Author: 木尺素 / Mu Chisu
Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/
Chapter 152
Dark clouds hung over the ruined Blue Harbor City 2301. The air pressure in the city was unusually low, and this decrepit villa where twenty-seven people had died felt especially eerie, making it hard to breathe.
After settling on a rough plan of action, Zhou Qian and the others prepared to leave.
Because of the Banquet of the Red God instance, Hidden Blade’s intuitive skills had improved even further.
Before departing, Hidden Blade closed his eyes and could directly sense whether there were any potential dangers within a 500-meter radius.
A few seconds later he opened his eyes and looked at the rest of the group. “I don’t feel any negative energy. We should be fine.”
“Mm. Let’s go.”
Zhou Qian turned around, stepped over the front door Bai Zhou had kicked in, and was the first to leave the villa.
Qi Liuxing took another look around. After confirming there really were no additional weapons or wristbands hidden on the furniture, he was the last to walk out.
Just as his foot crossed the threshold, everyone received a system message:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 14; Yellow – 25; Green – 25; Blue – 25; Indigo – 23; Violet – 25]
Most wristbands hadn’t changed.
Except the indigo and orange ones.
Two indigo bands were gone, but shockingly six more orange bands had disappeared.
The game had barely started, and the orange count had already plunged from twenty-five to fourteen.
Not long ago Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou had speculated that the sudden loss of five orange wristbands meant five orange-band wearers had been killed—very likely out of vengeance.
But now another six oranges were gone all at once—what was going on this time?
“The system doesn’t report every single wristband the instant it disappears, but the intervals are short—so this is still fairly timely.
“Two fewer indigo bands isn’t enough to see a pattern, but what the hell happened with orange? It’s so weird.”
He Xiaowei scratched his head. “Man, my heart’s pounding like crazy…”
Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou didn’t reply. The two walked abreast in front. He Xiaowei hopped up for a look and found their expressions rather strange— as if they were looking at the road ahead yet also past it, at something farther away.
After a moment He Xiaowei realized—they were probably sharing the little dragon’s vision to monitor what it was finding.
“How’s it look?”
In He Xiaowei’s eyes, Hidden Blade liked to play the master and keep silent. Qi Liuxing used to fake being deep, but now he actually seemed deep—throughout the whole exploration He Xiaowei hadn’t seen him smile once.
So whenever He Xiaowei had questions, he could only ask Zhou Qian.
After a while he saw Zhou Qian raise his hand and point at an office building they were heading toward. “Little Dragon finished searching that one and moved on to another farther away.”
He Xiaowei: “So what about the building it just searched?”
“After that system notice, I did have a guess. Little Dragon’s findings basically confirm it—” Zhou Qian concluded. “Wristbands of the same color show up in batches.”
He Xiaowei reacted quickly. “You mean that office building ahead is all yellow bands too?”
“Right. Little Dragon picked up seven at once,” Zhou Qian said. “By system rules Little Dragon counts as my tool, so any wristbands it finds are considered my discoveries. That means you guys aren’t bound by the three-minute wear rule. I’ll go in and collect them myself.”
He Xiaowei: “Doesn’t matter. The five of us were going to be the yellow team anyway.”
“Sure, but leaving them unworn gives us room to maneuver. We can wait and see.”
Saying this, Zhou Qian—accompanied by Bai Zhou—entered the building alone and took the seven yellow wristbands, then let the others in.
Now Zhou Qian, Bai Zhou, and He Xiaowei each wore a band. Hidden Blade and Qi Liuxing’s wrists were temporarily bare.
What they’d entered wasn’t a villa but an old office block.
There was no elevator, only seven floors—which wasn’t very high.
The players were on the first-floor office area. There were no computers, and the only vaguely modern item was an antique typewriter.
Apparently this building dated to about the same era as the killer’s hideout just now.
The killer had been set free, many who shouldn’t have died became victims, and history slid into ruin.
As for buildings still standing, they must have existed in that old timeline before the killer’s release. History collapsed afterward.
Once everyone was inside, Hidden Blade shut the ground-floor office door and stood guard with his blade.
With keen instincts, he would alert them at the first whiff of danger.
Standing by a battered desk, Zhou Qian glanced at Hidden Blade’s vigilant posture and nudged He Xiaowei with his elbow. “Hey, your master’s skill is more like a sharp-nosed dog—how’d he turn into a fox?”
Hidden Blade clearly heard that. He frowned and swept them with a probing gaze.
