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Chapter 36.1

Xiao Tangqiu, who had been shocked into a daze, got up, turned around and sat down on the floor.

His horrified expression gave Tang Mianmian a fright. Tang Mianmian nervously asked, “What’s the matter? What did you see?”

Xiao Tangqiu opened his mouth and blurted, “I saw... the puppet kill someone...”

“Fuck! The puppet? Killed someone?” Tang Mianmian quickly went through the day’s events and asked, “Was it the man who stole your hemostatic agent? How were you able to see what happened? This row of rooms are rather far apart ah.”

Xiao Tangqiu wasn’t in the mood to explain the details. “...Look at it yourself.”

Although he didn’t like the man very much, that was still a person’s life.

Tang Mianmian hesitated for a long time, then wasted more time preparing himself mentally and lay down to look out.

“...I can’t see anything!” He sounded confused. “I can’t see anything except for the door opposite ours and a small section of the corridor...”

“How is that possible?” Xiao Tangqiu frowned, lying down in disbelief. “I clearly saw it just now...” But before he could finish speaking, he froze. Looking out from the gap under the door, the originally distorted space outside had turned back to normal. According to normal spatial distribution, of course, there was no way he could see the man’s room which was several rooms apart from theirs...

But here came the problem – how was he able to see all of that earlier?

Xiao Tangqiu was shocked, “How is that possible? When I looked just now, I could clearly see the man’s room! ” He tried his best to find the right words to describe the space distortion for fear that Tang Mianmian wouldn’t believe him or think that there was something wrong with his head.

Fortunately, after knowing each other for so long, it didn’t take much for Tang Mianmian to believe him. “In this world, anything strange can happen... Does that mean that the first time you look outside, it’ll appear one way, and the next time you look, it’s different? Or perhaps we have to look out during a certain time to see the space distortion?”

Xiao Tangqiu gradually calmed down. “It’s also possible that everything in this old castle can’t be explained with logic.”

“Can you elaborate on what you saw?” Tang Mianmian rubbed his chin.

Xiao Tangqiu narrated in detail, while Tang Mianmian, who was listening, looked as if he had expected it to be so. “It seems that not damaging any puppets in this castle is one of the so-called rules that those old players mentioned? But the definition of “damage” is somewhat tricky. That guy didn’t damage the puppet. He just wanted to steal its little axe... “

Xiao Tangqiu arched an eyebrow. “If he really stole it, wouldn’t it be equivalent to damaging the integrity of the puppet?”

Tang Mianmian nodded. “That’s reasonable. So we should be careful not to damage any puppets over the next few days, even if we are attacked by them. Otherwise, the ones being “damaged” will be us.”

Xiao Tangqiu sighed, “We can’t fight back when we’re being beaten because we’ll be killed if we did. How can it be so unreasonable?”

After a few more listless jokes, the two climbed into bed.

Xiao Tangqiu thought that he wouldn’t be able to sleep well but ended up sleeping through the night.

Early morning the next day, they hurried to the dining hall on the first floor to gather at the dining table. Xiao Tangqiu looked around to see if there were any other players missing. He heard the woman next to Shen Yuan count their numbers, “There are still 17 players left. Three players are missing.”

Three players missing?

Three?

Xiao Tangqiu stared blankly. Yesterday, he had only seen something happen to the thief, so he knew that he wouldn’t appear today. What happened to the other two players?

“How is that possible! It was calm last night. Nothing happened and I didn’t hear anything... “One of the newbies couldn’t believe it. He stood up and counted to the last player, then turned ashen. “...It’s true that there are only 17 people left!”

Over the course of one night, three people were missing?

It was only one night, and they had lost three people?

Panic spread in the dining hall. Everyone had a different look on their face but their expressions were equally ugly. A few women trembled and huddled together.

A deafening silence reverberated off the walls. After a while, someone cautiously asked, “Is it possible that they stayed in their rooms because they didn’t want to come down?”

Immediately, someone else echoed, “Yes! Maybe they just stayed in their rooms and didn’t want to come down... “

Xiao Tangqiu hesitated for a moment, then stood up and decided to share what happened yesterday. He concluded last night’s events, “....I don’t know about the other two players, but that man should be dead.”

“You saw from under the door? How is that possible?” Someone questioned him at once. “The gap is so small and the rooms are so far apart. There’s no way you could’ve seen it!”

Xiao Tangqiu gave a wry smile; he had already known that he would be questioned like this. But that was the truth, he could only tell them this much and it was none of his business if those people believed it or not.

“Did you really see the puppet kill him?” Someone else asked suspiciously. “Then why don’t you save him? You clearly saw it. Why didn’t you save him? You let him die!”

Xiao Tangqiu frowned, “It’s because of the rule that we can’t leave our rooms after 12 midnight. If I went out, maybe...”

