The Missing Staff Member

"Tsk, tsk. Dying in the park turns you into an employee?" The Palace Master of Halting Slaughter nestled in Zhang Yuanqing's arms, tilting her head. "With my natural talents, I would definitely qualify to be on staff. If I could keep my self-awareness, that wouldn't be half bad." *It's terrible, all right? Wouldn't that just make you a puppet of the Zoo?* Zhang Yuanqing complained loudly in his mind, though he murmured in agreement aloud: "That's certainly a novel perspective, Elder Sister. You truly are an extraordinary woman. Um, how about turning the page so we can see what the rules say?" When dealing with a lunatic, appeasement was your only choice. "All right!" The Palace Master seemed easy enough to coax. Turning past the preface, the first page of the Employee Code of Conduct came into view. 1. If you encounter visitors in the peripheral area of the Zoo, politely approach them and ask if they need assistance. Accommodate any and all of their requests. If you are able to help the same person twice, congratulations: they will take your place working in the Zoo, and you will receive their body. 2. If you see a colleague wearing a black employee uniform in the peripheral area of the Zoo, pay them no heed. Do not speak with them. Remember: do not speak with them under any circumstances. 3. Patrols must be conducted every night along designated routes, and all issues must be reported to the Zoo Administrator. 4. If you encounter a colleague in a black uniform while patrolling the core area, shout loudly to alert the Administrator or other colleagues so they can escort them out of the core area. If neither the Administrator nor your colleagues respond, you may seek help from the panda or the white lion. 5. If you encounter dense fog, remain where you are. Do not move, and do not speak. Wait until the fog disperses. 6. When passing through Dodder Garden, move as quickly as possible. If you hear someone calling out, do not look back under any circumstances. 7. There are no cats in the Zoo. If you see a cat, immediately terminate your patrol and report it to the Administrator or the white lion. 8. Remember: the panda is a gentle, cuddly, and honest creature. If it is not, face your employee badge and speak your name aloud. 9. The panda is an animal worthy of respect; you must bow to it. Remember: do not utter the words 'Iron-Eating Beast' in its presence. 10. The monkeys in the park cannot speak. 11. There is only one patrol officer per route. If you see a colleague in a blue uniform on your patrol route, pay attention to their employee badge. If their badge is present, call out their name. If their badge is gone, run immediately. 12. Each patrol must be completed within half an hour. If you exceed half an hour, check the color of your uniform and sprint back at all costs. 13. When you have no patrol duty, remain in the staff dormitory. Do not go outside. If you hear unusual noises, lie in bed and pretend to sleep. Pay them no mind, and do not leave your bed under any circumstances. That was where the first page ended, but at the bottom ran a handwritten addition: *"New Supplementary Rule: If your surname is Zhang, cross out your surname on your employee badge. Do not call out any name with the surname Zhang. Once spoken, both the caller and the person called will draw its attention."* Zhang Yuanqing instantly recalled the staff badge with the scratched-out surname. He had found the reason. *This new rule is clearly aimed at me—no, at my dad...* He looked at the Palace Master, only to find she was looking up, meeting his eyes. "The new rule isn't a rule," she said. "What do you mean?" Zhang Yuanqing listened intently. The Palace Master giggled playfully. "Put your arm around my waist, and I'll tell you." Rummaging through drawers nearby, Commandery Princess Yinyao couldn't help looking up, a grave expression filling her scarlet pupils. *What a terrifying enchantress. Compared to her, Guan Ya, Queen, and Xie Lingxi aren't even playing in the same league.* *Sooner or later, this woman will overpower all of Yuanshi Tianzun's confidantes and poison them off one by one.* A chill ran through Commandery Princess Yinyao's heart. Stranded in such peril, it was hardly the time to uphold male virtue. Zhang Yuanqing yielded half-reluctantly, sliding his arm around the Palace Master's slender waist. It felt remarkably good against his palm. It possessed a softness and delicacy unique to women, tempting him to linger. "The rules of rule-based items are immutable; I've never heard of one being freely modified. The supplement in the employee manual looks more like a taboo than an actual rule," she explained. "I see. Mentioning the 'heartbreaker' infuriates it." Zhang Yuanqing knitted his brows. "In that case, if I were to announce who I am, would that just be walking into my own death?" He had harbored a lingering fantasy that if the Zoo's item spirit learned he was Zhang Zizhen's son, it might show mercy, spare him, or even switch sides. "Good that you realize that. Besides, your little scheme was flawed from the start. The rules of rule-based items cannot even be altered by the items themselves—otherwise, why would they be called rules?" the Palace Master said. "How did you know what I was planning? Do you know me that well?" Zhang Yuanqing scrutinized her. "...Stop running your mouth. We haven't finished reading the manual." The Palace Master flipped to the next page, only to find the leaves that followed had been torn out. "There's nothing left," she said