Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 675: Conditions of Disappearance

Chapter 675: Chapter 675: Conditions of Disappearance

"What was the problem?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow.

"The carvings on the wall!" Cao Dong lowered his voice, "Those carvings came to life, I felt several pairs of eyes staring at me while I was sleeping last night! You may not have noticed because it was during the day... At night, you’ll know just how severe it is!"

Xu Huo smiled slightly, "The relief and patterns in the hotel rooms are specially arranged to exert spiritual pressure on people. It’s not strange to have slight hallucinations when you’re highly stressed or exhausted. You just need to avoid looking at them."

Cao Dong was briefly startled, then frowned and shook his head, "Impossible, I’ve tried, but I can’t control myself!"

Hearing this, Xu Huo became slightly more serious, "Have you tried destroying the wall surface?"

"Scratching the wall didn’t help," Cao Dong looked at him with an expression of mutual hardship, "The only difference between me and the others is that I touched the stone carvings in the woods yesterday."

"I don’t believe that," Xu Huo said, "It might be the hotel manager playing tricks."

As the two disagreed, naturally there was nothing more to say, and they left the woods separately.

When Xu Huo returned to the hotel, he found that bus had brought another eight players, four men and four women. These people didn’t look for a homestay, but instead went straight to the hotel.

During the room booking, there was a lot of noise, a long-haired player with an artistic flair invited two fashionably dressed female players to stay with him, "It seems I’ll have to be the protector of the fair. I wonder if the two beautiful ladies would honor me with their company?"

There were two people with visible injuries near them, their gazes toward the trio still filled with anger, and the remaining three wore expressions of indifference.

One man and two women were pulling and dragging each other as the manager, with a displeased face, interrupted them, "There aren’t many rooms left, are you going to book or not?"

The eight of them took five rooms.

The long-haired man and the fashionable female players shared one room, the injured two each had their own, and among the remaining three one was a couple; the last room was taken by a doll-faced female player on her own.

Just like when Xu Huo and his group arrived the day before, the other players basically didn’t come out, the newcomers had no idea where to start buying information, and the other players were very tight-lipped.

"If only those who offend the statue will disappear, there is no need for other players to be on such high alert," Yi Pei brought some food for Xu Huo.

"Even if no one triggers the copy’s killing condition, people will still die. That’s the reason players are setting traps and being cautious of each other," Xu Huo said.

Players who have been here for a day or two probably have some idea.

First, people who see the statue or offend the so-called gods, as well as those who break the rule that ’outsiders cannot bully the locals with beliefs’, are the most likely to disappear.

Secondly, even without meeting the above conditions, people still disappear, indicating that no matter what, someone has to die each night; therefore, the criteria for disappearance could be artificially selected.

Third, the risk is higher for rooms occupied by more than one person.

Yesterday, when Xu Huo and others checked in, someone left; it’s very possible they discovered the trick with the wall like Cao Dong did, and Liu Shiyen’s claim that the hotel was safer may not necessarily be a lie.

The hotel manager doesn’t stay on duty at night—at least not officially—and players staying alone in a homestay have to deal with the town’s residents, who are very keen to invite players to stay, and it’s not necessarily just for a small profit.

"You heard a knock last night, did you look outside?" he asked Yi Pei, "Did you see anyone passing by?"

Yi Pei paused for two seconds before saying, "I didn’t dare to look outside."

"Are your eyes just bad or are you completely blind?" Xu Huo suddenly asked.

Yi Pei was first surprised, then showed an expression of "just as I thought," "You really noticed, didn’t you? Yesterday at the train station, when you suddenly stood behind me and then accompanied me to the interview, and later borrowing the voice recorder—it was all to check if I was blind, wasn’t it?"

"You seem no different from a normal person on the surface, it’s just that my eyes are a bit better." Xu Huo said.

No matter how one disguises it, a person with poor eyesight will show some signs. Yi Pei was probably not completely blind and must have had some tool to aid her vision, so her movements were fine. However, in particularly narrow spaces, she moved a bit slowly, and when it was too close and quiet, her reaction was a little slower.

The most exposure came from the interviews because she couldn’t see clearly, she could only gather basic information from what the residents said. Things that could be seen at a glance, such as every household not using mirrors, the rooms that were uniformly locked, and the differences in the statues.

Yi Pei clearly realized this too. She couldn’t completely avoid interacting with other players, and when she found out Xu Huo might see through her, she didn’t clarify it but instead took the initiative to be friendly.

"My eyes aren’t that good, I can only see roughly." Yi Pei said: "But that doesn’t affect my abilities. Even in this condition, I’ve survived up to Level D Copy."

The fact that she had survived up to this point with worse initial conditions proved she was stronger than the average person.

She emphasized this point also as a warning.

"I will keep your secret." Xu Huo returned to the topic, "Did you look through the peephole last night?"

"No." Yi Pei said: "Anyway, I can’t see clearly. But I did hear footsteps outside the door. That was before You Jun opened the door. After he opened it, I didn’t hear the footsteps again until you came up."

"Wei Xian didn’t make a sound immediately after You Jun disappeared."

"He’s not trustworthy." Xu Huo’s focus wasn’t on Wei Xian, "Can you see the wall reliefs clearly?"

"I can’t see the details too well." Yi Pei hesitated slightly: "Do you think there’s something wrong with these reliefs?"

"Not just the reliefs, mirrors, peepholes, they all have a problem." Xu Huo said: "When a door is knocked on, most players have one of two reactions, ignore it, or go look through the peephole."

"That hotel manager has been working here for over three months, which means nobody has discovered him knocking on doors in the night."

"With the knocking and footsteps, it’s impossible for no one to have looked from the side. The fact that he’s still alive indicates that the people who looked out from their doors are now the ones who have disappeared."

"So last night, rooms that weren’t knocked on also had people disappear!" Yi Pei paused and then said: "Why the peephole? It could also be that the person knocking did something outside the door."

"There might have been more than just the manager knocking on doors. Players who arrived earlier might have figured out what triggers the condition."

"It’s not hard to test that." Xu Huo said: "The manager will come to knock on my door tonight."

Yi Pei understood that these clues weren’t shared with her for nothing, "Do you want me to test the peephole for you?"

"Don’t force yourself, even if you don’t agree, I won’t tell anyone about your eye condition." Xu Huo said: "I can find someone else to test it."

Yi Pei looked hesitant, and after a moment she made up her mind, "I’ll try. This copy is related to the eyes, the statues can’t be viewed, the locals dislike using mirrors, and the reliefs also target the eyes. Perhaps the missing players disappeared because they saw something special."

"If I trigger the condition and nothing happens to me, it proves that the primary factor is ’seeing,’ and this could largely avoid the risks."