Iris 23

At that moment, Qiu Zijia was alone behind the apartment building, crouched in a patch of grass. His heart was pounding, and the Fool Card in his hand trembled along with him. Keeping close to the wall, he moved forward with painstaking care, following the Fool Card's guidance in search of the right path.

Mu Qin had told him that the Fool Card would only point a player toward the location of one thing. It might lead to an item needed to open an exit, such as a key or another tool. Or it might point directly to the so-called hidden exit.

So what exactly was a hidden exit?

Just as the name implied, it was an exit that had been concealed.

The Iris Orphanage map had one obvious exit: the massive iron gate in the courtyard. Though it did not look especially sturdy, that enormous gate had trapped Mu Qin and the others securely inside the orphanage. To open it, they had to find its key. Once one knew the situation, anyone could infer that much.

Which raised a new question: aside from that iron gate, did the orphanage have any other exits?

Of course it did.

According to Xu Fu, every map in the game basically had two or more exits, or ways to escape.

The map Xu Fu had encountered in his last game had been a fairly small island. There had been two means of transportation there: a speedboat at the island's dock, and a small submarine parked in an underground cavern beneath the island. Players could escape by submarine as well.

Those two vehicles were the means of escape available to the players. No one needed to know how to pilot a boat or submarine. They only needed to find the speedboat key that would start the boat, or a tool to open the submarine's sealed hatch.

They only had to find one of those two items. Once they used it to start the speedboat or submarine, the game system would recognize that the players had escaped successfully.

There was one important point to note. Even if a human was already inside an escape vehicle, say, standing on the speedboat, the killer could still attack them as long as the boat had not been started with its key. The killer could climb aboard and hack at people. But the instant the speedboat was started, the system would judge the player to have escaped, and the player would be teleported to the safe house at once.

Xu Fu said that in the end, he had left the island by speedboat and become the last survivor.

However, Xu Fu suspected that the sealed-off island had contained more than just a speedboat and submarine. There seemed to have been a third vehicle that could help the humans escape: a so-called hidden means of escape.

He had found a helicopter pad on the island. The veterans on his team told him that the presence of a helipad could not be meaningless; a helicopter was very likely the hidden escape route. There had been no helicopter on the pad at the time, though, so Xu Fu guessed that they might have needed to meet some condition in the game before it would appear.

And on the Iris Orphanage map, Xu Fu believed there was likewise a hidden exit, or hidden means of escape.

"This orphanage map is much simpler than the island map I went through before," Xu Fu said. "Its hidden exit is easy enough to guess, too. Apart from the gate, I think there may be an entrance like a tunnel somewhere in a corner of the orphanage."

Mu Qin's Fool Card pointed toward the second floor of the church, while Qiu Zijia's Fool Card pointed in another direction.

That made it obvious. Qiu Zijia's Fool Card was pointing to the hidden exit.

Under normal circumstances, the human side would not consider escaping through a hidden exit or hidden means of escape. Opening one apparently required meeting some extraordinarily demanding condition. Xu Fu did not know what that condition was, and he had never tried it. But their situation was extremely dire now.

The moment Mu Qin saw that the storage room door had been opened and the ladder inside had vanished, he guessed that Zhou Yue had gotten ahead of them to take the key to the exit gate. Zhou Yue had intended from the start to find the key and keep it in his own hands, cutting off the human side's retreat. It was too late for Mu Qin and the others to catch up now, and taking the key back from Zhou Yue would be exceptionally difficult. Mu Qin had no choice but to propose a new strategy: they would try the hidden exit.

The plan was much the same as before. Mu Qin and Xu Fu would each draw the killer's attention, while Qiu Zijia used his Fool Card to search for the hidden exit. Once he found it, he would have to figure out how to open it himself. Mu Qin and Xu Fu had to keep the killer occupied to buy time, leaving Qiu Zijia as the only one free to act.

Qiu Zijia immediately felt the weight of the responsibility on him. It frightened him so badly that his face went white, but he forced himself to muster every bit of courage he had. Gritting his teeth, he searched cautiously through the pitch-black courtyard. The tarot card glowing faintly in his hand seemed to be his only hope.

Perhaps it was only Qiu Zijia's imagination, but the tarot card in his hand seemed to be growing brighter and brighter, as though signaling that he was getting closer to the hidden exit. Yet just as he steadied himself and slowly approached his destination, he heard footsteps behind him.

When Qiu Zijia was alone, he was exceptionally sensitive. That was only natural. The loneliness of this environment kept him in an extreme state of tension; the slightest sound could startle him like a frightened bird for a long while. The instant he heard the footsteps, Qiu Zijia spun around. Sure enough, a figure was coming toward him from behind. In the pitch-black courtyard, all he could make out was a dark human-shaped shadow.

Instinctively, Qiu Zijia knew it was neither Xu Fu nor Mu Qin. If Mu Qin had come looking for him, he would certainly have called Qiu Zijia's name.

If it was not Mu Qin or Xu Fu, then there was only one person who could have come for him.

