Huai looked at Yu Xing's face and had a feeling that the gentle smile on this man's face just now wasn't "one death is enough," but "dinner is really delicious."

So, who to eat... no, who to die, have they all figured it out?

Huai pulled back the thoughts that had been led astray in her mind, unconsciously rubbing the secret silver pendant on her chest with her fingers.

Yu Xing's way of thinking doesn't seem like that of a good person.

The gambler isn't worried that Xing is on the wrong path?

Just as Huai's thoughts were turning, Yu Xing, with his harmless face, added, "Of course, death is ultimately the worst case scenario. The senior gambler must have already known where the new area is. I just need to follow the senior, and it will definitely be fine!"

Huai: "..." Is that so?

Zeng Lai: "..." What the heck!?

The detached "senior gambler" had just recovered from the blow of Yu Xing taking off his mask, and now felt the impact of being blamed.

Well, isn't he telling Huai that all these ideas were his?

Although, in the previous exploration, he did discover some things, but he didn't believe that with Yu Xing's current level of intelligence, he wouldn't have discovered these things at the same time.

You taste, you think carefully.

After thinking for two seconds, Zeng Lai figured it out.

In front of him, Xing didn't really put on a show, but it was different in front of Huai. Huai's biggest characteristic is that she likes to record deduction videos. Although she is a lone wolf, she has many supporters.

Because Huai's videos have provided many people with reference cases and taught them a lot, even their researchers have used Huai's videos for analysis.

So... Xing doesn't plan to expose his deduction habits to the audience in the future!

Zeng Lai gave himself a pat on the back for his quick thinking.

People like Xing, who have a backing, probably won't die in the struggling level of deduction. Maybe they will have some interaction in the future. If that's the case, he might as well do Xing a favor.

"Yes, I did find something, so let them struggle with occupying the rooms for now." He casually followed up on Yu Xing's words, trying to pass off the few seconds of being stunned.

Huai looked at him deeply.

Zeng Lai remained unchanged: "Seriously... no one really thinks that occupying the rooms is not dangerous."

Huai nodded and sighed.

In this deduction, the boss has the upper hand, in other words, Alice is the owner of the castle, and she doesn't even need an excuse to cause trouble for the deductionists.

But the deductionists can't do anything to her.

And this boss not only has a high position, but also high intelligence. With just a small trick, several deductionists have overlooked the initial focus and fallen into a blind spot—

They only saw time and competition, but Alice didn't guarantee that the rumored specters wandering around the castle wouldn't be waiting in the rooms.

The specter that everyone was avoiding, because of the sudden appearance of new rules, now had the opportunity to appear and kill at will.

For example, Yu Xing's vengeful spirit researcher.

This thing makes a lot of noise when walking, and it's hard to hide its tracks. But what if it's standing behind a door of a room that was unlikely to be opened?

The deductionists hurriedly pushed the door, only to see a section of a pipe with exaggerated serrations coming towards their heads.

The scene was beautiful, but let's not think about it anymore.

Occupying the rooms sounds simple, but in reality, it's very difficult.

Alice, this unknown creature, has no kindness towards them, and is very malicious.

To confirm their words, at this moment, a string of terrified screams came from the floor above.

It sounded like a man's voice, although the specific floor and person couldn't be distinguished, based on the intensity of the screams, it seemed like the person was running and screaming at the same time.

The screams lasted for a few seconds and then stopped, not the kind that was abruptly cut off, but the kind that stopped after realizing that it was getting harder to escape by screaming.

"..."

It seems that things are getting lively upstairs.

The three people at the dining table fell silent for a moment, and Huai spoke up to confirm: "You've noticed it, and so has Huang Bai. So, shall we form an alliance?"

"Agreed," Zeng Lai nodded.

Yu Xing continued eating.

The alliance was thus established. Huai is on the deviant path, Huang Bai is on the righteous path (according to what she told Huai), the gambler is on the righteous path, and Yu Xing is on the deviant path. Overall, this alliance is quite reassuring.

In other words, there are no fallen individuals in the team, which is reassuring.

Because this involves the method of clearing the game, those on the fallen path will stop at nothing and often harm others, as long as they clear the game or achieve a certain goal, morality is put aside.

