Chapter 100: Inheritance
“What does this ghostly thing want to do?”
Lu Jinzhao looked at her arm with some lingering fear; the place on her arm where the human skin had crawled left a fresh red mark.
She gently touched it with her hand, and pain instantly struck.
It was like being poisoned.
Lu Jinzhao’s brows lightly furrowed, feeling that the situation was somewhat troublesome.
It wasn’t that she lacked vigilance, but that human skin moved too fast and silently; she had clearly just closed her eyes when the human skin had already crawled onto her arm.
It was really impossible to guard against.
Lu Jinzhao recalled the extra three years of experiences, but there was no method for how to resolve the current situation.
It made sense, though; this wasn’t some puzzle-solving instance, but a supernatural platform—where would such good fortune come from for them.
“I need to go see if the others have experienced this.”
Even though she had anticipated it in her heart—that the anomaly probably wasn’t only happening to her—she still needed to confirm it personally.
She put the seemingly restored normal human skin back on the wooden frame, then closed all the doors and windows of the room, and Lu Jinzhao went out.
After thinking for a moment, she walked toward the location of Fu Xuesheng’s room in her memory.
This old house was very large; with only five people living there, even if all five were awake and moving around the house at that moment, they might not necessarily run into each other, so Lu Jinzhao didn’t encounter any other passengers along the way.
When she arrived at Fu Xuesheng’s room, the door was properly closed; she knocked, and within ten seconds, Fu Xuesheng came over and opened it.
Lu Jinzhao noticed that her originally somewhat listless expression now looked even more sullen.
Fu Xuesheng glanced at Lu Jinzhao, her gaze falling on the red mark on her arm, then spoke understandingly: “You’re here to ask if anything abnormal happened to me last night?”
Without waiting for Lu Jinzhao to answer, she lifted her other arm, which had been slightly held behind her: “Yes, it did.”
She spoke with a sigh, looking utterly exhausted.
And on the inner side of the arm she lifted, there was also a red mark identical to Lu Jinzhao’s.
Now, Lu Jinzhao could confirm that every room’s passenger had likely been attacked by the human skin, unless that person had stayed awake all night, constantly watching the human skin.
“Good.” Lu Jinzhao nodded and planned to leave.
Fu Xuesheng didn’t try to keep her; after Lu Jinzhao left, she went to the backyard, where it seemed no different from when they arrived yesterday, but when Lu Jinzhao lifted the lid over the water vat again, the head inside was gone.
It could be confirmed that the only living people here were their five passengers; if no one had done it deliberately, none of them would have casually moved that head.
So, who had taken the head?
Lu Jinzhao thought of the skinned corpse, but there were no bloodstains in the backyard, so it probably wasn’t it.
Just to be safe, she went to the master’s room again.
The corpse was still quietly lying in the center of the wooden table, no longer bleeding from its body, but its flesh remained exceptionally fresh.
Even in weather that wasn’t particularly cold, it was as if some strange existence kept its flesh and blood preserved.
If the human skin were reattached to its body, it might not be distinguishable from a fresh corpse.
The instant this thought appeared in her mind, Lu Jinzhao’s footsteps halted.
They thought this corpse was “fresh” because of what the doctor Ji Xiangchen had said, but what if this corpse had always been this “fresh”?
Then, had it died at the time when they arrived at the old house?
The more discoveries she made, the more she felt this place was extremely ominous.
Lu Jinzhao closed the door and returned to her own room.
The human skin was obediently drying on the wooden frame, looking very harmless, but Lu Jinzhao knew this thing, like the parchment on her own body, was no good plaything.
She leaned in to carefully observe the human skin and found that after just one night, it had dried considerably.
“This efficiency doesn’t seem right?”
At this rate, this skin could really air-dry completely overnight.
But rather than air-drying, it was more like withering?
“Is it because it wasn’t stuck to my body?”
She recalled peeling the human skin off her arm earlier; at that time, the human skin hadn’t been this withered yet.
If her hypothesis was correct, then the human skin had remained moist while on the master’s body—perhaps because it was stuck to human flesh?
Now that it was peeled off, was it slowly withering?
“What the hell is this thing?”
If they used this thing to make a shadow puppet, something would absolutely, absolutely go wrong.
But even knowing something would go wrong, they could only grit their teeth and proceed.
At lunchtime, Lu Jinzhao came to the restaurant and, as expected, saw the other senior brothers and sisters here.
“I’ll handle the food.” Zhong Sui took on this responsibility. “But don’t expect it to be tasty; make do.”
“It’s good enough that it’s edible; thanks for the hard work.” The others weren’t ungrateful.
The food was what they had received upon entering the platform yesterday; according to memory, it was enough for half a month.
“We’re not going to stay here for half a month, are we?” Ji Xiangchen frowned slightly, clearly worried.
“Probably not.” Huo Ye shook his head. “If it’s one trial per day, we can leave soon.”
After all, the shadow puppetry production process only involved making the skin, drawing, carving, coloring, shaping, and assembly.
Six days.
That was his estimated time.
After simply finishing the meal, the group discussed last night’s events.
As expected, just as Lu Jinzhao had anticipated, everyone’s human skin had acted abnormally.
Most of them had been stuck by the human skin; only Huo Ye had noticed when it approached.
“Sure enough, you need a fate to get by on a Class B Platform.” Ji Xiangchen looked at Huo Ye with envy.
This made Lu Jinzhao turn her gaze over as well.
Fate.
This was one of the main reasons she wanted to enter high-level instances.
Did one of her teammates this time already possess a fate?
According to messages from the forum, even after advancing to Second-Class Passenger, one wouldn’t quickly obtain a fate; even in high-level instances, special “roles” were rare, and most people’s life-buying money wasn’t much—sometimes even good fates couldn’t be afforded.
Some people knew they could only buy one fate, since a person only had one life; once bought, it couldn’t be changed, so they were especially cautious and unwilling to casually buy just any fate.
They hesitated and hesitated until they hesitated themselves to death.
So even among Second-Class Passengers, those with fates were a minority.
Her luck was pretty good; on her first time entering a high-level platform, she encountered one.
Unfortunately, once a fate was bought, it couldn’t be resold.
Huo Ye didn’t refute Ji Xiangchen’s words; he felt the other was right—even with supernatural items as aid, one still needed their own ability to confront ghosts to survive on the platform.
