Han Fei followed Xu Qin into Room 1052. He looked on as Xu Qin twisted open the faucet in the bathroom to wash her hands. The clean sink was immediately dyed red. “What are you in the mood for today?” With her head lowered, Xu Qin was fully focused on cleaning her hands. She even went in to scrub out the blood stains between her nails.
“Big Sister, actually I’m here today to discuss something with you.” Han Fei placed the human cocoon on the dining table. “I found this among the dying possessions of our 6th floor neighbour.”
“The people from the 6th floor? They are not our neighbours, they came from outside.” After washing her hands, she moved back to pick up the human cocoon to study, “This is the present you want to give me?”
“It’s called a human cocoon, it’s an insect cocoon. I believe it is quite rare so I brought it over to show you.”
“Human Cocoon? Well, I have not had that before, I wonder how it tastes.” Xu Qin’s pale fingers squeezed on the cocoon as her red gaze turned to Han Fei, “How do you think we should cook it?”
“Big Sister, temporarily I have no intention of eating it. Instead, I have another plan for it.” Han Fei said with an innocent smile. “When the non-local from the 6th floor died, this was the only thing he carried, so this should be quite important to him and his friends. I’m thinking perhaps we can use this thing to lure the people from the 6th floor out from their lair.”
“And then what do you plan to do after that?” A sick excitement entered Xu Qin’s eyes. She turned to Han Fei with some anticipation.
“We will have a good chat with them about their blatant disregard for the apartment rules. We will show them how to be a good neighbour.” Han Fei’s every word was civilized.
“Are you sure that’ll work?” Xu Qin turned to study the table knife in her grasp. “How can you be sure that they’ll even listen to us?’
“If they refuse to listen to reason, then we’ll press our number’s advantage. The minority has to follow the rules of the majority. We’ll force them to change.” Han Fei sounded like he was mediating a common neighbourly argument.
“Huh? But we’re the minority in this case, there are only 2 of us.”
“Big sister, that’s where you’re wrong. If they refuse to sit down peacefully to chat, then there will only be one of them left.” Han Fei’s innocent eyes turned to Xu Qin. “This last remaining person will help us find more non-locals so that we can educate them.”
The two pairs of eyes met. Xu Qin’s smile burned brighter.
“Notification for Player 0000! Xu Qin’s friendliness increases by 5! Forming a peaceful neighbourly relationship is the first step to a perfect life.”
The sudden system notification startled Han Fei. He had no idea why Xu Qin’s affection towards him had increased.
Han Fei clicked into the mission interface and realized the mission to explore the 5th floor was still incomplete. He gave it some thought and realized that it was probably because there were still 2 rooms on the 5th floor which he had not visited. Now that he had stayed in this game for 3 hours, after he completed this mission, he could log out at any time. That would give him a lot more leeway to go after more dangerous missions.
‘Without the get out of jail free card, my action will be heavily restricted. Xu Qin might even look down on me.’ Han Fei calculated internally. He closed the mission interface and turned again to Xu Qin. “When I arrived at the 5th floor earlier, Big Sister, you were in Room 1054. Does all 4 rooms on this floor belong to you?”
“Originally, only Room 1052 was mine but eventually my neighbours volunteered to give me rooms.” Xu Qin bit on her finger and blood dripped down her lips. “To be honest, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such generosity.”
“That is quite weird.” Han Fei wiped away the cold sweat from his forehead. “Then what is inside Room 1054 and Room 1053? Have the original tenants left anything behind? Can I take a look inside them?”
“Of course, there’s no problem…. As long as you believe you can stomach what you’d see.” Xu Qin chuckled. “There was this one time when I helped the old lady from the 3rd floor with a small favor. She later came over to thank me in person, and when she arrived, I was inside Room 1054.”
“And then what happened?”
“After she saw what was inside the room, she never came to visit me anymore.”
“The elderly are less susceptible to new things but I’m sure it’ll be different for young people like me.” Han Fei stood up and headed to the door. Xu Qin watched his back and licked away the blood on her lips. She picked up the knife and followed. “Do not stay too long out in the corridor, be careful of being captured.” After they were out of the room, Xu Qin spoke in a much smaller voice. The fact that Xu Qin acted that way meant that there was something much scarier hiding inside the building.
“Room 1053 is my storage room. I place my rarer ingredients and my homemade art projects here.” Xu Qin opened the door to Room 1053. It was filled with artistic projects made from sanded bones as well as tons of weird specimens.
“You made these all yourself?”
“Yes.”
“That’s quite impressive!” Han Fei carefully walked into the museum of bones. He’d occasionally turn around to glance at Xu Qin at the door. He was contemplating how to endear himself to this neighbour of his. Normally to befriend a lady, you gotta know her first. To do that, one could always look into her hobbies, her pet, the items inside her bag and the people she hung out with. In terms of Xu Qin, her hobby was to eat ghosts, her pet was a living house, she had no bag but she had an impressive collection of knives. Her neighbours gifted her their houses just to avoid her. In conclusion, a woman like her was extremely rare.
“Room 1054 is where I handle my food ingredients. Some of them struggled quite a bit so the room is a bit messy.” After a tour of Room 1053, Xu Qin led Han Fei to Room 1054. Pushing open the door of Room 1054, he was hit by a chilling draft. Then it was followed by a thick scent of blood. The whole room was covered in red. A large chopping block sat on the ground. The walls were decorated with scratch marks.
If not for the training he received from his roommates, Han Fei would be fainting right now. His heart pounded but he moved into the room without a twitch on his facial muscle. The only good news was, he realized the scratch marks were not left behind by human hands but more like the signs of a last struggle from various monsters.
“The place is a bit messy.” Fear did not show on Han Fei’s face. After he took a look around, he returned to Xu Qin’s side. “Big sister, I know how busy you are. If you don’t mind, you should leave the minor jobs like cleaning up to me.” The red pupils turned to Han Fei. Xu Qin imagined many scenarios but he did not expect Han Fei to say these things after visiting the hell-like room. “You should focus on the things you love and work on your recipes. Your hands are blessed with unique cooking skills. So you should leave the miscellaneous jobs to me, you shan’t dirty your hands with menial tasks.”
Han Fei said those to draw himself closer to Xu Qin so that he could be a dinner guest at Xu Qin’s place more often. She might come up with more food that could raise his attributes. But to his surprise, after he said those things, Xu Qin’s bloody red eyes zeroed in on Han Fei. It caused the man to chill.
“Someone has once given me those same promises but he turned out to be a liar.” Xu Qin bit on her fingers anxiously as she studied the bloodied knife. “He disappeared from my life. He went into hiding! So where is he now? Why can’t I remember anything about him?!”
“Notification for Player 0000! You’ve successfully explored all the rooms on the 5th floor. Grade G Mission—Explore the 5th floor completed! Obtained mission reward 1 Free Skill Point! Friendliness with Xu Qin increases by 20!”
Announcement: The raw for this book just got contracted on Qidian.com so the chance of this being picked up by Webnovel.com has increased exponentially. Now, I can't even guarantee that Webnovel will take me on as the translator if that happens.
That might be a good thing because there, you will get a better translator team and more consistent update rate. Or at least I hope that's the case, this book is very dear to me.
Of course, this might all be a false scare. In any case, thank you so much for your continuous support. I'll keep working on this until I'm told I can't anymore. The Patreon tiers [https://www.patreon.com/lonelyman] are still there as well. (Shameless Plug: The prices are much cheaper than the one at Webnovel haha)
XoXo, lonelytree
