Chapter 27: The Headless One

The reality of the mountain villa was not as Xu Huo had imagined. The first power outage had merely been a tripped breaker. Every player, save for Xu Huo, had emerged from their rooms. The scream had come from Liu Yuanyuan, who, while groping through the darkness, had stepped on a stray iron nail that Wan Zhikang had overlooked while ransacking the room. The two had nearly come to blows over the incident.

Huang Junjie had expected at least the Decapitator or the masquerading player to strike, but all the players remained safe; no one had been attacked.

"Stop being so paranoid. No one has maintained this place in ages; it’s perfectly normal for the wiring to be old and faulty."

Once the lights returned, the players retreated to their respective rooms. Zhang Xiong had ceased associating with Huang Junjie since the afternoon, moving instead to the room shared by Wan Zhikang and Abel, while Huang Junjie and Yuan Yao returned to the room they had occupied the previous day.

"Why is this happening?" Huang Junjie asked, his face full of disappointment. "It was the perfect opportunity during the blackout, and with several players already missing from the villa, the culprit still didn't make a move."

Yuan Yao kept a safe distance, waiting for him to finish his mutterings before suggesting, "Let's go find Brother Xu."

"Did you know him before this?" Huang Junjie looked up at him.

"No."

"Then why do you trust him so much?" Huang Junjie found it incredible. Many of Xu Huo’s actions seemed inexplicable, and frankly, like the man himself—dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with such long hair—he didn't look like a normal person.

Yuan Yao was momentarily tongue-tied.

"It’s not safe to go out now. I’m not leaving again," Huang Junjie said, lying down to rest.

Yuan Yao paced the room a few times before eventually sitting down.

Just as the two were drifting into a daze, the lights suddenly flickered with a buzzing sound. After flashing twice, they plunged into total darkness.

After a moment of silence, Zhang Xiong could be heard cursing as he slammed his door open in the opposite room. "The breaker tripped again! Can’t you people stop using so many lights at night? It’s a total pain in the ass!"

Sounds of doors opening and footsteps followed. After waiting a while, the lights still did not return, and Huang Junjie sat up abruptly. "Something's wrong!"

The electrical box was located in a small storage room on the way to the warehouse. By the time Huang Junjie and Yuan Yao arrived, Zhang Xiong and the rich kid were already standing before the box with grim expressions.

"What’s going on?" Abel asked, arriving late.

Several others followed. Huang Junjie stared at them intensely. "The wires were cut. Who was out here just now?"

"What’s that supposed to mean? You suspect us?" Wan Zhikang retorted. "You’d better clean up your own mess first. How can you prove you didn't do it?"

The veins on Huang Junjie’s forehead throbbed. "Zhang Xiong and the others saw me coming from the direction of my room."

"The interval after the power went out was long enough for you to run out, do it, and run back to shift the blame," Wan Zhikang sneered, arms crossed.

"Could it be the Decapitator?" the college student asked. "Why would a player cut the wires?"

"If it were the Decapitator, that would be a pretty low-brow tactic," Liu Yuanyuan muttered with a curl of her lip.

Huang Junjie suddenly realized something. "Who’s missing?"

The group looked around. After a few seconds, Wang Wei said, "Du Lanlan and Xia Guo haven't come out!"

"Damn it! They haven't been killed by the Decapitator, have they?" Yuan Yao exclaimed.

Before the words had even faded, footsteps sounded from outside.

Heavier than a woman's, the footsteps approached the storage room, accompanied by the sound of an object being dragged across the ground.

As the sound drew nearer, the players swallowed hard. The rich kid and Wang Wei each grabbed a mop and moved to either side of the doorway.

They held their breath for three seconds, listening as the sound reached the door. Just as they were about to strike, a blinding light flooded in—the people in the room were nearly blinded. Then, they heard the voice of the person at the door: "Why are you all here?"

"Where are Du Lanlan and Xia Guo?"

Recognizing Xu Huo’s voice, the group felt an initial wave of relief, which was instantly shattered by the sound of furniture crashing in the direction of the two women’s room!

The beam of a flashlight swung outward, and the players rushed to follow. At the doorway, they nearly tripped. Raising a lighter to see, they found a branch of a plum tree, growing as thick as a vine, which snagged their shoes as they stepped over it.

"Crazy!" the players cursed in unison.

Xu Huo, in the lead, had already violently kicked open the room door. The floor-to-ceiling window was wide open, and as the breeze blew through, the heavy stench of blood hit them.

The room was empty. The group headed straight for the courtyard. When the flashlight beam hit the pool, they saw two figures sprawled by the edge. The clothing identified them as Du Lanlan and Xia Guo. They lay face down, their bodies obstructed from the shoulders up by stone, with blood streaming into the hot spring.

Huang Junjie and the others approached, but after a single glance, they quickly averted their eyes, their composure shattered.

Knowing the Decapitator existed was one thing; seeing two headless corpses before their eyes with blood still flowing from the stumps was quite another. They didn't even have the courage to draw closer.

"It’s the Decapitator! It must be!" The college student stared at the blood-stained water, retreating in fear. "It killed two players in the blink of an eye! We’re no match for it; we’re all going to die!"

Huang Junjie turned and slapped him. "Calm down! The Decapitator only dares to strike when the power is out, which means it isn't confident enough to take us all on at once!"

His words pulled the other shocked players back to reality. Wan Zhikang, forcing himself to stay calm, added, "That’s right. We just heard Du Lanlan and the others earlier. If it weren't afraid of us, the Decapitator wouldn't have run away!"

Xu Huo glanced at him. "It might not have been the Decapitator."

The players turned to stare at him. Huang Junjie signaled with his eyes for him to stay silent, but Xu Huo ignored him and said directly, "Besides the Decapitator, there are others in this villa."

"Right, right!" Zhang Xiong suddenly remembered. "Wasn't there someone living in the cabin?"

"Didn't Huang Junjie say that person hung himself again tonight?" Wang Wei asked hesitantly. "Did he come back to life?"

"It wasn't him." Xu Huo squatted on the rock beside the corpses and lit a cigarette, his gaze sweeping over the faces of the players through the smoke. "I killed him."

The players' expressions shifted violently. Before they could press for details, Xu Huo explained, "When he came back to life and saw I was alone, he tried to attack me, so I sent him on his way."

He pointed to the mud on his shoes. "I buried him. There's no way he's coming back."

Perhaps because his tone was so matter-of-fact—as if he hadn't just engaged in a life-or-death struggle—the other players felt uneasy, their gazes toward him losing the disdain they had held earlier.

"Aside from the Woodcutter and the Decapitator, aren't there still so many players in this villa?" Xu Huo took a deep drag of his cigarette. "What were you all doing before and after the power cut?"