“You.”
Lin Jia’s gaze landed on the Buzzcut.
Everyone else followed Lin Jia’s gaze toward the Buzzcut. Each of them took a step back, wishing they could be ten thousand miles away from him.
The Buzzcut froze, then snapped back to his senses. He shouted at Lin Jia and the others, who had backed three feet away. “How could it be me?! How could I be the dead one? It’s not me. Absolutely not me.”
“If it’s not you, who else could it be?”
Lin Jia shifted from a sitting position to a standing position, his hand touching the back of the chair and gripping it tightly. “In White Shadow Documentary (1), based on character performance ranking, Shi Luo is first and you’re second.”
It was the Buzzcut who grabbed Shi Luo’s knife and protected Lin Jia the most. Besides Shi Luo, Buzzcut was the second most notable person. Being targeted by Shi Luo’s other eye wasn’t strange.
“I’m not! I’m really not. I’m breathing. If you don’t believe me, come feel it.” The Buzzcut argued with all his might, but Lin Jia’s cold face didn’t show the slightest emotion.
Suddenly, the Buzzcut thought of something. He glared at Lin Jia maliciously and said, “You’re the dead one, aren’t you? Going in such a big circle just to—”
He didn’t finish. Lin Jia suddenly twisted his arm, and a chair came smashing toward him with overwhelming force.
In the livestream that they could not see, the barrage was dense and layered.
[Again?]
[Again? Again? Another chair?]
[Another chair?]
The livestream view count skyrocketed—50k, 100k, 200k viewers—racing toward one million.
Likes multiplied—10k, 20k, and in the blink of an eye, 50k.
The barrage rolled endlessly:
[Almost 100k likes! Go, go, go!]
[I have PTSD from chairs. I hope he gets killed by a chair, too.]
[Smash him into meat paste! Let his bones and blood merge with the rotten floor!]
It was as if two races had begun: vicious comments versus Lin Jia’s flying chair. The finish line was not far ahead—whoever crossed it first would be applauded, while the loser would be crushed.
Suddenly, Lin Jia raised his voice, shouting, “Buzzcut, move!”
Buzzcut had been through several Fish Belly zones before. Without quick reflexes, he would have been dismembered and eaten by Fishman long ago.
Just before the chair slammed into his face, he dodged to the side.
Then—bang!
The chair leg hit Glasses Guy dead on. His glasses, already cracked by Shi Luo, flew off from the impact. The chair leg burst open his left eye. Sticky fluid sprayed out.
The chair hit the ground and broke into pieces.
The tension broke. Only then did everyone react—screams and chaos filled Room 202.
Only Glasses remained silent.
In the last moments of his life, he finally heard the whispers clearly:
—“A four-eyes.”
—“He seems really nearsighted, he’s trying hard to look at us.”
—“Isn’t severe nearsightedness basically the same as being blind? Since he’s practically blind, using his eye sockets won’t matter.”
—“Hahahaha, he should be thanking us…”
Bang—
The glasses fell to the ground.
The livestream suddenly went black. If only it had lasted a little longer, the likes would have reached 100k—the threshold where the vicious comments would have come true.
When the chaos finally subsided, confusion remained.
“Didn’t you say…” Sister Fang hesitated. “A-Yao was the one…”
The Buzzcut paused, then looked at Lin Jia. “He was the dead one?”
Lin Jia: “Mm.”
The buzzcut picked up a piece of the broken chair—a slightly longer wooden strip. He apologized to Glasses and struck his eye, preventing it from becoming another camera lens for viewers.
He dropped the wooden strip and turned around.
Everyone else had strange expressions. They were relieved the hidden danger was removed, but they couldn’t fully accept what the Buzzcut had done.
Lin Jia was the only one who remained calm.
The Buzzcut wasn’t interested in the others. He looked at Lin Jia again with a complicated expression. “You said I was the dead one on purpose?”
Lin Jia gave him a look that said, ‘What do you think?’
The Buzzcut didn’t press further. Lin Jia had only one reason to claim that he was the dead one: misdirection. He wanted to strike without warning and prevent the other eye embedded in Glasses’s socket from reacting and causing trouble.
The Buzzcut quickly asked, “What if I hadn’t dodged?”
If the chair had hit him, he wouldn’t have died, but he would have been seriously injured.
Lin Jia said lightly, “There is no if.”
The matter had already been settled. Bringing up hypotheticals served no purpose; it was just a waste of breath.
“Brother Jia…” Xiao Mei didn’t dare look at Glasses’s corpse. In fear, she asked, “Why was it him?”
The Buzzcut was curious, too. “Yeah, why him?”
