It was this vague intuition that prompted Lu Shi to return here.
Shaking off the nagging woman, Lu Shi continued forward.
Before he knew it, he had reached the end of the corridor, and it seemed that the influence of this place on him had diminished considerably.
Was it because his spirit had become stronger? Lu Shi felt that the efficiency of this self-strengthening was even more outrageous than when he cultivated on his own.
Just how powerful must the person who created all this be? The mere thought of it terrified Lu Shi.
Upon returning to the prison, Lu Shi examined the inmates even more closely.
"My sister, she, she was only 20 years old, and she was kidnapped!" Lu Shi stared at a withered old man, and then he heard a ghostly cry in his ear: "That old man, he treated her like a beast of burden! How could he get drunk and beat her to death!"
The old man shuddered in fear; he didn't even dare to look Lu Shi in the eye.
"What did you do wrong to be locked up here?" Lu Shi leaned against the iron bars, and for a moment, he really had the urge to reach in and strangle the old man.
Fortunately, Lu Shi quickly restrained himself. "Was this impulse because I was influenced?"
When Lu Shi opened his attribute panel, he found that his sanity value had dropped by five points.
This kind of subtle, insidious psychological attack was, in Lu Shi's view, even more troublesome than the prison guard's massive fist.
The old man didn't answer Lu Shi's question. He just covered his head and shrank into the corner, nervously watching Lu Shi.
The other prisoners stared at Lu Shi, their wide eyes filled with fear, as if Lu Shi had replaced the prison guards.
Unable to get in, Lu Shi had to be moved to a different cell.
He walked up to a woman, who was quite rare among the prisoners, most of whom were men, with women making up only one-tenth of the group.
Moreover, when this female prisoner saw Lu Shi, she wasn't flustered at all; she even dared to look him in the eye with her head held high. Lu Shi found this very interesting.
"Why were you locked up here?" Lu Shi asked.
"I don't know," the woman said frankly. She had a habit of touching her earlobe with her hand.
“You’re lying.” Lu Shi recalled the words of a ghost, a child: “I was killed by my teacher. She, she covered my face with a pillow while I was napping, making it impossible for me to breathe, and I suffocated to death.”
Judging from her appearance alone, it's hard to imagine that this beautiful young woman had killed someone.
"Yes, they all say I killed a child." The woman scoffed. "But I have no recollection of it at all. Who knows if it's just a fabrication! These days, isn't it normal to be framed? And what about you? Aren't you a criminal too?"
“I killed my wife and then dismembered her,” Lu Shi said calmly. “But I think the same as you: perhaps we were framed.”
After saying those words that shocked the viewers in the live broadcast room, Lu Shi observed the expressions of the prisoners.
Unfortunately, only a few people reacted. The vast majority of prisoners seemed not to hear, remaining numbly standing in place.
lifeless.
It's strange that these ruthless murderers changed their ways so quickly after being imprisoned. Something's not right.
Lu Shi had seen some evildoers in the cultivation world who, even on their deathbeds, did not regret the sins they had committed.
On the contrary, they would even boast to others about how many people they had killed, and they enjoyed doing so immensely.
But these prisoners were completely different. They all looked like they had killed someone out of a momentary misunderstanding.
However, according to the descriptions of those ghosts, everyone here is a born criminal.
“A born bad guy.” Lu Shi smiled, and couldn’t help but think of himself.
At this point, Lu Shi finally made his decision to use his ability.
A strange sensation immediately surged through Lu Shi's body, eventually reaching his eyes.
When he opened his eyes, everything before him had changed dramatically.
It was as if he had seen a new world he had never been to before.
"Is this the truth?" Looking at everything before him, Lu Shi smiled and suddenly understood everything.
Unfortunately, by the time Lu Shi wanted to turn around and look for more clues, his ability had already failed.
He covered his eyes, letting them recover slowly. "A terrifying ability, but unfortunately, its duration is too short, and it leaves the body extremely weak afterward. In the future, one must be careful of their surroundings when using it."
The viewers in the live stream didn't know what Lu Shi had done. From their perspective, Lu Shi's eyes suddenly turned red, and then he covered his eyes.
They had no idea what happened along the way.
However, this didn't stop the group from chatting idly in the Silver Hall: "Was he using his ability?"
"It could also be because you've been wearing contact lenses for too long and they're tiring."
"I don't understand why he had to come down here; it doesn't make any sense at all!"
"Indeed, his current actions are very strange. He's still a newbie after all; he can't handle B-rank dungeons."
"So people need to recognize their own abilities. Trying to trigger mysterious dungeons and ending up killing yourself!"
Compared to the previous newbie dungeons, Lu Shi didn't attract many viewers this time.
After all, there are too many good live streams in the Silver Hall, so who would want to watch a newcomer?
