Kuang Meiying sat up again, wrapped in her blanket, thinking through the situation, her entire body trembling.

She needed to tell Jiang Lian.

She picked up her phone, opened Jiang Lian’s WeChat conversation, then put it down again: at two in the morning, how could he possibly be awake to see messages? Moreover, she had set both their phones to “Do Not Disturb” after midnight, which had moved Wei Biao deeply at the time, praising her thoughtfulness.

Unlike hotels, the inn had no internal phone lines. Waiting until morning to talk might jeopardize matters—the night was long and unpredictable. After pondering for a few seconds, Kuang Meiying simply turned on the light, got out of bed, wrapped a thin coat over her spaghetti-strap nightgown, and quietly opened the door.

The corridor was extremely quiet, the lighting dim. There should have been two people patrolling this floor, but they were nowhere to be seen. Kuang Meiying gently knocked on the door, keeping her voice as low as possible: “Wei Biao? Jiang Lian?”

At this volume, even if the people inside were awake, they might not hear her, let alone if they were in deep sleep. Kuang Meiying hesitated—Wei Biao and Jiang Lian were her people, disturbing them wouldn’t be a problem, but in the dead of night, making too much noise would inevitably disturb other guests. She had been well-raised and genuinely disliked such uncouth behavior.

Perhaps she should return and use her phone? Maybe the screen lighting up and darkening could wake them?

While she was undecided, she suddenly heard a faint metallic sound, like a small metal ring falling to the ground.

Kuang Meiying paused, looking toward the sound.

This was the second floor, with about a dozen rooms per level. The stairs to the upper and lower floors were in the center, and people in the corridor couldn’t see the staircase unless they approached it.

The sound came from the stairwell.

As if responding to her gaze, a gold ring slowly, gradually rolled out from the stairwell, losing momentum and standing solitary on the floor, like an eye without a pupil.

Who had dropped a ring? The night patrol person?

Kuang Meiying expected someone to come down and pick it up, but surprisingly, no one did. After that soft metallic sound, there was complete silence.

Strange—it couldn’t have appeared out of thin air. Had someone dropped something without noticing? Kuang Meiying couldn’t help but walk toward it. When she was almost at the stairs, just one step away from the ring, she stopped.

People have intuition about danger, to varying degrees. The night air contained some unknown strangeness. Listening carefully, behind the wall leading to the upstairs staircase that she couldn’t see, there seemed to be the faint sound of someone breathing.

Who was there? Why didn’t they come out to look at her when they heard movement, but instead hid behind the wall?

Kuang Meiying stared at the edge of the wall, almost holding her breath. This unusual silence made her heart pound violently. After a moment, she lifted her heel, moving backward with extremely light steps.

Whatever was happening behind the wall, she didn’t want to be involved. She only hoped no one would notice her presence so she could safely retreat to her room.

Too late.

A face emerged from behind the wall.

Bai Shuixiao.

Her face was still pale, but her lips were crimson. Her bun was askew, with strands of hair falling around her temples, looking completely different from before. The Bai Shuixiao seen during the day was delicate and gentle, evoking sympathy, but now she appeared hard and cold, her eyes full of aggression, like a coiled snake ready to strike.

Kuang Meiying’s mind buzzed, and her feet seemed rooted to the ground, unable to move.

Just this face alone might not have frightened her so much. What made it worse was that after that nightmare, she had thought back and forth, imagining too much, and this face now carried too many implications.

Bai Shuixiao stepped out from behind the wall, her lowered right hand clutching a slender surgical knife, while her left hand released something that slumped and slid to the ground behind the wall.

Kuang Meiying instinctively knew it was a person.

Her entire body went cold. Her first reaction was to scream, but though her mouth opened, only hoarse, voiceless sounds came from her throat. Her old problem had resurfaced—when extremely frightened, she would either faint outright or lose her voice, unable to make a sound no matter how hard she tried. Jiang Lian had once teased her, saying, “Weather disaster warnings are classified into blue, yellow, orange, and red levels. Meiying’s ear-splitting screams barely qualify as a yellow warning, indicating the situation is still manageable and she can handle it.”

Bai Shuixiao’s eyes flashed with contempt, as if this reaction wasn’t surprising to her. She twirled the knife in her hand and lunged forward.

This lunge seemed to break some balance. Kuang Meiying’s legs suddenly felt lighter, and she could move again. She turned and ran with all her might toward Jiang Lian and Wei Biao’s room.

If she just wanted to make noise, the best method would be to pound on the nearest door, regardless of who was staying there. But in her extreme terror, Kuang Meiying fixated on the idea that only the room where Jiang Lian and Wei Biao stayed could save her life.

From a distance of one or two meters, she clenched her fist and leaped forward to pound on the door—it didn’t matter that her throat couldn’t produce sound; pounding with fists and kicking with feet could still create noise.

