Skin Tailor

For a moment, only the shallow breathing of the few people remained in the dorm room.

Yang Zhanbai gripped the dagger and fell silent. Even Chen Zhaoxing, who was usually absent-minded, had a serious look on his face.

“This can’t be right, can it? Are we just stuck hiding behind the door?”

He fiddled with the half-formed cockroach in his hand, his mouth drooping at the corners.

“Is my new cockroach experiment a total loss now?”

Xu Tongguang moved further away. “Nobody cares about your cockroach experiment right now. Can you focus on the important stuff?”

Zhu Yan squinted his eyes.

“Give me a second.”

He decided to bring out the book Coexisting with Forbidden Things openly. After all, it was an item that players above Level 2 could purchase from the [Online Mall], so pulling it out now wouldn’t raise any suspicion.

“Let’s look it up.”

He pretended to climb up to his bed, using the bed curtain as cover to grab the thick book. As far as Qi Yinming and the others could see, it looked like Zhu Yan had just pulled it out from his bed.

“I bought it on the [Online Mall],” Zhu Yan said, handing the book to Qi Yinming. “Forgot to tell you all earlier. It just happens to come in handy right now.”

“Do you still have any money left?” Qi Yinming asked.

This book clearly wasn’t cheap.

Zhu Zeyu had spent 90 bone coins earlier, paid the rent, and even treated them to dinner.

His money…

Qi Yinming felt that Zhu Yan’s wallet was hanging by a thread.

“I should have some.”

Zhu Yan activated his skill I Must Get This Bargain and started rummaging through his pocket for the student cards he had taken from Tu Shan.

A pleasant female voice notification rang in his ear, and Zhu Yan felt a sudden boost of confidence.

“Ding! Congratulations, you’ve gained 15 bone coins.”

“Ding! Congratulations, you’ve gained 30 bone coins.”

“Ding! Congratulations, you’ve gained 16 bone coins…”

Yang Zhanbai said, “Next time, let me buy little things like this. I’ve seen this book on the [Online Mall]... What’s in it?”

“Basically a compendium of horror creatures.”

The sound of coins hitting the account kept ringing in his head, sweeping away the gloom from Zhu Yan’s mind.

He was somewhat surprised. “So, aside from me, none of the players in our dorm have bought this?”

Qi Yinming, Yuan Chen, and Qin Yang hadn’t unlocked their permissions.

But Chen Zhaoxing, Xu Tongguang, and Yang Zhanbai…

Xu Tongguang laughed awkwardly. “Oh, haha, I wanted to buy it before, but Chen Zhaoxing said it wasn’t necessary.”

“He said that with our abilities, we could just go ahead and take the hits…”

Yang Zhanbai scratched his head. “I figured with Brother Zhu around... and I don’t really like rigid textbook knowledge.”

Just thinking about how this guy constantly had “I’m dead” and “build me a grave” on his lips made Zhu Yan furious.

He was about to say something to Yang Zhanbai when the usually quiet Qi Yinming suddenly spoke up.

“I think I have some clues. Come take a look.”

He sat cross-legged on the carpet, the book Coexisting with Forbidden Things flipped open to the later pages, laid flat on his lap.

Xu Tongguang picked up on a side detail. “How did you find it so fast? What was your college entrance exam score?”

Qi Yinming looked a bit embarrassed.

“Well, I got fast at flipping pages from reading manga under the desk during class.”

“Cough, just kidding. Since the horror creature outside can turn into human skin, I directly searched for anything related to ‘skin.’”

Zhu Yan moved closer, following Qi Yinming’s finger to read the short description.

“[Skin Tailor] is a special type of horror creature with a bizarre appearance, originating from the East.”

“As is well known, the creation and formation of horror creatures are influenced by local cultural legends and ideologies. [Skin Tailor] clearly bears the shadow of the Painted Skin ghost from Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.”

“In appearance, it is indistinguishable from a real person.”

Oh, The Painted Skin.

Zhu Yan had read that story when he was very young. The ghost in it would wear a painted human skin to seduce scholars.

By that logic, the two things were indeed somewhat similar.

Zhu Yan continued reading seriously.

“The difference is that [Skin Tailor] has obsession as its essence and human skin as its vessel.”

“Obsession is formless, so like the [Mist], [Skin Tailor] has almost no weaknesses.”

Zhu Yan noticed Qi Yinming’s fingers unconsciously pinching the page corner. He seemed very nervous.

Zhu Yan tried to comfort him. “The higher the demon, the greater the power… I mean, there’s always a way out.”

“That’s not it,” Qi Yinming said. “Take a look at this line.”

His finger pointed to a spot a couple of lines down. Zhu Yan sped up his reading and looked over.

“The special trait of [Skin Tailor] is that it cannot freely enter or exit places with doors unless it receives a response from someone inside.”

“Once it gets a response, and provided the door’s level is lower than its own, it can enter the room immediately.”

“In its rules, silence is a response, refusal is a response, and agreement is a response.”

Oh, all responses.

Zhu Yan understood.

So the reason this thing couldn’t get in was simply because the level of their door was higher.

“Of course, [Skin Tailor] levels up quickly. Every time it consumes a player, its level increases slightly.”

“If you encounter [Skin Tailor], then best of luck. You can try communicating with it about its obsession, but it might not bother to respond, so don’t count on it.”

This was getting tricky.

Zhu Yan didn’t feel like collecting coins anymore. He put the untouched student cards back into his ring and sank into thought.

For [Skin Tailor], there were over a hundred players on this floor for it to devour.

Even if they were all low-level players at Level 1 or 2, small gains add up. After devouring them all, its level-up wouldn’t be negligible.

Right now, this thing wasn’t at Level 14. But what about after it levels up?

Even if this door had no cracks, it could still find another way to break in.

When that happened, how could the door possibly hold it back?

“We can’t let it keep leveling up,” Yang Zhanbai immediately grasped the key point. “At its current pace, it’ll eat up the entire floor within two hours.”

“And this thing is pretty smart.”

Yang Zhanbai recalled the look [Skin Tailor] had given their door earlier. His eyebrows furrowed low, and a chill ran down his spine.

That look—it had clearly set its sights on them!

Zhu Yan nodded in agreement.

“On the surface, it has no weaknesses,” he analyzed calmly. “But this thing has an obsession. We can try to draw it out and see what that obsession is.”

Zhu Yan paused for a moment, then glanced at the surveillance mirror.

The thing had clearly succeeded again.

It had changed into an even thinner body, wailing miserably as it knocked on a third door.

“As everyone knows, obsessions can be resolved…”

Of course, that’s what people said, but Zhu Yan wasn’t too keen on wasting effort to resolve some creature’s obsession.

There had to be more than one way.

If it was really as he guessed, and this thing had been in contact with the [Mist], then things could get interesting.

With that thought, Zhu Yan raised his hand, quickly cracked the door open a sliver, and shouted outside.

“Hey! Classmate, come over here for a second!”