The welcome party continued.
The manager busied himself flattering the boss’s wife and occasionally wandered over to clink glasses with the longtime employees, reinforcing his position as their supervisor.
He did not pay much attention to the players’ table, but he was not worried.
The welcome party was a standard part of the instance and had an astonishingly high death rate. The cook hated nothing more than people criticizing his food, yet the horrifying dishes he prepared were so terrible that even the NPCs refused to eat them.
So the manager could practically predict what would happen to the players.
After making a round of the long table and drinking several glasses with the veteran employees, the manager finally arrived at the players’ table at a leisurely pace.
He had already instructed his assistant to prepare extra tableware. What had been served when the banquet began was merely the appetizer.
These players were the main course.
Was there anything more delicious than a human soul?
Absolutely! Nothing!
The manager looked at the players, his throat moving unconsciously. His stomach was already growling with hunger.
But when he reached their table, he found a lively feast in progress. The food here was even more abundant than at the longtime employees’ table: braised meatballs, steamed sea bass, thirteen-spice crayfish, garlic ribs, northwestern big-plate chicken…
The players were eating, drinking, and having an excellent time.
Xu Moyang even shouted toward the kitchen at the top of his lungs, “Old Cui, bring me another glass of 1982 cola! Extra ice!”
—Old Cui was the cook’s nickname. He had been dead so long that he had forgotten his real name, and everyone at the guesthouse called him that.
Old Cui’s face stiffened as he forced out a smile uglier than crying. “No problem. How many glasses would you like?”
Xu Moyang: “One!”
Without lifting his head, Fang Yuan spoke around a mouthful of ribs. “Plus one.”
Lu Jin nodded too. “Plus one.”
Old Cui’s gaze moved from one face to the next as he silently counted. When he reached Jiang Sui, his expression stiffened.
Jiang Sui seemed to have finished eating and was idly swirling half a glass of barley tea. He looked up at Old Cui. “I’ll pass on the cola. Pour me a whiskey instead.”
Old Cui: “…”
They were actually ordering drinks now? Did they truly think he was their waiter?
Anger shot through his chest, but he did not dare show it. The cook could only force himself to keep smiling.
“Of course~ I’ll get everything for you right away!”
After saying that, he turned and left almost instantly, disappearing into the kitchen without looking back.
The manager stood beside the table with his eyes stretched wide, his brain practically refusing to turn.
What was happening? Whenever he ordered Old Cui around, the man always relied on seniority and resisted a hundred different ways. Why did he obey every request from these players?
Was that reasonable?!
*
The meal ended with hosts and guests apparently delighted. Whether the person who cooked was happy remained unknown, but the people eating certainly were.
When the banquet ended, the manager forced a smile as he saw the players out. At the hall entrance, he wore a false expression and said, “Looks like everyone had a wonderful time today. I hope your first night at the guesthouse is just as enjoyable!”
Lu Jin lifted his chin. “Thanks for the good wishes.”
Xu Moyang was so full that he had become sleepy. Rubbing his eyes, he looked over. Beneath the lights, one human and one ghost stood facing each other. If he ignored the fact that this was a bizarre infinite-flow instance, the scene somehow looked strangely harmonious.
“Oh, right.” The manager still remembered his NPC responsibilities despite the miserable smile on his face. “Once you return to the dormitory, don’t come out again. You’re not allowed to leave your rooms at night.”
The players did not answer and returned to the dormitory one after another.
Once all six were inside, Jiang Heng locked the door behind them.
There was no chance they were actually staying inside. Mission Two remained unfinished, and only two hours were left. Jiang Heng even suspected that the NPCs had deliberately arranged this welcome party to waste their time and ensure they failed the mission.
He looked at the others. “Does anyone have any ideas about Mission Two?”
Fang Yuan raised his hand. “During the banquet, I chatted with several NPCs. They said the boss’s wife is a decent person who focuses entirely on taking care of her child. She isn’t particularly close to any man.”
Xu Moyang looked surprised. “You were actually collecting clues just now?”