“So you let him die! Who cares about your bullshit excuse about the rules?! So what if it’s a rule? Why do we have to obey? That’s just an excuse!” The man sounded very aggressive. “Even if there wasn’t such a rule, you wouldn’t have saved him”

With a deep frown, Xiao Tangqiu sized up the person who was speaking. It was a young man – the fresh graduate who had complained about missing his interviews on the first day...... He had never seen a keyboard warrior in person before this. So this was how a keyboard warrior looked like?

Before Xiao Tangqiu could speak, Tang Mianmian rolled his eyes dramatically at that man. “There you go, here’s a keyboard for you. Why don’t you quickly go and save the world?! You’re so powerful, so why don’t you bring a keyboard wherever you go? I think, if you started tapping away at your keyboard, all the puppets would die at once!”

The young man immediately turned red with anger. Before he could say anything else, the middle-aged man came out to ease the situation, “Alright, alright. Is it so hard to say a little less? Harmony is the most important thing. We have to spend a few more days together. It doesn’t do you any good if you strained your relationship to this point. Young man, don’t be so angry. Although this young fellow claimed to have seen it, it’s not necessarily true... Maybe he saw it in his dream? Hahaha!”

He laughed loudly, thinking that his own joke was very funny but the young man merely snorted and turned around. Xiao Tangqiu sat down and continued eating breakfast without a change in his expression.

Their breakfast was already on the table waiting for them when they entered the dining hall. There wasn’t a maid around, and neither the host nor the housekeeper was present. However, the food was still steaming hot – soft baked bread and hot corn soup. As hungry as the players were, of course, they wouldn’t refuse a hot breakfast.

Xiao Tangqiu drank his corn soup with a straight face and listened to the middle-aged man decide on behalf of the group. “Let’s go up and have a look after breakfast! We’ll check room by room and see for ourselves if those three are still alive.”

After breakfast, they returned to the second floor. To Xiao Tangqiu’s surprise, Shen Yuan and his team went with them as well. He had thought that these old players would have separated from the newbies.

Shen Yuan and his team obviously didn’t intend to explain anything. They moved silently behind the group, keep a distance that was neither close nor far from them. Seeing that Shen Yuan’s team had also followed along, the other old players also went upstairs too.

The newbies, headed by the middle-aged men, searched from room to room. Xiao Tangqiu took this opportunity to look at the structure of the other rooms. Soon, he found that all the rooms on the second floor seemed to have the exact same layout. The only difference was that the portrait of Lily Marlene had been placed in different positions. In some of the rooms, the painting was hanging directly above the head of the bed. He could imagine how horrifying it must be to sleep in one of those rooms at night.

Xiao Tangqiu originally wanted to follow to see if he could find any important clues from the other vacant rooms, but even after searching several rooms, he had still found nothing. Of course, they hadn’t found the three missing players either.

At that moment, someone hesitantly said, “There seems to be... a candle missing.”

“What candle? What do you mean?” Some of the rookies asked in confusion.

“The candles at the door.....” The man explained in a trembling voice, “I noticed before that there were candles burning in front of all the occupied rooms, so I had specifically counted how many there were. But I just counted again and it looks like there’s one missing.”

“Could it be that you remembered wrongly? Maybe it’s always been like that?” Someone else questioned in doubt.

“No way!” The man said excitedly, “There were only a few candles in total. How could I remember it wrongly? There’s one missing!”

The crowd looked at each other. If there were candles in front of all the occupied rooms, and one candle was missing, that would mean that one of the candles had been extinguished or taken away...

“You’re right, I saw what happened,” Xiao Tangqiu said coldly. “The candle in front of his room went out, and then the puppet appeared and killed him.”

The newbies were immediately alarmed. “When the candle goes out, the puppets will come to kill us? An extinguished candle means death? What if our candle is blown out by the wind?”

“No, that guy had obviously done something wrong! He deserves it!”

Everyone started chattering at once. They looked at the flickering candlelight in front of their rooms, eyes filled with fear.

“So that is to say, there shouldn’t be a candle in front of that man’s room,” the middle-aged man spoke solemnly, drowning out all other voices. “Then what about the other two? Since only one candle was extinguished, it means that the candle in front of their doors is still burning. What’s this nonsense about an extinguished candle meaning death?! Don’t frighten yourselves over nothing!”

The newbies looked at each other, maintaining their silence. At this moment, Xiao Tangqiu spoke again, “I remember which room that man was staying in. Should we go straight to his room to take a look?”

Someone immediately burst out in an irritated voice, “Why didn’t you say so earlier? We went through so many rooms for nothing!”

Xiao Tangqiu gave the man a chilly look. The man immediately withdrew his disgruntled gaze.

He turned and walked straight towards the thief’s room. The newbies eyed each other and finally followed behind him.

He found the room from last night by memory, took a deep breath, and summoned the courage to open the door.

~~~

P.S. I just got promoted so my workload is a little heavier than normal at the moment, but it shouldn’t last long. Well, a girl’s gotta eat 😭 Anyways, if I miss an update, I’ll either make up for it the next day or over the weekend, so don’t worry! On a side note, how sassy is TMM! Love the sarcasm!

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