Chapter 1

In the illusion, the blonde little girl wore a bright smile, clumsily wielding a colored paintbrush, scribbling on a book.

Her seated posture was a bit crooked and awkward, and next to the pile of toys behind her were two child-sized auxiliary crutches made of metal.

The blonde woman sitting beside her gazed at the little girl with a kind and gentle expression mixed with pity and sorrow, silently reaching out her palm to stroke the girl's soft hair.

"Mommy, look what I drew!"

The girl held up the book, which depicted two pink human figures, one large and one small, wearing ballet tutus and striking dance poses. She used the book to cover half of her chubby face, and looked at her mother with her two large, watery eyes, begging, "Mommy, when I get better, will you teach me to dance?"

A faint trace of sadness flashed in the woman's eyes. She blinked, revealing a shallow smile, and hugged her daughter, kissing her forehead. "...Okay, Alice."

The illusion ended there. As the mist slowly dissipated, the room returned to its dilapidated and decayed state.

"It's over?"

Li Ang frowned, glanced at the note in his hand, and muttered to himself, "Hmm... it seems Alice has polio, and her parents can't take care of her for some reason.

Did the couple move away? Or did they realize the house was abnormal and want to send Alice away?"

Just as he was lost in thought, a burst of rapid footsteps suddenly sounded from above the ceiling.

Tap, tap, tap tap, tap.

The footsteps were very rhythmic. Judging from the direction of the sound, the owner of the footsteps seemed to be jumping and drawing circles in the floor above.

Li Ang silently turned off the flashlight, took out the three-edged bone-tipped spear, held it in his hand, aimed the spear blade at the source of the footsteps, and followed the other party in drawing circles.

Suddenly, the sound subsided, and everything was silent. Li Ang quietly bent down, leaning on the spear, and looked up indifferently.

"Creak—"

A square wooden door embedded in the ceiling was slowly lifted open, revealing a dark passage leading to the room upstairs.

In the moonlight, the fine dust slowly falling from the room above could be clearly seen.

In the silence, a small leg wearing a dirty ballet shoe and dust-covered white tights stretched out from the narrow wooden door passage and slowly rested on the edge of the wooden door.

Then, another small leg.

With Li Ang's keen insight, he easily identified that these two legs did not belong to any of his teammates.

As early as when all five players were still in front of the villa, Li Ang had a general understanding of the height, weight, and body shape of the other teammates through scanning and observation.

These two legs, although not as long as Forest Cat's, were superior in terms of curves.

Comparable to a statue, extremely beautiful, good-looking.

Human? Or a monster?

Li Ang hid in the darkness, holding his breath and concealing his aura, quietly watching the two small legs hanging from the ceiling swing back and forth like a pendulum.

After a moment, the two small legs seemed to finally make up their minds, slowly moved forward, and jumped down from the wooden door.

Thud.

The two legs fell onto the floor of the room, almost losing their balance, and it took some effort to regain their footing.

With the help of the moonlight, Li Ang also completely saw the other party's appearance.

They were indeed long legs wearing ballet shoes, ballet tights, and a ballet skirt, but the body part above the hip bones was missing, and only two slender arms were suspended in the air above the long legs.

The palms of those two arms looked dirtier than other parts, and the blood scabs and dust from torn and re-healed wounds were mixed together, presenting a dark, reddish-black color.

The "ballerina" without a body, only limbs, continued its ballet dance in an extremely clumsy posture.

Because it had no eyes, it often bumped into tables, chairs, and debris, falling to the ground, looking pitiful and not at all threatening.

"There's a mole above the elbow on the left shoulder..."

Li Ang said silently, "The same as Alice's mother in the illusion.

And the fact that she now has only limbs and no torso probably corresponds to the abnormal organ marked as 'limbs' in the mission objective."

Li Ang did not actively attack the other party, but instead shrank to the side of the wall, watching her tiptoe, dance clumsily, and slowly move to the center of the room.

Then, she roughly made a "bending over" motion, leaned down, knelt on the ground, and groped around on the ground with her hands. She seemed to be looking for something.

Li Ang's heart stirred. He gently rubbed his fingertip on the note written to Alice. After thinking for a moment, he stretched out the spear, used the spear blade to gently turn over the pile of debris on the ground,

Found the same fairy tale book as in the illusion just now, and with a flick of the spear blade, he smoothly tossed it half a meter in front of the other party.

Soon, the inhuman monster with only limbs found the fairy tale book. Her hands trembled as she held up the book, turned to the page with the graffiti, knelt on the ground and curled up into a ball, and her limbs slowly lost color, petrifying into a statue.

[Abnormal Limbs Cleared, Seven Abnormal Organs Remaining]

The system prompt sounded not only in Li Ang's ears, but also in the ears of his other teammates.

At this moment, Stonemason was standing in a spacious and bright room.

The doors and windows in the room were tightly closed, the heavy curtains were airtight, and the sconces emitted light, illuminating rows of shelves that almost filled the room.

"Solved one so quickly,"

Stonemason nodded and said to himself, "It's a pity, I don't know who solved it."

He took out two ordinary plastic craft knives, held them in his hands, cautiously approached the shelves, and examined them carefully. "This is, a storage room?"

What was placed on the shelves were not ceramic tableware, cultural relics, or antiques,

But rather bizarre items such as spider specimens, dried lizards, wild boar skulls, and glass bottles containing unknown dark green mucus.

There were even some glass jars filled with formaldehyde, soaking deformed stillborn lambs.

It was hard to imagine that the luxurious and exquisite manor would be related to the strange and bizarre items placed on the shelves.

"Witchcraft...?"

Stonemason scanned the shelves, muttering to himself.

His knowledge of mystics was not bad. The items placed here were all alchemical props used in witchcraft.

"The owner of the Williams manor is a wizard? Or even further, the family that owns the mansion itself is a family of wizards... that would explain why this manor is so strange."

As he muttered, his gaze swept across a row of shelves, and suddenly he stopped and stared at a glass jar.

It was filled with a light yellow, transparent liquid, and a throbbing human heart was suspended in the liquid.

Below the glass jar was a label—Mr. Williams' Heart Specimen, 10, 8, 1830

Stonemason stared blankly at the throbbing heart, his own breathing becoming more and more rapid.

He could feel that as Williams' heart became more and more vibrant, his own heart was slowly withering, until it tended towards sudden cardiac arrest.