Players, Please Board the Train

Ni Tian was somewhat reluctant, but since the other players suspected Pan Siming and Da Xiong’s deaths weren’t normal, she didn’t dare break off from Xu Huo. Otherwise, she would become the target of public criticism, so she could only follow his instructions.

Seeing her avoid the others’ line of sight and slowly move to the far end of the corridor, slipping into the hallway, Xu Huo then began searching the exhibition hall.

The first priority was definitely to find Painting Woman. She hadn’t returned after coming out yesterday, and she wasn’t in the exhibition hall now, so she must have entered a painting.

”You came out last night.” Gao Jun suddenly approached from behind him, lowering his voice.

The exhibition hall wasn’t soundproof, and all the other players, whether they turned their heads or not, instantly focused their attention on them.

”You’re pretty good at playing the ’thief crying stop thief’ game.” Xu Huo said calmly, ”Whether I went out or not, Ni Tian can testify, but who can testify for you?”

Gao Jun retorted, ”You two are cooperating partners, taking turns to clear levels isn’t strange at all, is it?”

”Right, both Ni Tian and I cleared the level. Not only that, we killed Deng Yu and the other two, and you’re our next target.” Xu Huo went along with his words, ”Does saying this make you feel better now?”

”Instead of wasting time picking fights, you’d be better off looking at the paintings.”

After saying this, he walked away first, while Gao Jun stood behind, staring at him for quite a while before continuing to examine the paintings.Although they were supposed to be looking for fake paintings, the players paid more attention to the two missing paintings. The Gloomy Man and Li Weiran successively paused before the pillar, carefully examining the empty spaces.

”What exactly is the connection between these two paintings?” Xie Man pondered endlessly without finding an answer.

The Gloomy Man beside her didn’t answer her question, instead walking away alone, which made Xie Man roll her eyes, ”What’s with the attitude? You haven’t cleared the level either, have you?”

After the two left one after another, Li Weiran remained standing in place, but then Fan Shiji approached and said furtively, ”I have something to discuss with you.”

Li Weiran looked at him without speaking, but Fan Shiji continued, ”We two are in the most danger right now. Everyone else is unreliable. Shouldn’t we cooperate?”

Li Weiran nodded and proactively headed toward the room.

After they left, Xu Huo came to the portrait painting’s location again. Looking around, he suddenly noticed that the leaves in the landscape painting behind were trembling, then a hand pushed aside the leaves and appeared within the painting’s content.

Painting Woman, shrunk to occupy only a small corner, smiled and waved at him.

Xu Huo smiled slightly and took out his phone to ask her, ”Did you see any dead people last night?”

Painting Woman pointed diagonally upward. He followed her gesture and looked up—it was the crystal chandelier beneath the dome. The chandelier’s lamp holder was solid, blocking the line of sight.

”Help me with something.” Xu Huo said, ”Get the corpse down from there.”

Painting Woman nodded and slipped back into the leaves.

Xu Huo turned and walked toward the corridor. Just then, a loud crash came from the left room. As the other players turned their heads, they saw Ni Tian flying out from the corridor. Before she even hit the ground, Lu Gang, who had rushed out, caught up with her and stomped on her abdomen!

Ni Tian, who had crashed heavily to the ground, coughed up blood. Getting up, she grabbed Lu Gang’s leg and flipped him over, striking his knee to slam him face-down to the ground, simultaneously pressing her body down on him!

However, she was clearly no match for Lu Gang in terms of strength. He directly lifted her up, carrying her on his back as he crashed into the large mural behind them!

Hearing the noise, Fan Shiji and Li Weiran came out of the room. The former said, ”Why are you fighting?”

Ni Tian was currently pinned against the mural by Lu Gang gripping her shoulder, her blood-stained mouth shouting at Xu Huo, ”Aren’t you going to help?!”

Xu Huo stepped forward, grabbed Lu Gang’s shoulder, and pulled him back, ”That’s enough. Do you really want to kill her?”

Lu Gang gasped heavily, staring at him without speaking, but his expression remained furious.

Xu Huo said calmly, ”You can’t speak, but that doesn’t mean your brain is broken. If you find an excuse to kill Ni Tian now, will you find excuses to kill other players next?”

The other players stood around at a distance, all staring at Lu Gang.

”You’ve all misunderstood.” You Huanhuan stepped forward and said, ”Just now, Ni Tian sneaked out of our room. When I asked what she was doing, she wouldn’t say, so Lu Gang got angry. It wasn’t deliberately looking for an excuse.”

Ni Tian, now freed, immediately moved to Xu Huo’s side, resetting her dislocated shoulder as she said, ”What business is it of yours what I do? Is the room your private property? Or are you hiding something unspeakable?”

Li Weiran frowned, ”Finding the fake painting is most important right now. If you want to cause trouble, we can settle things clearly first, so we don’t have people causing disturbances from time to time.”

”Ho! You’ve got quite the tone.” Ni Tian said with a dark expression, ”If you have what it takes, deal with these two first!”

Li Weiran was clearly angered, but before she could speak, the Gloomy Man interrupted, ”What were you looking for in You Huanhuan and Lu Gang’s room?”

Ni Tian glanced at Xu Huo, who took over the conversation, ”Don’t you also suspect that Pan Siming was killed by someone among us? So I had her go look for the body.”

The others immediately became alert, but the Gloomy Man laughed, ”Looks like you didn’t find anything.”

”We really didn’t kill anyone,” You Huanhuan said with reddened eyes, ”You have to believe me. If I killed Pan Siming, may heaven punish me to be eaten by Mutants!”

Unfortunately, her pitiful appearance didn’t evoke sympathy. Fan Shiji instead said, ”If swearing oaths worked, lightning would have struck countless people dead long ago. Give us something substantial!”

You Huanhuan looked around, seemingly hurt by the players’ indifference. With a stern face she said, ”Since you’re saying I killed someone, show me the evidence! There’s no body in my room, so why are you accusing me of murder? Do you think I’m easy to bully?”

For a moment, no one spoke. At this point, Xie Man lost interest in watching the drama and turned away, waving her hand, ”We can’t even determine whether the person is dead or left the dungeon, so why look for a body? Aren’t you just looking for trouble?”

Xu Huo, who was ”looking for trouble,” watched her walk under the chandelier.

”Plop!” Something dripped onto Xie Man’s face. She reached up to touch it, but what came away was a piece of flesh with a bloody smell. Shocked, she looked up just in time to see a shadow falling down!

Xie Man quickly retreated to avoid it. Only when the thing hit the ground did she exclaim in surprise: ”Pan Siming!”

”What?!” The other players were also shocked by the corpse falling from the sky and immediately gathered around. The Gloomy Man turned the body over, and the standing players couldn’t help but gasp.

Pan Siming’s death was too gruesome. One eyeball was burst, his neck and half his face were completely chewed apart, scattered muscle tissue hanging from the bones, with tooth marks visible along the edges.

”It’s him. His throat is broken, probably bitten to death while still alive.” The Gloomy Man examined Pan Siming’s clothes and frowned, ”Although his clothes are soaked with blood, the amount of bleeding doesn’t match. The person who killed him not only ate human flesh but also drank all his blood.”