She is Within Her

Morning light danced through the dust of the manor. What should have been a peaceful night symbolizing hope now exuded an eerie chill that made one's spine tingle.

Ren Yi stood in that empty room, staring at the spot where the demon statue had originally been placed.

The faint, circular mark on the floor was like a mocking smile, silently announcing that some kind of balance had been shattered.

"Favorable rules?" Ren Yi muttered, rubbing a bit of fine, cold dust between his fingertips. His eyes were as dark as a bottomless pool, swirling with doubt and vigilance. His tone was filled with skepticism. "No, this isn't right."

He suddenly turned to Zhang Qiuqiu behind him, his voice urgent and low, carrying an unquestionable sense of pressure. "Go, back to the hall!"

"What's wrong?"

Zhang Qiuqiu hadn't yet recovered from the shock of the statue's disappearance. Her brow was furrowed, her eyes filled with confusion as she instinctively followed him.

"We were too clever for our own good," Ren Yi said, his feet moving like the wind as he practically jogged through the corridor.

The thick wool carpet swallowed his footsteps, but it couldn't dampen the anxiety in his voice. "We thought the clues would be hidden in some secret corner like the keys, so we rushed into the depths."

"But what if... the rules never intended for us to 'find' them at all?"

What if, from the very beginning, the rules intended to shove the most critical clues right under everyone's noses, catching us off guard and leaving us defenseless?

The two of them hurried through the labyrinthine corridors and rushed back to the hall.

There, a lone figure stood abruptly by the fireplace, looking completely out of place in this eerie, oppressive atmosphere.

It was Player 6.

She was the girl who always wore sharp sportswear and had ear-length short hair, appearing heroic and straightforward.

However, at this moment, she looked disheveled to the extreme once again.

Her usually neat hair was a mess and covered in black soot. Her fair face was streaked with grey marks, looking like a cat that had just crawled out of a chimney.

Clearly, Player 6 had crawled into the fireplace again.

Ren Yi's heart skipped a beat as his unease was instantly confirmed.

On the surface, however, his expression relaxed, and his tone carried a hint of teasing.

"Yo, Player 6, what's this..."

Ren Yi stopped, showing a perfectly timed look of surprise as his gaze swept over the towering fireplace. "Up there 'getting a better view' again?"

Player 6 didn't answer immediately. She was looking down, staring intently at the soot under her fingernails, her face so grim it looked like it might drip with malice.

Player 6's current state was definitely not caused by a simple search for clues. She must have discovered something—something significant enough to throw her mind into chaos.

Only when she heard Ren Yi's voice did she slowly raise her head. Her gaze held an unprecedented level of scrutiny.

But that scrutiny didn't seem to be directed at Ren Yi, but rather at Zhang Qiuqiu behind him.

"Why are you back?" she asked, her voice tight. "Weren't you going to find the keys? Did you find them so quickly?"

"We looked, but we came up empty," Ren Yi lied without batting an eye. His tone carried exactly three parts annoyance and seven parts helplessness, as if he were truly frustrated by the lack of clues.

"Player 11 and I ran into each other halfway and cross-referenced our clues. We found that the items in the places where we found clues before have all disappeared. That shouldn't happen."

He paused intentionally, his gaze locking onto Player 6's face to carefully observe her expressions. He continued.

"The clues here don't have any obvious markings. If they aren't placed in special locations or attached to fixed objects, they're completely meaningless."

"Even that demon statue weighing hundreds of pounds is gone. We figured the rules might have changed, so we hurried back to see if anyone was still here."

"We wanted to ask where you found your clues earlier to confirm if all the clues have vanished."

Upon hearing the words "everything's gone," Player 6's expression indeed became even more unsightly.

Ren Yi raised an eyebrow and followed up with a question: "Looking at you, did you find something?"

He stared into her eyes. "Could the keys still be in their original spot... though you don't look like you've found them."

Ren Yi felt a bit strange.

Logically, in this game of life and death, Player 6 should be happy if she found even the slightest clue.

Why did she look even more miserable than he did right now?

Player 6 slowly shook her head. This time, she didn't speak, falling into an eerie silence.

Her expression was hard to describe—a mixture of dread, confusion, and an insulted sort of rage.

Ren Yi noticed that she didn't give him much attention. Most of the time, her gaze was fixed on Zhang Qiuqiu behind him. The wariness in her eyes was significantly heavier than what she showed toward him.

Ren Yi didn't push further. He glanced at Zhang Qiuqiu, gesturing for her to stay below and cover him, while he nimbly grabbed the edge of the fireplace, preparing to climb up and investigate.

This human body truly limited his abilities. With his True Form, he would have only needed to float up lightly to reach the top of the fireplace without any effort.

But now, using this ordinary human body to climb a stone fireplace over three meters high was nothing short of torture.

Inside the fireplace, soot and dust from countless years had accumulated into a thick layer, like a black velvet carpet. The slightest touch would send it cascading down, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Ren Yi had only climbed a short distance before he was choked by the rising dust, coughing violently.

"Cough, cough... the cleaning staff for this Instance... cough, definitely slacked off..."

While cursing inwardly, he struggled to flip himself into the small hidden compartment at the top of the fireplace.

The compartment was tiny, barely large enough for two people to sit side-by-side. It was pitch black inside, and he couldn't even see his own hand, with only a faint glimmer of light filtering up from below.

This was where the ten keys had originally been stored, but it was now empty.

At least that was some good news—the keys hadn't reappeared in their original location.

Given the lack of clues, it could be assumed that the keys were unlikely to be found in the remainder of the game within such a large manor.

But there was something else here.

Under the faint light filtering from below, Ren Yi saw a line of dark red writing on the originally smooth ceiling.

The handwriting was crooked, as if it had been gouged out by fingernails, and it carried a nauseating scent of blood:

【She is Within Her】