A few minutes later.
Inside the secluded courtyard.
Creak...
With the eerie sound of a door closing, the courtyard fell back into silence once more.
Zuo Lin'an and Xu Youyou's specter bodies had already returned to the underground secret room.
Xu Youyou plopped down onto the ground.
“They didn't even trigger their talents just now.”
Zuo Lin'an said, “They fainted the moment they saw you. They probably didn't even think to use their talents. This is a common flaw among players with weak mental fortitude.”
“When their emotions are in extreme turmoil, they forget they even have talents.”
Since they forgot, they naturally wouldn't use them.
Xu Youyou said, “True. But am I really that terrifying? Terrifying enough to make them forget their talents? If you ask me, their talents were probably useless to begin with.”
As he spoke, he pulled out his phone to look at his reflection.
“I might be a specter, but I look pretty ordinary, don't I?”
As a specter body, he did indeed constantly maintain his deathly state.
However, Xu Youyou's injuries were all on his joints and his neck. Since he was fully clothed, nothing was visible on the surface.
As for Zuo Lin'an...
His wound was a bloodline that started from the back of his neck and crept downward.
His other injuries were all internal.
For instance, the cuts hidden deep within his flesh were naturally invisible from the outside.
The biggest difference between him and Xu Youyou was actually his eyes.
Other than that, their specter bodies looked largely the same. At most, they were just deathly pale, making it obvious at a glance that they were dead.
Still, just how terrifying was a corpse that could move and speak?
Well...
To ordinary humans, it was probably indeed quite terrifying.
Zuo Lin'an snapped out of his thoughts and shook his head slightly.
“That doesn't matter.”
“If you've got nothing better to do, why don't you guess when the other players will realize two of them are missing?”
Xu Youyou pondered for a moment.
“They should find out pretty soon.”
“Even though the specter aura we released blankets the entire old residence and greatly dampens the players' perception of the smell of blood, we didn't bother keeping the courtyard sealed off after we left.”
“So the smell of blood will still gradually spread over time. I'd estimate... half an hour. That Blood-Clad specter, Tang Luoshan, should be able to sense it by then.”
And reality unfolded exactly as Xu Youyou had predicted.
Half an hour later.
Around the corner near the kitchen, Tang Luoshan was currently discussing with Huang Shiliu on how to bypass Xu Youyou and pull Zuo Lin'an aside to ask about the dungeon.
“The two of them seem to always stick together. Finding an opportunity to catch him alone will probably be...”
Before he could finish his sentence, Tang Luoshan suddenly paused.
Sensing something carefully, he frowned slightly and turned to look in a certain direction.
Huang Shiliu was about to ask, but at that moment, it seemed to catch a scent. Its nose twitched as it sniffed the air repeatedly.
“The smell of blood?”
Zhao Ying's expression froze.
“Could it be... a player has died?”
Tang Luoshan turned to look toward the back of the old residence. That direction happened to be where the two players had been killed.
“It's over there. Let's go take a look.”
Huang Shiliu quickly followed.
Zhao Ying was startled. Though she felt tense, she figured it would be safer to follow these two powerhouses.
It took them less than three minutes to find the right courtyard.
The wooden gate of the courtyard was covered in dark, rotting patches, and one half of it had fallen to the ground.
Looking closely, there were also a few messy footprints on the gate. It looked like someone had accidentally stepped on it while fleeing.
Huang Shiliu's expression turned somewhat grave.
“The smell of blood is coming from inside. Judging by the footprints, they should belong to two females.”
It sniffed again.
“This scent... seems to match the two female players we accidentally bumped into around the corner near the front gate earlier.”
Zhao Ying had a strange look on her face. She had also sniffed the air just now, but she hadn't smelled a thing.
But from what Huang Shiliu said, she understood the gist of it.
“So, you mean there isn't just one person killed inside, but two?”
Huang Shiliu followed Tang Luoshan inside.
“That should be correct. Let's go inside and take a look.”
The three entered the courtyard and walked up to the door of the house.
Tang Luoshan reached out and slowly pushed the door open.
A sharp creak rang out.
A thick, metallic stench of blood rushed out at them.
The scene inside instantly unfolded before their eyes.
It was only now that Zhao Ying finally smelled the blood, and she felt a wave of nausea.
Then, she turned her gaze inside.
The room was covered in dust. Dark red blood had mixed with the dust, splattered everywhere, giving off a dirty, sticky feeling.
However, blood alone was nothing to fear.
What made Zhao Ying's skin crawl was the corpse.
Her gaze shifted, landing on the square table.
Resting on the dusty square table was a tattered, rotting bamboo basket.
Inside the basket were a person's limbs, arranged like a bouquet of flowers.
Right in the center lay a severed head.
As for the torso, perhaps because it was too large to fit inside, it had been carelessly tossed onto the floor.
Surrounding the basket were numerous blood-stained white bones, arranged in a bizarre, incomprehensible pattern.
In a corner of the room, there was also a water jar with a small portion broken off.
Looking through the crack, she could see a pile of unidentifiable flesh and blood inside.
Blood dripped steadily from the crack.
Drip... drop...
She hadn't heard it when she was at the door, but the other two must have.
Could the bones on the table have been stripped from the corpse inside the water jar?
Even though Zhao Ying had cultivated to her current level and knew the cruelty of the cultivation world, this was the first time she had witnessed such a scene. Fear instinctively welled up in her heart.
Right at that moment, a drop of blood suddenly fell from above.
Drip!
Zhao Ying was startled when she saw it. Why was there still blood dripping from above?
She subconsciously looked up.
There, she saw a complete human skin hanging from the roof beam.
The drop of blood from earlier had dripped right off it.
And when she looked up, she unluckily made direct eye contact with the hollow, empty eye sockets.
“Ah!”
Zhao Ying let out a low shriek, turned around, and bolted outside.
Clearly, the gruesome scene inside had terrified her out of her wits.
Tang Luoshan and Huang Shiliu stared grimly, beginning to inspect the details of the room.
“Your Highness, these two died in entirely different ways.”
“This means there are two specters in this Two-Star dungeon. We just don't know how they triggered the rules.”
Tang Luoshan asked, “Don't you find it strange?”
Huang Shiliu's ears twitched.
“What's strange?”
Tang Luoshan turned and walked out the door.
“Do you remember what that Steward Feng said earlier?”
Huang Shiliu followed him out.
“Of course I remember. But he said quite a lot. What are you referring to, Your Highness?”
“He said they only arrived recently.”
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