“Y-You... you kicked right through the window?!”
A9 looked utterly bewildered, no less shocked than Chen Xijian. It still remembered how, when it first saw Lin Mo, it had labeled her as having very little physical strength.
It opened Lin Mo's interface again, confirming that the value in the Strength column had only increased by 1.
1... Was it really just 1? Had it somehow missed a few zeros?
A9 scanned up and down dozens of times in disbelief. Although it knew that stat evaluations for Replacers differed from those of native characters, this difference was way too absurd. Her actual display of force was more terrifying than characters with double-digit stats.
A bug? Even the protagonist's potential bursts weren't this horrifying.
Could the stat boost for Replacers be exponential rather than multiplicative?
But no matter how much 1 grew, how high could it go?! Whether doubled or grown exponentially, wasn't it still based on the original value?!
“H-How did you get in?” The expression on Chen Xijian's face went blank. She seemed unable to process what had just happened. Staring at the gaping hole in the window, she blinked, still unable to comprehend what she was seeing.
S-So Lin Mo had been looking for an exit with them for so long...
When in reality... she could kick right through a three-centimeter-thick wooden board all by herself.
Chen Xijian shook her head violently to clear away her stray thoughts. Throwing a fearful glance at Zhang Qiumin on the floor, she dragged herself up with difficulty and pulled Lin Mo along. “Run! They've all gone crazy! They're trying to kill people!”
“...I didn't realize someone was standing there. Sorry,” Lin Mo said, looking down at the person she had kicked over. Zhang Qiumin kept her head lowered, not daring to meet her gaze.
The pain in Lin Mo's leg was sharp. She turned her head absently. “What happened?”
The sudden scream, the two people locked in a dispute, and Chen Xijian, who had unilaterally claimed her as a companion...
Feeling trapped in a fog was uncomfortable; an uneasy anxiety weighed on her heart. In just the span of a moment, things had veered far off course, hurtling into chaos.
Chen Xijian pulled Lin Mo along as they sprinted down the third-floor corridor, saying anxiously, “It's a long story. Right now, we need to stop your bleeding first, then we can find a place to hide.”
Lin Mo asked, “So, what actually happened?”
Shoved into a room, Chen Xijian began frantically searching through cabinets and drawers. Half-kneeling on the floor, the strength suddenly drained from her body, leaving her back trembling.
“Lin Mo, this place... this place is terrifying. You have no idea what happened,” she said without turning around, her voice breaking into sobs again. “What should I do? Tell me... I'm going to die here.”
“Everyone... everyone has secrets they can't tell anyone. Yuan... Yuan Ying used to work abroad as an obstetrical nurse. She returned to the country and lived under an assumed identity because...”
She suddenly looked up, her tear-stained face twisted with bewilderment and disgust. “Do you know about the 'Angel Maker' serial killer? It was her! She's sick in the head. For money, she used her job to harm nearly a hundred infants and toddlers! Some of the children who escaped her hands were left with lifelong disabilities. It's utterly sick!”
“And Zhang Qiumin! Her too—she's a human trafficker! Even that old lady who looks the oldest of us all has killed someone before...”
“How do you know all this?”
Lin Mo didn't believe that after two people had already died, everyone would just open up their hearts and spill all their secrets to one another.
“The broadcast... the broadcast revealed it all! He exposed everything behind everyone's backs. He said if we don't name the killer, he'll leak everyone's secrets here to the media. Ruining their reputations is the least of it—they'd probably spend the rest of their lives in prison.”
Chen Xijian sniffled, repeatedly pulling open drawers. “No... crimes of this scale mean death. They'd all be sentenced to death.”
Tears blurred her vision. She kept wiping them away to see what was inside the drawers. “If that's the case, then my brother's disappearance must have been done by some of them!”
“Excluding the two who are already dead, criminals like Yuan Ying and Zhang Qiumin who targeted children in the past are definitely the culprits who harmed my brother!”
“What about you? What did you do?” Lin Mo asked casually, stepping up behind her to help open a drawer.
Upon pulling open the last drawer, instead of finding tools to stop the bleeding, a sharp dagger gleaming with a cold white light lay quietly at the bottom.
The dagger was brand-new and shiny, clearly not something left to rest with the manor over time. It had been intentionally placed there by the mastermind behind the scenes to stoke panic.
Presumably, the knife in Zhang Qiumin's hand had also been dug out from some corner.
Chen Xijian shivered violently—whether startled by the sudden discovery of the dagger or by Lin Mo's question, it was hard to tell. “A... knife...”
Lin Mo had no intention of dropping the subject just yet. “It seems everyone here is a bad person. Even I've done bad things, so it's impossible for you to be completely innocent.”
“No, Lin Mo, you're not a bad person! You're the best person!” Chen Xijian shook her head frantically at her words. “No matter what happened in the past, to me, you're the absolute best.”
Lin Mo caught her drift: Chen Xijian didn't want to speak of it. She was willing to overlook Lin Mo's past, provided Lin Mo accepted hers as well.
“I can't deny it, and I don't want to lie to you,” Chen Xijian said, her voice turning sharp and agitated at the question. “But I beg you, stop asking! I have things I can't say, just like you, right? I can't... I just can't!”
Seeing that Lin Mo remained silent, she hurriedly grabbed the dagger from the drawer and handed it over. “Take this. You need to protect yourself. I'll go look for another weapon.”
“What about Zhou Shen? What did he do?” Lin Mo took the knife, suddenly remembering the forgotten figure—the quiet butcher of low presence who quietly minded his own business.
At the sound of that name, Chen Xijian's face turned deathly pale.
Rate on N.U.
