Kaleidoscope of Death

Chapter 123: The Second Sacrifice

What happened the night before, nobody knew—except for Jian Qianyuan and that unfortunate dead partner of hers.

Lin Qiushi remembered that yesterday, Jian Qianyuan had also been one of the people eschewing the unpleasant taste of lunch. But sat before the same nauseating and flavored dead-fish lunch today, her odd behavior gave Lin Qiushi an unfortunate supposition. Could Jian Qianyuan have been affected by that monster as well...

Jian Qianyuan didn't care at all what the others thought. Once she finished eating, she left the dining room with a satisfied pat of her slightly distended belly. On her way out she seemed to have noticed the shocked looks everyone was sending her, and answered with a cold smile.

"The taste is actually pretty good. If you like, you should all go give it a try," she mumbled to herself.

Nobody answered her, and she shrugged in disinterest before leaving.

Lin Qiushi watched her enter a room. And when the rooms changed, Jian Qianyuan disappeared before the crowd.

The locations of the rooms kept changing; every few minutes, a new room appeared in front of the deck.

Some were lucky—people found their stuff inside the rooms and brought them out. Others not so much, never managing to find their original rooms.

Lin Qiushi, on the other hand, made a new discovery. While they were perusing the hallways, they were fortunate enough to see once more that locked room they'd discovered the day before. Only, something had changed about it. The door to that room now stood wide open, and the chain that had locked it from the inside was scattered in broken pieces all over the ground. It seemed to have been violently broken off.

"I remember this room," Lin Qiushi said. "Room 201." He looked at the door plate, thinking of the room number they'd seen yesterday. "Is there anything inside it now?"

Ruan Nanzhu stood in the doorway staring into the dark interior.

"You don't hear anything inside?" he asked.

"No," Lin Qiushi shook his head after listening for a while. He was sure he could hear nothing moving about.

"Then that thing probably left." Ruan Nanzhu approached and took a step inside, casually turning on a kerosene lamp on the table beside him.

The dim light illuminated what wasn't a terribly large room, and they got a good look at what was inside.

The room was both normal and abnormal. Normal was its furnishings, which were identical to where Lin Qiushi's group slept. Abnormal was the additional things inside the room: a bunch of fish scales.

These scales were scattered throughout the entire room, filling the space with a disgusting fishy stench. Lin Qiushi also noticed that on the floors, there was a sort of liquid—like water, but a bit more viscous—smeared all over. It was discomforting to look at.

And on the walls and furniture all around them, there were marks made by sharp claws, telling them that this indeed was the room that once held that monster prisoner.

Lin Qiushi inspected these claw marks and found them extremely deep; if those claws could do this much to hardwood flooring, then it was easy to surmise that a fragile human body for them wouldn't stand a single blow.

Gu Longming was gagging out of disgust, but Ruan Nanzhu took a napkin from his shirt and collected a few of the scales.

Though at present, they didn't know what the fish scales were for, it was better to be prepared just in case.