Before lights out, all players had to return to their rooms.
"Ladies and gentlemen, I hope tonight will be a peaceful night," Xu Huo was the first to stand up.
Everyone stood up following him, and as Liang Chong went upstairs, he said to Xu Huo, "Brother Xu, good luck!"
The lights in the villa were extinguished quickly, and it wasn’t until two hours later that Xu Huo left his room. He didn’t conceal the sound of his footsteps, letting the other players hear him going downstairs.
After inspecting the rooms on the first floor, he returned to the second floor and began checking rooms from one end of the corridor, knocking on the doors of the occupied rooms.
The raincoat-clad man and the baby-faced player were the first, opening their door for Xu Huo to enter directly and make a brief inspection of the doors and windows.
"Do you have to look in every room?" the man in the raincoat asked.
"Not necessarily, just to be safe," Xu Huo replied as he smoothly closed the door, also telling the two, "Get some rest early."
Next were the rooms of the players who had bullied Zhao Xiaojing. Xu Huo stood at the door and knocked, and someone inside responded, "Come in yourself."
Xu Huo grasped the doorknob and gently turned it but then let go, smiled, and turned toward the seductive female player’s room.
The female player on this side was much more honest; she hadn’t prepared any props in advance to welcome him. He entered the room to find the woman lazily leaning on the couch in her pajamas, not posing deliberately, but rather enjoying a pre-bedtime drink leisurely.
Watching Xu Huo stand by the window and then sit down by the bed, the female player asked, "Do you know why I couldn’t pass the game?"
"You killed someone and didn’t dispose of the ’trash’ in time," Xu Huo said indifferently. "It would have been fine if you’d killed just one person, within your rights, but you killed too many."
The female player shook her head and sighed, "I only thought of that the next day, thinking the temporary host had a lot of power. Turns out, I had to do housekeeping as well. How can that be a host?"
"You have to clean your house as well," Xu Huo replied, "unless you hire a maid."
Thinking of something, the female player chuckled and then said, "I didn’t have a maid before I became a player, but afterwards, I had my former boss clean for me. Not only could I avoid paying a wage, but she had to pay me as well."
"Oh?" Xu Huo pressed down on the bedsheet, "Aren’t you afraid she’ll poison you?"
"What kind of decent poison can she get?" The female player’s gaze slid gently off his arm, "Besides, the lives of her whole family are in my hands. Being a player is convenient; I’ve got access to chronic poisons that I never could have before, just raise my hand, and many people will bring them to me."
"Doing others favors is doing yourself a favor," Xu Huo looked up, "Obstructing other players’ success only brings trouble upon yourself."
The female player’s expression shifted slightly, and her posture changed, "What do you mean?"
"I’ve seen the bodies that the raincoat man threw outside the villa; one of them was fake. He actually did very well last night; although he didn’t kill anyone, the damage caused by one player should have been within the allowed range. So, the main reason he didn’t get through was probably your substitution of the real body with a fake one," Xu Huo patted the bed beneath him, "As an uncleaned ’trash’ body, it was placed inside this bed."
"I hear you’re good at magic," he smiled faintly, "Pull the body out, and we have nothing to do with each other, or else, I’ll have to use my murder quota tonight on you."
The female gamer’s face grew cold at first, then she burst into laughter. "You really think you’ve got me scared!"
As she waved her hand, the large bed sprang forward as if fitted with a spring, propelling Xu Huo towards the sofa. Meanwhile, the female gamer smoothly stood up, her long leg raised, her high heel slicing down like a Sword!
A string of piano wire looped around her ankle, suspending her leg in mid-air; Xu Huo, who was supposed to be sitting on the bed, was now standing behind her, his fingers poised at her throat: "Don’t disturb others’ sleep late at night."
Chills ran down the female gamer’s spine. After performing a backward somersault to regain her footing, she threw a matchbox-like prop onto the floor: "The performer is in position!"
The matchbox projected something transparent in mid-air, like a glass cabinet, but it was actually soft. As it unfolded, it quickly entrapped Xu Huo, falling to the ground like an upright coffin.
Watching the struggle inside the box, the female gamer stood up with a smile, a flick of her finger summoning three long swords in her hand. Without any superfluous talk, she lunged forward, thrusting the sword through the glass cabinet and Xu Huo’s body!
"The night is long, full of dreams, so let’s get straight to it. Don’t worry, I’ll make your death quick, then I’ll stash you inside the mattress. That way, your body will stay in the game forever, until it completely decays."
She stabbed two more swords in, confirming they pierced the heart and lungs before she approached the bed. With a light tap on the mattress, a corpse was expelled.
There were no signs of damage on the mattress itself, so the average person would never guess a corpse was hidden inside. This was also why the man in the raincoat fell for it.
The female gamer waited for Xu Huo to breathe his last, but only saw him spitting blood. The game notification was delayed, and she realized something was amiss. Before she could react, she felt a sharp pain at the back of her neck.
The glass cabinet and the critically injured Xu Huo had disappeared; only the corpse pulled out from the mattress remained on the floor. At the same time, she lost all sensation in her hands, feet, and tongue, unable to move or speak.
"This toxin won’t cause much pain." Xu Huo slowly circled around to her front, softly murmuring, "But the despair you’re meant to feel in the two minutes before death won’t be any less."
The female gamer glared at him fiercely, her lip muscles trembling, uncertain if she was trying to call for help or plead, but Xu Huo laid her on the bed. He then sat by the sofa, intently watching her until she exhaled her last breath.
She died silently, without damaging any facilities in the room or dirtying the sheets.
After restoring the bed to its original position, Xu Huo tossed both bodies over the back gate of the villa, the same old dumping ground where the man in the raincoat’s body had been discarded.
Someone was watching from the third floor. He turned and waved to them; the two companions of the man in the raincoat responded with stiff expressions.
Having dealt with the female gamer, Xu Huo knocked on the next door.
The two players who had been bullying Zhao Xiaojing were already ambushed behind the door, waiting for him to open it and deliver his head. Unfortunately, they had activated their props prematurely, upset that Xu Huo had halfway opened his door only to turn toward the female gamer’s room!
Regretful, because some props have long cooldown times, and usually, such props are very powerful. They treated them as their trump cards, not expecting them to be released into the air without a confrontation.
So, when Xu Huo knocked on the door a second time, the two players cautiously approached the door, wielding their props, fixated on the lock, waiting for the door to be fully open before using them.
The door did indeed open this time, but as soon as a sliver of space appeared, it quickly shut again. The two stood behind the door, and all their words condensed into: "Fuck!"