Just as her fist was about to hit the door, her leg was suddenly gripped tightly. Bai Shuixiao had grabbed her and forcefully dragged her backward. Seeing that she was just centimeters away from the brown tea-colored door, Kuang Meiying’s heart nearly sank to the bottom of a valley, but her strong survival instinct forced her to quickly turn and respond. She saw a flash of knife-light before her eyes and, without thinking, instinctively raised her arms to block.

The sharp coldness cut straight from her right arm to her left, blood immediately gushing out. Bai Shuixiao frowned, about to swing the knife again, when something caught her eye, causing her to pause momentarily.

Kuang Meiying’s blood was strange.

The blood gushing from the wound initially appeared normal, bright red like anyone else’s, but very quickly, as if boiling, it bubbled and burst along the edges of the flesh, like pop rocks, creating a series of tiny spurts and explosions.

Is this how people bleed?

Thanks to Bai Shuixiao’s moment of hesitation, Kuang Meiying had time for a desperate counterattack. Summoning all her strength, she kicked Bai Shuixiao down, then turned and desperately crawled to the door, pounding with her fists.

The loud pounding finally broke the seal on her silence. She heard her near-hysterical screams emerging from her throat: “Wei Biao! Jiang Lian!”

When Meng Qianzi came down, the left half of the corridor by the stairwell was already completely blocked with people.

At the end of the corridor, it was like a boiling pot, with people crowded so densely that one could only see a general outline through the moving heads: Bai Shuixiao was holding Kuang Meiying hostage, her back against the wall, laughing coldly. Wei Biao seemed to want to charge forward, but was hesitant to act recklessly, only shouting curses loudly. Jiang Lian was also there, not as agitated as Wei Biao, but with a grave expression, clearly indicating the situation was not optimistic.

The one managing the scene from the mountain ghost side should be Meng Jinsong. Meng Qianzi heard his raised voice: “Do you think you can escape with so many people here?”

Bai Shuixiao laughed coldly: “Meng Qianzi hasn’t spoken yet. Since when does the mountain ghost family let you make decisions?”

Meng Qianzi murmured: “Such a strong voice.”

Wasn’t she too weak to get up during the day, playing the sickly damsel?

Liu Guanguo, at the periphery, hurried over to meet her, explaining the situation as concisely as possible.

It turned out that the security Meng Jinsong had arranged focused on the perimeter, with only two guards assigned to each floor inside the building, since all residents were mountain ghosts.

The guards on the first and second floors had been knocked out by Bai Shuixiao’s sleeping gas. On the second floor, Qian Qin was physically strong and had a stuffy nose from a cold these past two days. In his drowsy state, he managed to stay conscious, though his limbs were weak. When he was being strangled by Bai Shuixiao and about to pass out, he heard voices in the corridor.

Thinking it was a mountain dweller, he had desperately twisted off his wedding ring and thrown it out to attract attention, only to discover that the person who came was Kuang Meiying.

Liu Guanguo gestured toward the scene: “Fortunately, Kuang Meiying’s screams alerted everyone. With mountain dwellers above and below, how could she escape? Bai Shuixiao, with her back to the wall, is using Kuang Meiying as a hostage, forcing us to clear a path.”

Just as Meng Qianzi was about to speak, she caught sight of Xin Ci. She didn’t know when he had come down, but he was staring at the scene with wide eyes—and even with his eyes wide open, the corners remained thin and long.

Those eye corners…

Something stirred in her mind.

Just then, Bai Shuixiao shouted harshly: “Stop the fucking nonsense, either we all die together!”

There was a commotion from that direction, mixed with panicked cries: “Look at her blood! How can it be like that!”

It seemed they were at an impasse. Meng Qianzi signaled Liu Guanguo to clear a path for her.

Those mountain dwellers watching the scene were too tense and absorbed to notice her arrival. Only after Liu Guanguo’s reminder did they come to their senses, hurriedly pulling each other aside to quickly make a path.

The critical moment had arrived.

Bai Shuixiao’s lips were dry, and she swallowed very lightly. Kuang Meiying, held so tightly she could barely breathe and having struggled for so long, had no strength left to resist. Her neck was covered with cuts—her face, already as white as paper, looked even more terrifying against the streaks of blood, especially since the blood at the edges of the wounds continued to bubble and spurt in small bursts.

Meng Qianzi now understood why a group of mountain ghosts would make such a fuss about “blood”: she wasn’t that surprised, merely thinking that Kuang Meiying might have some rare blood disease.

By comparison, she was more interested in Bai Shuixiao.

Meng Qianzi stared at Bai Shuixiao for a while, then suddenly smiled: “You said you were attacked by a mysterious person and even pretended to help us draw a portrait all day, but that person doesn’t exist, right? Where’s the portrait?”

The last question was directed behind her, and soon someone passed a drawing forward. Meng Qianzi took it and opened it to look: “I said earlier that these eye corners and brow angles resembled Xin Ci… You just used what was at hand, borrowing a bit from here, shifting a bit from there, fabricating a non-existent person, piecing together a face, right?”

