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Bonus chapter! Thank you to Fray for the donation! ^^
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At noon, the early summer weather was scorching, with the sun hanging high in the sky. However, the sunlight failed to warm the community even slightly.
Especially in a certain room on the sixth floor of Building D, where the cold was as biting as if they were inside a freezer.
The room was eerily quiet, so quiet that every movement of the two people on the screen could be heard clearly.
The five people standing in the living room were all staring intently at the screen, and the entire room was filled with a dangerous and terrifying atmosphere.
Just as the temperature in the room plummeted to bone-chilling levels, the door to the room was abruptly opened.
The five people in the living room turned their heads expressionlessly toward the doorway, their eyes filled with a chilling, sinister gloom.
Their expressions were as if they would mercilessly kill the intruder the next second.
When Ruan Qing, standing at the doorway, saw the situation inside the room, he was completely stunned. His delicate face turned pale, and he instinctively took a few steps back, bumping into Lan Xu behind him.
Lan Xu reached out to steady Ruan Qing, but even that couldn't provide him with a sense of security.
As the door opened, the icy, bone-piercing aura rushed toward them, and the temperature instantly dropped from over 20 degrees to below zero. The drastic temperature difference caused Ruan Qing's slender and frail body to tremble uncontrollably.
He had never expected these people to be in Zhou Jinchen's room.
He hadn't known about the sixth-floor room through intuition; he had deduced it through analysis.
The places where these people had died weren't in Building D but in the southeast direction, closer to the community's entrance.
Instead of staying at the locations where they had died, they had chosen to live in Building D, the farthest from the entrance. There was only one possibility for this:
The basement was in Building D.
These people had likely occupied Building D because of him.
In other words, they would seize the floors closest to the basement.
But Zhou Jinchen wouldn't.
From the moment Ruan Qing first saw Zhou Jinchen, he had determined that he was the system himself.
And it was the system without suppressed memories.
In the past, when the system entered the game to help him, he would suppress his memories and fully integrate into the NPC. But this time, the system clearly hadn't, which would undoubtedly carry significant risks.
The best way to reduce risk was to lower one's presence and marginalize oneself.
Therefore, Zhou Jinchen definitely wouldn't compete with those five for the floors, making the sixth floor the most likely place for him to reside.
As it turned out, Ruan Qing's guess was correct, but he never expected that the scene of him kissing Zhou Jinchen would be discovered.
And not just by one person—all of these people knew about it.
It didn't take much thought to figure out why these people had gathered here. They were waiting for nightfall, planning to take advantage of Zhou Jinchen's weakened state after death to completely destroy his ghost.
And, incidentally... they were also waiting for him.
Waiting here for him to walk right into their trap.
Ruan Qing's face turned pale. When the group's gazes fell on Lan Xu's hand supporting him, he instinctively pulled away from Lan Xu and put some distance between them.
Even so, the expressions on the faces of the group remained dark and terrifying, enough to make anyone's scalp tingle.
The door was right behind them, but Ruan Qing didn't dare to grab Lan Xu and run, nor could he run.
Running now would only further enrage these people.
In the end, Ruan Qing could only press his lips together and stand stiffly and helplessly in place.
Completely focused on the people in the room, Ruan Qing didn't notice that when he pulled away from Lan Xu, Lan Xu's eyes also turned dangerous, filled with the same dark intensity as the five inside.
But Lan Xu quickly concealed the emotions in his eyes. He stared intently at the five people in the room, his entire body tense, his eyes full of vigilance.
However, no matter how vigilant he was, it was useless. In a high-level instance, encountering even one vengeful ghost already left little chance of survival, let alone five.
In an instant, Lan Xu's heart was crushed by Xu He, who had suddenly appeared in front of him, so fast that Lan Xu didn't even have time to react.
Feeling the searing pain in his chest, Lan Xu looked down in disbelief.
A hand had ruthlessly pierced through his heart, and blood was rapidly flowing from the wound. Within seconds, his clothes were completely soaked in blood.
Xu He mercilessly pulled his hand back, and as he did, a large amount of blood was flung from his hand, drawing a terrifying arc on the ground.
Lan Xu's body slowly collapsed to the floor, and he soon stopped breathing.
The viewers in the live stream were completely stunned, whether they were watching Ruan Qing's stream or Lan Xu's.
[Lan Xu just died like that? No, I thought he might die, but I didn't expect it to happen so easily!]
[I'm completely dumbfounded. Logically, I know it's normal to be instantly killed by a mini-boss in a high-level instance, but why does this feel so unreal all of a sudden!]
[Are you guys idiots? Have you checked if Lan Xu's livestream is still closed? If he were really dead, how could we even be sending these comments?]
[...Oh, right. So, is Lan Xu dead or not? What's going on right now? Could it be a system bug? (confused face.JPG)]
The livestream audience was completely baffled. After all, Lan Xu had stopped breathing and died—that much was true. No one could survive having their heart crushed.
Not to mention the terrifying amount of blood loss—there was no way he could still be alive.
But the fact that the livestream was still active was also undeniable. For a moment, the audience couldn't make sense of the situation.
Aside from the strange fact that the livestream was still running, no one inside the instance seemed to notice anything unusual.
Xu He glanced at the blood on his hand, a hint of disgust flashing in his eyes. In the next second, a tissue appeared in his hand. He wiped the blood off expressionlessly, then tossed the bloodied tissue onto Lan Xu's corpse as if it were trash. He spoke casually, "The human body is so fragile."
After saying this, Xu He turned to Ruan Qing, who stood beside him with a face as pale as a sheet. He tilted his head slightly and asked, "Don't you think so?"
Ruan Qing's face grew even paler. He stared at Lan Xu's corpse, his clear, lively eyes filled with disbelief.
He opened his mouth to speak, but his throat seemed to be tightly constricted, and no sound came out.
In the end, Ruan Qing lowered his gaze, avoiding Xu He's dangerous stare, his slender body trembling uncontrollably.
He was clearly terrified.
However, Xu He didn't give Ruan Qing the chance to avoid him. He grabbed Ruan Qing's chin, forcing it upward, his tone still gentle. "Why aren't you saying anything?"
"Is it because you don't want to speak, or is it just that you don't want to talk to me?"
Ruan Qing tried to struggle, but he couldn't break free from Xu He's grip. His silky, smooth hair fell loose as he was forced to tilt his head back, revealing his delicate, captivating face.