Fang Yuan stared at him blankly. “Weren’t we supposed to?” Wasn’t gathering clues the reason they had attended the banquet?
The room fell silent for several seconds.
Especially Lu Jin and Xu Moyang.
They had genuinely just been eating, and they both thought Old Cui’s cooking was pretty good.
Jiang Heng and Xie Zhi also shared what they had found, although neither had dared leave the welcome party, so most of their information had also come from NPCs.
Overall, the boss’s wife was not particularly close to the other NPCs. Most of the time, her attention revolved around Boss Huang and their child.
Boss Huang had been in a bad mood lately and had argued with his wife several times, but she always endured it and never let things escalate too far. Even when the arguments became severe, Granny Huang would come mediate, and she usually sided with the boss’s wife.
Lu Jin suddenly asked, “Does Granny Huang know about the DNA test?”
“Well…”
The players were speechless. Generally, the closer an NPC was to the Boss, the more dangerous that NPC tended to be. When gathering information, they had dared question ordinary employees, but who would walk up to the Boss’s own mother and interrogate her directly?
Xie Zhi speculated, “She definitely doesn’t know. If she knew, would she still treat the boss’s wife so well? Would she still adore that grandson so much?”
Those were all the clues they had. These scattered details were nowhere near enough to determine who had cuckolded Boss Huang.
In the end, the players decided they had to sneak outside and investigate.
Jiang Heng checked the time. “Mission Two began at six-thirty in the evening, with a six-hour limit. Should we regroup in the dormitory before midnight?”
Everyone agreed. They split into three groups of two and went their separate ways.
*
Outside the dormitory, everything was pitch-black.
Moonlight shone through the floor-to-ceiling window at the end of the corridor, coating the thick carpet in a layer of silver.
Xu Moyang cautiously followed Lu Jin. His sneakers made no sound on the plush carpet.
Lu Jin pulled out his phone and opened a map showing the layout of Clear River Guesthouse.
“First, we go to Boss Huang’s office.” Lu Jin pointed at one marked location.
Clear River Guesthouse consisted of several small buildings: a guest building, staff dormitory, logistics building, and a three-story residence where Boss Huang’s family lived.
Boss Huang’s office was in the logistics building.
When the two reached the building, the main doors were tightly locked. Lu Jin grabbed Xu Moyang by the back of his collar and brought him over the second-floor balcony. They found a window that had not been fully closed and silently slipped inside.
The logistics building was frighteningly quiet. At least in the dormitory building, they could hear the breathing of sleeping employees, but there was no one here at all.
Following the map, they quickly found Boss Huang’s office.
Xu Moyang immediately got to work, opening cabinets and rummaging through drawers for clues. He had played plenty of escape rooms and murder-mystery games, so searching for clues was familiar territory.
Lu Jin left him to it. He walked to the side, took out his phone, and snapped his wrist hard, shaking Huang Youquan out of the device.
Huang Youquan appeared to have been sleeping. He rolled onto the floor with a grunt and knocked his head against the leg of the sofa, instantly beginning to curse. “Who the hell is disturbing my sleep?!”
The moment he saw Lu Jin standing in front of him, his curses stopped. His face immediately filled with a reluctant smile. “Lord Reaper, it’s late at night. What can I do for you?”
Lu Jin raised a brow. “The DNA report is already out, and the son isn’t biologically yours. You didn’t have any thoughts about that?”
Huang Youquan’s smile froze.
Xu Moyang came over too and asked curiously, “Exactly! Back in the car, you kept insulting your wife! You already knew about this, didn’t you? Didn’t you investigate who the other man was?”
Huang Youquan’s eyes shifted, and he unconsciously avoided both their gazes.
Lu Jin immediately understood. So he had investigated.
He crouched and looked directly at Huang Youquan, who was sitting on the floor. “What did you find? Tell me.”
Huang Youquan sneered and lifted his chin stubbornly. “Why should I tell you? Don’t think that broken saber scares me! I’m an instance Boss, after all. I don’t scare that easily!”