Meeting his eyes, Zhou Qian smiled and spoke in earnest. “Just curious. You overturn my image of foxes. Foxes usually bring to mind Su Daji—seductive, good at luring people. But you’re a rare… combat fox. Impressive!”
Hidden Blade: “……”
—I knew it would be like this.
If I hadn’t been cornered in that Murder Exhibition instance I would never have shown my true form! Really it’s all He Xiaowei’s fault—he couldn’t even tell which was the real me?!
He Xiaowei had been waiting for Zhou Qian’s wristband analysis while thinking of searching nearby, but suddenly felt a chill. Looking up, he saw his master’s rather unfriendly stare.
His heart thudded.
—Fuck, it was Qian-er who bad-mouthed him, why glare at me!
“Master, I’m innocent,” He Xiaowei said.
Hidden Blade: “…………”
Zhou Qian chuckled, then seriously steered the topic back to wristband numbers.
He Xiaowei never understood how Zhou Qian’s brain shifted gears so seamlessly. He just heard:
“I still lean toward the idea that those five people died, hence five wristbands vanished. At that time we had no other info, so we could only assume it was vengeance.
“But just two or three minutes later another six orange bands disappeared… maybe it’s not mere revenge. Especially since the Peach Blossom Legion wants me dead and laid traps in advance.”
Hearing this, He Xiaowei frowned. “A lot of Peach Blossom members must have shown up.”
Zhou Qian said, “We just found a bunch of yellow bands, while orange suddenly dropped hard… That shows wristbands of one color spawn in clusters.
“That means teams entering the instance will likely pick up the same color first. Take us: my white is an exception, but everything else we’ve gathered is yellow.
“So I can deduce the Peach Blossom group also grabbed a single color—maybe purple, maybe blue, we don’t know yet. At a time like this…”
Zhou Qian looked at He Xiaowei. “If you were a Peach Blossom member, what would you do?”
“I’d round people up first!”
Understanding dawned and cold sweat broke out on He Xiaowei’s back. “The system says the goal is fewer survivors, and after ten hours if the number’s over a limit we all die… but that’s ten hours away.
“In those ten hours plenty could happen—like killers, side quests. So if I were Peach Blossom I’d recruit a big team, make them help me explore! Then later… I’d figure out how to get rid of them!”
“Exactly.” Zhou Qian nodded firmly. “We have enough to infer this: the Peach Blossom Legion started this instance and pushed Blue Harbor City toward ruin.
“They certainly got more intel than we did— wristband stashes, even weapon locations—so they grabbed them all right away. As for what happened next…
“Say Peach Blossom quickly found lots of green and blue bands. They put on green first, then ran into eleven people.”
His eyes deepened. “Those eleven were another team that found orange bands and had put them on. Peach Blossom forced them to join the green side; they refused. Peach Blossom wasted no words, used weapons to kill five as intimidation.
“Unlike Peach Blossom, the newcomers had no weapons. After witnessing the cruelty, the six survivors had to swap to green bands.
“Thus forced into Peach Blossom’s green camp, they couldn’t turn on Peach Blossom even if they later found weapons—unless they also found a new color and switched. But Peach Blossom would likely kill them before that. Don’t forget—Peach Blossom surely stockpiled other colors, like blue.
“In short, Peach Blossom will conscript many people to scour the instance and compel them to hand over all weapons and info.
“When they’re no longer useful, Peach Blossom will just switch to the pre-collected blue bands, collectively ‘betrays’, and slaughters every former green teammate.
“That’s Peach Blossom’s perfect scheme, and why eleven orange bands vanished in two batches.”
He Xiaowei: “Damn, Peach Blossom is vicious! What do we do?”
“Same plan as before.” At this point Zhou Qian suddenly grinned.
Seeing his confident smile, all of He Xiaowei’s worries evaporated.
Sure enough, he heard Zhou Qian say, “In a way, Peach Blossom is handing us the answer.”
He Xiaowei rubbed his palms eagerly. “How so?”
“For this instance, we don’t yet know the hidden quest specifics—and neither does Peach Blossom, or why recruit so many helpers? They probably only know the quest is tough and need lots of labor.
“However, Peach Blossom must know the maximum survivor count after ten hours. Their trick hinges on precisely managing same-team numbers. Without that number they’d risk a wipe.”
“In short, teammates with the same band color can’t kill each other. Peach Blossom plans to rotate colors: first exploit teammates to finish the hidden quest, then switch colors and wipe them to hit that ‘max number’…
“So once we figure out how many Peach Blossom players are here, we can roughly deduce what that maximum is.”
