Guest Guidelines
Rule Five.
All guests are living people.
Rule Six.
If you discover that someone isn't, notify the innkeeper immediately.
If the old lady really was the innkeeper...
then she should at least be bound by these two rules.
Which meant—
she couldn't attack a guest on her own initiative.
Unless...
someone violated the rules first.
With that thought, Su Nian suddenly spoke.
"Innkeeper."
The old lady's gliding motion paused for a moment.
"In your inn..."
"There's a dead person."
For the first time, the expression on the old lady's face changed.
It wasn't anger.
It was...
shock.
"What did you say?"
Su Nian didn't retreat an inch.
"Rule Six of the Guest Guidelines."
"If you discover that someone isn't, notify the innkeeper immediately."
"I'm notifying you now."
"There's a dead person in the inn."
As soon as her voice fell,
the entire inn suddenly fell silent.
The old lady didn't move.
She only stared fixedly at Su Nian.
A few seconds later,
she slowly lowered her head.
As if she were thinking.
Or perhaps...
confirming something.
Suddenly,
a sharp cry rang out from upstairs.
It wasn't the girl with glasses.
It was...
the little girl.
"Grandma—!"
"She knows!"
"She knows!"
The old lady's body jolted violently.
The next instant,
she stopped paying attention to Su Nian.
Instead, she spun around and shot toward the depths of the hallway.
She moved so fast that only a blur remained.
Bang!
At the end of the hallway, a door that hadn't existed before suddenly flew open.
The old lady rushed inside.
The door slammed shut behind her.
The entire hallway fell silent once more.
The girl with glasses cautiously poked her head out from behind her door.
"She... left?"
Su Nian didn't answer.
She lowered her head and looked at her System.
【Night Watchman (Incomplete)】
【Rule decryption successful.】
【Reward: Mind’s Eye awakening progress +1%.】
【Current progress: 3%.】
She finally understood.
The rules of this world weren't just there to restrict the players.
The NPCs were bound by the rules too.
Whoever understood the rules better
was the one who could stay alive.
Just then,
midnight arrived.
The old-fashioned wall clocks throughout the inn all began to chime at once.
Dong—
The first chime.
Every door on the second floor closed automatically.
Dong—
The second chime.
The oil lamps in the hallway went out one after another.
Dong—
The third chime.
Darkness swallowed the entire hallway.
Su Nian immediately pulled out the Night Watchman's wooden token.
The character for "watch" on the token actually began to radiate a faint yellow light.
It wasn't very bright,
but it illuminated a one-meter radius around her.
And the instant the light appeared,
she heard it.
In the darkness,
someone was walking.
Not one person.
Many, many people.
Pat.
Pat.
Pat.
The sound of countless bare feet striking the wooden floor came from both ends of the hallway at once.
And they were all...
moving toward her.
Su Nian held her breath and tightened her grip on the token.
When the first figure stepped into the edge of the yellow light, she finally saw it clearly.
It wasn't one of the inn's guests.
It wasn't the old lady.
It wasn't the little girl.
It was the five players who had died tonight.
Their heads hung low.
Their eyes were pitch-black.
Their skin was deathly pale.
Step by step, they closed in around Su Nian.
And standing at the very back of all the dead
was a man dressed in a black robe.
She still couldn't make out his features.
Only his pale golden eyes gazed calmly at Su Nian from the darkness.
He didn't approach.
He simply stared at Su Nian from a distance, separated by the many wandering souls.
Then the corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
As if he were smiling.
Or perhaps...
waiting for her to make a choice.
The man in black said nothing.
He merely stood behind the wandering souls.
Those pale golden eyes were like the only light in the night.
Yet Su Nian instinctively sensed that—
the truly dangerous one wasn't the wandering souls.
It was him.
Just then, the Night Watchman's wooden token suddenly grew faintly hot.
A line of gray text visible only to her appeared above the man's head.
Unobservable.
Mind’s Eye level insufficient.
Su Nian's pupils contracted sharply.
This was the first time she had ever been unable to see through an entity.
It didn't even have a name.
In the moment she lost focus,
the first wandering soul had already entered the range of the yellow light.
It was Wang Zhiqiang.
He slowly raised his head.
His pitch-black eyes held not a trace of life.
But his mouth slowly opened.
"Su Nian."
"Come with us."
Su Nian didn't answer.
Because she noticed something.
Although the wandering souls kept approaching,
they always stopped at the edge of the yellow light.
Not one of them had stepped inside.
She lowered her head and looked at the Night Watchman's wooden token.
The light on it was dimmer than before.
Clearly,
this protection wasn't permanent.
It consumed energy.
Just then,
the man in black suddenly spoke.
His voice was low,
carrying an indescribable indifference.
"Rules."
"They're not meant to be believed."
"They're meant to be used."
Su Nian abruptly looked up.
Was he speaking to her?
But the man in black didn't say anything else,
as if that sentence had merely slipped out.
Instead, the wandering souls
suddenly raised their heads in unison.
