I Stabbed Myself

“What exactly did you say to Zhu Zeyu?”

Yang Zhanbai addressed the Hunter before him, trying yet another approach.

He opened the recording function in the private messages of the Player Forum.

In the lower right corner of his vision, the small red dot signaling the start of recording blinked steadily. The recording duration presently stood at twenty seconds.

Guan En had, piece by piece, fed him more information.

Word had it that the Human Alliance placed great importance on this traitor—especially the newly appointed squad captain, Jin Rongxu, who had issued Guan En a direct order.

The Hunter had concealed both his appearance and his human form, so the recording function was certainly out of the question for visuals.

But the sound of a voice could not be hidden.

If he could send this footage to Guan En, Guan En could forward it to experts in voice analysis.

That way, the Hunter might expose just a little more of himself, lowering the Alliance's difficulty in tracking him down.

Unfortunately, Zhu Yan had no intention of entertaining Yang Zhanbai at all.

The man had suddenly started firing off these baffling questions about half a minute ago.

Things like, “Clearing the instance this fast—you must have known the dungeon info in advance,” and “Did you know Zhu Zeyu was a threat and deliberately let him walk into death?”

Before opening his mouth to speak, his gaze had darted briefly to the empty air ahead of him—clearly fiddling with the Player Center, more than likely surreptitiously turning on the recording.

So Zhu Yan chose to keep his lips sealed, focusing all his attention on the surroundings and the floor above.

The area around them remained still.

Upstairs.

He maneuvered the puppet through two rubber curtains and into the empty adjacent room, surveying his surroundings while casually harvesting some flesh.

He could do a favor for that pseudo-human friend of his who wore an uncle’s skin, and also stock up on some food for the tabby cat.

This room made the voices much clearer—though still muffled, like listening to an echo in a cave from dozens of meters away.

“These damn curtains have incredible soundproofing.”

Zhu Zeyu grumbled in frustration as he crawled along the conveyor belt toward the next room.

If he could slice off a piece of this rubber belt to use as a bed curtain, he could loudly plot Guan En’s murder in there—and neither Qi Yinming nor Yang Zhanbai outside would hear a single word.

By the third room, the voices of the horror creatures finally became intelligible.

But by the looks of it, their discussion was drawing to a close.

“…I’m an old lady, frail as can be. I won’t tag along with you young folk for this commotion.”

That should be the ancient silver-haired creature by the long table.

Her pronunciation was crisp and forward-placed, with an old-world charm reminiscent of the late imperial capital a hundred years past.

“I’ll follow this conjurer upstairs and deal with that dragonfly.”

The silver-haired old lady said, then lowered her head to admire her long ornate fingernail guards.

The Clown’s face darkened. “Watch your tongue, old hag.”

They were about to leave.

Zhu Zeyu waited a beat longer.

Only when the Clown, with perfect enunciation, spoke the floor-shift command for The Lazy Man’s Craft Shop did Zhu Zeyu immediately murmur in a low voice: “Bedroom!”

Cold, damp air enveloped his entire body.

This time, Zhu Yan did not waste a moment having the puppet survey its surroundings. It hurried at full speed back toward him.

At a moment like this, he needed to put on a show—seal up the small cracks in his story.

Small cracks, for instance, like the level-13 long blade he’d used to break open the cage lock.

Because if the Human Alliance ever employed their investigative means and found that the details at Zhu Zeyu’s end didn’t add up, things would get problematic.

His alt account.

The alt account he’d painstakingly raised!

“Open the door!” Zhu Zeyu shouted as he ran, his voice trembling—panic and agitation obvious.

“Open the door—those things are coming!”

Yang Zhanbai whipped his head around, while the Hunter narrowed his eyes with keen interest.

“What things?” Yang Zhanbai gripped his silver spear in both hands, poised to strike at any second.

“The horror creatures you toyed with?”

The Hunter let out a sneer.

“And what nonsense is that supposed to mean?”

He shifted the key in his left hand, making sure it could slide into the groove at a moment’s notice.

The atmosphere in the hallway shifted abruptly.

A powerful, chilling aura erupted from somewhere behind Zhu Zeyu. A murky cold current surged outward violently, kicking up a faint but visible draft.

In an instant, a dizzying wave slammed into both of them.

Zhu Yan felt as if his mind had been seized—frozen stiff and hanging in the air, buzzing ceaselessly.

“Hunter!” the Lady shrieked, followed by a blast of harsh noise, like the hum of a swarm.

Zhu Yan gripped the edge of the key tightly, forcing himself to concentrate, calmly playing out the Hunter’s final part in this scene.

“What do you mean, ‘the horror creatures I toyed with’—was Zhu Zeyu not part of it too?”

“You—” Yang Zhanbai couldn’t stop himself from glancing back.

Zhu Yan timed it perfectly, reached out, and a sleek, beautifully crafted long blade materialized in his hand.

“The weapon I lent Zhu Zeyu,” Zhu Yan said, flashing Yang Zhanbai a cruel smile. “I don’t care much for cold steel anyway. How about I just give it to him? What do you say?”

Yang Zhanbai’s eyes went wide. His jaw clenched as he demanded, “What exactly are you playing at?”

Zhu Yan let out a cold snort, gaze fixed forward.

The puppet was barely ten meters away, and behind it loomed a wall of black cramming the entire corridor.

That wasn’t a beehive—it was a mass of flies and mosquitoes.

At the same time, behind Zhu Yan came the grating sound of a massive axe dragging across the concrete floor.

It was the Murderer.

Its breathing bulged the mask outward. The blurred “lips” on the white cloth stretched wider still, nearly consuming the lower half of its face.

“Open the door!!” Zhu Zeyu cried, his voice tinged with pleading. “Open it now, or we’re all dead!!”

Time was up.

Zhu Yan’s finger twitched slightly, and the key slid perfectly into the groove.

To these horror creatures, what could be crueler than finding the Hunter—only to watch him slip through their fingers again?

BZZZZ—

The scarlet door erupted in crimson light, the corridor floor trembling.

Raging flames leaped up from nothing, scorching that dense black mass of flies and mosquitoes.

They tumbled and burned midair like cinders, crackling faintly as their proteins combusted, then plummeted to the ground.

“No—!” the Murderer bellowed in fury.

The massive axe hurtled toward Zhu Yan’s head with a whistle—only for Zhu Yan to duck aside as it arced in a looping path and slammed into the Murderer’s own body with a resounding thunk.

Zhu Zeyu had reached them by now. The scarlet door shattered with a crackle, and the dense gray fog outside poured in, mingling with the dim light of the overcast day.

Zhu Yan smiled at his puppet.

“Ah—what was I saying? I told you, I don’t like this blade…”

He spun the knife around and drove it forward.

“Consider it a gift.”

The blade punched through the puppet’s body with a wet squelch, and a searing agony tore through Zhu Yan in the same instant.

He reacted with lightning speed, throwing himself backward, transforming into mist, instantly dissolving into the air and merging with the gray fog outside.

"Zhu Zeyu!"

In the final moment, he heard Yang Zhanbai's heart-wrenching scream.

A silver bullet cut through the gray fog in vain; Zhu Yan slowly trickled back into the room, and in a spot Yang Zhanbai couldn't see, gradually squeezed itself back into the puppet's body.

Holy shit.

How the hell did this thing still have a sense of pain?!

Back in the banquet hall, when he'd pinched the puppet's face and made expressions at it, his main body hadn't felt a single thing!