coquettishly. "You should sound a bit more serious right about now." "But with you holding me, I can't help feeling happy." Commandery Princess Yinyao grew increasingly alarmed. Zhang Yuanqing sighed. "I knew it wouldn't be that simple. Why would it hand over every precaution all at once? If it did, rule-based items would be far too easy to crack." "No, even if you were told everything, that wouldn't mean you could crack it," the Palace Master said, shaking her head lightly. "Take rule eight—or the rule that monkeys can't talk. What happens if one does? What do you do? The manual doesn't say. Many of these are merely cautionary notes without offering any solutions." "And if you can't solve it, you most likely die." Zhang Yuanqing sighed. He immediately grasped just how terrifying a Dominator-tier rule-based item could be. The Red Dancing Shoes were also a rule-based item, but they had only one rule. The Zoo, on the other hand, was riddled with rules at every turn. Triggering even one would likely send a person straight back to the Spirit Realm on the spot. Even with all his trump cards and items, survival would be an uphill battle. Not just for him—even the Palace Master would face grave peril if she broke the rules. The logic was simple: the Palace Master was a Level 7 Dominator, whereas Elder Dog was Level 8, yet even an Eighth-Level figure like Elder Dog had never managed to fully master the Zoo to this day. Dominator-tier rule-based items almost always had extensive histories, but the Zoo felt far too modern, as though it were a rule-based item that had emerged only after the advent of the Spirit Realm... While his thoughts churned, he saw Commandery Princess Yinyao lift a dust-laden pillow and raise her small megaphone like someone eager to take credit: "I found a new clue!" Zhang Yuanqing and the Palace Master walked over at once. In the princess's hand was a small notepad bearing several lines of writing: *"Another colleague has 'died.' Their lives have been taken a second time. Ever since that guy had his incident, people in the dorm have been dying every day. We can't stay here anymore." "Fortunately, the Administrator promised to build us a new dormitory."* They flipped through the rest of the pad; the remaining sheets were blank and unused. The contents of the note made the trio understand why the dormitory had been abandoned: something had happened to one of the employees, and from that point on, the staff in the dorm had begun dying one after another. Yet the Zoo Administrator had lacked the ability to resolve the issue, opting instead to relocate them to a new dormitory. *Elder Dog was a bit incompetent, wasn't he? Well, it was probably Elder Dog... it couldn't have dated back to my dad's era...* Zhang Yuanqing didn't linger on the notepad for long, saying, "Let's keep looking for another employee manual to see if there's a complete copy." With that, he tossed the manual to the princess. The three resumed searching, turning up nothing. Fortunately, there were plenty of rooms here, with thirteen left to explore. They searched room by room, combing through the entire first floor without finding a second employee manual. Then they began searching the second floor. Finally, they pushed open the door to the rightmost room on the second floor—the very last one. Unlike the other rooms, this door was locked. A U-lock hung from the latch. Whoever locked it seemed terrified of something coming out, securing the door so thoroughly that even after moving away, they had never unlocked it. This room was rather eerie. To be safe, darkness welled in Zhang Yuanqing's eye sockets as he stared at the tightly shut door. *No traces of yin entity activity...* He deactivated Spirit Devouring, brought out the Ghost Mirror, and opened his Star Eyes. In his physiognomy, the bloody glow curling between his eyes remained unchanged. At moments like this, the limitations of Star Physiognomy became glaringly obvious. He had no way of telling whether the bloody calamity was connected to entering this room. "There are no signs of life inside," the Palace Master, as an Arbiter of Fate, delivered an authoritative conclusion. "No presence of yin entities, either," Zhang Yuanqing said. After securing the Palace Master's assent, he stepped forward, gripped the U-lock, and silently exerted force with his palm. With a sharp click, the lock shackle was wrenched open by brute force. The door swung open, and a wave of moldy air rushed into their nostrils. Zhang Yuanqing cast a vigilant gaze across the room: bare bunk beds, an empty long table, and dust coating every corner. Nothing here appeared unusual; it looked even tidier and cleaner than the rooms before it. Commandery Princess Yinyao bent down to check beneath the beds. "It's been cleaned out thoroughly. Nothing was left behind." An eerie sort of cleanliness! As usual, Zhang Yuanqing and the Palace Master headed toward the storage lockers beside the window. There were four locker doors: three were open, and one was locked. The three open lockers were completely barren, cleared of all contents. "Strange. The people who lived in this room seem to have moved out properly, whereas the people in the other rooms looked like... they fled in a hurry, leaving their daily necessities behind," Zhang Yuanqing murmured. The Palace Master remained silent. Approaching the single locked locker, two red threads snaked out from her sleeves, wrapping tightly around the brass padlock before violently wrenching it. With a faint snap, the brass lock split