Chapter 226: The Knocking at Night
The string got stuck in her mouth, and as she bit down, it sank deeper into the corner of her lips.
"Hiss!" Ni Tian's face showed pain, but before she could retreat, Xu Huo grabbed her head and slammed her hard against the floor!
The floor tiles shattered, and Ni Tian's face was cut. Shocked and furious, she twisted her head to bite his wrist, but at that moment, the string was yanked backward, pulling her entire head back, and then a cold sensation pressed against her throat!
Ni Tian took advantage of the momentum to fall backward, dodging the fatal blow, then grabbed the string at her cheek and tried to pull it out. However, the string crossed behind her head wasn't easily extracted, and she was lifted upright.
"Mmph!" A punch landed on her stomach. Ni Tian spat out blood, pulled the string taut with both hands, and shouted, "Help! Murder!"
Xu Huo thrust the dagger into her open mouth.
"Uh... uh..." Ni Tian's forehead broke out in sweat. Her eyes stared fixedly at the dagger handle in front of her, trying her best to keep her mouth open, and mumbled indistinctly, "Don't kill me..."
"Bang, bang, bang!" Someone knocked on the door outside. Xu Huo immediately moved to the door, and after hearing Xie Man's voice, he quickly opened it.
"Hey, can you keep it down a little—" Xie Man's words were cut off as Xu Huo pulled the door open. She couldn't help but take a step back, glanced inside, and then said, "Please consider the feelings of the people living next door."
Xu Huo glanced at Gao Jun's tightly closed door on the right, then turned back to her. "Sorry, I have violent tendencies."
Just then, Ni Tian fell to the floor with a thud.
Xie Man stared at Xu Huo for a moment, cursed "psycho," and turned to leave. But instead of going back to her room, she headed toward the exhibition hall. However, as soon as she exited the corridor, she suddenly spun around and ran back, lowering her voice to hiss, "Get back inside quickly!"
Pan Siming and the gloomy man, who had just opened their doors, immediately retreated into their rooms. Xu Huo saw a long, eerie shadow cast on the floor by the light and quickly closed his door, locking it from the inside.
He swiftly moved to Ni Tian's side, knocked her unconscious with a chop to the neck, then returned to the door. Patting his back, the Painting Woman, who had turned back into paper, slid out from inside his coat.
Xu Huo pointed at the door. The Painting Woman immediately tried to slip out through the crack under the door, but he pulled her back.
"Wait." Xu Huo mouthed the words.
The Painting Woman nodded, then transformed into human form and pressed her ear to the door, mimicking his posture.
In the corridor, there was the sound of something hard scraping across the floor tiles, moving slowly from the exhibition hall to the upper corridor. It paused at a fork in the path before shifting to the left.
"Thump!" A knock sounded, different from a human's knock.
Just one knock, and the room door slammed against the wall with a crash. Then came the scream of the player nicknamed "Octopus Card Bear," but it stopped abruptly in less than half a second!
The sound of something hard scraping across the floor moved out of the room, then went a little deeper to the left before starting to knock again:
"Thump!"
"Thump!"
This time it knocked twice, but whatever it was didn't break the door down. Instead, it moved along the corridor to the right, slowly approaching Xu Huo's door.
"I'll go fight it." The Painting Woman held up her phone screen for Xu Huo to see.
Xu Huo shook his head slightly. The sound didn't stop at his door but continued on, passing Gao Jun's room and heading toward the leather-clad woman's room.
"Thump!"
"Thump!"
"Thump!"
This time it knocked three times, then turned back and headed toward the exhibition hall.
The scraping sound gradually faded in the direction of the exhibition hall, and the corridor fell silent again.
The next morning at seven, the exhibition hall's main lights turned on, and the players gradually emerged from their rooms.
Pan Siming and Fan Shiji, who were closest, immediately went to Deng Yu and Big Bear's room. The others followed a few steps behind and their eyelids twitched at the sight inside.
The broken door aside, from the center of the room to the bed and wall on the right, it looked as if a giant blade had slashed through, leaving a deep groove that nearly split the entire room in two.
Deng Yu was gone, but Big Bear sat on the collapsed edge of the bed.
"Did you see anything last night? Where's Deng Yu?" Pan Siming stepped forward and asked.
Big Bear shook his head. "I didn't see anything. When I heard the noise, Deng Yu said to turn off the lights for safety, so we did. But when the door was smashed in, a strange gust of wind swept over me. I hit my head on the nightstand and passed out. When I woke up, Deng Yu was already gone."
The bandage on the side of his head was stained with blood. At his feet were torn clothes and a bloodstained headband. The corner of the nightstand next to him had a dried bloodstain.
You Huanhuan handed Big Bear half a bottle of Self-Healing Agent.
"You're pretty lucky, huh? Didn't even die from that." The gloomy man said sarcastically.
Big Bear drank the Self-Healing Agent and said, "I don't know what happened to Deng Yu yet..."
"Let's check the exhibition hall." Pan Siming turned and said.
The group returned to the exhibition hall. After checking every pillar, they found no trace of Deng Yu—no body, no sign of him.
"No blood on the floor, no drag marks." Pan Siming frowned. "Did Deng Yu just vanish into thin air?"
"Could it be the instance boss that appeared last night? Maybe it ate Deng Yu?" You Huanhuan said quietly.
"Did you see that thing last night? What was it like?" Pan Siming asked Xie Man.
Xie Man shook her head. "To be honest, I didn't get a clear look at what it was. It was in front of the statue in the center of the exhibition hall. I only saw a shadow as tall as the statue clinging to its back. I was afraid of being discovered, so I didn't dare look closely."
"As tall as the statue?" Fan Shiji looked up at the nearby statue. "That would be about five or six meters tall, wouldn't it?"
The statue placed in the center of the exhibition hall was of a male figure, carved with a draped cloth. In his left hand, he held a book, while his right hand was hidden beneath the cloth.
Big Bear swallowed hard. "Could it have been the one that killed Deng Yu?"
"Let's set aside whether it killed Deng Yu for now," the leather-clad woman said at that moment. "The knocking last night had a pattern."
"The first knock was one time, the second was two, and the third was three. What does that mean?"
"Also, it only attacked the first room. Why?"
"Could it be related to the order we entered the museum?" Xie Man thought for a moment and said. "Who was the first to arrive?"
"It was me," the gloomy man said.
"Then that's not it." Pan Siming recited the players' names. "First, Deng Yu and Big Bear."
"I was second," Fan Shiji said.
"I was third," the leather-clad woman said.
"What connection is there between these four?" Pan Siming looked back and forth at them.
"What if there's no connection?" Ni Tian covered her injured mouth and said. "Maybe the instance is just killing randomly."
"It can't be random killing," the leather-clad woman said. "If it were random, it wouldn't have let Big Bear go."
Big Bear licked his lips and said, "I might know why."
"It's the painting. Yesterday, I saw Deng Yu take down a painting to inspect it and accidentally tore a small corner."