The room where the incident happened faced the stage and housed only one person.

At first, no one noticed anything amiss, but the strong smell of blood spread too quickly. In a place like this, everyone knew what that smell signified.

After knocking on the door with no response, someone opened the private room’s door. The scene inside was both expected and unexpected.

The person inside was, of course, already dead, but the scene was extraordinarily gruesome.

This private room was a bit larger than the one Yu Sen and his group had. The bed was against the wall at the far end, and the deceased’s legs had seemingly been torn off at the knees. The bones and tendons were shattered into fragments, and a large amount of blood had gushed from the broken legs.

The two severed lower legs were by the bedside, with the feet bare, while the remaining torso had dragged itself toward the door, leaving a streak of smeared blood behind.

The blood had spread to almost every corner of the room. The person’s face displayed a mix of terror and despair that couldn’t be erased even in their final moments, with their right hand desperately reaching towards the door, frozen in the position it was in before death.

Someone spoke softly, “In this condition… he probably died from blood loss.”

“Did you hear him call for help last night? Why didn’t I hear anything?”

“I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t sleep well, but I didn’t hear a sound.”

“I don’t even know how he died.”

“Who would know? Probably only a ghost.”

Some of those who had seen the Red Dancing Shoes the night before and had managed to avoid them said nothing more. They didn’t bother to warn others, as everyone knew that in a world like this, only a few people would die at a time. If these unlucky ones fell into the Red Dancing Shoes’ trap next, those who avoided it would live a little longer.

…

When Yu Sen opened the door, his sensitive nose immediately caught the smell of blood. He instinctively covered his mouth and nose with his hand, and as the scent entered his body, his uneasy stomach started to churn again.

Si Xuanyang grabbed him: “Forget it, you can’t handle this smell. Let’s not go and see. We’ll wait for Si Nan to tell us what happened.”

Yu Sen hesitated for a moment, then nodded in agreement: “Okay.”

In fact, he had no choice. In his current state, he wouldn’t even need to see the scene. Just getting close to that private room and smelling the blood would make him vomit.

After waiting by the stairs for a while, Si Nan and Luo Yu came over, shaking their heads: “He probably died from blood loss. Why didn’t you two go check it out?”

“I can’t stand the smell,” Yu Sen pouted. “Blood loss? Where was he injured?”

“The legs. It looked like both legs were torn off, starting from the knee joints, you know, like when we tear apart chicken wings, pulling at the bone, twisting and yanking. That’s what the injury looked like,” Si Nan said.

“Stop describing it in such detail…” Yu Sen’s face turned pale as he swallowed hard, trying to push the image out of his mind.

“He probably put on the Red Dancing Shoes in the middle of the night.” Si Xuanyang placed a hand on Yu Sen’s back, gently patting him.

“What Red Dancing Shoes? He wasn’t wearing any shoes,” Si Nan and Luo Yu exchanged confused glances.

“The shoes disappear when someone dies. Didn’t you see them last night?” Yu Sen looked at Si Xuanyang in surprise. “I woke up in the middle of the night and almost put on a pair of Red Dancing Shoes that were beside the bed. Luckily, I reacted quickly and avoided the trap.”

Thinking back to last night, he breathed a sigh of relief: thankfully, his fragile stomach had acted up at just the right time.

“If someone puts them on, this is the result,” Si Xuanyang said. “You two were lucky not to encounter it, but be careful over the next few nights. Don’t sleep so deeply that you step into them.”

Si Nan, recalling the bloody scene, shuddered and nodded repeatedly.

…

The theater was currently different from last night—there were more ‘people.’

They looked like people, but anyone could tell they weren’t alive.

They were dressed like dancers from an old theater troupe, mostly young boys and girls, with their hair neatly fixed in place with hair gel, not a strand out of place. They were slim and well-proportioned.

But they were covered in a gray, deathly aura, their faces a bluish-black hue. Their movements were stiff and strange, their eyes filled with a chilling coldness that made one’s skin crawl and sent a shiver down the spine.

Yu Sen scanned their shoes carefully—none were red, only black or white.

They followed these “people” backstage. Apart from rows of waiting rooms, there was a temporary dining area, the largest space, with some buffet food and long tables. Everyone was eating in the same room.

Including the dancers who didn’t look like people.

Eating with a group of dead people was chilling just to think about. Many, seeing the setup, simply took their food and ate outside, finding it far better than eating under those cold, eerie gazes where every bite felt like chewing wax.

Yu Sen walked around the buffet station and saw only low-sugar fruits, yogurt, boiled corn, and other mostly cold items. He grabbed some and stood in the outer corridor with Si Xuanyang, eating slowly. A bad premonition suddenly arose in his heart.

“Could it be that breakfast is the most plentiful and appetizing meal here?”

He mentally dismissed the thought, trying to convince himself that it wouldn’t be that bad, but intuition often has a strange way of being accurate.

By noon, the food at the buffet station had completely changed. Boiled vegetables, sashimi, white, flavorless chicken, oddly colored soup, and bananas with blackened centers…

He didn’t even need to taste it; just looking at it made his stomach, more dramatic than he was, start to protest loudly.

“This place is going to be the death of me…” Yu Sen rolled his eyes and collapsed onto Si Xuanyang.

“Hold on, I’ll see if there’s anything you can eat.” Si Xuanyang patted his waist and left him there, going off alone.

It wasn’t just Yu Sen; everyone else also looked miserable while eating. The sashimi, which was slightly more acceptable, was mostly gone, but without wasabi and soy sauce, even that couldn’t satisfy anyone’s hunger.

Yu Sen could roughly guess that this wasn’t a deliberate attempt to torture him. It was just how this world was set up—dancers had to eat to maintain their figures, and there was an added “make life difficult for the players” buff typical of death zones, which naturally resulted in this kind of situation.

But his stomach was rebelling at the worst possible time. After eating like this for a few days, he might just die of pain.

Sighing, he clutched his stomach and stood by the door for a while before Si Xuanyang returned, handing him something: “Eat this.”

“What is it…?” Yu Sen instinctively took it, glanced down, and was stunned.

Two pale chicken breasts sandwiched some lettuce leaves, a few normally colored banana slices, and carefully poached fish, all wrapped in something resembling lotus root paste.

It looked strange but oddly not unattractive, clearly an effort was made to put it together.

Yu Sen looked up at Si Xuanyang, who was staring at the odd sandwich in his hand, clearly unsatisfied and somewhat helpless. “There are too many different ingredients; it might be hard to digest and could strain your stomach. But if it’s too simple, you probably wouldn’t eat it, which would likely cause even more pain.”

Si Nan, standing nearby, sighed, suddenly feeling that introducing Yu Sen to Si Xuanyang was actually a disservice to his brother—because his best friend was really hard to take care of!