apart. The two red threads hooked the shackle, pulled outward, and swung the locker door open. Inside lay a blue uniform, a roll of bedding, some daily necessities, an employee badge, and a notebook. Zhang Yuanqing picked up the booklet with delight, only to find it was a personal notebook rather than an employee manual. "It's not an employee manual. There's only one employee manual in this entire dormitory building," Zhang Yuanqing sighed. This meant they had no way of piecing together the full rules of the Zoo. "Wang Mingming." The Palace Master glanced at the badge, put it back, and said, "See what's written inside." Even as she spoke, Zhang Yuanqing had already opened the notebook: *"My name is Wang Mingming, and I am a Zoo employee. The employee manual says I died in the Zoo, but I can't remember anything from before. The only thing I know for certain is that if I want to survive, I have to work hard. Starting today, I am an employee of the park, responsible for night patrols."* *"The Administrator told us to study the employee manual thoroughly and follow its rules strictly. There are nine routes in the Zoo's core area, and I am assigned to Route Two. This is my first day on patrol. I hope everything goes smoothly."* *"Nothing happened tonight. I was lucky. I have tomorrow off, so I can rest in the dorm all day..."* *"Last night, I heard someone tapping on the window glass outside. I didn't dare look in that direction. Following the employee manual's rules, I lay in bed pretending to sleep, terrified to move... But I heard Li Ang next to me whisper: 'The shadow outside the window is two meters tall. It's a monster.'* *"I didn't dare answer him...* *"When I woke up this morning, Li Ang was gone!!"* *"The Administrator said this happens all the time—it's what becomes of those who don't follow the rules."* *"Patrol went smoothly tonight; no accidents."* *"Last night, I heard the tapping on the glass again... This morning, another person in the dorm went missing."* *"...Another person went missing."* *"Patrol went very smoothly tonight."* *"Another person went missing... I'm the only one left in the whole dorm."* *"Patrol went very smoothly tonight."* *"Disappearances have started happening in the other dorm rooms too..."* *"Patrol went very smoothly tonight."* *"Another person went missing last night. Ever since Li Ang vanished, colleagues in the dorm building have been disappearing one after another. Everyone says a monster taps on the window glass outside every night, but it hasn't tapped on my room's glass again..."* *"Patrol went very smoothly tonight."* *"Another person went missing last night..."* Zhang Yuanqing turned the pages one by one. It was a bizarre notebook, mentioning patrols and staff disappearances, yet offering very little detail, glossing over everything in sparse sentences. The genesis of it all had been that single window-tapping incident, after which Wang Mingming's roommate, Li Ang, had vanished. Following that, as though Pandora's box had been pried open, the staff in the dormitory building had disappeared in rapid succession. This notebook offered a rudimentary reconstruction of why the dormitory building had been abandoned. "So the 'that guy' mentioned in the note was Li Ang?" Taking advantage of the Palace Master being lost in thought, Commandery Princess Yinyao leaned over secretly to steal a glance. Just as Zhang Yuanqing was about to speak, the Palace Master caught her breath and whispered: "No! "'That guy' refers to Wang Mingming, not Li Ang." Zhang Yuanqing's pupils shrank. "Why?" Commandery Princess Yinyao blurted out. The moment the question left her mouth, likely realizing this rule-flouting woman wouldn't deign to answer her, she turned her small megaphone toward Zhang Yuanqing. "Why? The one who went missing was clearly Li Ang." She had only just read through the notes and hadn't had time to think it through. Zhang Yuanqing's expression darkened. "Look closely at Wang Mingming's patrol entries." "Patrol entries..." Commandery Princess Yinyao scanned the notebook, her tone turning grave all of a sudden. "Smooth. Every single day was smooth!!" "Right. Smooth every single day—but that's impossible. If every day went smoothly, why would the manual have so many rules, so many warnings?" Zhang Yuanqing said with a grim face. "There's only one explanation: something happened to Wang Mingming, but he never realized it himself. Perhaps the one who 'disappeared' that night wasn't Li Ang at all, but Wang Mingming." Even though Commandery Princess Yinyao was a yin corpse, thinking through the implications sent a chill down her spine. The Palace Master added abruptly: "There's another possibility: Wang Mingming didn't meet with disaster when the monster tapped on the window, but even earlier—during his very first patrol. "He didn't realize anything was wrong with him, so he returned to the dorm... The monster knocking on the door in the notes was Wang Mingming himself. "He was the one who killed colleague after colleague, which fits the information left on the note." Commandery Princess Yinyao raised her megaphone. "Then why is this room locked?" Zhang Yuanqing's face changed. "Wang Mingming wanted to return to his dorm—he had to return every night. The staff wanted to stop him, so they locked his bedroom door. Unable to return to his own room, Wang Mingming went into the other employees' rooms instead... which is why someone died every single day..." Right at that moment, stiff, shuffling footsteps echoed from the corridor outside the door.