Having sorted wristbands and Peach Blossom matters, the group now needed the murder info linked to this office building.
Zhou Qian said, “Little Dragon’s main job is finding wristbands and weapons. It swept all seven floors just now, using skill points to sense everything; there are only those seven bands in the whole place—no weapons. Also… while sharing its sight, I didn’t see any corpses.”
He turned to Bai Zhou. “Zhou Ge, you didn’t either, right?”
“No,” Bai Zhou replied. “Corpse-finding isn’t Little Dragon’s specialty, but visually, no bodies where it passed.”
Hidden Blade said, “But to me this building absolutely has corpses. The negative energy here is strong… far worse than the villa.”
At that Zhou Qian summoned his Rib of God to sense.
Sure enough, he felt a massive surge of resentful power and saw related stats skyrocketing on his panel.
The instance’s special limits kept him from using skills, and he was at full health so he couldn’t trigger his ultimate, but using the bone to gauge vengeance was easy.
Since the vengeance was indeed this strong—where were the bodies?
Zhou Qian scanned the office: peeling, rotten desks and chairs, a rusty printer, filing cabinets… finally his gaze landed on the walls.
“Could the corpses have been chopped up and walled in?” he asked.
He Xiaowei: “What the—?”
“Just recalling a precedent,” Zhou Qian said. “We’ll have to split up and look.”
After a quick discussion they divvied up tasks.
Hidden Blade would check the seventh floor and see if the roof offered a view of the city. He Xiaowei and Qi Liuxing took floors four through six; Zhou Qian and Bai Zhou handled one to three.
The others headed upstairs. Zhou Qian stayed on the first floor. He went to the nearest rickety desk, opened a few drawers, and found a document.
The company name read “Blue Harbor City Yuanhang Shipping Co.”
Apparently, a maritime transport firm.
The document was just a simple personal work plan, with no useful info for now. Rummaging further, Zhou Qian found several keys.
Remembering the locked filing cabinet, he took the keys over.
But the lock was rusted solid—useless.
While Zhou Qian pondered which tool to use, Bai Zhou walked over.
Grabbing the iron lock, Bai Zhou said, “Let me try.”
Zhou Qian glanced at him, nodded, and smiled slightly. “Go ahead.”
Bai Zhou gripped the lock with both hands and yanked hard.
The iron itself was sturdy and tough to break directly, but Bai Zhou didn’t focus on the lock. He just kept pulling outward. Soon the cabinet’s sheet-metal face warped into a huge arc under his force.
With a clang, the side hinges tore loose and both doors, still chained by the lock, ripped away from the cabinet.
Eyes wide, Zhou Qian turned to Bai Zhou in surprise. “Zhou Ge, your skills are all disabled?”
“Mm.” Bai Zhou met his gaze. “Why?”
“Nothing. Just praising your arm strength.” Zhou Qian laughed.
The violent tug had also dumped many files. The two crouched to gather them and discovered they were all ledgers.
The company had run many years. The accounts were intricate, making it complicated to read.
Too lazy to explore the upper floors, Zhou Qian plopped onto a desk with an armful of books.
He said nothing else, simply opened the first ledger and then lifted his eyes at Zhou Ge.
That look carried meaning outsiders couldn’t grasp, but Bai Zhou understood instantly—
Back in school, countless times during evening study when Zhou Qian suddenly craved a popsicle, he’d give Bai Zhou that exact look.
Catching it, Bai Zhou stepped forward and pressed a hand on his shoulder.
Zhou Qian blinked at him. “Mm?”
Bai Zhou leaned close and whispered in his ear. “I’ll check the second and third floors. Be careful down here alone.”
Whenever Bai Zhou spoke to Zhou Qian his enunciation was extra soft.
Zhou Qian’s ear tingled with his breath, warm and a bit itchy.
He reflexively touched his earlobe—and realized nothing was there.
When he’d first arrived in Blue Harbor he’d dressed flamboyantly and even pierced several studs, but as the instance fractured, that shop vanished and so did the studs.
Same with the tattoo parlor.
After leaving Murder Exhibition the two had gotten matching “Z” tattoos, but now the letters had vanished from their skin without a trace.
“Zhou Ge—” Zhou Qian looked at him again.
“Mm?” Bai Zhou leaned in, as if to listen.
