Chapter 26, The Wrong Rules

It would have been better if that person hadn't retreated. The Sharp Knife Shadow hadn't even noticed anyone else appearing in front of him, as he was focused on Zhong Bingxuan. The moment that person retreated, it caught the Sharp Knife Shadow's attention.

The dagger-like figure peeked out and tentatively reached towards the person, who kept retreating. Excitedly, it let out a loud gulp and devoured the person.

While eating, they made a mess of flesh and blood everywhere.

Suppressing her discomfort, Zhong Bingxuan ran towards the maids.

The ghost servants had reverted to their normal maidservant appearances and were chattering and complaining that their prey had been eaten by the gluttonous ghost with the sharp knife. Zhong Bingxuan walked up to them, and they all stopped complaining.

The head maid, Xiaoman, had a strange expression and said in a sinister tone, "Young Miss, why are you running outside at this hour?"

The tone was very rude, showing no respect whatsoever for the master of the mansion, but considering Zhong Bingxuan's original personality, this was quite normal and not surprising at all.

"Don't you know?"

Zhong Bingxuan did not answer the question posed by the head maid Xiaoman. Instead, she looked at Xiaoman with a mixture of suspicion and frantic longing.

The head maid, Xiaoman, was startled and took several steps back.

"Young Miss, I am the Madam's personal maid. If you lay a hand on me, the Madam will not forgive you."

"That's right, Xiaoman is the madam's trusted maid. The young lady must have taken the wrong medicine this time. She actually dared to show her appetite to Xiaoman. She doesn't want to live anymore."

...

Xiaoman held considerable influence among the maids, and many of them spoke up for her.

However, no one suspected that Zhong Bingxuan was possessed by an evil spirit, which shows that Zhong Bingxuan's previous guess was correct. The original owner was not a truly innocent and naive person with a shy, introverted, and pure-hearted persona.

While she was alive, the servants may have bullied her, but after her death, Wang Qiuling's status in the mansion was probably different, otherwise these maids wouldn't have been so afraid.

"Such a serious matter as my second sister being possessed by an evil spirit, how could my mother's personal maid be completely unaware of it? I strongly suspect that you, Xiaoman, are possessed by an evil spirit."

Zhong Bingxuan's gaze became increasingly blatant, her eyes constantly scanning Xiaoman up and down, as if considering where to make her move.

Zhong Bingxuan imitated the way the servants in the hall looked at the player playing Wang Shixuan. Since everyone knew that the original owner was also two-faced, she naturally had to make good use of this to reduce the possibility of her role-playing making mistakes.

However, this meant that several of the rules Zhong Bingxuan initially received for playing the role were incorrect.

The first rule of the role: Miss Wang Qiuling's birthday is also the anniversary of her mother's death. Her father dotes on her mother and hates her to the core.

After three days of observation and understanding, Zhong Bingxuan realized that the first half was true: the original owner was born and her mother died shortly after.

Zhong Bingxuan had previously thought the latter half was also true, and was wary that Wang's father, the patriarch, might secretly kill Wang Qiuling, his jinx daughter.

However, judging from what happened in the hall today, Mr. Wang may not like his eldest daughter as much as his second daughter, but he certainly doesn't hate her to the core. Therefore, the story about the father loving the mother may be false.

That makes sense. If he really loved the original owner's mother that much, how could he marry his own sister-in-law before the original owner's mother's body was even cold? Wouldn't he be afraid that the original owner's mother would be so angry that she would die?

As for playing the second rule: the head of the household ignores you, the servants bully you, and you are obsequious and afraid of offending others.

Based on the fact that Zhong Bingxuan held her own against her stepmother, and that Wang's father did not show excessive favoritism towards Wang Jingjing, but instead reprimanded her, it can be seen that the original owner's situation with Wang's father was not as humble as the rules stated.

If Zhong Bingxuan hadn't discovered this, it could easily have led to a situation like Wang Shixuan's, where she was killed by the head of the family.

A lady from a respectable family, unable to even keep a lowly servant in line, has brought shame upon herself. Who knows what kind of person Wang's father will become?

Speaking of which, this dungeon is even more dangerous than the previous one. Players need to be careful of the numerous traps the dungeon has set up to prevent themselves from being directly killed by it, unlike the previous dungeon where you could successfully pass it just by relying on your strong combat power.

If you're not careful in this dungeon, even someone with high combat power can die faster than a weakling.

There is a third rule: a child without a mother's guidance is ill-mannered.

The fifth rule is that no portraits of people are ever displayed in the house. If you see a portrait of a person, you are either seeing things or dreaming.

Zhong Bingxuan had never encountered anything like this before; no servant would openly point at her nose and curse her. The truth of the third rule was unknown.

Zhong Bingxuan had walked through the Wang residence for the past three days, but found no portrait paintings, making it difficult to determine whether this one was genuine or not.

Zhong Bingxuan couldn't find the fourth and sixth rules either, and she had a bad feeling that she had overlooked something.

The road back to her boudoir was anything but peaceful. Either strange creatures would appear to scare her, or she would encounter other players being chased around by their ghostly servants. She was on high alert and had no time to think about the rules of the original owner's role.

Besides that, an even more thrilling incident occurred when Zhong Bingxuan returned to her boudoir and a servant came out of her room.

"How dare you! Who gave you permission to enter my room without my consent?"

Zhong Bingxuan looked at the four servants who came out of her room with a gloomy expression. The four strange servants were so frightened that they trembled and knelt down to beg for mercy.

“Young Miss, it was Madam who said that evil spirits had appeared, and everyone’s room had to be searched to prevent anyone from having anything that shouldn’t be there. We were just following orders.”

The ghost servants, who had always been indifferent to Zhong Bingxuan, were so frightened by her change of expression that they lost their human form and turned into bloody, fleshy figures without skin, which made people feel terrified and as if their skin was being peeled off alive.

Zhong Bingxuan controlled her gaze from falling on the ugly servants, and thought about how those servants seemed to be the same way. She was very afraid when she got angry.

Could it be that the original owner has some secret she doesn't know about, and once she gets angry, something very serious will happen? It's a pity she doesn't have the original owner's memories, so it's not easy for her to back down.

Fortunately, not far from Zhong Bingxuan's house, the searching servants were excitedly shouting that they had caught an evil object, which contained a demonic artifact that the object itself had made to possess their relatives and friends.

Zhong Bingxuan turned her attention to the other side. With her excellent eyesight, she immediately recognized the evil artifact that people were talking about as the original owner's role-playing rule that she had obtained earlier.

The only difference was that the person who was caught had a different social status and the rules for playing the role were also different from hers.

The rules for playing the role of the servant Qiaoqiao are as follows:

[Article 1: Abide by the rules for servants under Father Wang; no overstepping of these rules is permitted.]

[Second rule: You must remember that when you're in the Wang family, besides the master, the only thing you must never do is offend the young lady. Otherwise, she won't notice what you do.]

[Article 3: Servants may handle any unusual individuals they discover themselves without reporting to the master.]

[Article 4: The master is the head of the Wang family; the servants must not conceal anything from him.]

[Article 5: No portraits of people are ever displayed in the house. If you see a portrait there, it means the late Madam misses the eldest daughter terribly. You need to go to the eldest daughter, tell her about it, and take her to the place where the portrait appears.]