As if they had heard an order.
The next second,
they all charged forward!
Bang!
The first wandering soul slammed into the yellow light.
It couldn't break through.
Instead, its entire face began to burn.
It let out a shrill, agonized scream.
The second.
The third.
The fourth...
They seemed completely incapable of feeling pain as they frantically battered the yellow light.
The light on the token began to fade rapidly.
Su Nian immediately realized it.
They weren't trying to get inside.
They were...
wearing down the token!
At most, another minute.
Then the yellow light would disappear.
And when that happened...
she would die for sure.
She forced herself to remain calm.
Her gaze swept over the surroundings again.
Suddenly,
she noticed something strange.
Before each charge,
the wandering souls would instinctively avoid one particular spot.
It wasn't fear.
It was more like...
they weren't allowed to step there.
It was an ordinary wooden floorboard.
There was nothing different about it.
But Mind’s Eye began to tremble faintly at that moment.
The gray mist appeared before her eyes once more.
Beneath that floorboard,
a golden pattern slowly emerged.
It looked like an ancient rune.
The Night Watchman's wooden token also began to tremble faintly,
as if reminding her of something.
Su Nian didn't hesitate.
She stepped onto it.
The instant both feet landed on the rune—
Vmmm—
the entire hallway shook violently.
All the oil lamps
suddenly lit up again at the same time.
Yellow light instantly flooded the entire second floor.
The wandering souls let out shrill screams.
Their bodies began pouring out thick black smoke.
"No!"
"It can't be lit!"
"The lamps can't be lit!"
They retreated in terror,
as if they were afraid of the lamplight.
Su Nian's mind jolted.
Wait...
It wasn't that "the lamps couldn't go out."
It was...
for the wandering souls,
the lamps couldn't be lit.
Rules.
They had never been meant to be viewed from only one angle.
Just then,
an enraged roar suddenly came from deep within the hallway.
"Who!"
"Who lit the Night Watch Lamps!"
Accompanying the roar,
one door after another opened automatically.
Su Nian saw a sight that made her scalp prickle.
Inside every guest room,
someone was standing.
They weren't players.
They were "guests" dressed in old-fashioned clothing.
They stood silently inside their rooms,
all with their heads lowered,
completely motionless.
Until the Night Watch Lamps lit up.
They...
opened their eyes at the same time.
Dozens of gray-white eyes
snapped toward Su Nian in the middle of the hallway.
And the man in black standing at the very back of the wandering souls finally lifted his foot.
One step.
He stepped into the lamplight.
Yet...
the Night Watch Lamps
had no effect on him at all.
He raised those pale golden eyes and looked quietly at Su Nian.
After a long while,
the corner of his mouth curved by an almost imperceptible degree.
"So..."
"the first person to wake up..."
"was you.........."
After the man in black spoke,
the entire hallway suddenly fell silent.
The old lady stopped yelling.
The wandering souls stopped wailing.
Even the "guests" standing inside the rooms lowered their heads in unison.
As if they were...
paying their respects to him.
Su Nian's heart jolted violently.
She finally confirmed one thing.
This man's status here was higher than the innkeeper's.
Even—
the rules couldn't completely bind him.
The Night Watchman's wooden token suddenly became scorching hot.
A blood-red System warning abruptly appeared.
【Warning!】
【An unknown high-level entity has approached.....】
【Do not observe it voluntarily.......】
【Do not answer any questions.......】
【Do not accept any invitations.......】
Su Nian only glanced at it
before shifting her gaze back to the man.
He still stood beneath the lamplight.
The black robe he wore had no patterns,
yet it seemed capable of swallowing all the light around it.
He walked toward Su Nian one step at a time.
Strangely,
the wandering souls automatically moved aside.
The old lady also lowered her head, not daring to stop him.
When he was only five steps away from Su Nian,
he stopped.
His pale golden eyes quietly watched her.
"Night Watchman."
He spoke slowly.
"It's been many years."
"At last, someone else..."
"can see."
Su Nian didn't answer.
The System's warning had been perfectly clear.
Don't answer.
The man seemed to know what she was thinking.
The corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly.
"You're very smart."
"That's why..."
"you've managed to stay alive this long."
After saying that,
he suddenly raised his right hand.
A black chess piece had appeared between his long fingers at some point.
It was only the size of a thumb.
Yet its surface was covered in densely packed ancient characters.
"Here."
The man flicked it lightly.
The chess piece flew toward Su Nian.
Su Nian instinctively tried to dodge.
But the Night Watchman's wooden token rose into the air on its own.
Smack!
It caught the chess piece securely.
The next instant,
the wooden token shook violently.
The System frantically flashed one notification after another.
【Unknown medium detected.】
【Analyzing...】
【Analysis failed.】
【Insufficient permissions.】
Su Nian's brows furrowed.
Even the System couldn't analyze it?
But the man looked completely unsurprised.
"Wait for it."
"When you truly awaken..."
"you'll know what it is．．．．．．．．。"