Kaleidoscope of Death

No one knows what happened last night, except for Jianyuan and her unlucky companion who died.

Lin Qiushi remembered that yesterday, Jian Chianyuan was one of those who disliked the taste of her lunch, but her strange behavior in the face of her disgustingly bland and tasteless dead fish lunch gave Lin Qiushi an unpleasant suspicion. Could it be that Jane Chien-won was also affected by that monster...?

When she walked out of the restaurant, she seemed to notice that all the people on the deck were giving her frightened looks, so she smiled indifferently and said to herself, "It's actually quite tasty. "

No one answers her, so she shrugs her shoulders and turns to leave.

Lin Qiushi saw her enter a random room, and then the room changed and she disappeared.

The rooms were changing all the time. Every few minutes, a new room appeared in front of the deck.

Some people were lucky enough to have their things taken out by others, while others were unlucky enough to never find the original room again.

However, Lin Qiushi did make a new discovery. As they were walking through the corridor, they were lucky enough to see the locked room they found yesterday again. The only difference was that the door was wide open, and the chains that used to lock the door fell to the ground in a mess, broken into several pieces, as if they had been violently destroyed.

"I remember this room." Lin Qiushi, "It's 201," he looked at the door number, the one he had seen yesterday came to mind, "Is there anything in there now?"

Ruan Nan Candle stood unmoving at the doorway, gazing towards the darkened door and saying, "Is there any movement inside?"

"No." Lin Qiushi listened for a moment before shaking his head, sure he hadn't heard anything.

"That thing should be gone." Ruan Nan Candle took a step forward and stepped inside, casually lighting the kerosene lamp that was placed on the table next to him.

The dim light illuminated the modest room, allowing them to see what the house looked like.

It was an ordinary and extraordinary room, ordinary in its furnishings, just like the place where Lin Qiushi and the others lived, but extraordinary in the things that were in the room - some fish scales.

These scales were almost all over the house, and even the house was filled with a disgusting smell of fish. Lin Qiushi also noticed that on the floor of this room, there was a layer of liquid that was somewhat like water but more viscous than water attached to it, making it very uncomfortable to look at.

The claw marks on the surrounding walls and furniture were also telling them that this room was once the room where the monster was held.

Lin Qiushi inspected these scratches and saw that they were very deep, which was true for the solid wood floor, thinking that a fragile human body would be even more vulnerable in front of it.

Gu Longming was disgusted enough by what was inside, Ruan Nan Candle instead pulled out a tissue from her bosom and collected a bit of this thing's scales into it.

Although it was currently unknown what use these scales were for, it was a good idea to be prepared just in case.

Lin Qiushi, on the other hand, searched the house for other traces, and soon he found a man's shoe in the corner of the house, which reminded Lin Qiushi of the man who had been gnawed off yesterday. Had the monster also dragged its prey back to the room? As Lin Qiushi was thinking this, Gu Longming said, "It's almost time." He had been timing it since he came in, and it was still a few tens of seconds short of five minutes.

"Let's go out first." Ruan Nan Candle said, "There shouldn't be any other use for this place."

Lin Qiushi hmmed.

Not long after the three of them left the room, the location of that room changed to another room, and Lin Qiushi's expression looked slightly silent.

Ruan Nan Candle asked him what he was thinking about.

Lin Qiushi said, "I think things might be a little worse than we thought."

"How so?" Gu Longming was confused.

"Is the location of that monster really fixed?" Lin Qiushi said, "Or can it be moved?" Before seeing that room, he had thought the monster's location was fixed. But now when he saw the destroyed chains, he had a bad suspicion that the monster could move, he could walk through this maze, and although he couldn't find an exit even like the humans, the humans lost in the maze were food-like in his eyes.

"Your guess should be right." Ruan Nan Candle looked at his watch, "There are still thirteen of them, enough to feed him for ten days."

Gu Longming laughed dryly, "Are you guys joking?"

Nguyen Nan Candle shrugged, "If you like the joke."

At dinner time, Lin Qiushi had expected to see the NPC covered in bugs, but the NPC didn't appear, it seemed that he would only appear inside the restaurant at lunch time, a regular refresher....

Everyone was still eating listlessly at dinner, except for Jane Chianyuan, who appeared in the restaurant again and continued to eat those fish in front of her.

