Although Liu Da saw the countdown steadily ticking down, seeing twenty-eight days left still gave him a slight sense of security.
However, he quickly frowned.
He knew that this was actually a countdown.
If he could successfully clear the dungeon before the countdown reached zero, his talent would refresh, and the countdown would be canceled.
But if he failed to clear it before it hit zero, sudden death would await him.
As for when the countdown started, it was calculated from the moment he triggered his talent.
Originally, it had been a total of thirty days.
The time deducted was because the specter had previously stabbed through his neck.
Since that was a fatal wound, it had directly deducted a day and a half from his time.
If the Death Rule were to be fully executed on him once, based on his past experience, about five days would be deducted.
In other words, his remaining twenty-eight days of Delayed Injury could support him being killed by the specter five times.
However...
Deducting five days per execution was only his estimation.
It might be less, say, four days.
Or perhaps a bit more, say, six days.
Just as his mind wandered slightly, a dark figure appeared behind him.
Because Liu Da was running too fast and was busy checking his talent, he didn't notice it at all.
By the time he realized the specter had caught up to him, it was already too late.
“Ah!”
He felt a heavy blow to his left leg and crashed hard onto the ground, rolling forward a few times from his momentum before collapsing.
Panting heavily, Liu Da clutched his leg and slowly sat up.
“Damn it, I'm going to be killed!”
Zuo Lin'an suddenly appeared before him, plunging his knife straight into Liu Da's throat.
He then pinned him to the ground and began executing the Death Rule!
Only then did Liu Da belatedly recall the corpse of Tang Yuanhuai he had seen earlier.
Because the man's death had been too gruesome, Liu Da had been extremely reluctant to recall it, subconsciously ignoring it until now. But now, he finally realized...
Tang Yuanhuai's death was this specter's method of execution!
Previously, because he had used a specter item, he had interrupted the specter mid-execution, so he hadn't realized the severity of the situation at all!
He felt an icy chill at the back of his neck. It was the boning knife in the specter's hand.
The cold blade sliced open his skin, bringing him boundless terror and the threat of death.
“Ugh!”
“No...”
Only now did panic truly set in, but with his throat already pierced, he could only make unintelligible noises, unable to speak a single complete sentence.
“Let... go...!”
“Damn it!”
“Let...”
Faced with Liu Da's death struggles, Zuo Lin'an completely ignored them.
His movements were fluid, and in just a few minutes, he had killed Liu Da.
To his surprise, however, the moment it ended, the scattered pieces of flesh and bone began to rapidly gather and piece themselves back together.
The scene looked just like time flowing backward.
In a mere two to three seconds, Liu Da stood before him once again, completely intact.
Yet, the newly restored Liu Da showed no sign of joy. Instead, he clutched his throat and roared repeatedly, his raspy voice filled with terror and shock.
Then, he began to frantically claw at the flesh all over his body with both hands.
Zuo Lin'an understood why.
The process of executing the rule just now must have left him with extreme pain. He surely still felt as though the flesh on his body didn't belong to him.
Even though his body had recovered, his consciousness had not yet processed it.
Zuo Lin'an watched quietly for a moment, then took a step back, pulling in his aura to conceal his figure.
The opportunity at four in the morning had already been used, so there was no point in staying. He would hide for now.
He hadn't expected this talent to be so troublesome.
To fully undergo such a bloody and cruel execution and still restore himself to his original state was impressive.
He didn't know how many times he would have to kill him, but there was no rush.
With three days in total, he could take his time.
He refused to believe that Liu Da's talent could support him indefinitely.
Liu Da had just recovered, and his mind was still unstable. He broke down and went wild for seven or eight minutes before finally managing to stop.
By now, he was lying on the ground, completely drained of strength. He stared blankly at the sky with unfocused eyes, looking as if he had lost his soul.
When the time reached four-fifteen, his eyes quickly focused, and he suddenly sat up.
“I've got it!”
Time!
It's time!
Just now, he had suddenly thought of this.
When he first entered the dungeon, he had happened to see someone being attacked.
At the time, he hadn't sensed any specter aura, so he assumed it was a player attacking another player to settle a personal grudge.
But up until now, he hadn't seen that attacker.
Calculating by the timeline, that attacker couldn't have been any of Tang Yuanhuai, An Miao, or Chang Sheng.
After all, given his speed and direction of travel at the time, there was no way those three could have circled around and gotten ahead of him after committing the murder.
Therefore, deducing from what he knew...
That attacker must have been the specter.
“That's right, the posture at the time...”
The attacker's hand had been right at the back of that player's neck.
“It was stabbing a knife through that person's throat.”
Thinking of this, Liu Da subconsciously touched his own neck.
“It was midnight when the specter killed the first person.”
And the specter appeared in the guest room, chasing him between one and two in the morning.
After escaping the old residence, he saw Tang Yuanhuai's corpse.
“If my deduction is correct, Tang Yuanhuai was highly likely killed by the specter at one in the morning.”
“And then, at two in the morning, I was attacked.”
He had just been lucky then, using a specter item to freeze the specter for two minutes, which allowed him to escape.
“Thus, the attack at two in the morning failed, so the specter didn't pursue.”
“And after that, it was three in the morning.”
Liu Da glanced back at the mountain not far away.
“Since the specter didn't come for me at three in the morning, it must have gone to attack An Miao or Chang Sheng.”
He just didn't know whether they were dead or alive.
And after that was four in the morning, which was just now.
The specter had targeted him again.
He took a deep breath and swore.
“Damn it!”
“This specter doesn't even need players to trigger a Death Rule to kill them!”
“【Time】! 【Time】! 【Time】!!”
Only now did he realize that the word 【Time】 represented the specter's Death Rule!
Killing on the hour!
Liu Da scrambled to his feet and sprinted back!
Because he suddenly felt that leaving that mountain had been a mistake!
The old residence was there, and so were the NPCs!
The specter had also appeared there first!
Which meant there was a high probability he could find specter items inside the old residence.
Only by staying there would he have any hope of survival.
Rate on N.U.