Lin Jia’s earlier reasons for identifying the Buzzcut as the dead one had almost convinced him. If he hadn’t checked his own breath and confirmed that he was still alive, he really would have believed that he was the dead one.
With the eye problem resolved, Lin Jia finally explained to everyone in gratitude for their cooperation: “He ranked third.”
In White Shadow Documentary (1), Shi Luo swung a knife, trying to kill Lin Jia. The Buzzcut rushed to block him while Glasses crawled around on the floor, searching for the pair of glasses Shi Luo had stepped on.
That moment served purely as comedic relief for the online viewers. Naturally, the one providing the joke was also the target of vicious comments.
Liu Ying was confused. “He’s third, but instead…” He cautiously glanced at the Buzzcut. He was rough and wild, and most people didn’t dare to provoke him. Liu Ying’s voice dropped. “His ranking wasn’t as high as Brother Yao’s, so why was he considered the dead one?”
Truthfully, from the beginning, Lin Jia had only suspected two people: the Buzzcut and Glasses. Of the two, Lin Jia suspected Glasses far more.
He simply had a habit of leaving no possibility unchecked, which is why he asked two questions and involved everyone.
When Glasses’s turn came to explain himself, he stepped right into the self-test that Lin Jia had tailored for him.
Dead people can’t take many actions inside a room. The more they say, the more mistakes they make. A dead can only claim to have been sleeping.
So Lin Jia asked him: Did you fall asleep?
Glasses said yes.
But when he knocked on Room 202’s door, he showed no sign of having just woken up. He didn’t open the door slowly; he responded immediately. Because Shi Luo’s eye needed more footage to make the video more interesting.
Glasses hurried to let Lin Jia in, exposing himself to the livestream audience.
That was the moment Glasses exposed himself as the dead one—and Lin Jia caught it firmly.
As for how Lin Jia knew that Shi Luo’s eye was in Glasses’ left eye: When Glasses received the errand from Lin Jia and went out the door, the right side of his body hit the doorframe.
He was already dead. His own eyes no longer provided him with sight.
He relied entirely on Shi Luo’s eye to see, but since Shi Luo only had one eye left, his vision was compromised. That was why Glasses bumped into the doorframe.
Lin Jia summarized all of this into one sentence to answer Liu Ying’s question: “A random guess.”
Liu Ying: “…”
Lin Jia didn’t care to elaborate. Liu Ying had no choice but to swallow his curiosity.
The matter of the eye was already settled. The process didn’t matter anymore.
“Toast.” Lin Jia called to the cat on the windowsill. “Let’s go.”
The cat leapt down and followed him.
Seeing that Lin Jia was about to leave, Buzzcut hurriedly asked, “What now?”
Lin Jia: “Sleep.”
The Buzzcut rushed after him. Just as Lin Jia opened the door, the Buzzcut blocked him and asked anxiously, “What about the video in blogger Xiao Wu’s hands?”
“The likes are still short of reaching the threshold where it becomes real,” Lin Jia said, lowering his gaze to the Buzzcut’s hand blocking the doorknob. “Move.”
The Buzzcut wanted to move, but he didn’t dare. He wasn’t intentionally trying to stop Lin Jia. Lin Jia was right. In the White Shadow Documentary (1) video, Shi Luo ranked first, and Lin Jia ranked second.
They weren’t at the threshold yet, but they would be.
He had just gone through being wrongly identified as the dead one. His mind was in chaos. He had no idea what to do next or how to find the Soup Base.
Of everyone present, he could depend only on Lin Jia.
The Buzzcut didn’t want to die. He said: “We’re all grasshoppers tied to the same rope. You helped me this time—later, I’ll help you.”
Lin Jia remained cold and unmoved: “Move.”
The Buzzcut gritted his teeth. “Fine. If we manage to leave Fish Belly, all the fish spirits are yours.”
The moment he said this, the other old hand expressions shifted. But they didn’t dare speak up because of the Buzzcut.
Lin Jia noticed everything. After a moment’s thought, he spoke. “Fish spirits?”
He glanced at the cat at his feet. The cat was deep in thought—it seemed to have forgotten about the fish spirits again.
Lin Jia didn’t know what fish spirits were, but since Buzzcut saved this condition for last and the other old hand reacted so strongly, they were likely valuable.
He stopped walking, willing to continue the discussion.
The Buzzcut froze for a moment, then remembered that Lin Jia was a newcomer.
It wasn’t his fault—Lin Jia’s performance surpassed that of every older member here.
The Buzzcut offered a simple explanation: “Once you find the Soup Base, you’ll receive fish spirits. You can exchange the fish spirits for currency, and only with currency can you survive in the Underwater Wold.”
