Romantic Hotel

The dawn of the fifth day brought no hope, but rather weighed heavily on the survivors' hearts like a tattered rag soaked in sewage.

After four consecutive days of intense death screening, the dozen or so survivors were no longer in their original state.

Although the members of the seventh sequence were exhausted, with bloodshot and solemn eyes, they still maintained discipline and composure in their actions, and their equipment was relatively neat.

In contrast, the random participants were in a much worse state—some had lost an arm, the wound hastily bandaged with torn sheets, oozing dark red blood; some had strange bluish-purple tinges on their faces and walked with a limp; and many more had unfocused eyes, like frightened birds, overreacting to the slightest disturbance.

This contrast, under the oppressive and desperate environment, fermented into a kind of distorted hostility.

"Look at them... how come they've barely lost any men?" A man with a missing arm leaned against the wall, his eyes gloomily sweeping over the Seventh Sequence members who were quietly recounting yesterday's events not far away. "We fought tooth and nail, losing limbs, and they're doing just fine, their clothes aren't even that torn!"

"Exactly! They must know something! Or... they might even be in cahoots with this awful place!" A woman with burn marks on her face chimed in, her voice shrill with fear and jealousy. "That Bai Xu, those eyes, they're really creepy!"

Rule Ten: Trust your colleagues. In a romantic hotel, teamwork is the foundation of survival.

To some of the randomly selected participants, this rule sounded more like a malicious mockery or a trap to lure them into lowering their guard.

Bai Xu noticed the pervasive malice.

He frowned, then walked over, trying to ease the tension, his voice as calm as possible: "Everyone, I know you're all under a lot of pressure. Conflicts in the rules and hidden traps are impossible to guard against, and we've suffered losses too. In the current situation, mutual suspicion is pointless. Perhaps Rule Ten..."

"Rule Ten? Fuck Rule Ten!" The man with the severed hand abruptly interrupted Bai Xu, roaring uncontrollably, spitting almost onto Bai Xu's face. "Of course you fucking say unity is good! So you can continue to use us as scapegoats, right? You uniformed lackeys! Do you think you can clear the level by selling us all out?!"

"Yes! Share your equipment! Tell us what you know! Otherwise, how will anyone know what you're up to!" The scalded woman screamed, and several other random participants on the verge of a mental breakdown surrounded her, their eyes filled with distrust and greed.

Bai Xu's face darkened. He wasn't unfamiliar with being questioned by teammates or temporary collaborators, but in this place, unwarranted malice and sabotage were more deadly than monsters. His eyes turned cold, and the patience he had previously tried to appease vanished instantly.

"Shut up." His voice wasn't loud, but it was like a block of ice hitting the ground.

But those on the verge of madness wouldn't listen. The cursing grew louder, the profanities incessant, and some even tried to shove Hong Yuan, who was closest to them.

Bai Xu's gaze turned completely cold. A strange green flashed deep within his eyes, not a sign of activating the 'Eye of Rules,' but rather a more subtle and energy-consuming fluctuation of another kind of power.

He didn't bother to determine the truth or falsehood of Rule Ten—it was pointless.

He directly mobilized his vast and refined spiritual power, like the most skillful yet domineering scalpel, instantly "cutting" into the invisible "rule power" that constituted Rule Ten permeating the hotel space!

He was performing an extremely dangerous operation—not verification, but limited tampering.

He forcibly anchored and amplified the potentially vague and guiding "psychological influence" or unknown punishment of Rule 10 into immediate and absolute annihilation when targeting these individuals who harbored clear malice towards him and his team and had already launched verbal and minor attacks.

The process was extremely brief, but Bai Xu's face turned as pale as paper at a visible speed, and fine beads of cold sweat even seeped from his forehead. The blood vessels in his temples throbbed slightly, indicating that he had consumed a great deal of energy.

Just as the man with the severed hand, who was cursing the loudest and reaching for Red Kite's equipment, uttered another vicious curse—

His voice abruptly stopped.

His entire being seemed to be frozen in time, all his movements and expressions solidified. Then, starting from the inside out, his body silently disintegrated and decayed, like pencil marks erased by an eraser, or like a natural decay process accelerated a thousandfold.

In less than two seconds, a living person was turned into a clump of gray dust in full view of everyone, falling softly onto the dark red carpet without leaving a trace of blood.

Dead silence.

Absolute silence.

All the random participants who had been shouting and shoving just moments before turned pale as if they had been choked, their eyes bulging as they stared in terror at the dust cloud, then at Bai Xu.

Bai Xu swayed slightly, but quickly regained his balance.

With a blank expression, he took out a small glass bottle from his tactical waist pack. The bottle had a faint blue glow and a "Grade B" label on it. He uncorked it, tilted his head back, and drank the liquid inside in one gulp.

As the medicine went down his throat, his pale face regained a sliver of color at a visible speed. Although the fatigue in his eyes could not be completely eliminated, the weakness caused by the severe depletion of his mental energy was forcibly suppressed.

His cold gaze swept over the silent, trembling random participants. His voice, though not loud, carried clearly to everyone's ears, brimming with undisguised indifference:

"It's a favor we do for you. It's our right not to help you."

"To survive, you need brains, ability, and luck. Not by throwing tantrums or using others as stepping stones."

"If anyone tries to target us again, or tries to cause internal strife and hold us back..." His gaze fell on the pile of ashes, the meaning of which was self-evident.

After saying that, he stopped looking at the terrified random participants and turned back to his own team.

Although Hong Yuan, You Ying, and the others were also alarmed by Bai Xu's near-rule-level annihilation techniques, they were mostly relieved and firmly supported him. They quickly surrounded him, forming a tighter defensive circle.

Those surviving random participants no longer dared to look at the Seventh Sequence with any disrespect or greed.

They huddled together, trembling, away from Bai Xu's squad. The suspicion hadn't disappeared, but it was mixed with extreme fear, turning into a more complex alienation, one of awe and despair.

The virus of suspicion was temporarily suppressed by the more direct fear of death, but the hotel's omnipresent malice was not diminished in the slightest.

On the fifth day, amidst blood and dust, and the newly defined, cold, and fragile boundaries, the story slowly came to an end.

The number of survivors has decreased again, and an invisible chasm has separated the living.