Free Web Novel"What problem?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow.
"Those carvings on the wall!" Cao Dong lowered his voice. "They came to life. When I was sleeping last night, I felt several pairs of eyes staring at me! You probably didn't notice because it was daytime... at night, you'll see how terrifying it is!"
Xu Huo gave a slight smile. "The reliefs and patterns on the hotel room walls are specially arranged to put mental pressure on people. It's not strange to experience mild hallucinations when you're highly stressed or exhausted. Just don't look at them."
Cao Dong was visibly startled, then furrowed his brow and shook his head. "Impossible. I tried, but I couldn't control myself at all!"
Hearing this, Xu Huo's expression turned slightly more serious. "Did you try damaging the walls?"
"Scraping the walls did nothing." Cao Dong looked at him with an expression of shared misery. "The only difference between me and the others is that I came to the woods yesterday and touched the stone statues."
"I don't buy that," Xu Huo said. "Maybe the hotel administrator is just playing tricks."
The two disagreed, so there was nothing more to say. They parted ways and left the woods.
By the time Xu Huo returned to the hotel, he found that the bus had brought another eight players—four men and four women. They didn't look for guesthouses but came straight to the hotel.
They were noisy when booking rooms. A player with long hair and an artistic vibe invited two fashionably dressed female players to stay with him. "It looks like I'll have to be the flower protector. I wonder if the two beautiful ladies would do me the honor?"
Beside them, two people had visible injuries on their faces and were glaring at the trio with barely contained anger. The remaining three looked completely indifferent.
The one man and two women were bickering back and forth. The administrator interrupted them with a sour expression. "There aren't many rooms left. Are you booking or not?"
The eight of them took five rooms.
The long-haired man and the stylish female player shared one. The two injured players each took their own. Among the remaining three, there was a couple, and the last one—a baby-faced female player—took a single room.
Just like when Xu Huo and his group had arrived yesterday, the other players barely came out. The newcomers had no way to buy information, and the other players were tight-lipped.
"If only people who offend the religious statues go missing, the other players wouldn't need to be so defensive," Yi Pei said, bringing some food to Xu Huo.
"People die even when no one triggers the dungeon's kill conditions. That's why players dig traps and stay wary of each other," Xu Huo replied.
Players who had been there for a day or two probably had a rough idea.
First, people who saw the statues, offended the so-called gods, or violated the rule that "outsiders can't bully the faithful locals" became the primary candidates for disappearance.
Second, even when those conditions weren't met, people still went missing. That meant no matter what, someone had to die every night. So the disappearance criteria might be manually selected.
Third, rooms with more than one occupant carried a higher risk.
Yesterday, when Xu Huo and his group checked in, someone had left. It was highly likely that, like Cao Dong, they had discovered something off about the walls. And Liu Shiyan's claim that the hotel was safer wasn't necessarily false.
On the hotel side, the administrator didn't stay for the night shift—at least not openly. Meanwhile, players staying alone in guesthouses had to face the county's residents. Their eagerness to get players to stay wasn't necessarily just for the meager profit.
"Did you hear knocking last night? Did you look outside?" he asked Yi Pei. "Did you see anyone pass by?"
Yi Pei paused for two seconds before saying, "I didn't dare look out."
"Are you nearsighted or completely blind?" Xu Huo suddenly asked.
Yi Pei was first surprised, then showed an "I knew it" expression. "You really figured it out. Yesterday at the station, suddenly standing behind me, then coming with me for the interview, and later borrowing the recording device—all of it was to verify if I was blind, wasn't it?"
"You look no different from a normal person on the surface. It's just that my eyes are a bit sharper," Xu Huo said.
No matter how well someone pretended, someone with poor eyesight would inevitably show signs. Yi Pei probably wasn't completely blind and had an item to assist her vision, so she could move fine. But she was slightly slower in particularly cramped spaces, and her reaction lagged when something was too close and made no sound.
What exposed her the most was the interview. Because she couldn't see clearly, she could only gather basic information from the residents' words. Things that were visible at a glance—like how no household used mirrors, the uniformly locked rooms, and the differences in the carvings—she missed.
Yi Pei had clearly noticed this too. She couldn't completely avoid interacting with other players. When she realized Xu Huo might have seen through her, she didn't call it out but instead proactively showed goodwill.
"My eyes aren't good. I can only make out the gist of things," Yi Pei said. "But it doesn't affect my abilities. Even under these circumstances, I've survived all the way to a D-rank Dungeon."
Given her inherent disadvantages, the fact that she had survived this long proved she was more capable than the average person.
She emphasized this as a warning as well.
"I'll keep your secret." Xu Huo returned to the topic. "Did you look through the peephole last night?"
"No," Yi Pei said. "I can't see clearly anyway, but I did hear footsteps outside the door. That was before You Jun opened his door, though. After he opened it, I didn't hear footsteps until you came up."
"Wei Xian didn't immediately speak up after You Jun went missing."
"He's not trustworthy." Xu Huo's focus wasn't on Wei Xian. "Can you see the reliefs on the walls clearly?"
"Not in detail," Yi Pei said hesitantly. "Do you think those reliefs are the problem?"
"Not just the reliefs. The mirrors and peepholes are also problematic," Xu Huo said. "When the door is knocked on, most players have two reactions: ignore it or check through the peephole."
"The hotel administrator has worked here for over three months, which means no one has caught him knocking on doors at night."
"There are knocking sounds and footsteps. It's impossible that no one has peeked out. The fact that he's still alive means the people hiding behind their doors to look have also become the missing."
"So there were people missing last night from rooms that didn't get knocked on!" Yi Pei paused, then added, "Why the peephole? Couldn't it be that the person knocking tampered with something from outside?"
"There might be more than one person knocking. Players who came earlier might have already figured out how to trigger the conditions."
"That's not hard to test," Xu Huo said. "The administrator will come knock on my door tonight."
Yi Pei understood that these clues weren't free. "You want me to test the peephole for you?"
"Don't force yourself. Even if you refuse, I won't tell anyone about your eyes." Xu Huo said. "I can find someone else to test it."
Yi Pei showed hesitation for a moment, then steeled her resolve. "I'll do it. This dungeon is tied to eyesight. The religious statues can't be looked at, the locals don't like using mirrors, and even the reliefs target the eyes. Maybe the missing players disappeared because they saw something specific."
"If I trigger the condition but nothing happens, that would prove the primary factor is 'seeing,' and we can largely avoid the risk."
