Players, Please Board the Train

Before lights-out, players had to return to their guest rooms.

”Everyone, I hope tonight is a quiet night.” Xu Huo was the first to stand.

Everyone else rose with him. As Liang Chong went upstairs he called after Xu Huo, ”Brother Xu, good luck!”

The villa’s lights were quickly extinguished. Two hours later, Xu Huo finally left his room. He did not try to hide his footsteps, letting the other players know he was going downstairs.

After checking the rooms on the first floor, he returned to the second floor and began inspecting rooms one by one from one end of the corridor, knocking on the doors of rooms where someone was inside.

First he came to Raincoat Man and Baby-faced Player’s room. The two opened the door and Xu Huo walked straight in, giving the windows and doors a quick once-over and nothing more.

”Do you really have to check every room?” Raincoat Man asked.

”Not really, just to be safe.” Xu Huo closed the door behind him and told them, ”Get some rest early.”

Next was the room of the two players who had bullied Zhao Xiaojing. He stood at their door and knocked. Someone inside answered, ”Come in yourself.”

Xu Huo turned the doorknob gently, then let go, smiled, and moved on toward the Alluring Female Player’s room.She was more straightforward. She hadn’t prepared any props in advance to greet him. When he entered she was in pajamas, reclining on the sofa, not posing deliberately, but leisurely enjoying a pre-sleep sip of liquor.

Seeing Xu Huo pause at the window and then sit on the edge of the bed, the female player said, ”Do you know why I couldn’t clear the dungeon?”

”Killing people and not handling the waste in time,” Xu Huo replied evenly. ”If you only killed one person it would have been fine—within acceptable limits. Unfortunately, you killed too many.”

She shook her head and sighed. ”I only realized it the next day. I thought the temporary master had so much authority, but they still have to do cleaning work. Is that being a master?”

”You still have to clean your home,” Xu Huo said. ”Unless you hire a maid.”

The female player suddenly snorted with laughter at something she remembered, then said, ”I didn’t have a maid before I became a player, but later I had my old employer clean for me. Not only could I not pay her, she even had to give me money.”

”Oh?” Xu Huo pressed his hand on the bedsheet. ”Aren’t you afraid she’ll poison you?”

”What sort of decent poison could she get?” Her eyes slid lightly over his forearm. ”Besides, her entire family’s fate is in my hands now. Being a player makes things easier—chronic poisons I couldn’t have gotten before are suddenly easy to obtain. Lift a finger and many people will deliver them.”

”Making things convenient for others makes life convenient for yourself.” Xu Huo looked up. ”Obstructing others from clearing the dungeon only brings trouble to yourself.”

Her expression shifted, her posture changing. ”What are you implying?”

”I went to look at the corpses Raincoat Man tossed outside the villa. One of them was fake. He actually did quite well last night. Although he didn’t kill anyone, the damage caused by one player should have been within the allowed range. The biggest reason he failed the dungeon was probably that you swapped a fake body for a real corpse.” Xu Huo tapped the bed. ”You left the uncollected corpse inside the bed.”

”I heard you can do magic tricks,” he smiled slightly. ”Bring the corpse out and we’ll have nothing to do with each other. Otherwise, tonight my killing quota might have to be used on you.”

Her face went cold at first, then she laughed. ”You really think I’m afraid of you!”

”Close-up magic!”

With a wave of her hand, the large bed sprang forward like it contained a spring, slamming Xu Huo into the sofa. She stood up with the motion, her long leg rising as her high heel came down like a sword!

A piano wire looped around her ankle, suspending her leg in midair. The Xu who should have been seated on the bed was suddenly standing behind her, his five fingers clamping toward her throat: ”Don’t bother people at this hour.”

She bristled, then executed a somersault and, while flipping, threw an object that looked like a matchbox: ”Performer ready!”

The matchbox projected a transparent, glasslike cabinet in midair. In truth the material was flexible; once opened it quickly trapped Xu Huo, landing on the floor like an upright coffin.

Watching the person struggling inside the box, the female player stood and, with a flick of her fingers, three long swords appeared in her hands. Without wasting words, she lunged and drove a blade through the glass cabinet and Xu Huo’s body together!

”Long nights breed many dreams; let’s get straight to it. Don’t worry, I’ll make your death pleasant, then put you into the mattress so your body will remain in the dungeon forever, until it completely rots.”

She stabbed twice more, confirming she had pierced heart and lungs, then went to the bed and, with a light pat on the mattress, a corpse was expelled.

There were no visible marks of damage on the mattress itself, so a normal person would never suspect a body could be hidden inside—this was why Raincoat Man had been fooled.

The female player waited for Xu Huo to stop breathing, but he only coughed up blood, and the game notification still did not appear. She realized something was wrong and, before she could react, felt a stabbing pain at the back of her neck.

The glass cabinet and the severely wounded Xu Huo vanished. Only the corpse pulled from the mattress remained on the floor. At the same time her hands, feet, and tongue all lost sensation; she couldn’t move or speak.

”This toxin won’t make someone suffer greatly.” Xu Huo slowly circled to stand in front of her and spoke softly, ”But in the two minutes before death, the despair you feel will be more than enough.”

The female player glared at him, the muscles in her lips trembling, unsure whether to beg or to cry for help. Xu Huo laid her back onto the bed, then sat on the sofa, watching her with utterly calm eyes until she exhaled her final breath.

She died quietly and silently, without damaging any of the room’s furnishings or dirtying the sheets.

After restoring the bed to its original position, Xu Huo threw the two corpses out the villa’s back door and over the courtyard wall—the usual corpse-dumping spot where Raincoat Man had also left a body earlier.

Someone on the third floor was watching. Xu Huo turned and waved up; the two companions of Raincoat Man responded with stiff expressions.

After dealing with the female player, Xu Huo knocked on the next door.

The two players who had bullied Zhao Xiaojing had long been lying in wait behind that door, ready to send him a head on a platter the moment he opened it. Unfortunately, their props had already been activated, and who would have thought Xu Huo would leave the door half-open and go to the female player’s room instead!

They deeply regretted it, because some props had long cooldown times; such items tended to be powerful and treated as finisher moves. They never expected their setup to be deflated before they’d even had a face-to-face.

So when Xu Huo came to knock a second time, the two men crept to the door with extreme caution, holding their props up and staring at the lock, waiting to be certain the door was fully open before using them.

This time the door did open for real, but it only showed a crack before slamming shut again. The two men behind the door turned their myriad words into a single exclamation: ”Shit!”