng for example—when alive, he was a mad scientist; after death, his obsession turned him into a ghost. By the same logic, these eyes can’t have gathered here without cause.”
Su Er thought for a moment. “That old Taoist risked coming to the museum even while being hunted down. Maybe it’s related.”
Eavesdropping from the side, Xu Yangyang couldn’t help but say, “Isn’t digging into a monster’s origin kind of putting the cart before the horse?”
Once they found the alien probe and cleared the instance, everything would be solved.
“Not necessarily.” Su Er’s voice was low. “Everything in this museum is under the gaze of those eyes. They must know where the alien probe is.”
Hearing this, Xu Yangyang rubbed his chin. In the end, he had to admit it made sense. Finding something so easily by human effort alone didn’t fit the twisted aesthetic of the game.
“Wind…” Zhu Yu cut into their discussion. “There’s wind.”
Even before she spoke, Su Er had already been pulled behind the door by Ji Heng. The moment they pressed flat against the wall, a fierce gust whooshed past their ears, stinging their cheeks as if scraped by blades.
The swooping peacock first spotted Zhu Yu and opened its beak to bite her.
The exhibit hall had little room. Zhu Yu didn’t dodge—she directly used a tool to repel the peacock, her face paling.
“I’ve been targeted!”
No number of tools could withstand that kind of drain.
From Su Er’s position, he saw it all clearly. The peacock wasn’t corporeal—it could shift size at will. At its largest, a single mouth could swallow a whole person. The false eyes on its feathers shone with malice and mockery.
“Upstairs.” Ji Heng stepped out of the hall, looking up at the skylight pattern that had shifted again. “Looks like it roams the main hall every so often.”
Still shaken, Zhu Yu panted, “Alright.”
The group sprinted upstairs at full speed.
On the way, Xu Yangyang didn’t forget to curse. “So there really are no shortcuts in life—we still have to play by the game’s script!”
This was forcing them to confront the monster and probe for deeper truths.
Once on the second floor, Ji Heng motioned for them to stop, then lowered his head and began timing.
Not long after, the skylight burst into vivid colors. The peacock, dragging its long tail feathers, circled the hall as its false eyes rotated and strange laughter echoed faintly among them.
“About seven minutes.”
Jia Kanhua hesitated. “We could use this gap to search.”
Ji Heng said nothing, just stood still in silence.
The next time the peacock appeared, it took only six minutes and forty seconds.
“The interval is shrinking.” Jia Kanhua instantly abandoned the thought, seeing reality clearly. “It’s showing up more and more often.”
After being targeted twice in a row, Zhu Yu accepted reality with surprising speed. “The rules are stopping us from doing a carpet search.”
By chance, she noticed Su Er still had his head tilted back. She swallowed the rest of her words and followed his gaze—on the upper floor, beside a pillar, stood a slovenly man in Taoist robes, about fifty years old, staring at them with a hostile expression.
And directly in front of the slovenly man, another figure emerged. A scar across his face lent him menace, and with a cold smile, he said, “What, not running anymore?”
“Li Shuo.”
Su Er’s voice was low, but Li Shuo still heard it. He paused, his stern expression softening a little. “So long without word—I thought something had happened to you all.”
Then his face hardened again as he looked at the old Taoist. “Let’s join forces and kill this rat who brings harm!”
The old Taoist’s laughter was shrill. “Young man, think carefully. Cooperation is the surest way to your death. Do you even know what this place is?”
Su Er didn’t hesitate to answer. “The museum.”
“……” The old Taoist gave him a speechless look. “Before that—it was a research base.”
Su Er frowned. Normal research wouldn’t be emphasized like that. Unless… it was something illegal.
The old Taoist wasted no more words, pointing at the peacock circling above. “If you’ve made it here, you must have some ability. Look closely—what do you think that thing really is?”
Su Er hesitated, but then opened the mysterious eyes within him. Soon, rare astonishment appeared on his face.
Xu Yangyang was the first to notice the change in his gaze and quickly asked, “What do you see?”
