Selling Skin

The moment Zhu Yan finished asking, the expression simulated by the Doppelganger completely froze on its face.

After a full two seconds, it leaned forward eagerly and exclaimed to Zhu Yan in a low voice.

"Oh my god, you really are a good demon!"

"To be honest, I am in need of human skin right now."

Zhu Yan looked at that face belonging to his uncle. The Doppelganger wearing this face and making such a naive and cute expression always gave him a sense of incongruity.

The Doppelganger's eyes darted around, and it chose to confess honestly to Zhu Yan.

"Hmm, demon, is the chain of contempt severe within your species?"

Zhu Yan thought of the product catalog divided by levels in the [Demon Department Store] and nodded without thinking.

"It's severe," he observed the Doppelganger's expression, "Low-level demons don't have many resources."

The Doppelganger nodded with a strong sense of resonance.

"Yes, yes! We are the same. When low-level Doppelgangers enter an instance and encounter high-level Doppelgangers, they can't grab any food at all."

Those black eyes, radiating a sense of hunger, stared urgently at Zhu Yan.

"I... I need as many human skins as possible; they can help me disguise myself as a high-level Doppelganger."

"You know, unless the level gap is too large, generally other Doppelgangers can't see through my level."

Zhu Yan remembered that this guy had just accurately stated his level, and couldn't help but ask curiously.

"How did you see through my level?"

The Doppelganger said, "Oh, demon, I'm already level seven. That's a gap of three levels and above!"

Damn.

That fast?

Not long ago when they met, it was just a level-two Doppelganger.

The point was, even a level-seven Doppelganger had to buy more human skins to disguise itself to prevent starvation.

Just how terrifying was the current Bailu City?

Zhu Yan looked at this Doppelganger with new respect.

Not to mention, it was quite polite and didn't choose to just snatch things directly.

Zhu Yan immediately decided to sell those four human skins, and he told the Doppelganger truthfully.

"The dead Doppelganger was level four. Because it was killed by a dagger, its human skin has small tears."

"I can sell them to you cheap, 200 Bone Gold Coins each."

"A total of eight hundred Bone Gold Coins."

This price was a guess Zhu Yan made based on the rewards players received for clearing each level.

Every time he cleared an instance, he would receive a reward ranging from 400 to 500 Bone Gold Coins.

Zhu Yan guessed that if a player failed to clear the level, the same amount of reward would likely fall into the hands of the thriller creatures.

And one human skin meant one successful clear.

So, selling them for 200 Bone Gold Coins each should, perhaps, not be too much?

For the current Zhu Yan, this was not a small amount either.

That is to say, in case he quoted too high... he absolutely couldn't defeat a level-seven Doppelganger right now.

He looked nervously at the Doppelganger opposite him. Unexpectedly, the other party's dark eyes actually curved into crescents with laughter, and its whole body trembled like soft noodles.

"Oh my god!" the Doppelganger exclaimed, then nervously looked at the surrounding passengers and immediately lowered its voice.

"You really are an excellent demon! For four skins with tears, you're actually only charging eight hundred!"

Holy crap.

A wave of regret washed over Zhu Yan's heart.

Damn it, he sold them too cheap!

But...

Zhu Yan was a bit curious: "Why can one of your skins be sold so expensively?"

The Doppelganger was thrilled to death: "Oh, little demon. You haven't been into instances that require the cooperation of many thriller creatures, have you?"

Actually, he had.

But Zhu Yan indeed hadn't figured out their true internal rules.

"Such instances often have a rule that, unless a thriller creature breaks the rules, high-level thriller creatures are not allowed to kill low-level thriller creatures."

The Doppelganger said dejectedly: "They can only torture them. Oh, but low-level creatures can kill high-level thriller creatures."

Alright.

Zhu Yan could roughly understand these two rules.

Even if no restrictions were placed on the behavior of low-level creatures, their probability of killing high-level thriller creatures was very small.

But it was also because of this rule that the [Bar Owner] back then was indeed threatened by Zhu Yan.

"So, we have no way to seize the skins of low-level thriller creatures in the instance."

The Doppelganger said in disappointment: "The instance must have order."

"What about outside?" Zhu Yan asked.

"That's too complicated," the Doppelganger said. "My god, you really are a confused demon."

Zhu Yan decided to remain silent.

"How do we trade?" The Doppelganger didn't continue the topic. It looked down at the brand-new watch on its wrist. "I'm almost at my destination."

"[Hall of Mourning]," Zhu Yan said immediately.

Because the [Hall of Mourning] was the safest place.

800 Bone Gold Coins was a massive amount. If they just counted the money, it would be really easy to count wrong, and it was too easy to be robbed.

But transferring the money was different.

The only risk point was that the account he used was a player account, carrying the risk of his identity being exposed.

However, there were plenty of ways around it; he could make up a hundred excuses.

The Doppelganger looked at its watch with infatuation: "I love human time so much."

"I also think the [Hall of Mourning] is the safest. According to human time, what time shall we meet this afternoon?"

Zhu Yan took out his phone and checked the time.

After clearing several instances, it wasn't even one o'clock in the afternoon yet.

"Three-thirty in the afternoon." He asked, "Is your watch accurate? Do you want to sync the time?"

The Doppelganger looked at Zhu Yan with a fanatical, obsessed gaze.

"Oh my god! You really are an interesting little demon!"

Huh?

Zhu Yan didn't quite understand.

Following the direction of those dark eyes, he looked down and saw the phone glowing with blue light in his hand.

"Wh-what's wrong?"

The Doppelganger became even happier: "A mobile phone, I've always wanted one. It's a pity that there aren't any in [Carnival Paradise]. The few phones I snatched in the instances have never been usable."

"In the first two instances, I didn't take the phones. I did inherit their memories the most completely, but unfortunately, my capacity wasn't enough later on, so the memories were deleted."

It simulated a dejected tone: "Alas, for the others, I have no way to unlock them."

"In the later stages, as there are more instances, we can almost only inherit the parts of memories and human behavioral patterns that are beneficial for clearing the instance."

"Now I know that a phone needs to be unlocked, but I have no way of knowing how to unlock a phone."

Zhu Yan really wanted to laugh.

How was there still selective blocking?

But... a few phones?!

He could coax the Doppelganger into using fingerprint payment and have it transfer all the money on those phones to himself.

He just didn't know how much money was left in these people's accounts and whether they had exchanged it all for Bone Gold Coins in [Carnival Paradise].

Zhu Yan immediately took action.

"Try fingerprints," he reminded it. "And facial recognition."

He explained a few sentences to the Doppelganger, and the Doppelganger's eyes widened in surprise.

It immediately transformed into the appearance of a young man, looked down, picked a phone from its pocket, and pressed its fingerprint.

"Oh, my god!"

The Doppelganger whispered in amazement.

It generously showed Zhu Yan the screen glowing with blue light, which made Zhu Yan itch with anticipation.

"Come, I'll teach you how to use this thing."

He whispered, "No horror creature is better at this than I am. We could even exchange contact info..."