Chapter 36.1 (2/2)

Xiao Tangqiu hesitated for a moment, then stood up and decided to share what happened yesterday. He concluded last night’s events, “….I don’t know about the other two players, but that man should be dead.”

“You saw from under the door? How is that possible?” Someone questioned him at once. “The gap is so small and the rooms are so far apart. There’s no way you could’ve seen it!”

Xiao Tangqiu gave a wry smile; he had already known that he would be questioned like this. But that was the truth, he could only tell them this much and it was none of his business if those people believed it or not.

“Did you really see the puppet kill him?” Someone else asked suspiciously. “Then why don’t you save him? You clearly saw it. Why didn’t you save him? You let him die!”

Xiao Tangqiu frowned, “It’s because of the rule that we can’t leave our rooms after 12 midnight. If I went out, maybe…”

“So you let him die! Who cares about your bullshit excuse about the rules?! So what if it’s a rule? Why do we have to obey? That’s just an excuse!” The man sounded very aggressive. “Even if there wasn’t such a rule, you wouldn’t have saved him”

With a deep frown, Xiao Tangqiu sized up the person who was speaking. It was a young man – the fresh graduate who had complained about missing his interviews on the first day…… He had never seen a keyboard warrior in person before this. So this was how a keyboard warrior looked like?

Before Xiao Tangqiu could speak, Tang Mianmian rolled his eyes dramatically at that man. “There you go, here’s a keyboard for you. Why don’t you quickly go and save the world?! You’re so powerful, so why don’t you bring a keyboard wherever you go? I think, if you started tapping away at your keyboard, all the puppets would die at once!”

The young man immediately turned red with anger. Before he could say anything else, the middle-aged man came out to ease the situation, “Alright, alright. Is it so hard to say a little less? Harmony is the most important thing. We have to spend a few more days together. It doesn’t do you any good if you strained your relationship to this point. Young man, don’t be so angry. Although this young fellow claimed to have seen it, it’s not necessarily true… Maybe he saw it in his dream? Hahaha!”

He laughed loudly, thinking that his own joke was very funny but the young man merely snorted and turned around. Xiao Tangqiu sat down and continued eating breakfast without a change in his expression.

Their breakfast was already on the table waiting for them when they entered the dining hall. There wasn’t a maid around, and neither the host nor the housekeeper was present. However, the food was still steaming hot – soft baked bread and hot corn soup. As hungry as the players were, of course, they wouldn’t refuse a hot breakfast.

Xiao Tangqiu drank his corn soup with a straight face and listened to the middle-aged man decide on behalf of the group. “Let’s go up and have a look after breakfast! We’ll check room by room and see for ourselves if those three are still alive.”

After breakfast, they returned to the second floor. To Xiao Tangqiu’s surprise, Shen Yuan and his team went with them as well. He had thought that these old players would have separated from the newbies.

Shen Yuan and his team obviously didn’t intend to explain anything. They moved silently behind the group, keep a distance that was neither close nor far from them. Seeing that Shen Yuan’s team had also followed along, the other old players also went upstairs too.

The newbies, headed by the middle-aged men, searched from room to room. Xiao Tangqiu took this opportunity to look at the structure of the other rooms. Soon, he found that all the rooms on the second floor seemed to have the exact same layout. The only difference was that the portrait of Lily Marlene had been placed in different positions. In some of the rooms, the painting was hanging directly above the head of the bed. He could imagine how horrifying it must be to sleep in one of those rooms at night.

Xiao Tangqiu originally wanted to follow to see if he could find any important clues from the other vacant rooms, but even after searching several rooms, he had still found nothing. Of course, they hadn’t found the three missing players either.

At that moment, someone hesitantly said, “There seems to be… a candle missing.”

“What candle? What do you mean?” Some of the rookies asked in confusion.

“The candles at the door…..” The man explained in a trembling voice, “I noticed before that there were candles burning in front of all the occupied rooms, so I had specifically counted how many there were. But I just counted again and it looks like there’s one missing.”

“Could it be that you remembered wrongly? Maybe it’s always been like that?” Someone else questioned in doubt.

“No way!” The man said excitedly, “There were only a few candles in total. How could I remember it wrongly? There’s one missing!”

The crowd looked at each other. If there were candles in front of all the occupied rooms, and one candle was missing, that would mean that one of the candles had been extinguished or taken away…

“You’re right, I saw what happened,” Xiao Tangqiu said coldly. “The candle in front of his room went out, and then the puppet appeared and killed him.”

The newbies were immediately alarmed. “When the candle goes out, the puppets will come to kill us? An extinguished candle means death? What if our candle is blown out by the wind?”

“No, that guy had obviously done something wrong! He deserves it!”

Everyone started chattering at once. They looked at the flickering candlelight in front of their rooms, eyes filled with fear.

“So that is to say, there shouldn’t be a candle in front of that man’s room,” the middle-aged man spoke solemnly, drowning out all other voices. “Then what about the other two? Since only one candle was extinguished, it means that the candle in front of their doors is still burning. What’s this nonsense about an extinguished candle meaning death?! Don’t frighten yourselves over nothing!”

The newbies looked at each other, maintaining their silence. At this moment, Xiao Tangqiu spoke again, “I remember which room that man was staying in. Should we go straight to his room to take a look?”

Someone immediately burst out in an irritated voice, “Why didn’t you say so earlier? We went through so many rooms for nothing!”

Xiao Tangqiu gave the man a chilly look. The man immediately withdrew his disgruntled gaze.

He turned and walked straight towards the thief’s room. The newbies eyed each other and finally followed behind him.

He found the room from last night by memory, took a deep breath, and summoned the courage to open the door.