On the other hand, those on the righteous and deviant paths, although their deduction habits differ, have one thing in common—they both believe that the threat posed by the absurd deduction game is not enough to make them break their morals and kill others to clear the game.

After the deviant level of deduction, the death rate is generally around fifty percent. When led by a big shot, this data can be reduced further, and Zeng Lai has also seen everyone survive.

So, for those with sufficient experience and strength above the average, one deduction does not mean a life-or-death situation, but more like a seventy-thirty chance of survival...

Although the increase in probability is not significant, there is still some confidence.

When it really comes down to it, when death is imminent... that's when they'll talk.

After all, they don't usually mess with the lives of innocent teammates they randomly match with. Watching from the sidelines is one thing, actively harming others is another, unless they encounter someone who has a grudge against them, or someone from the fallen path who clearly has hostile intentions.

Hmm, the fallen path doesn't usually do anything, and of course, they won't be seen as human by deductionists from the other two paths.The butler witnessed the three tourists seemingly gossiping about Alice while forming some strange relationship.

But he didn't speak up, nor did he feel the need to inform Alice. His duty was just to be a good logistics butler, and everything else was not his concern.

That was the rule.

Zeng Lai and Huai understood this characteristic of the system, so they casually didn't return to their rooms, but instead discussed these matters directly at the dining table.

So, the butler, who was being used as a background, began eavesdropping on the exchange of clues between the three.

"What was in the box you took back with you just now?" Huai finally asked the question he had been wanting to ask, "A clue or a prop? How did you find it?"

"It's probably a prop, I think," Zeng Lai wasn't very sure either, since he hadn't opened the small wooden box. But from the system prompts, it was clear that it involved finding lighting tools and keys, making the process of opening the box more similar to a prop than a clue.

If a prop clue was this complicated, then they might as well not play around and just stab each other to death.

He gave his answer and then looked at Yu Xing, who had no intention of speaking. "It was actually Xing who found it, in the cabinet on the fifth floor corridor. The fifth floor is very strange, you see the grand hall, all magnificent, do you know what the fifth floor looks like? The dust is piled up so high, and there are spider webs, it's so dilapidated."

"Dilapidated?"

Huai hadn't been to the fifth floor, only the end of the staircase in the grand hall that led to the fifth floor. That iron door that required a key, he thought, was indeed dilapidated.

Just that one door, so rusted that it was almost unrecognizable from its original material. If the entire floor was of this style, then it must have its significance.

In this absurd world, every anomaly could symbolize vitality and clues.

Since they had reached this point in the conversation, there was nothing to hide. Zeng Lai roughly recounted their discoveries, including the Abyss Blood Array on the ceiling that had not been activated.

"I see. So you've already encountered three types of specters," Huai looked at Yu Xing, who had a ravenous appetite, and inexplicably felt his own appetite being stimulated. He took advantage of the hot food and ate a few more bites to fill his stomach, then said, "When I was in the bathroom with Huang Bai, we also saw one."

Huang Bai wanted to occupy a room, so Huai let her go.

The first few rooms were easy to enter, at least they had ten bedrooms, right?

As for the possible dangerous places, Huai believed that Huang Bai had her own judgment and wouldn't take risks easily.

Because this woman was very clever, giggling and laughing, but actually very attentive.

Huai said, "The men's bathroom is similar to what you said, I looked around for a while and then left, and went to the women's bathroom."

Yu Xing raised his eyelids to look at him.

Zeng Lai also stared at him silently, as if making some kind of accusation.

"…Come on, there was no one in the bathroom at that time!" Huai's usually calm voice finally showed the strongest fluctuation so far, "…And Huang Bai went in first, I just followed to check for clues, I wouldn't do anything perverted, so stop giving me those looks!"

Yu Xing obediently withdrew his gaze.

Zeng Lai clicked his tongue twice, "So what happened next, what did you see in the women's bathroom?"

Huai cleared his throat, "A mirror."

"Huang Bai found it, she said she heard a sound from the mirror, so she looked over, and I went too, and then we saw a person in the mirror."

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow, "Who?"

Huai said, "Myself."

Zeng Lai: "…?"