“Ghosts.” Su Er’s face darkened. “The killer isn’t the peacock. It’s the hundreds, thousands of resentful spirits clustered together.”
Individually, their power might not be great. But bound into one rope, they could easily devour a powerful being of their kind.
“A pack of fools!” The old Taoist roared with laughter. “All their research and they never found a way to wipe out the insects! These are the spirits of those who died in live experiments. I came here to release them!”
After laughing, he pointed at Li Shuo and said, “If you choose to cooperate with this self-righteous guy, once you get out, to cover up this secret, you will definitely be dealt with.”
Compared to the old Taoist, Li Shuo’s voice was unusually calm: “In extraordinary times, people with special abilities will be recruited by the organization, not eliminated.”
Su Er’s smile was half-amused, half-skeptical. When it came to spinning grand tales, no one could surpass him. Cooperating with anyone was never truly safe.
Li Shuo might already be parasitized. This old Taoist wasn’t a saint either—he claimed he came just to release vengeful spirits, but even ghosts wouldn’t believe that! What puzzled Su Er most was that these two still hadn’t clashed violently, as if they were conserving energy, waiting for something.
Standing silently for a while, Su Er noticed that both Li Shuo and the old Taoist were secretly watching the peacock.
Unable to resist, he once again activated the mysterious eye within him to observe. The longer he looked, the stronger the dizziness and discomfort. Su Er took a deep breath to steady himself and noticed, among the countless flickering eyes, one in the heart stood out.
It had no malice, no hatred.
Most importantly, it was a vertical pupil, murky and dim, like a twin to the eye inside himself.
That eye seemed to notice him, too. At the instant their gazes met, Su Er felt the eye within him tremble slightly. Thoughts stirred, and he whispered a few words to Ji Heng, silently marveling at why the other eye appeared in his “dead-end instance.”
Ji Heng considered this thoughtfully: “You’ll know once you take it.”
Su Er: “Wouldn’t that make us the target of everyone?”
Ji Heng smiled: “Ordinary vengeful spirits devour each other—that’s normal. The eyes are the key to their cohesion.”
The old Taoist came here deliberately, likely not to release the spirits but to claim them. Once he had them, he wouldn’t need to hold back at all.
“There’s only one problem to solve,” Ji Heng squinted. “When I take that eye, they will inevitably attack together.”
Players are ultimately a coalition of interests. Once they know the eye is valuable, not joining the fight is generous enough; they certainly won’t help block.
Su Er took out the stone given by the Smiling Merchant. “There’s one chance we haven’t used yet.”
The Smiling Merchant had said before leaving that each instance allows three trades.
Ji Heng shook his head. “Ordinary items won’t help.”
“Not ordinary—this is advanced.”
Under Ji Heng’s suspicious gaze, Su Er whispered in a voice barely audible: “When we get closer, as the old Taoist and Li Shuo strike, I’ll summon it immediately, using the Smiling Merchant as a shield.”
“......”a
Su Er continued: “I observed before. In the first two appearances, it took at most five seconds, and each time it appeared half a meter in front of us. If we time it right and keep the distance, the first wave of attacks will hit it precisely.”
“......”a
Special Field.
In a dark corridor, players were fleeing desperately, when a figure’s face suddenly went pale.
“You did it on purpose,” he said with a bitter smile. “Deliberately underbidding at the auction, making us scramble to buy, and now we can’t pay for tonight’s room.”
“I never said you could leave immediately after the auction,” the Smiling Merchant said, patting the small top hat on his head. “Blame your own greed.”
On the ceiling, a huge monster appeared at lightning speed. The players, already exhausted, were completely devoured in endless frustration.
“Tsk tsk…”
Without a glance, the Smiling Merchant walked straight to the room at the end of the corridor and pushed open the door. “Everyone’s dead—how boring.”
Gou Baopu spun the red beads on his wrist. “The next round will start the day after tomorrow.”
The Smiling Merchant raised an eyebrow to say something, but suddenly sneezed repeatedly. He touched the tip of his nose, and even he was stunned.
…He couldn’t remember the last time he sneezed like this, not in decades.
For some reason, a sense of foreboding lingered.
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