She reappeared in the restaurant and continued to gorge herself on the fish in front of her, but because of Jane Chianyuan's bold eating style, everyone lost their appetite even more and left the restaurant after eating some noodles.

Lin Qiushi and the others did the same, but before they left, Lin Qiushi carefully observed Jane Qian Yuan to see if there were any changes in her.

However, he was puzzled that currently, Jane Chianyuan was still a simple human, and other than suddenly becoming fond of eating fish, there was no other abnormality.

"I'm really afraid that if I come over tomorrow, I'll see her turn into that thing as well." Gu Longming now had complicated feelings about Jane Chianyuan, and he and Lin Qiushi were thinking about the same thing.

Both Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nanzhu didn't speak.

That night, Lin Qiushi didn't sleep much, his mind kept thinking about Jane Chianyuan, the changes that had happened to her, and the connection between the clues.

Ruan Nan Candle, on the other hand, pulled out the scales of the fish from her pocket and placed them on the table, carefully observing them.

It wasn't raining tonight, and the bright moon hung in the sky, casting a pale silvery tint on both the cabin and the sea. The sea breeze, with its salty taste and heat, poured in through the window, and the bed underneath was shaking slightly, if not in the door, the atmosphere was a bit like a leisurely journey.

Lin Qiushi looked out sideways, and the view from the window changed every five minutes.

The two people lying behind him seemed to be asleep and breathing evenly. However, just as Lin Qiushi was about to fall asleep, he heard a very subtle sound - something moving around on the planks, something heavy, making the planks creak slightly.

And the sound got closer and closer, eventually staying near their window.

Lin Qiushi's breath held as he half-lidded his eyes and saw a tall shadow that blocked the light from his window. Lin Qiushi... on the other hand, smelled a familiar fish smell - he knew what the thing standing against the light in front of him was.

It was that huge monster with a fish-headed body that they had seen last night.

It was currently standing in front of Lin Qiushi's window, seemingly twitching its nose in search of some kind of scent, and Lin Qiushi held his breath, not daring to move at all.

Through the moonlight, Lin Qiushi saw the thing slowly extend its hand to the window and began to shake the window vigorously with its webbed hand that was attached to it.

As soon as they woke up, they saw the huge figure standing outside the window, and heard the low, beast-like growling sound.

Lin Qiushi originally thought that the sleeping Gu Longming would scream out in fear when he saw this, but he just shivered and lowered his voice, "Fuck, am I having a nightmare? Why is this thing on our doorstep-"

Nguyen Nam Candle was also calm, he had already pulled a knife from the restaurant out of his pocket and said, "Maybe he found us looking tasty?"

Gu Longming touched his face, incredulous, "...do I look delicious?"

Ruan Nan Candle looked at him sympathetically, "There's always monsters who like the heavy stuff."

Lin Qiushi was now simply admiring the big nerves of these two people.

The monster reached out and pushed the window out of a large hole, all the glass on it shattered and crackled, then it tried to get in through the window opening, but after finding it too small, it moved its bulging white eyes and put its eyes on the wooden door next to it.

"Fuck." Gu Long chirped a curse, "This thing isn't really going to come in here!"

"It seems so." Ruan Nan Candle frowned, "Is the death random? No...that's not possible! We left something out!"

As they spoke, the fisherman began to hit the wooden door in front of them with great force, and the wooden door, which was already not sturdy, soon became shaky under its impact, and Lin Qiushi could even hear the sound of the wooden planks cracking.

"Later it rushes in, I'll stop it you guys escape through the window." Ruan Nan Candle's voice rang out, still very calm, as he said, "Do you hear me, Lin Lin?"

"No." Lin Qiushi said, "I'm not leaving without you, and you're not going to make the same mistake." He frowned, his expression very unpleasant.

Ruan Nan Candle was silent for a moment, giving up something as if to sigh, "Alright, as you wish." He handed Lin Qiushi a dinner knife.

"I'm not leaving either." Gu Longming said nervously beside him.

Ruan Nan Candle looked helpless, but he didn't try to persuade anymore, he looked at his watch and said, "Thirty seconds, hold on for another thirty seconds, stop it outside-"

Lin Qiushi and Gu Longming instantly understood - thirty seconds later, the room would change again, and the change would allow them to leave the place and dump the monster outside.

But those thirty seconds were not so easy to buy, for the fish-man had already split half the doorway with its sharp claws, and was about to squeeze its scaly body through the gap as far as the eye could see.