His profile was right against Zhou Qian’s. When he blinked, Zhou Qian could feel his lashes brush his cheek.
“Nothing.” Zhou Qian turned his face, his raised chin brushed Bai Zhou’s cheek.
Startled, Bai Zhou’s taut profile went even stiffer.
Seeing that, Zhou Qian smiled.
Then he said, “When we get out, let’s get new ink—okay?”
The moment he spoke, Zhou Qian saw Bai Zhou’s brow knit slightly.
After a pause he added, “Anyway, I’ll head to Zone X to find you first.”
Bai Zhou still had a hand on his shoulder. He squeezed hard before letting go and answered, “Okay.”
Lowering his head, Bai Zhou placed a gentle kiss on Zhou Qian’s forehead before heading upstairs.
Watching him leave, Zhou Qian hopped off the desk, pillaged the whole first floor, then settled in to sift through ledgers.
Years of accounts were voluminous. Zhou Qian dug out the earliest books and sped through them—it would take time.
By the time he’d skimmed several volumes, the others had finished exploring and returned.
He Xiaowei, very excited, ran over clutching a sheet of paper. Spreading it on the desk, he said, “It’s the building’s schematics. Guess what? There’s an elevator drawn here! See the floor plan—clear as day! So why can’t we see any elevator in the building?”
Qi Liuxing added, “We measured—the interior space is smaller now, so the building should have had an elevator. It’s just sealed up.”
“That fits.” Hidden Blade said, “I went to the roof from the seventh floor and saw a sealed structure—looked like the lightwell closed off. Now it seems that was probably the elevator shaft.”
“Mm.” Zhou Qian looked up from the book. “I found finances from construction. Notes say the building did install an elevator, but when another building in town had a fatal elevator crash, the boss thought it unsafe. Since this place only had seven floors, he halted the project. Also—
“In its first five years the company kept losing money. Specifically, month by month they were profitable except every July—each July showed a huge loss.
“That pattern improved in the sixth year onward. Profits every year and no more massive deficits.”
“Wait…” He Xiaowei said. “Maybe the shaft was dug but later the elevator wasn’t installed—so the shaft is empty! The bodies could be inside! And maybe the roof links to it—should we check now?”
“A sealed shaft is definitely suspicious, but it may not be that simple. I’ll go down first. You judge whether to follow carefully.”
That was Bai Zhou.
Zhou Qian met his eyes across the room. “Zhou Ge, if you say that, you must’ve found something on two and three?”
Bai Zhou said, “The boss’s office is on the second floor. He was superstitious—lots of books on the Five Phases, arrays, and talismans to ward off evil. Also many ship models.”
“Right, a shipping firm.” Zhou Qian mused. “Maritime transport… always risky. Trouble every July likely ties to storms, waves, capsized ships. Compensation for cargo and crew families—that would cause huge losses.”
“Exactly. I suspect the boss is a killer. His motive may have been human sacrifices.”
Bai Zhou said, “The shaft might not hold intact corpses, but it’s surely linked to the sacrificial rite. He wanted to offer some lives to the sea to calm its fury and stop his losses. That’s why he killed.
“Whether Blue Harbor truly has supernatural forces is unclear, so be careful.
“Also, if the death-trigger mechanics are like the small sub-instance with Ruan Mei, we need extra caution. Learning motive and manner of death is crucial for later tasks.”
“Yeah. At the museum exhibition we got limited intel on those killers. We only know how to avoid Ruan Mei and the swastika murderer. The rest we must investigate.”
Zhou Qian nodded, then told Bai Zhou, “And Zhou Ge, remember—you’re no different from us now, just ordinary. No need to spearhead alone. We’ll work together.”
After the brief discussion, they headed up the stairs toward the roof.
On the way another system message arrived:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 12; Yellow – 24; Green – 25; Blue – 20; Indigo – 18; Violet – 25]
By the time they reached the rooftop, it pinged again:
[Wristband colors and quantities updated: Orange – 11; Yellow – 24; Green – 25; Blue – 20; Indigo – 14; Violet – 25]
He Xiaowei immediately said, “Yellow barely changed since we’re holding them here… but besides that… green and violet never drop at all!”
“Mm. One of those is Peach Blossom’s color, no doubt.”
Reaching the roof, Zhou Qian spotted the sealed elevator shaft at a glance.
He continued, “We may not have weapons here, but that’s fine. Once we grasp the killers’ methods and the death-trigger rules, we’ll have another powerful weapon of our own.”
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