Bai Shuixiao’s face remained expressionless, but Jiang Lian recalled Kuang Meiying’s teasing about his mouth shape after completing the portrait.

So he had been borrowed from as well.

Meng Qianzi crumpled the portrait: “Where’s Wang Qingliang?”

Wang Qingliang was in the crowd of onlookers. Hearing himself called, he quickly squeezed out: “I’m here.”

“I remember you said that after your makeup was done, you wanted to see Bai Shuixiao to ask about clues—did you go see her later?”

“Yes.”

“What was her reaction when she first saw you?”

Wang Qingliang thought for a moment: “At that time… she was startled and cried out. I thought my makeup looked frightening or that I had frightened her by barging in suddenly, so I apologized to her.”

Meng Qianzi glanced at Bai Shuixiao, her words laden with meaning: “An ordinary person might be startled, but looking at Miss Bai’s courage, calm in the face of change, composed when surrounded by so many people…”

Bai Shuixiao pressed her lips together, pretending not to understand the sarcasm in her words.

“The reason you were frightened was because Wang Qingliang was wearing Liu Sheng’s face, and you knew that Liu Sheng was already dead.”

“Strange, how did you know he was dead? We only asked you to draw the person who attacked you; we didn’t tell you anything else. Could it be… that you killed Liu Sheng?”

The crowd erupted in an uproar. Meng Jinsong’s expression changed: when Bai Shuixiao created this hostage situation in the middle of the night, he knew this woman must be up to something, but events had unfolded too suddenly for him to think it through.

The uproar quickly turned to anger. Someone roared: “Damn it, dare to move against our people, kill her!”

Instantly, a chorus of agreement rose with cries of “Kill her,” “A life for a life,” and “Blood debt must be paid in blood,” echoing continuously. Wei Biao’s heart grew anxious seeing Kuang Meiying bleeding incessantly, drops on the ground almost connecting into patches. His fists clenched tightly in distress, his eyes nearly shooting fire, yet when he looked at Jiang Lian, the latter merely shook his head almost imperceptibly.

Meng Qianzi raised her hand in a downward gesture, signaling everyone to quiet down. Only when the corridor was completely silent did she speak again.

“Finally, you used sleeping gas to knock out the guards on the first and second floors. I’m curious—if the person on the second floor hadn’t delayed you, and if the incident with Kuang Meiying hadn’t occurred, what were you originally planning to do? Continue upstairs, taking advantage of the quiet night to knock out the people on the third floor? Who were you after? Me?”

She found it bewildering: “Do I have a grudge with you? Or did the mountain dwellers offend you somehow?”

Bai Shuixiao finally showed a reaction.

There was no fear on her face; instead, she appeared somewhat composed: “That’s right, all correct.”

As she spoke, her knife hand remained still while her other hand moved to Kuang Meiying’s head. Under everyone’s watchful gaze, she unhurriedly gathered Kuang Meiying’s hair strand by strand into her palm.

Meng Qianzi frowned, unable to discern her intention. Suddenly, Bai Shuixiao tightly gripped Kuang Meiying’s hair and yanked it back violently, like wringing a chicken’s neck to expose the throat for easier cutting, murmuring: “I’ve lost patience.”

The crowd let out cries of alarm. Some of the more timid even closed their eyes, unable to bear watching. Jiang Lian and Wei Biao rushed forward almost simultaneously, shouting: “Wait!”

Meng Qianzi thought they were rushing to save someone in desperation, but only when Jiang Lian approached her side did she realize something was wrong. Her attention had been entirely focused on Bai Shuixiao, fixated on questioning her repeatedly, while Jiang Lian had already discreetly chosen his position, aiming for a single, decisive strike that would give her no time to react.

On the other side, Wei Biao wasn’t charging at Bai Shuixiao either. His target was Meng Jinsong, probably to prevent him from helping Meng Qianzi. Caught off guard and surrounded by people with no room to dodge, Meng Jinsong was forcefully knocked into the crowd by Wei Biao. Wei Biao’s strength was immense, and he acted quickly. After succeeding, he pressed his advantage, grabbing two more people and smashing them into the crowd. By the time everyone recovered from the chaos, Meng Qianzi already had a blade at her throat, restrained by Jiang Lian.

Meng Qianzi’s heart chilled, though her face remained composed. She said quietly, “Jiang, are you looking to die?”

With this sudden turn of events, Meng Jinsong became furious beyond measure, shouting at Jiang Lian: “You dare…”

He swallowed the rest of his words as Jiang Lian’s dagger visibly pressed down. If Meng Qianzi hadn’t urgently shrunk back, it would have broken skin and drawn blood.

Jiang Lian smiled slightly, gesturing toward Bai Shuixiao: “Whether I dare or not isn’t up to me to decide.”