Lu Jin said, “If you tell me properly, I might consider letting you go.”
“Really?!” Huang Youquan’s eyes lit up instantly.
“If you don’t believe me, ask him.” Lu Jin pointed at Xu Moyang. “He’s known me for years. He knows I keep my word.”
“As long as you tell me everything you know without hiding anything, I promise I’ll let you go.”
The offer was too tempting. Huang Youquan wavered.
There was actually little harm in telling Lu Jin. NPCs instinctively harmed humans. They were ghosts, and many were malicious ghosts, which naturally enjoyed eating human souls. NPCs and players were therefore natural enemies.
But to them, players were little more than a meal. If they could not eat this group, there would always be another batch. So Huang Youquan did not particularly care whether Lu Jin cleared the instance.
Freedom mattered much more!
Huang Youquan gritted his teeth and agreed.
“The whole affair started half a year ago…”
Before then, Huang Youquan had believed his life was smooth and fortunate: a beautiful wife, an adorable son, a healthy mother, and a guesthouse business growing more successful every year.
But half a year earlier, Xiaobao accidentally fell from the second floor and suffered massive abdominal bleeding. He urgently needed a blood transfusion.
That accident was also how Huang Youquan discovered something was wrong with Xiaobao’s blood type. Huang Youquan had AB blood. There was no way he could biologically father a child with type O blood.
“How ridiculous!” Huang Youquan laughed bitterly. “The son I raised for three years wasn’t even mine!”
“I gave that woman and her child everything I had. If she wanted the stars or the moon, I would have found a way to give them to her. And what did she do? She betrayed me and carried another man’s bastard!”
No matter how deep love had once been, once betrayal entered it, a shattered mirror could never truly become whole again and spilled water could never be gathered back. The thorn called “infidelity” had lodged deep in Huang Youquan’s heart, impossible to pull out or cut away.
He could not understand when their relationship had begun to go wrong. Why had his wife betrayed him? More than that, he desperately wanted to know whose child Xiaobao truly was. Who was the third person who had entered their marriage?
Working backward from the time of his wife’s pregnancy, Huang Youquan eventually focused on a class reunion four years earlier. During that period, his wife had returned to her hometown for the reunion and stayed one night in a hotel.
Afterward, she frequently chatted with former classmates on her phone and smiled several times more often than before.
“It has to be one of her classmates!” Huang Youquan said decisively. “It happened that time. There’s no mistake!”
To find the adulterer, Huang Youquan secretly investigated and eventually obtained the reunion attendance list. It had been the centennial celebration of his wife’s high school, so quite a lot of former students attended—nearly fifty people.
Huang Youquan threw the list at Lu Jin. “You can let me go now, right? With that list, you can find the person yourselves.”
Xu Moyang asked, “You already had the list. You never found him?”
Huang Youquan laughed bitterly. “I didn’t have time.”
He had died before finishing the investigation. As for the reason for his death, that was not part of the players’ mission, and he had no intention of explaining it.
“Mm.” Lu Jin always kept his word. “You can go.”
Huang Youquan nearly jumped with joy.
He had assumed that being captured by a Reaper meant his existence was finished. He had eaten human souls. Avoiding Hell would already have been fortunate, and reincarnation was completely impossible. He never imagined he would get another chance to escape.
Suppressing his wild joy, Huang Youquan turned and rushed toward the door, sprinting without hesitation toward freedom.
But the moment he ran out of the office, he collided head-on with someone.
Lu Jin.
Huang Youquan: “?!”
His face turned green with fury. “Didn’t you say you would let me go?!”
Lu Jin nodded. “Yes. I promised to let you go.” Then his tone shifted. “But I never said I wouldn’t catch you again after letting you go.”
Lu Jin spread his hands. “See? I already released you. If you weren’t capable enough to escape and ended up in my hands again, how can you blame me?”
Huang Youquan: “???”
Never in all his existence had he seen anyone this shameless!
Huang Youquan trembled with rage and pointed at Lu Jin’s nose. “Put your hand on your conscience and tell me—are those words something a human being should say?!”