In Lin Jia’s ears: fish spirits = currency = money.
At this moment, the profit-driven nature of businessmen was somewhat revealed. After considering it briefly, Lin Jia said, “Sleep. Wait for dawn to refresh the questions.”
They had already clashed with blogger Xiao Wu and learned about his secret filming and the videos he had posted. While the Buzzcut group bought time for Lin Jia, they also warned Xiao Wu. Xiao Wu wouldn’t dare step out again easily. Although going to Room 303 again to delete the posted videos was difficult, there was no need to worry about Xiao Wu sneaking out and filming them again. All that remained was waiting for the questions to refresh.
However, the Buzzcut noticed something: “Do you already have an idea about what to ask?”
He was nervous. “It’s not going to be about food or drinks again, is it? If you need them, I can give them to you.”
The moment the topic shifted to the morning questions, everyone perked up.
Sister Fang said worriedly, “The danger posed by blogger Xiao Wu isn’t fully resolved. If another manifested thing appears…”
Xiao Mei said, “But didn’t you say that Fishman mutate quickly? If we can’t find the Soup Base, we will all die.”
Lin Jia reminded them: “White Shadow.”
White Shadow had already been solidified. They needed to figure out what it was.
The Buzzcut asked, “What do you plan to ask?”
Lin Jia hadn’t fully decided on the specific questions about White Shadow.
However, discussing with partners was never a bad idea—communication leads to understanding and cooperation leads to mutual benefit. He’d said such things before.
Lin Jia said, “We know White Shadow is harmless, but it looks terrifying. It scared Shi Luo so much that he peed himself, and it made the blogger constantly film it. What do you think White Shadow is?”
That was a question Lin Jia couldn’t answer. He only feared the dark, so he couldn’t imagine anything else that could be terrifying.
“No danger, but looks terrifying…” Everyone murmured the key points he offered.
Suddenly, Xiao Mei asked, “Could it be a creepy doll?”
The Buzzcut asked, “What’s that?”
Xiao Mei didn’t know how to explain. She gestured: “Like those toy dolls. Some have terrifying designs—just one look makes people uncomfortable.”
Sister Fang said, “Probably not. If they were the kind of creepy dolls you mean, the video would clearly show them.”
Liu Ying immediately took out his phone and played the clips where White Shadow appeared. In the videos, White Shadow always flashed by, its posture ethereal and twisted.
The high school boy thought of something. “Could it be sacrificial items?”
“Things used in rituals—they look creepy too.”
The Buzzcut frowned. “What does that have to do with White Shadow?”
The high school boy replied, “The white smoke that comes out after burning. In the video where Xiao Wu was looking for White Shadow, wasn’t there a light spot behind him? That could have been the final burning embers.”
The Buzzcut fell silent. It’s not impossible.
However, the category of “not dangerous but terrifying in appearance” was far too broad. They couldn’t make an accurate guess based on speculation alone.
He turned to ask Lin Jia, but saw that he was deep in thought. He asked, “Got any ideas?”
“No,” Lin Jia said. “If it’s smoke from burning ritual items, we can just ask.”
The Buzzcut was about to say something when Xiao Mei called out.
“It…it’s dawn,” Xiao Mei said.
Night and day switched instantly. With the arrival of daylight, three new questions arise.
The Buzzcut felt an inexplicable anxiety and rubbed his face. He asked, “Is White Shadow really smoke from burnt ritual items?”
Lin Jia: “Then we should ask if there was ever a homicide at Yile Apartment.”
In Xiao Wu’s videos, White Shadow appeared twice.
The first time, ants were migrating and it was about to rain heavily.
The second time: Xiao Wu was actively searching for it at midnight.
If it wasn’t a homicide, then who would burn ritual items in the rain and in the dead of night?
Only someone with a guilty conscience.
Morning had arrived. Everyone left Room 202 and went to the lobby.
The Fishman had mutated again. Their fingers had grown webbing, and thin membranes had formed beneath their ears, connecting to their cheeks.
Lin Jia had effectively become the leader. Asking the Fishman questions naturally fell to him.
Lin Jia asked, “Is the White Shadow a fog-like entity?”
The high school boy muttered anxiously, “Why not just ask if it’s ritual smoke…?”
The Buzzcut cursed, “Idiot. If it’s smoke but not from ritual items, the Fishman would say no.”
The Fishman said: “Yes.”
Everyone’s hearts tightened. Tension spread.
Second question. All eyes moved between Lin Jia and the Fishman.
Lin Jia: “Is the White Shadow fog created from burning ritual items?”
The Fishman grinned, revealing even sharper, densely packed teeth.
You can read the full completed story here with instant full access. ✨
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