Gu Longming turned around and moved the table against the top of the door, while Ruan Nam Candle planned to pull the bed over to block the doorway as well.

Lin Qiushi watched Ruan Nanzhu's actions, but suddenly remembered something, he remembered that when the fish man reached their window, the first action he made was to sniff his nose -...

"Give me the scales you collected during the day!" Lin Qiushi opened his mouth to shout.

"What?" Ruan Nan Candle was slightly stunned.

"That scale you found in the monster's room-" Lin Qiushi repeated once again aloud.

Luckily, Ruan Nan Candle was extremely quick, and after understanding Lin Qiushi's meaning, he pulled out a small paper bag from his pocket and threw it straight out through the crack in the window.

The scales wrapped in the paper bag were all scattered on the corridor outside, and the fisherman who had been concentrating on banging the door moved towards the paper bag, bending down as if to pick up the scales.

Seeing this, Lin Qiushi was relieved, but in the next moment, after finding nothing more than scales in the paper bag, the fisherman let out an angry growl and turned around to lunge back towards their location.

But these few movements were enough to survive the long thirty seconds, and the moment before the fishman lunged towards them and was about to shatter the door panel, their room changed position and the fishman disappeared before them.

Lin Qiushi hurriedly opened the wooden door that had shattered into several pieces, and after making sure that there were no more fishmen outside, he moved to the next room with Ruan Nam Candle and the others.

And his fears soon became a reality, because about two or three minutes later, the fish man actually found the room they were in again and completely destroyed the door panel and jumped inside the house.

And now, Lin Qiushi and the others were hiding in another small room not far from that room, seeing what was happening outside through the window.

The sounds of smashing things kept coming, and after making sure that their prey had escaped, the fishman left with heavy breathing, but looking at its appearance, it seemed to have a new target, its huge mouth slightly opened, revealing white and fine pointed teeth, as well as the saliva that ran down the corners of its mouth.

The three of them hid in the house and never dared to make a sound until the fish man was far away, and only then did Gu Longming breathed a sigh of relief, "Damn, it actually followed the smell of fish to find us, I thought we were dead!"

None of them had expected the fish to play such a role here, if it wasn't for Lin Qiushi's quick enough reaction, the three of them would have had to lose at least one of them.

Although the fish man was gone, Ruan Nan Candle's expression still didn't slacken, and his heavy look made Gu Longming a little uneasy as he said, "What's wrong? Wishing Meng?"

"I think Jane Chien Yuan is going to die," Ruan Nan Candle said.

Gu Longming was about to ask why, when he remembered the unusual things that happened to Jane Chianyuan during the day. She seemed to have eaten very much fish, and even as they left the restaurant, they could all smell the strong smell of fish on Jane Chianyuan's body. And since they could smell it, there was no doubt that the monster, too, could easily sniff it out.

As expected, not long after the fish monster left, Lin Qiushi's keen hearing caught a woman's scream, which seemed to be a bit far away from them, and Lin Qiushi could only hear an approximation of it, while Gu Longming and Ruan Nanzhu, on the other hand, couldn't seem to hear it.

The scream continued on, accompanied by weeping and wailing, and eventually became faint, leaving behind only numbing growls and chewing noises.

The sound was coming from where the deck was, and Lin Qiushi didn't want to know at all what they would see on the deck the next day.

Thinking it was another hollowed out corpse, its innards gnawed away, leaving behind an empty skeleton.

Ruan Nan Candle seemed to sense that Lin Qiushi couldn't sleep, he sat on the edge of Lin Qiushi's bed and lay down with him, resting his chin on the top of Lin Qiushi's head and gently kissing his hair.

The warmth of his body from behind him gave a little comfort to Lin Qiushi's cold voice, but it was just as if the horrible sound continued to echo in Lin Qiushi's ears, as if he could continue to hear Jian Qian Yuan's cries....

"She's dead." Lin Qiushi said.

"Hmm." Ruan Nan Candle said, "Go to sleep, it's normal."

Lin Qiushi sighed, "Maybe there's something I can do to save her."

"But you have to save yourself first." Ruan Nan Candle's fingers ran through Lin Qiushi's hair, "We're still missing a long sword that can kill it."

In the mythology, Theseus had used a longsword to kill the Minotaur, but now they hadn't seen any weapons on the ship that looked like they could do damage to the fisherman - a dinner knife certainly wouldn't do.

