Chapter 52: The Crimson Apartment 12

"You also want to cancel your lease?"

The landlord spoke with casual interest, his gaze completely calm. He had killed a man as effortlessly and leisurely as eating a meal.

That emotionless stare seemed to freeze the very souls of everyone present.

Hearing his words, everyone shook their heads stiffly.

"No, we don't want to..."

A bone-chilling cold crept deep into their marrow. Driven by an intense survival instinct, they didn't even dare to let fear show on their faces.

It was terrifying enough to make one doubt whether this apartment building truly existed, or if everything before them was real.

It was all like an absurd horror script.

And none of them could escape.

The boss stood outside the play, looking down at them from above, while the characters inside struggled for survival like a swarm of ants.

"Heh," Lu Cheng chuckled nonchalantly. "Canceling the lease is out of the question, but you can go outside during the day. You just have to be back by nightfall."

The man looked at them playfully, speaking in a pleasant voice, "Otherwise, I can't guarantee what might happen, oh."

Although he claimed not to know what would happen, both NPCs and players knew it definitely wouldn't be a good end.

The crowd in the apartment trembled with fright instantly. This man was simply too terrifying... able to make someone's body explode into pieces in an instant, completely defying common sense.

They didn't dare disobey.

A terrifying guess took root in the minds of the NPCs: having grown powerful to such an extent, could he... still even be considered human?

Such a boring, wearying reaction...

Lu Cheng looked away from them, walked over to the pile of bloody mist, and cast an indifferent, downward glance.

Filthy.

With a flick of his fingertips, a gray-green tentacle appeared from nowhere and slid swiftly across the floor, devouring the pile of flesh and blood completely.

The dirty blood and shattered meat on the ground vanished instantly, leaving everything spotless.

Only then did Lu Cheng feel much more comfortable inside.

The gray-green tentacle was thick and horrifying, inducing an intense, dizzying sense of vertigo the moment anyone laid eyes on it. The NPCs in the apartment screamed in shock, "Wh-What is that—!"

The players quickly looked away. Things like this lowered their sanity values, and they had no desire to suffer mental corruption and be assimilated.

Hearing the screams, Zhou Zhou's ears twitched, and her heart trembled.

Yet the young girl's eyes had long been covered by the young player, and her body was firmly blocked by him. She could only smell the thick scent of blood lingering in the air.

Zhou Zhou couldn't help but sniff, tightly clutching her pure white long-sleeved cuffs. Out of an indescribable fear, she crumpled the fabric of the cuffs quite a bit.

The landlord... what is he doing?

Zhou Zhou felt extremely uneasy.

The palm of the man's hand over her eyelids was too warm and pressed down so tightly that her eyelashes fluttered in the darkness, tickling his skin.

"Hey," the man murmured softly, "stop blinking, or I'll throw you to that bad guy to be killed."

"..." Zhou Zhou's body stiffened, and she instantly didn't dare to blink anymore.

If she moved again, he might... actually throw her to that terrifying landlord who could blow people apart with just a snap of his fingers.

How wicked.

How could someone be so wicked?

He called the landlord a bad guy, but Zhou Zhou felt this player was much more like a bad guy.

She ground her small, snow-white teeth. They felt a bit itchy; no wonder she had such a strong urge to bite someone.

"Oh, right," Lu Cheng picked up the room card dropped by the dead man from the floor. Looking at the terrified crowd, he raised his eyes and smiled lightly.

"A friendly reminder, remember to protect your room cards. Lose them, and you die."

Room cards... lose them and you die.

What did that mean?

The players were startled.

Could this remark... mean that the room cards served as their identity cards in this instance?

Instances always arranged suitable identities for the players. Right now, they were tenants of the apartment, and as long as they didn't trigger any death conditions, the rules would impose certain restrictions on the monsters.

Without a room card, they would no longer be protected by the rules and could be slaughtered by the monsters without restraint.

After Lu Cheng left, the atmosphere in the apartment fell somewhat silent for a moment.

The few players had already huddled together, forming an invisible barrier between themselves and the shivering NPC tenants.

"Let go of me..."

Zhou Zhou's eyes were filled with a mist of tears. She had already heard the landlord's footsteps fading away, but the young player was still covering her eyes, and the hot, sticky sweat on his palm felt unbearably uncomfortable.

"St-Stop covering them, will you?" Zhou Zhou felt that if this continued, her eyes would be baked blind.

She tilted her head, brushing his hand away, and said thickly, "You're making my eyelids all wet."

The player let out an "oh." Then sorry. You're just too sensitive.

His handsome face looked as hateful as ever.

"Hateful..." Zhou Zhou raised her voice slightly. "Say whatever you want, now move aside."

The player was taken aback: "What are you doing?"

"None of your business." Ignoring him entirely, Zhou Zhou turned abruptly and hurried away.

Originally, this perverted player wanted to follow her, but Zhou Zhou refused to let him. She shoved him away fiercely, putting on a mocking persona in accordance with her character setting.

"I detest poor people like you who pretend to be rich the most."

She acted as tough as she could, raising her voice, while her eyes remained wet and red.

Yet the player stared intently into her eyes. How truly beautiful.

"Pervert," her eyes grew wetter... and her voice grew louder, "stop pretending already."

His breathing grew heavier with excitement. Hearing her mockery, he felt not a shred of anger in his heart; instead, he felt an agonizingly sweet itch.

"Claiming your card has endless money to spend, yet you don't even look at the rags you're wearing. How do you have the face to pretend?"

"Heh."

The man chuckled softly. The player's clothes were cheap and thin—standard-issue items from the system space.

"So that's what you thought."

That's why seeing his clothes made her think that card was fake.

Taking him for some penniless beggar.

How utterly foolish.

The player thought with disdain, staring at her fixedly, while his heart somehow grew hotter and hotter.

Yet she was so truly beautiful.

"The card you gave me is a fake one too, right?"

Zhou Zhou awkwardly recited the lines from the light panel.

She really wasn't good at portraying this kind of character, so she had asked 022 to cobble together some lines belonging to a vain, scheming female supporting character from a cliché eight o'clock melodrama.

To be honest, if it weren't to shake off this pervert, she wouldn't be caught dead reading this to him.

Zhou Zhou knew the card he gave wasn't fake, but she had zero desire to have any entanglements with this pervert.

Since it wasn't fake, she would just have her character assume it was fake.

In any case, she absolutely, positively could not get involved with a wealthy bad-guy player who used money to play around with NPCs.

"You think you can fool me with this kind of trash? Do you think I'll fall for it like those people who've never seen such cheap tricks? Let me tell you, no way."

She spoke in a soft voice, putting on a vicious, money-obsessed act.

"No..." The player felt an urge to smile. Why was she so cute when acting like this?

Clearly so foolish.

"Wh-What?" The girl watched his lips move.

"I said," the player said earnestly, "I didn't fool you."

"Stop joking around..." Zhou Zhou refused to believe it, her voice muffled, "Just look at yourself. Is there a single thing on you that's actually valuable?"

Before the player could speak, Zhou Zhou continued.

"Anyway, don't you dare follow me, you poor wretch."

Dropping those words, she bolted and vanished from sight instantly.

Because it was all too awkward, Zhou Zhou's final words sounded a bit dry, though the player, completely infatuated and captivated by the young girl, failed to notice at all.

The man could only hear her soft voice stubbornly trying to sound fierce, and the young girl even gave him a kick.

Left behind, the young man touched the spot where she had kicked him, feeling a tingling sensation.

His face couldn't help but burn with heat.

Her strength was tiny, like a kitten's scratch. Not only did the kick not hurt at all, but it was light and soft.

It felt so nice...