Am I deaf…

"Do you think it's cool to see yourself in the mirror, isn't that just a mirror?"

Huai knew he hadn't explained it clearly enough and was about to make a clarification for the hot-tempered guy from the northeast, but Yu Xing spoke first.

He tried to understand, "You and Huang Bai looked in the mirror, and there was only you in the mirror?"

"Yes," Huai said, "And, in the mirror, I waved to myself, I didn't pay attention to it, Huang Bai looked first, and found that her expression was similar to mine, maybe a little greener, she probably saw herself smiling and waving at her in the mirror."

Zeng Lai imagined this scene, not very shocking for someone who had seen many specters, who hadn't encountered one or two mirror ghosts.

Then he imagined, if he was taking a shower and something identical to him smiled at him in the mirror, candidly facing him while showering.

Zeng Lai felt that he might be going crazy from the obscene image.

Chasing the obscene image out of his mind, he cautiously asked, "What is it?"

Huai didn't know what strange image he had just imagined in his mind, and answered normally, "The Specter Notification says it's called 'Good Friend'."

A good friend who showers together.

Zeng Lai looked despairing, feeling that his mind couldn't get past this pit.

He really wanted to slap himself.

But Yu Xing, after hearing this name, began to have some associations about the attack method of this specter.

Obviously, this thing wasn't solid.

He knew that there were many types of specters, taking the specters in this deduction as an example... the Resentful Corpse Researcher and the Crier both belonged to entities, but the Good Friend didn't.

And the attack methods of his White Coat Zombie and the Good Friend were quite obvious - the former used a pipe and body to beat people, while the latter either pulled people into the mirror or killed them through the reflection.

The attack mechanism of the Crier and the Blood Array was hard to say. Should you respond to the Crier knocking on the door, or not? If you open the door, does the Crier use its body to attack directly, or is there another causal rule? As for the Blood Array, apart from having a certain range of induction, Yu Xing didn't know anything else.Some specters are immediately identifiable from a distance, refreshing the ghost notification as soon as they are seen, while others require activation, meaning they only update the information upon close contact and detection. There are even those specters that might not be recognized even when seen. As for the criteria of judgment, it's all up to the system.

Yu Xing asked, "What happened after the greeting?"

Zeng Lai also managed to focus his attention.

Huai twiddled with his pendant again, a habitual gesture it seemed.

He said, "The person in the mirror didn't make a move, just greeted like a good friend. We were at a standoff for five minutes, and then I left. Back in my bedroom, I checked the small mirror and it didn't follow me. I don't know if it only exists in the bathroom, or if it's temporarily too weak to attack us."

Yu Xing thought to himself that the likelihood of it existing only in the bathroom was slim; otherwise, this ghost would be too undignified, appearing only twice, once each night, specifically to have friendly meetings with Deductionists.

And most likely, it would appear without clothes every time, which was quite tragic.

It seemed necessary to thoroughly check the mirrors in the bedroom when returning...

After Huai waited for Zeng Lai and Yu Xing to ponder for a while, he added, "There's one more thing. You mentioned earlier that you couldn't enter the fifth-floor corridor because there were no lights. I remember seeing matches in a display room on the second floor."

Zeng Lai's eyes lit up: "Thanks."

...

After so much discussion, both parties had received some new information.

At the very least, it showed that this alliance was sincere.

Zeng Lai stroked his chin, having eaten his fill, and glanced at the golden clock.

The hands pointed to 18:19.

He stood up: "The bathroom is not close from here; we should get going."

Yu Xing, having eaten and drunk his fill, nodded at the words.

Huai also stood up: "Then that's settled. If there are new discoveries later, let's find time to share them. And if you find new items... it would be best to give a heads-up."

Items corresponded to different specters, and knowing what each other had could help coordinate a joint defense when encountering a specter.

Having verbally agreed, the three of them left the hall and went upstairs.

Only the old butler remained, silently beginning to clear the dishes, stacking them all up, and then transporting them batch by batch to the transport chute in the corner of the hall.

After finishing these tasks, he stood by the golden clock, as quiet as a machine without self-awareness.

Only the occasional movement of his fingers seemed to silently protest this illusion.

Search "pawread.com" for the original.