"The line is found," Lin Qiushi said, "and the aperitif was found." He understood the meaning of the aperitif after the death of Kan Chien Yuan.

Ruan Nan Candle kissed the tips of Lin Qiushi's ears and said, "Go to sleep, we'll talk about it tomorrow."

Lin Qiushi mmmed and closed his eyes.

Saying that he was sleeping, he actually still didn't sleep too much, but he just stayed up until dawn in a daze.

The weather was bad today, the thick clouds covered the sky once again, and the light was frighteningly dark.

Lin Qiushi woke up early and went to the deck with Ruan Nanzhu and the others, and unsurprisingly saw an additional corpse on the deck, although the face was no longer visible, but judging from the clothes, it was indeed Jane Chianyuan's.

Her stomach had been cut open, and all the fish she had eaten yesterday had disappeared, as well as her internal organs.

"Vom-" Shen Juexin, who was already seasick, vomited again, and also vomited with him, along with a few girls who had weaker tolerance.

Lin Qiushi also saw Xiao Mo, who had given him a hint that day, she had lost some of the newcomer's acerbity and her expression had become much more numb, as if she had accepted the horrific image in front of her.

Two days passed, and Jane Chianyuan was the second sacrifice to be eaten.

The crowd simply disposed of Jane Chianyuan's corpse, and to say that they disposed of it, they just threw it into the sea to watch the rest of her being eaten by the fish.

"I saw that monster yesterday as well." The number of people who saw the monster increased a bit, and someone was trembling as they described what happened yesterday, "It just walked right past my door, went to Jane Chien Yuan's house, and then split the door open and pulled Jane Chien Yuan out of the house..."

"That thing is horrible." The man said, "I can't save her, I'm no match for a monster."

No one could fight a monster that was two meters tall, and if they had a hot weapon they might be able to struggle, but with only a dinner knife, no one dared to take their own life.

Lin Qiushi looked a bit tired as he found a seat in the restaurant and fiddled with the plates with beans on them.

The NPC that gave them food also appeared, he was exactly the same as the first day Lin Qiushi saw him, even his expression hadn't changed at all.

Lin Qiushi and Ruan Nan Candle looked at each other, and Ruan Nan Candle got up first and walked over towards that NPC.

"Hello, sir." Ruan Nan Candle greeted him.

The NPC didn't say anything, but looked at Ruan Nam Candle with cold eyes as if he was just a robot and the matter of people greeting him wasn't part of the program he had written.

"Hello, sir." Ruan Nan Candle said to him a second time.

The man remained silent.

Ruan Nan Candle tilted his head, reached out and pushed the plate in front of him directly to the ground, and the plate fell to the ground, along with the fish placed inside it, shattering all over the place.

"What are you doing?" The man finally opened his mouth and spoke in a very unhappy tone.

"I wanted to ask you." Ruan Nam Candle said, "Do you also carry so many bugs with you when you make food?"

The man said, "I don't understand what you're talking about."

Ruan Nan Candle then casually grabbed a face mosquito that was circling around the man and said, "Don't understand?"

The man saw this, but put down the spoon he was using to prepare the food and turned to leave, but Ruan Nan Candle grabbed him by the shoulder: "Where are you going."

The man's body began to tremble violently.

Lin Qiushi watched from a distance, at first he thought the man was afraid or angry, but he soon realized that it wasn't fear or anger, but the man was melting.

His body began to shrink rapidly, turning into a black mass from head to toe, and this figure thing buzzed and spread out directly in the restaurant - it turned out to be a dense mass of mosquitoes.

Everyone else in the restaurant was stunned by the sight and began to swat like crazy.

But the mosquitoes came and went as fast as they could, and they disappeared into the restaurant, while the NPC who had just stood in front of them was left with an empty set of clothes.

"Fuck." Gu Longming didn't expect this at all and opened his mouth stunned, "This brother is actually a mosquito spirit?"

Lin Qiushi: "......." he didn't know what to say for a moment.

Ruan Nan Candle scratched his head and turned his head to look at Lin Qiushi: "Is there no one to give us fish to eat from now on?"

Lin Qiushi: "...as if."

Ruan Nan Candle spread her hands and made an innocent expression, but everyone else in the restaurant had complicated expressions and didn't know what came to mind.

Ruan Nan Candle: "That's quite a pity."

Everyone: "...It's not regrettable alright, thank you.