Iris 19

Mu Qin truly felt that his eyes had been opened. He could hardly wait to ask Zhou Yue about the effects of the other tarot cards, and about the difference between upright and reversed cards. But before he could get the words out, they both suddenly heard a sound from outside.

Now that the nighttime rain had stopped, the surroundings had become deep and still; even the slightest noise was conspicuous. Mu Qin and Zhou Yue instinctively fell silent and turned to look out the door.

Earlier, Zhou Yue had carried Mu Qin up to the third floor of the apartment building. The sound seemed to be coming from downstairs.

Zhou Yue stepped quietly to the doorway and listened for a moment. Then he turned back to Mu Qin and whispered, "Darling, I don't want you to leave, but you'd better not stay with me right now. Go find the others. I'm going to act alone."

Mu Qin was reluctant to leave. "But..."

Zhou Yue still smiled at him. "You can try to protect the others, but I will pursue them without hesitation. Everyone else in this orphanage has to die, except you."

Zhou Yue was smiling as he said it, or perhaps it could be called a feral grin. He was utterly serious. He seemed to have made up his mind... to become a butcher with blood on his hands. And because he had made up his mind, he could abandon his principles and beliefs without reservation.

"What are the game system's standards for erasing you? Will you die if you don't kill everyone, or do you only need to kill some of them? And... if someone dies but not by your hand, how will the system count it?" Mu Qin wanted to know the specifics.

Zhou Yue answered simply, "Fewer than two and I die. Exactly two meets the requirement, but I don't get any reward points. If someone dies but I didn't kill them myself, it only counts as half a kill credit."

Mu Qin felt miserable at that. Biting his lower lip, he said, "It's forcing you to kill people."

"The system is forcing me to kill people, but you don't have to do the same." Zhou Yue seemed to be trying to tell Mu Qin something. "I don't want you deliberately betraying other people to help me. Mu Qin, if this makes you feel bad, then in the time ahead, do everything you can to help your teammates and stop me."

Mu Qin said nothing. He fixed his eyes on Zhou Yue for a while, his feelings a tangled mess. After hesitating for a long time, he finally sighed softly and said, "I understand. No matter what, when we meet again after we part ways, I won't know you anymore."

"That's right." Zhou Yue's voice was soft and gentle. "Treat me as an enemy, Mu Qin. I don't mind. But I like you. I... love you very, very much."

Mu Qin couldn't keep listening to Zhou Yue. He turned away and hurried out of the cramped, empty room, leaving the room where Zhou Yue remained.

As Mu Qin left, Zhou Yue watched his retreating back disappear through the door. Once he could no longer see Mu Qin, Zhou Yue lowered his head and continued fiddling with the Death Card disguised as the Fool Card. Then he suddenly pulled another tarot card from his pocket. On closer inspection, it was a somewhat grimy card: the Reversed Fool. It was the one Han Li had discarded, which Zhou Yue had picked up.

Mu Qin then reached the stairwell on the third floor and quickly headed down. He made no effort to soften his footsteps as he descended, pounding down the stairs, and soon encountered the person who had made the noise downstairs.

Just as Mu Qin had expected, it was Xu Fu.

Xu Fu appeared to have come to the infirmary on the first floor of the apartment building to look for medicine. As Mu Qin had anticipated, his leg was injured. He seemed to have splinted it himself with a wooden board, and it was now wrapped in white bandages.

When Mu Qin encountered Xu Fu, Xu Fu was just coming out of the infirmary. He had probably noticed the tangled bloodstains covering the floor and the infirmary's ransacked interior, and had heard Mu Qin's hurried footsteps coming downstairs. Mu Qin had no idea what Xu Fu was thinking. His own mind was filled with Zhou Yue, who was still upstairs.

Remembering what Zhou Yue had said when they parted, Mu Qin took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. Right now, he had to act as though he had never met Zhou Yue and knew nothing of Zhou Yue's identity as the killer. At this point, Mu Qin had always believed Xu Fu was the killer, so...

The moment he saw Xu Fu, Mu Qin swiftly assumed a defensive stance. Xu Fu stood at the foot of the stairs, so Mu Qin could not go back up. He could only stand on the staircase and glare down at Xu Fu.

Xu Fu did not come forward to attack him. He stayed where he was and met Mu Qin's gaze. After they stared at each other for a while, Xu Fu spoke first. "Calm down. There's something I want to discuss with you."

Mu Qin snapped back without courtesy, "Discuss how to kill me?"

"I'm not the killer," Xu Fu argued. "You're all newcomers. There is still a great deal you don't understand about this game. I'll tell you what I know, and you can decide after you've heard it."

