Chapter 27: Headless
However, the villa was not as Xu Huo had imagined. The first power outage was caused by a tripped circuit breaker. Except for Xu Huo, all the players had shown up. The scream came from Liu Yuanyuan, who had stepped on a nail that Wan Zhikang had carelessly dropped while rummaging through cabinets. The two nearly came to blows over it.
Huang Junjie had originally thought that either the Headchopper or the disguised player would make a move, but all the players were safe and sound—no one had been attacked.
"Don't be so paranoid. This place hasn't been maintained for a long time; it's normal for the wiring to age."
Once the lights were restored, the players returned to their original rooms one after another.
Zhang Xiong had stopped hanging out with Huang Junjie since the afternoon. He had gone to Wan Zhikang and Abel's room, while Huang Junjie and Yuan Yao returned to the room they had used the previous day.
"Why is this happening?" Huang Junjie said, his face full of disappointment. "A perfect opportunity with the power out, and a few players missing from the villa, yet the other side still doesn't make a move."
Yuan Yao kept a safe distance from him, waited for him to finish muttering to himself, and then said, "Let's go find Brother Xu."
"Did you two know each other before?" Huang Junjie looked up at him.
"No."
"Then why do you trust him so much?" Huang Junjie found it hard to believe. Many of Xu Huo's actions seemed utterly inexplicable. To be honest, just like the man himself—wearing a short-sleeved shirt and shorts, with hair that long—he didn't look like a normal person.
Yuan Yao was momentarily at a loss for words.
"It's not safe to go out now. I'm not planning to leave again." Huang Junjie lay down to rest directly.
Yuan Yao paced around the room a few times before finally sitting down as well.
Just as the two were starting to doze off, the electric light suddenly began to flicker with a buzzing sound. After two cycles of dimming and brightening, it plunged into complete darkness.
After a moment of silence, Zhang Xiong from the room across the way stormed out, slamming the door and cursing, "Tripped again! Can't you turn off a couple of lights at night? What a damn waste of time!"
The sounds of doors opening and footsteps followed one after another. After waiting for a while with no sign of the lights coming back on, Huang Junjie shot up from his seat. "Not good!"
The circuit breaker box was in a small storage room near the warehouse. When Huang Junjie and Yuan Yao ran over, Zhang Xiong and the rich second-generation kid were standing in front of it with grim expressions.
"What's going on?" Abel, who had arrived later, asked.
Several more people came over one after another. Huang Junjie's eyes were fixed on them. "The wires have been cut. Who came out just now?"
"What do you mean by that? Suspecting one of us did it?" Wan Zhikang retorted sarcastically. "Then you'd better clean up your own mess first. How can you prove you didn't do it?"
The veins on Huang Junjie's forehead bulged. "Zhang Xiong and the others saw me coming from the direction of my room."
"The time gap after the power outage was long enough for you to run out, come back, and then play the accuser." Wan Zhikang crossed his arms and sneered.
"Could it be the Headchopper?" the college student asked. "Why would a player cut the wires?"
"If it were the Headchopper, that method would be way too low-class." Liu Yuanyuan curled her lip.
Huang Junjie suddenly snapped back to reality. "Who's missing?"
The group looked around at each other. After a few seconds, Wang Wei said, "Du Lanlan and Xia Guo haven't come out!"
"Damn it! Could the Headchopper have killed them?" Yuan Yao exclaimed.
As his words faded, footsteps suddenly sounded from outside.
Footsteps, heavier than a woman's, were approaching the storage room, accompanied by the sound of something being dragged and scraping against the floor.
As the sound grew closer, the players couldn't help but swallow nervously. The rich second-generation kid and Wang Wei each grabbed a mop and crept toward the door, one on each side.
Holding their breath for three seconds, they listened as the sound drew near the entrance. Just as they were about to strike, a beam of strong light shone in first—the people inside were nearly blinded—and they heard the person at the door ask, "Why is everyone here?"
"What about Du Lanlan and Xia Guo?"
The crowd recognized Xu Huo's voice and first breathed a sigh of relief, but then the sound of furniture crashing came from the direction of Du and Xia's room!
The flashlight beam swung around and quickly headed outside. The players hurriedly followed, nearly tripping at the doorway. Holding up a lighter, they saw it was a branch of plums, growing as lush as grapes. When they kicked it, it even stuck to their shoes.
"Psycho!"
Several players cursed in unison.
Xu Huo, who was in front, had already violently broken down the door. The floor-to-ceiling windows in the room were wide open, and as the air circulated, a strong smell of blood rushed in.
The room was empty. The group rushed straight to the yard outside. Under the light of the flashlight, they saw two people lying by the edge of the pool. Judging by their clothes, they were Du Lanlan and Xia Guo. They were face down, their upper bodies completely blocked by rocks, with blood flowing down their bodies into the hot spring pool.
Huang Junjie and a few others walked over one after another, but they only glanced before quickly looking away, their expressions on the verge of breaking down.
Knowing about the Headchopper was one thing; seeing two headless corpses lying before them, with blood still gushing from the severed necks, was another. They didn't even have the courage to get closer.
"It's the Headchopper! It must be the Headchopper!" The college student stared at the blood-stained hot spring water, retreating in fear as he shouted, "It killed two players in the blink of an eye! We're no match for it! We're all going to die!"
Huang Junjie turned around and slapped him across the face. "Calm down! The Headchopper only dares to strike when the power is out, which means it's not confident enough to take on all of us at once!"
His words pulled the other players, still in shock, back to reality. Wan Zhikang forced himself to stay calm and said, "That's right. We just heard Du Lanlan and the others' voices. If it weren't afraid of us, the Headchopper wouldn't have run!"
Xu Huo glanced at him. "It might not necessarily be the Headchopper's doing."
The players turned to stare at him. Huang Junjie signaled with his eyes for him not to say anything, but Xu Huo pretended not to see it and said directly, "Besides the Headchopper, there's someone else in the villa."
"Right, right!" Zhang Xiong suddenly remembered. "Wasn't there someone still living in the wooden cabin?"
"Didn't Huang Junjie say that guy hanged himself again tonight?" Wang Wei hesitated. "Did he come back to life?"
"It's not him." Xu Huo crouched on a rock beside the corpse and lit a cigarette for himself, taking in the faces of all the players through the smoke. "I killed him."
The players' expressions changed drastically. Before they could press for details, Xu Huo explained, "When he came back to life, he saw I was the only one there and tried to attack me. I just sent him on his way."
He pointed to the mud on his shoes. "He's buried. There's absolutely no way he's coming back to life."
Perhaps because his expression was too matter-of-fact, as if he hadn't just been through a life-or-death struggle, the other players felt a bit unsettled. The looks they gave him were no longer as dismissive as before.
"Besides the woodcutter and the Headchopper, aren't there still all these players in the villa?" Xu Huo took a deep drag of his cigarette. "What were you all doing before and after the power outage?"