Even Red Spider turned and left, leaving one of her underlings to keep watch for her.
Lu Shi still didn't turn on the live chat; his vision returned after five seconds. He then opened the panel and, unsurprisingly, found that his stamina had changed from 92/100 to 82/90.
"Are you leaving?" the woman asked Lu Shi.
“Yes,” Lu Shi glanced at the other person, hesitated for a moment, and said, “Believe what you believe, seeing is believing.”
The woman frowned and didn't say anything more.
Lu Shi didn't explain. When he discovered that the plague dog in his cell was gone, he left without looking back.
Having seen the "real" Lu Shi, one feels a greater sense of pity when looking at the vengeful spirits in the corridor.
Standing at the stairwell once again, Lu Shi chose to go upstairs without hesitation this time.
The second floor houses the prison guards' dormitories and offices, while the third floor is a laboratory. Lu Shi decided to explore the second floor first, looking for more clues.
But to his surprise, as soon as he reached the second floor, he heard heavy footsteps, which sounded a lot like those of the prison guards.
Lu Shi reacted quickly and took a step back without hesitation, showing the viewers in the live broadcast room his excellent waist strength and flexibility.
He heard the sound of a nose sniffing, which gave Lu Shi a bad feeling.
Could the prison guards on this floor possibly identify someone by their smell?
When Lu heard the footsteps getting closer, he immediately threw out a banana—or rather, a banana peel.
Lu Shi then saw a prison guard with pus oozing from his eyes and his arms covered in green pustules fly out as if he had lost his momentum.
"Wow!" Lu Shi exclaimed in surprise upon seeing this: "This prop is amazing!"
Finding that no other prison guards had come out, Lu Shi immediately rushed out and found that the guard had run headfirst into the wall and passed out.
Unfortunately, the banana peel he stepped on was completely useless, even though Lu Shi wanted to make use of it.
Lu Shi, who was never afraid of corpses, took a closer look and realized that it was no wonder the prison guard could only smell with his nose; it turned out he was blind.
However, the infection he was carrying was much more serious than that of the prison guards on the first floor.
"Eek..." Suddenly, a door in front of Lu Shi was pushed open silently.
Chapter 9
☪ True Plague Prison
Lu Shi reacted very quickly. The moment he heard the sound, various scenarios flashed through his mind, and he made what he considered to be the best decision within a second.
Without hesitation, he embraced the dead prison guard, using the monster's corpse to shield himself from the monster's body.
Even though the prison guard's body had begun to rot and emitted a nauseating stench, Lu Shi endured it expressionlessly.
This amazing move immediately earned Lu Shi a batch of gifts, and his previously pitiful popularity finally soared.
The audience in the Silver Hall also noticed that a television set that was originally in the far corner suddenly jumped to a mid-to-lower position.
"Huh, is the streamer about to die, or is it some kind of amazing move? The popularity is rising so fast!"
"Wait a minute, 'The Secret of the Plague Prison'? I don't remember this dungeon?"
"A hidden dungeon! Good heavens, let's see what happened!"
More and more people flocked to Lu Shi's live stream, and the number of viewers, which was originally in the hundreds, jumped to thousands.
The new viewers who flocked in didn't see the anchor at first glance, but they did see a green-haired hand slowly reaching out from behind the door.
"Where's the streamer? Is he dead?"
"No offense intended, just offering incense to the streamer and praying that I live a few more days!"
"The new guy, the streamer is sticking to the corpse right now!"
"Hahaha, as expected of the Demon Lord I know, your skills are still as flashy as ever!"
"The streamer's judgment and execution are amazing. These monsters can distinguish their own kind by smell, so he simply went along with them!"
"Isn't the streamer a germaphobe? She must be feeling awful right now!"
Lu Shi was indeed in great pain. Who would have thought that the pustules on the corpse would burst open, and the foul-smelling pus dripped onto his clothes, making Lu Shi want to immediately use a cleansing spell on himself.
Of course, he could only endure it, because the monster behind the door was very strong.
Lu Shi's senses told him that if he unfortunately angered the other party, he would not be far from death.
The monster finally emerged, and it looked even uglier than Lu Shi had imagined.
It was enormous; its decaying head was almost touching the ceiling.
Its hands, covered in green hair, had nails as sharp as knife tips.
If it were to pierce through Lu Shi's current body, it would be no problem.
However, that wasn't the most disgusting thing. When Lu Shi saw that a twisted head had grown out of the monster's belly, his eyebrows furrowed.
It was as if two monsters had merged.
Even in the cultivation world, Lu Shi had never seen anything so ugly.
He didn't even know if his disguise would fool the monster's sense of smell.
As the new monster drew ever closer, Lu Shi could even hear his own heartbeat.