Mu Qin did not yield so quickly. Giving in too readily would have seemed unnatural, so he frowned at Xu Fu. "You just killed Cheng Guoxu, and now you're still claiming you're not the killer? I don't believe a word you say. If you're going to make a move, you'd better do it now!"

Xu Fu probably knew he would not be easy to persuade. He patiently tried his best to explain. "When players who aren't killers kill each other in this game, reward points are deducted."

"That only proves even more that you're the killer!" Mu Qin made his defensive posture even more obvious, backing up a few steps.

Xu Fu seemed to have a headache. Rubbing his temple, he said, "What I mean is... I think you must have noticed already. The players who enter this game basically all have criminal histories. In other words, everyone who enters this strange world is a sinner. And there is something else they all have in common: every one of you has a connection to this orphanage."

After hearing this, Mu Qin showed a faintly thoughtful expression and lowered his guard. "Yes, I noticed that too... What? Are you going to ask what crime I committed before?"

"Whatever crime you committed has nothing to do with me." Xu Fu looked Mu Qin up and down as he spoke. "But I know what crime Cheng Guoxu committed. That man was a murderer who serially tortured and killed children. He specifically targeted the orphans from this orphanage. One of the children he killed was my little sister. My sister was abducted by traffickers when she was young, but later the trafficking ring was busted by the police, and more than a dozen abducted children were rescued. The police couldn't immediately find my sister's biological parents or birthplace, so they could only place her temporarily in an orphanage. By the time my family found her, that murderer had already killed her."

After saying all that, Xu Fu ground his teeth. "When my parents saw my sister's body, the shock and anger made them both fall ill and die, one after the other. For more than ten years after that, I kept tracking that murderer's trail. But during that time, I got into a conflict with someone and killed him by accident in a fight, so I went to prison. Thinking that my sister's killer still hadn't been found, I was frantic with anxiety. In the end, I tried to escape from prison, but failed and was shot dead by the police."

"So you killed Cheng Guoxu in this game and finally avenged your sister?" Mu Qin deliberately furrowed his brow, showing that he did not quite believe him. "The relative of a murder victim who has been tracking down the killer, and the killer himself, appearing in the same game and on the same map... Do you really think I'd believe a coincidence that fantastical?"

"I don't know why it happened this way," Xu Fu said earnestly to Mu Qin. "But it's true. A large part of this game's maps are based on buildings or scenes that existed in the real world, and everyone who enters a given map is definitely connected to it. I don't know whether it will be the same later on. I've only gone through two game cycles."

Mu Qin suddenly thought of Zhou Yue. Did Zhou Yue have a connection to this orphanage too?

Or perhaps Zhou Yue had only entered the orphanage map alongside Mu Qin because of his connection to Mu Qin, like Qiu Zijia. Qiu Zijia had no direct connection to Iris Orphanage either. It was only because the older brother he had caused to die was an orphan from this orphanage that he had entered.

"Why is everyone connected to the map? Don't you know anything at all about that?" Mu Qin seemed to be convinced by Xu Fu's words.

Xu Fu gave his own guess. "I think... the game system is probably deliberately creating conflict."

"Creating conflict?" Mu Qin suddenly understood what Xu Fu meant. "You mean the game intentionally brings in those of us connected to the map, not only making the killer hunt us down, but making us kill each other too?"

"I think so. If there are contradictions and conflicts between us, we'll distrust and suspect one another, and may even slaughter each other. The game reduces our chances of joining together to deal with the killer, perhaps to balance the opposing sides... After all, there is only one killer, while there are five of us."

"All right," Mu Qin said. "Thank you for telling me this, but you haven't offered any concrete proof that you aren't the killer. Even if you killed Cheng Guoxu because of a personal grudge, was it not you who killed the body lying in this stairwell?"

"The body?" At Mu Qin's words, Xu Fu seemed to remember it too. He abruptly looked around the stairwell, above and below. "That body is gone!?"

"You didn't know?" Mu Qin feigned surprise. "I thought someone had dragged the body away, so I went upstairs to look around just now, but I didn't see anyone..."

"No, it wasn't dragged away!" Xu Fu looked at the tangled, chaotic bloody footprints on the floor... then at the trail of footprints inside the infirmary. The strings of prints ran together, making them nearly impossible to distinguish. Some had faded under the rain, but Xu Fu still spotted something amiss. "That guy walked away on his own!"

Mu Qin slowly steered the conversation in the direction he wanted, showing Xu Fu his astonishment. "A corpse can get up and walk away by itself!?"

"You don't understand!" Xu Fu was growing agitated. "In this game, only killers have the ability to come back to life."

Mu Qin looked utterly incredulous. "You're saying... killers can resurrect!?"