Qiu Zijia was instantly seized by terror. It spread from his brain through every organ in his body. So frightened that he sprang out of the grass, he stopped caring which way he was going and began to run desperately forward. Every cell in his body was shrieking at him to run!

So Qiu Zijia ran, clutching the tarot card in his hand as he rushed into the courtyard, black enough that he could not see his own fingers. Seeing him flee, the killer, who had been following Qiu Zijia slowly, began to run after him as well.

But Qiu Zijia was not fast enough. His stamina was no match for the killer's. The courtyard was overgrown with weeds and shrouded in darkness; he could see nothing and could easily trip over a stone or something else. Qiu Zijia had to proceed carefully, and that caution slowed him down even further. Before long, the killer caught up with him.

Qiu Zijia did not know whether the other person had a weapon, but he seemed to hear the killer swinging something, producing the faint whistle of an object cutting through the air. Then a burst of agony shot through Qiu Zijia's back. He cried out and hit the ground with a thud.

Looking back, Qiu Zijia saw that what had struck him was a stone the size of a palm. Even a rock casually picked up by the killer could become a terrifying weapon. The killer had thrown it at Qiu Zijia, striking him squarely in the back and sending him stumbling to the ground.

Qiu Zijia tried desperately to scramble to his feet, but just as he pushed himself up on his arms and started to rise, the killer reached him and planted a foot on his back, right where the stone had hit him. The pain drove Qiu Zijia flat against the ground again.

The killer seemed intent on tormenting him, so he put all his weight into it. As the killer, every aspect of Zhou Yue's physical ability had been raised to its peak by the Death Card. His strength was no joke. Even that seemingly casual step made Qiu Zijia scream miserably and struggle beneath his foot.

Zhou Yue did not particularly enjoy hearing people scream, and Qiu Zijia's cries were not very pleasant. He soon took his foot away and stared at Qiu Zijia for a second, seemingly considering how to kill him.

The simplest way would be to snap his neck.

Zhou Yue had originally had a weapon. In the game, a player who drew the Death Card and was assigned the role of killer would have a weapon spawn near their spawn point, something like a knife. Whether they took it was up to them. But once they carried it, other humans would usually suspect them of being the killer on sight. Some killers therefore chose not to take their weapons in order to conceal their identities. Others even took the weapon, then secretly planted it on someone else to divert suspicion.

Zhou Yue had taken his. At first, he carried it to the church, set the knife on a table there, and then hid. Later, when Xu Fu came to explore the church and found the knife, Zhou Yue deliberately shouted that Xu Fu was the killer and struck him with a wooden plank to provoke him. In the heat of the moment, Xu Fu fought Zhou Yue. During the fight, Zhou Yue deliberately let himself meet the blade, allowing Xu Fu to leave several bloody gashes across his neck and body.

Then Zhou Yue clutched his wounds and ran out, all the way back to the apartment building at the spawn point, where he lay sprawled in the stairwell and pretended to be dead.

That not only gave him an alibi, but also redirected everyone's attention toward Xu Fu, making Xu Fu seem far more likely to be the killer.

But it also meant handing his weapon over to Xu Fu.

Still, Zhou Yue did not need a weapon to kill someone. It was the work of an instant. He crouched down, grabbed Qiu Zijia by the shoulder, and turned him over. Preparing to strangle the guy, Zhou Yue pinned Qiu Zijia's torso with his knee, then gripped Qiu Zijia's throat and began to squeeze.

Qiu Zijia's eyes immediately began to roll back from suffocation. He reached out and pounded Zhou Yue's arm and shoulder, even groping blindly over Zhou Yue's body.

He was feeling around Zhou Yue's leg.

Zhou Yue found that odd. No matter how hard someone struggled, why would they be feeling around his leg? But before Zhou Yue could sense that anything was wrong, Qiu Zijia, whose throat he was choking, suddenly had bloodshot eyes. The muscles all over his body swelled, veins bulging, and his physique seemed to strengthen dozens of times over in an instant. With his left hand, he seized the wrist that was choking him. His strength seemed to surge to a terrifying degree as well: he actually squeezed blue marks into Zhou Yue's arm and forcibly tore Zhou Yue's hand away from his own throat.

At the same time, Qiu Zijia's right hand reached Zhou Yue's left pants pocket. The pocket held the key Zhou Yue had found earlier on the second floor of the church. With one swift grab, Qiu Zijia took the key.

Zhou Yue had to admit that the string of actions from this fellow, who had seemed utterly incapable of resistance, left him completely dumbfounded. Realizing Qiu Zijia had swiped his key, he tried to take it back. But Qiu Zijia threw a straightforward, swift left hook into Zhou Yue's face, knocking him sideways. Qiu Zijia seized the chance to leap to his feet and run toward the gate he had long since memorized the location of, key in hand.

Zhou Yue sprang up after him. At last, he understood: Qiu Zijia had been carrying more than the Fool Card. He also had a Chariot Card!