Players, Please Board the Train

“You remember how the game background mentioned that locals here would give their best room to guests—well, that best room is actually where they worship their gods,” Tian Kunwen said. “As for which specific god they worship, nobody knows. They say the religious statue is kept inside a wooden cabinet.”

“Hasn’t anyone opened it to look?” Yi Pei asked.

“Most of the people who opened it ended up missing,” Fu Danhong said. “Last night, two players went missing from the guesthouse too. Tian Kunwen and I went to check on them. Those two families had already been interrogated three times, and one person was dead. They wouldn’t give in, insisting that the missing players must have offended the gods and brought punishment upon themselves.”

“With that premise, the other players didn’t dare open the cabinets to see what god was inside either.”

So after searching all over, they still had no clue what was causing the players to disappear.

If only people who had seen the religious statue would vanish, then You Jun’s disappearance made no sense.

“What if You Jun saw the statue somewhere?” Yi Pei suggested.

“He came here with us, went to the same places, and saw the same people. If he had inadvertently triggered the dungeon’s kill condition, we should all be marked too,” Tian Kunwen said, more worried about that possibility.

“You Jun could have seen the statue,” Xu Huo said at that moment. “He was the one who went to answer the door last night. Normally, he would have looked through the peephole first. If the statue was outside the door, then he fits the criteria.”

The group exchanged glances. Fu Danhong dialed the front desk and asked the administrator to bring some snacks up.The administrator ran up quickly. As soon as the door opened, Tian Kunwen and Wei Xian dragged him inside, pinned him to the ground, and demanded, “Was it you knocking on the door last night?!”

The administrator’s face was squished, and he spoke with a muffled voice, “What do you think you’re doing?! Let go of me! Or I’ll make you regret it!”

“How exactly will you make us regret it?” Xu Huo stepped on his head, leaned down, and pressed the dagger against his neck. “I’ll ask, you answer. Otherwise, you’re not walking out of this door alive.”

Fear crept onto the administrator’s face. “Boss, what do you want to know? Just ask—I’ll tell you everything I know!”

“Was it you knocking on the door last night?” Xu Huo asked.

“What knocking?” the administrator said. “I got off work yesterday. Didn’t you call the front desk?”

“Not answering the phone doesn’t mean you weren’t there,” Wei Xian twisted his arm. “If you don’t start talking, you can kiss this arm goodbye!”

“What’s going on with the missing people? Talk!”

“So that’s what you’re after…” The administrator pulled a face. “Why didn’t you say so earlier? Why go through all that trouble…”

Xu Huo pressed down harder. “Skip the unnecessary chatter.”

The administrator bit into the carpet and only spoke after the pressure on his head eased. “All of us in Sifang Palace City have gods protecting us. Every outsider who bullies us will face retribution!”

Tian Kunwen’s grip loosened slightly.

Xu Huo stomped down harder. “Do you think we’re that easy to fool?”

“I’m… telling the truth…” the administrator struggled to say. “Every family in this city worships a god, so of course we’re under divine protection. If you want to bully us, just wait—you’ll get what’s coming to you!”

The players weren’t bothered by verbal threats. Fu Danhong pushed past Xu Huo, stood in front of the administrator, and held a rapidly spinning watch in front of his eyes. “Stare at this. Watch it carefully. In a moment, I’ll ask, and you’ll answer.”

The administrator resisted at first, but soon his expression grew dazed.

“How did those people go missing?” Fu Danhong asked.

The administrator’s face twitched in struggle for a moment before he answered, “They disrespected the gods.”

“Why did You Jun disappear?”

“I don’t know…”

“Are we not allowed to look at the statue?”

“Staring directly at a god is an insult to the god.”

Fu Danhong asked a few more questions, but the administrator kept circling back to the same answers.

“Under the influence of the item, he can’t lie,” Fu Danhong said with a sneer. “No wonder he’s still alive and well despite all those players going missing. He really doesn’t know anything.”

Unable to extract any useful leads, Tian Kunwen threw the administrator out, closed the door, and said, “The most likely person knocking last night was the administrator. Next would be other players who arrived early. If the administrator is clueless, could another player be responsible?”

Guessing that the knocker was a player was reasonable. Wei Xian had gone to the door just moments later, and the person was already gone—the administrator shouldn’t have been that fast.

“But wouldn’t seeing the statue trigger the kill condition? That doesn’t add up,” Wei Xian said.

“Maybe the god here really does protect the locals,” Xu Huo said slowly.

The others fell silent for a moment, then Fu Danhong said, “We ran into a few troublemakers earlier. If attacking the locals is a trigger condition, we’ll find out by tomorrow morning.”

“If there’s a power in this dungeon beyond our understanding, all we can do is avoid the trigger conditions,” Yi Pei said.

“By the way, have any of you found the bodies of You Jun or the others?” Tian Kunwen changed the subject.

“There’s no sign of anyone buried in the woods,” Xu Huo said. “Unless the killer really is a god, they should be hidden somewhere in this town. Even if they were eaten, there’d be bones left behind.”

Aside from Player-Eaters, there was no guarantee the townsfolk weren’t cannibals either.

The players’ faces showed varying degrees of disgust. Yi Pei said, “I don’t think so. Most of the people here are old or young. Able-bodied adults are less than a tenth of the population. Some households don’t even have a single young person.”

“No surprise there. This place is so isolated, and the locals are all superstitious and weird. If I were a young person, I wouldn’t want to stay either,” Wei Xian said.

“I’m going back to rest.” Xu Huo’s arm injury flared up again, and sweat beaded on his forehead.

“I’ll eat first, then head out,” Fu Danhong said, crossing her arms in a dismissive gesture.

Xu Huo turned and walked toward his room. Yi Pei caught up and handed him a potion, smiling at him. “You look pretty badly hurt. This is a special medicine—might help.”

“Thanks.” Xu Huo took it and then added, “Can I borrow your voice recorder to listen to?”

Yi Pei handed it over without hesitation.

“Let’s go eat together,” Wei Xian called out to her.

The group left together. Xu Huo closed the door to his room, checked the space, and then pressed play on the recorder.

Just as Yi Pei had said, when the locals were asked about the religious history of Sifang Palace City, they couldn’t give a straight answer. When questioned about the gods they worshipped, they dodged the topic, seemingly genuinely ignorant.

This was the complete opposite of the administrator’s story.

The residents were evasive about the subject of worshipping gods, while the administrator claimed their gods protected the locals from bullying.

Xu Huo didn’t think a god would be so idle or bother to intervene so broadly—otherwise, there wouldn’t have been a knock on the door last night.

Still, regardless of how people were going missing, it was connected to religion, which meant it was connected to the religious statue… He swept his gaze over the walls covered in relief carvings, then glanced at the peephole on the door and the mirror in the bathroom. Finally, he called the front desk and ordered a batch of small mirrors from the administrator.