Players, Please Board the Train-Chapter 52: Back of the Neck

According to the location given by Xu Huo, Zou Weichang precisely found a leopard skin. After feeling it for a long time, he cursed under his breath, then turned to another rhinoceros skin. After touching it for a while, he suddenly tore the hide off and slammed it harshly onto the ground.
"You bastard!" he cursed viciously and directly barged into the Skinner’s bedroom!
As the bedroom door opened and closed, Peng Fengnian, who was crouching against the wall, silently cursed the idiot inside his mind. His peripheral vision, however, was fixed on the Skinner who had just come out of the warehouse.
The Skinner held a candle in one hand and a rusty thick iron chain in the other. He casually threw the chain up onto the crossbeam, hung it up, tested its height, and then lit an alcohol lamp below.
The flame illuminated the metal hook dangling from the tip of the iron chain. Unlike the rusty iron chain, this hook shone like a mirror’s surface. Under the burning flame, it gradually glowed red, the radiating red light spreading realistically and soon engulfed the entire workshop.
Sweat oozed from Peng Fengnian’s forehead. His nose was pressed against the wall, eyes staring fixedly at the dust mere inches away. Even his peripheral vision dared not shift toward the Skinner.
He was one hundred percent certain that the glowing metal hook was a special tool. He didn’t know its exact function but could only pray it wasn’t related to searching. Meanwhile, his own item “You Can’t See Me” would lose effectiveness whether he stared at the Skinner or was under light.
"Two little piglets." The Skinner shifted position, whispering, "One’s very naughty, broke my beloved hide, the other disobedient, still hiding outside during game time."
"Which one should be dealt with first?"
When he spoke the first sentence, he was still in the center of the workshop, but by the second sentence, his voice seemed to be right next to Peng Fengnian’s ear.
Peng Fengnian’s cold sweat poured down. His eyes trembled uncontrollably. He didn’t dare focus on the Skinner who suddenly appeared in his sight. At the same time, a half-finger-long syringe appeared in his left hand. As he clenched his fingers, the black liquid was injected into his palm. A black vein bulged from the skin, swiftly crawling up his arm toward his chest. The instant it reached his heart, he collapsed against the wall, completely silent.
"Dead?" The Skinner stood beneath the wall, raised the candle, and tilted his head to look at the person hanging above. He shook his head regretfully, then walked out the front door and entered the fur room.
Inside the Skinner’s bedroom, after jumping out the window for the third time only to land back in the same spot, Zou Weichang finally realized something was wrong.
He had originally intended to secretly grab the hides and clear the dungeon ahead of others. But according to the location Xu Huo gave, he hadn’t received any completion notification after taking two hides, obviously meaning the information was false.
All talk about working together to save someone was just an excuse to buy time and monopolize the good stuff inside the Skinner’s secret room. Those fools trusted him unconditionally, but Zou Weichang wasn’t that stupid.
What’s grabbed by one should be shared. If Xu Huo got some, then he wanted a share too.
So he immediately entered the Skinner’s bedroom. Sure enough, the bed was empty. Needless to say, the Skinner had gone into the secret room.
Several attempts to negotiate met no response. Trying to push open the wall failed. He planned to go back and wake Qin An and the others, but he found he couldn’t get out at all!
The dungeon had changed!
Suddenly, Zou Weichang recalled how Xu Huo and Peng Fengnian’s expressions had dramatically changed during their earlier call. It seemed they had already discovered the dungeon’s problem then.
Regretting his own carelessness, he immediately turned toward the bedroom door. But when he reached the door, a beam of bright light arrived, and a pair of shadows stopped face-to-face outside.
"Knock knock!" The person outside knocked on the door, singing in a light tone, "Little piglet, be good, open the door, open it gently, don’t break anything."
The somewhat awkward, unrefined tune sent shivers down the spine. Even the dull-witted Zou Weichang could feel the Skinner outside was different from the one during the day. No wonder he had shouted for Xu Huo for so long in the bedroom without any response; the Skinner had long since escaped!
"Little piglet, be good, open the door. If you don’t open it soon, I’ll come in." The Skinner’s tone changed again as he twisted the door handle.
Desperate!
Zou Weichang steeled his heart and threw out a skateboard!
The bedroom door collapsed with a sound. As the skateboard flew out, Zou Weichang leapt onto it and jumped over the Skinner, exiting the bedroom in one bound!
The candle flame flickered not at all. The Skinner stood beside the door, first glancing at the fallen door, then looking up at Zou Weichang. His bloodshot eyes slightly rolled, like a dead man staring at another dead man.
Zou Weichang shuddered in horror, cold sweat pouring down. He didn’t care anymore and dashed straight through the fur room to escape!
Just as he was about to exit, he looked back and saw the Skinner still standing in the same posture. But the candlelight cut across half his face, gradually pulling up a sinister smile.
Zou Weichang’s heart sank deeply. He immediately sped up, but the next second, his whole body crashed into the hanging furs!
The furs, like living creatures, wrapped tightly around his body. Hands were hands, heads were heads—the fur fit completely against his body. When he rolled off the skateboard, he had already turned into a four-legged tiger with closed eyes!
Unable to see, unable to speak, Zou Weichang stumbled blindly toward the door by his sense of direction. But after a few steps, another force stopped him. The fur wrapped tightly around his limbs forced him to kneel and lie prone on the ground. Whether it was the fur or him, both trembled!
The Skinner came over, grabbed his hind leg, and dragged him toward the workshop.
Zou Weichang screamed loudly for help, but what came out was an incoherent low growl. His hands scratched the ground, leaving faint marks that were barely noticeable.
However, the Skinner turned back, saw this, walked over, and stomped on his hands, coldly saying, "Disobedient piglets must be punished."
Zou Weichang screamed in agony as he was hung on the metal hook already heated red by the alcohol lamp. Then the Skinner pulled away the tiger hide outside, picked up his broken hands to look at them, and said regretfully, "Too green. This skin won’t look good once peeled off."
The metal hook pierced through the back of his neck. Hung long and high, Zou Weichang’s eyes and lips twitched simultaneously. He couldn’t speak or move, drenched in sweat all over.
The Skinner opened a leather box and took out tweezers, a file, over ten small blades of various shapes, and a fishhook tied to fishing line.
He burned these tools one by one, then checked the metal hook at the back of Zou Weichang’s neck. Only then did he circle back to the front and take the skinning knives from his apron to wipe them carefully.
"Some mammals, due to memories from infancy, won’t struggle when their neck is pinched. Whether it’s a just-weaned kitten or an adult tiger or leopard, they have the same nerve reflex. You don’t need to exert much effort to capture them; they’ll obey quietly, be gentle and compliant. They won’t move when skinned, which preserves the beauty of the fur."
"Humans are the same. Hooking the skin on the back of the neck near the spine relaxes the muscles. Although it causes pain, the nerves won’t cause the skin and flesh to tighten. This way, the peeled skin is even and smooth."
"I call it the ‘Fate’s Back of the Neck Skin.’ Right now, it’s hanging on the ‘Awake Iron Hook,’ with two hours left." The Skinner looked up at Zou Weichang, his features arranging into a ‘smile.’ "Let’s begin."