# Chapter 679: Anyone Who Sees the Eyes Must Die
"Both of their eyes were gouged out, their brains and internal organs sucked dry, and their upper bodies are nothing but skin," Fang Penghui said. "I've been here four days, and this is the first time I've seen a player die like this."
Previously, aside from those killed by other players, all the missing players had simply vanished without a trace, their bodies nowhere to be found.
Having a body dumped so carelessly here was a first.
It seemed more like a warning... Xu Huo pondered for a moment, then said, "Isn't there a player in the instance who's been here for six days? He might know what's going on."
"Brother Fang, why bother beating around the bush with him!" A square-faced player with a bad temper cut in. "That guy's completely insane, can't get anything out of him. The only ones who know what's happening are this man and woman. If it wasn't something in the instance killing people, then these two are cannibal players trying to cover their tracks by staging this!"
"If he won't talk, kill him. Cannibal players—killing him reduces everyone's risk!"
"Are you sure?" Xu Huo didn't feel like fighting right now. "Before the end of the month, the number of players here is clearly limited. Several go missing every day. If one less person is around, the probability increases for everyone else. Do you think, with your intelligence, you can survive the full seven days?"
The square-faced player was about to explode, but Fang Penghui stopped him. "What do you mean by 'before the end of the month'?"
"The hotel registration book gets cleared at the end of every month," Xu Huo said. "Players in this instance don't check in at the same time, so there's no possibility of everyone clearing it together. And players wouldn't agree to all stay in the guesthouse. So the instance does a purge at the end of the month. Chances are, none of the players will escape."
"Looking at the time, that's the day after tomorrow. Your seven-day instance time won't be up by then."
Fang Penghui's face darkened, and his wariness toward Xu Huo lessened slightly. "You're right. I noticed the registration book issue too. Everyone who came before was fine, but things changed yesterday. Even if players stay in the hotel and don't go out, avoiding potential triggers for disappearance, they probably won't survive until the instance ends."
"That's exactly why I want to know what happened last night."
"I really don't know," Xu Huo said. "They encountered danger first. Yi Pei and I only turned back to the hotel after hearing the commotion. The only thing I'm sure of is that the danger ended within seconds of them being attacked. They had no chance to resist."
"You didn't see what killed them?" the square-faced player pressed.
Xu Huo shot him a look. "Would you rush over to look? In that situation, escaping was the only priority. Besides, the fog was too thick—you couldn't see anything beyond two or three meters."
That much was obvious. Several players glanced at the gloomy sky, and Fang Penghui said, "The instance won't let us off just because we don't break the rules. The best approach is to contact all the players and fight the instance together."
He stared at Xu Huo. "Since the hotel gets cleared at the end of every month, that means players who came before also failed to clear it. Collective effort beats going solo."
"I never planned to clear it alone." Xu Huo raised his injured hand. "I don't have that luxury. But can you convince the other players?"
People went missing every day. If they knew the instance had even greater dangers lurking, would gathering all the players together just bring the danger sooner?
"Convincing most of them is enough... we need to leave a few cannon fodder." Fang Penghui shrugged. "Then it's settled. We'll meet in the hotel lobby."
He left with his people, but two of them broke off from the group and followed Xu Huo at a distance.
Xu Huo didn't mind. He followed yesterday's route, first checking the grass nearby for footprints, then examining the couple's bodies.
The bodies had been covered with grass by Fang Penghui's group. When he lifted it, a foul smell hit him—not the stench of decay, but the odor of internal contents.
He pressed down on the heads, torsos, and limbs. The eyes were naturally gone. The skulls and abdominal cavities had no bones left inside. The abdominal cavities still had contents, and the muscles and bones of the limbs were relatively intact, though somewhat shriveled.
With the head, internal organs, and most bodily fluids missing, the bodies weighed less than a third of their original weight—could the figures that appeared in the woods yesterday have been these hollowed-out corpses?
No signs of life, no footprints left in the woods, and there were many of them.
Even if they were half-corpse, they couldn't have appeared out of thin air. With that many, where would they normally be hidden?
After a moment's thought, he took out the Screaming Chicken and had it continue along yesterday's path.
Through the woods, the chicken and he reached the pond. Here, the Screaming Chicken stopped moving forward and just circled in place.
The administrator had gone missing and then come to the pond.
Staring at the foggy water surface, Xu Huo took a monitoring device from his luggage compartment and dropped it into the lake, controlling it as it sank.
The monitoring device was something he'd brought from District 011. It was waterproof, but since it was a portable model, it couldn't dive too deep.
However, to his surprise, the device hit the bottom less than ten meters down. He put on his glasses, added an oxygen supply, and then remotely controlled the monitor to move left and right.
Underwater, there was a flat stone surface about ten meters wide. It had probably been a road in the past, with deeper water on either side—the light couldn't reach the bottom. But this road started from the pond's side and seemed to head toward the opposite shore.
Someone must have lived on the opposite side of the pond, at least before the road was submerged.
The game background mentioned that the Four Directions Palace City had shrunk multiple times. Could the abandoned areas all be cut off on the other side of the pond?
Thinking about this, Xu Huo felt a subtle sense of dissonance.
The buildings in the county town showed no signs of change. The people here believed in gods, so they shouldn't have completely abandoned religious traces. Rather than being remnants of the Four Directions Palace City, it seemed more like they had simply built a new city somewhere else.
The missing players and the dead in the county town all ended up in the pond. This suggested that the Four Directions Palace City the instance referred to shouldn't be limited to this county town—the missing players should be in the superficially abandoned parts of the Four Directions Palace City.
Turning back to look at the county town, Xu Huo frowned. In other words, spending two or three days here meant they were just circling at the entrance of the Four Directions Palace City, never reaching the instance's core.
Just as he was considering whether to cross the pond to investigate, thick smoke suddenly rose from the county town. Judging by the location, the hotel was on fire.
He put away his umbrella, shook off the two people following him, and rushed back to the county town at top speed. By the time he arrived, the hotel was already half-burned. Two or three players were working together to pin a man down in front of the hotel.
"This lunatic!" The square-faced player got bitten and couldn't help punching the man on the ground.
The deranged player had completely forgotten how to use his traits and items, struggling only with brute force. After being hit, he screamed in terror, "Eyes! Eyes! Eyes everywhere! Anyone who sees the eyes must die!"
Xu Huo slowed his pace. This man was the only player in this instance who had survived to the sixth day.
(Chapter End)