The ancient stone walls seemed to absorb the faint light from the mountaintop.

Many corners of this ancient castle were filled with shadows, and unknown secrets might be hidden behind every door.

The cold stone walls and dim corridors, influenced by the killing intent, seemed to be permeated with an even more chilling aura.

The group walked through the castle corridors, maintaining a subtle distance.

Looking out the window, one could only see the misty forest and the vague outlines of the valleys, all hazy and mysterious.

Since the two betrayers, being vampire familiars, could only borrow the Blood Lord's power when he awakened, and since vampires usually seal themselves in a safe location during the day to isolate themselves from the light and fall into slumber, only to awaken at night.

Therefore, the betrayers only had one chance each night to use the unknown and terrifying Earl's power.

On the first day of the five-day killing game, the challengers, with no one yet killed, were at their peak. The two betrayers, unable to use the Blood Lord's power, did not dare to directly engage in a two-on-ten fight.

Instead, they wisely disguised themselves as normal challengers.

The strategy for daytime exploration naturally became for everyone to stay together, without leaving each other's sight.

This forced the betrayers to follow the group, preventing them from both committing murder and completing their own mission objectives during the day.

Similarly, it could greatly delay the betrayers' mission progress.

From the stone steps of the Holy Hall, they ascended the winding staircase to the second-floor attic landing, where they could still clearly see the main hall of the ground floor. Walking further inside, besides three locked giant bedrooms and several washrooms and storage rooms, the most conspicuous feature was a two-story library, directly connecting the castle's second and third floors.

The library was made of dark mahogany, with tall, ornate carved bookshelves extending along the walls to the ceiling. The shelves were filled with various ancient books from the Honing Empire, including ancient manuscripts and precious maps. In the center stood a writing desk, with a quill and an ink bottle placed on it, clearly indicating that this was once the reading and working place of the castle owner, Sir Caligula.

However, Frey did not ask everyone to spend a lot of time in the library searching for clues. He simply led the group up the spiral staircase inside the library to the castle's third floor.

On the way from the third to the fifth floor, besides the fixed three enclosed bedrooms on each floor, there were also the castle owner Sir Caligula's private bedroom, the castle's conference room, the cast iron room, the armory, the textile room, the studio, the pharmacy, the tower, and so on.

There were many places in the castle rooms they passed that seemed to hold clues.

However, the detective had no ideas.

He seemed to have seen through the distractions, acting in a straight line only for the most efficient plan he had already confirmed in his heart.

After a three-hour complete exploration of the castle's interior, the challengers finally confirmed that the five-story castle's architecture was covered with a solid magical formula, capable of withstanding extremely strong attacks, especially in the bedrooms, which had individually strengthened enchantments.

There were three rooms on each of the second to fifth floors, totaling exactly twelve safe bedrooms, and each challenger already possessed a magic key to open the corresponding room's doors and windows, right in their own pockets.

At this point, the mechanism of this shadow world became even clearer.

When the Blood Lord awakened at night and the betrayers could use their powers, everyone gathering together would most likely be killed all at once by the two betrayers.

Therefore, the strategy for the night was obviously for everyone to separate and hide in safe bedrooms.

Even if the vampire powers included attack or dispel types that could break through the bedroom's defenses, due to the limitation of only being able to borrow power once a day, and considering the absolute rationality that the shadow world had always maintained, only one or two safe bedrooms should be broken through on any given night at most.

The more concentrated they lived, the greater the probability of multiple challengers being killed in one go that night; the more dispersed they lived, the fewer deaths there might be that night.

If they couldn't catch the betrayers as soon as possible, five days might be enough for the two betrayers to kill all the other challengers.

Each bedroom's corresponding occupant was public knowledge before the shadow world began. Challengers with important identities were especially dangerous, especially the detective.

The only way to avoid danger was to go and live with a trusted challenger in their room.

And the challengers might even sacrifice themselves to protect the detective, and the betrayers must be prevented from directly killing the detective on the first night.

The earlier the detective died, the more this shadow world would tilt towards the betrayers' victory!

Correspondingly, if they could reasonably mislead the betrayers, or conduct a perfect psychological game, it was also possible to make the betrayers come up empty all night!

At this moment, after investigating the internal structure of the castle, the group, led by Frey, went downstairs and returned to the ground floor.

Frey went to the kitchen and food storage to find some portable food, which he put into the cross-body leather bag he found upstairs, and then went to the wine cellar to get a few bottles of sweet white wine.

The time was approaching nine o'clock in the morning.

In front of the double doors, the light surged freely between the window frames, passing through the colorful glass on the dome, highlighting the originally slightly dim interior of the building in a way that was sometimes bright and sometimes dark.

Frey pushed open the huge doors, and the group followed behind him, stepping out of this ancient castle for the first time from the ground floor, and the strong sunlight immediately gave them a sense of impact they had never felt before.

They finally saw the full view of this castle in the clouds.

Stepping out of the gate and looking back, the detailed decorations on the ancient castle's exterior walls appeared particularly clear under the morning light. The limestone walls formed a sharp contrast with the surrounding lush green forest, and the top-floor cantilevered platforms and spires looked particularly spectacular under the swirling clouds and mist.

Now what Frey instructed everyone to do was to go to the cliff edge together to confirm whether the [Geographer] and [Lawyer]'s information was correct.

If the information was true.

The credibility of two people's identities would become higher.

The castle was surrounded by mountains and trees, everywhere was lush, and the bleak autumn was even more gloomy.

Twelve figures walked through the forest, and the atmosphere became increasingly tense.

The trees in the mist looked like eerie shadows, and the shallow stream became a mysterious passage disappearing into the fog.

They knew that the real purpose of this trip was to confirm the condition of the bridge.

In just five minutes, the group arrived at the location of the broken cliff in the direction accurately described by the [Geographer].

The scene before them was terrifying. The road to the city-state was blocked by a huge broken cliff.

Even if their sight hadn't reached the edge, the eight-hundred-meter-high, hundred-meter-wide cliff had already brought a strong visual shock.

Just as Lan Qi predicted, the hundred-meter-long bridge was indeed destroyed.

It was as if someone had deliberately trapped everyone in this ancient castle.

It must have been the betrayers' actions using their vampire powers before the shadow world began.

The height of more than eight hundred meters and the distance of more than one hundred meters to the opposite bank, as well as the air defense magic effect of the national defense barrier, seemed to isolate them from the rest of the world, making them prisoners of this rocky island.

In this bleak morning.

Everything was in a stage of clueless mystery.

Just when everyone's mood was about to fall into the extreme of depression because of the broken bridge.

Frey, like a detective who was about to solve a case, walked towards the broken cliff alone!

(End of this chapter)