# Chapter 681: Missing Players and Corpses
"If we don't look, will it be harder to fall for it?" Yi Pei asked.
Closing one's eyes might have some effect, but it wouldn't be decisive.
Xu Huo glanced outside. "The rain is getting heavier. You should go back."
Yi Pei took her leave from the grandfather and granddaughter, then exited the small courtyard.
The sky was as dark as night, and by evening, a torrential downpour began. Umbrellas couldn't even be held up, and naturally, no one was walking outside in the rain.
Not long after it got dark, a faint scream suddenly came from outside. Xu Huo immediately walked into the courtyard. When the little girl saw he was about to go out, she quickly stopped him. "Don't go out at night."
"I'm worried something might have happened to my friend." Xu Huo walked out of the courtyard but turned back to see the old man calling his granddaughter back inside and forcefully closing the courtyard gate.
Nearby players who had come out were heading toward the direction of the sound. Several people walked in that direction, and soon they saw the square-faced player who was with Fang Penghui standing guard in front of a courtyard.
When Xu Huo and the others entered, they found that besides themselves, the black-shirt player and the artistic-style player and their groups were also there.
The tragic scene in the courtyard was visible at a glance. The old sisters who lived there had their heads smashed to pieces—one lay collapsed in the main hall, the other sprawled in the yard. That scream should have come from the second woman, who ran out of the house but still died.
These two people had been killed by a player. The player Xu Huo had set on fire during the day lay just a few steps away.
"These two people—I remember they spat at this guy during the day," Fu Danhong said. "His vengefulness is way too strong. He came out at night to kill them, but ended up getting himself killed instead."
"Don't make sarcastic remarks," one of the artistic-style player's companions said. "Can't you see how horribly he died?"
This was also why the players were still staying in the courtyard. The burned player's death was the same as that couple in the woods—his eyes had been gouged out, his head and chest and abdomen were caved in, his brain and internal organs were gone, but the shattered bones remained inside his body.
"Didn't anyone see how he died?" Xu Huo asked.
"With such heavy rain, you can't even hear clearly, let alone see anyone," the square-faced player said. "Besides, whatever did it was too fast."
The reason they described it as a "thing" was because the time between the second woman being killed and their arrival was very short. Not only had the killer murdered someone, but they had also started from the eyes to hollow out the internal organs. If they had arrived any later, there probably wouldn't even be bones left in the abdominal cavity.
"It could also be other players who did it," the artistic-style player said with a smile. "There are quite a few cannibal players among us. Maybe they couldn't resist the smell of blood."
"Don't stir up trouble," Liu Shiyan said with a grim face. "No one died in the county town in the past few days, but three have died from yesterday to today. We should think about how to deal with this."
The artistic-style player still wore that carefree expression, shrugging and saying, "Maybe they violated the instance rules."
"Could killing locals also be one of the triggering conditions?" Someone immediately thought of the two murderous players. "Didn't they come?"
"Someone has already gone to look for them," Fang Penghui said at this point.
The others looked at him but said nothing more.
Soon, several people came running over. The two groups had clearly come from different directions—one was sent by Fang Penghui to find those two players, and the other was stationed at those empty courtyards.
"The people are gone!"
"The bodies are gone!"
"Speak clearly," Fang Penghui said as he quickly walked over.
It wasn't hard to explain. Simply put, those two players had forcibly occupied a residence and driven the original owners out. No one knew exactly what happened, but when they went to look, the house was already empty, there was no one around, and there were no signs of a struggle inside the room.
The missing corpses were the ones from the old people who died during the day.
Their bodies had been placed in an empty courtyard, right next to the small courtyard where Fang Penghui and the others were staying together. When Fang Penghui and the others followed the screams to check, a few players hadn't come along. When they happened to glance to the side just now, they discovered the bodies laid out in the main hall had inexplicably disappeared.
"Can corpses just walk away on their own?"
This undoubtedly cast a shadow over all the players. How the people died was unclear, and how the bodies disappeared was also unclear. Whether they had run off on their own or something was lurking in the county town, it was already beyond their imagination.
"I don't believe there really are gods in this world," the black-shirt player said, pressing down on his hat. "It's just the instance boss using props to play tricks."
"Who doesn't know that?" the square-faced player said. "The key is how to deal with it. Before, it was sneaking around, but now it's blatantly entered the county town. If this continues, it will kill all of us!"
"What if the instance venue doesn't exist anymore?" the artistic-style player said. "No people, no houses, and the instance ceases to exist."
Truly, boldness comes from skill.
And after hearing this, everyone present actually started considering the proposal.
If the instance ceased to exist, they could clear it early.
"Destroying the county town will only speed up the instance progress," Xu Huo spoke up at this point. "First of all, we might not be able to destroy the deity statues enshrined in the residences. Just the rule of not being able to look at them could put us in a difficult position."
"Can't look at the deity statues—does that mean we can't look at them, or the statues can't look at us?"
"Without the cover of houses and wooden cabinets, everyone might be exposed to the statues' line of sight."
"Also, leaving aside the dead for now, where have the missing players and corpses gone? Since they can't be found in the county town, and they're not in the woods either, and they can't possibly have left the instance range, that means the county town isn't the full picture of the instance. Are you sure that burning down the instance will end the game early?"
Destroying the instance venue—unless you can completely destroy this space—under normal circumstances, the instance probably won't collapse just because the venue is damaged. In the Skinner's instance, Xu Huo was just lucky enough to have burned the instance authorization document, which caused the instance to end early.
The Four Directions Palace City clearly had more to it than just this area. Destroying the houses was the worst possible strategy.
"This county town is indeed a bit strange," the black-shirt player added. "It doesn't look like it was remodeled from an existing town. Judging by the usage level of the building materials, it's at most twenty years old. If the Four Directions Palace City could form a religious culture, its urban history wouldn't be this short."
"Are you saying we have to go find the instance boss?" Wei Xian was shocked and somewhat hesitant. "Rather than going for a high rating, I'd rather just survive here for seven days."
"You won't survive seven days," the artistic-style player said, shaking his phone. "I took a picture of the hotel registration book. The hotel clears out its guests once a month—no matter how many days they've stayed, all guests have to check out. Think about why they have to check out."
"Brother Shi is amazing!" The two female players clinging to him gave him enthusiastic kisses in appreciation.
"Either we take the initiative to attack, or we wait until time runs out and we all die together," the artistic-style player said with a grin. "Either way, it's death. Take a gamble—a bicycle might turn into a motorcycle. Maybe we can scrape by with an A-rank rating."
(Chapter End)