Chapter 368: The Stench Seeker

"Everyone has a stench. It's innate, and no perfume can cover it up." Hair that hadn't been cut in ages covered his forehead, and his small eyes, hidden amidst folds of fat, gleamed with an incomprehensible light. Tian Teng's gaze swept over the crowd, ultimately landing on me. "The stench of rotting fruit, the stench of semen, the stench of corpses! The stenches radiating from all of you are stronger than any I've smelled before coming here!"

Number Five was so agitated that the fat all over his body trembled. Worse, his gaze remained fixed entirely on me, which thoroughly pissed me off.

"You can smell the stench on us?" Number Four, Wang Yuchun, raised her arms, lifted her clothes, and sniffed herself. "I took a shower right before I passed out. I only smell like body wash."

As she spoke, she stretched an arm as pale as goat's milk right in front of my face. "Number Twelve, take a sniff."

Wang Yuchun's pretty face took on an innocent, naive look. She made it seem like an unintentional lift of her arm, but it exposed a wide expanse of pale, tender skin beneath her clothes.

Few men could resist her gentle charm, but unfortunately for her, I was an exception. This wasn't just a killing game; it was an Underworld Live Show live broadcast. One wrong step and I would pay with my life.

"You should let Number Six take a sniff. He looks completely starved for affection—probably never smelled a girl's arm before." I smoothly dodged Wang Yuchun, wondering why she was trying to get on my good side.

'First, my seat is very close to hers. Second, she might have mistaken me for the mastermind behind all this.'

Seeing Wang Yuchun's poor 'performance', Number Five, Tian Teng, got angry. His pea-sized eyes nearly bulged out of his head as he shouted at her, "Number Four, stay away from Number Twelve! That guy is extremely dangerous! His stench is the second strongest out of everyone here! And what radiates off him is almost entirely the stench of corpses! A thick corpse stench that seeps right down into the bone!"

Tian Teng's words put me in a rather bad spot. "Number Five, don't just spout nonsense. If I really reeked of corpses that badly, wouldn't I notice it myself?"

"You can't smell this stench; only I can. It's probably because my sense of smell is unique. I can't detect what you call a fragrance at all, but what you call a stench holds a special allure for me. The stronger the stench, the more excited I get. Fragrances can be faked with perfume, shampoo, or body wash, but a stench is different. This odor permeates deep into the body and fuses with your very flesh. Only the filthiest of people are worthy of it." Number Five stretched his mouth into a wide grin and took a deep, greedy breath. "Such a powerful stench! If I could spend the rest of my life surrounded by this smell, I'd die happy!"

"A stench seeker? That isn't a superpower, it's a mental illness." Number One Wang Shi looked at Number Five with a hint of pity. "You just said that Number Twelve's stench is the second strongest out of all of us here. I wonder who has the absolute strongest stench?"

The moment Wang Shi asked this question, everyone pricked up their ears to listen. For the murderers currently gathered in this room, the strength of someone's stench was an indirect indicator of how dangerous they were.

"The strongest?" Tian Teng's gaze shifted away from me and swept across the rest of the people in the back. His fat face grew increasingly excited. "No, I don't dare say it out loud. That person's stench is far too unique. I've never smelled an odor so intense and so bizarre!"

"This retard is so fucking disgusting. I really just want to stab him to death," Number Six cursed under his breath. He was well aware that Number Five's gaze hadn't lingered on him for even a second just now. That proved that despite his fierce exterior, he was nowhere near the most dangerous person in the group.

Number One Wang Shi was also rather apprehensive. He was merely a suspense novelist, and his one and only kill had been accomplished using external tools. With his frail physique, tonight's Real Death Game offered him zero advantages.

"Continue your statement. There isn't much time left." The one who spoke this time was Number Seven, a Doctor in work scrubs.

Tian Teng wiped the sweat from his forehead, his chest heaving, and began to tell his story.

"I was a premature baby. My intelligence was lower than most people's. I only learned to speak and communicate at the age of six."

"My childhood memories are a bit blurry now. My parents divorced, and ever since I can remember, I lived with my grandpa."

"Grandpa was very good to me. Whenever someone bullied me, he was always the first to step in and help."

"Everything changed when I was five years old. It was a summer morning. Grandpa collapsed in the kitchen and never got up."

"I only found out years later that Grandpa's health had long been failing, and he had been pushing himself to the limit just to take care of me."

"But I understood too late. Out of instinct, five-year-old me dragged Grandpa to the side of the bed. Imitating the way he cared for me, I covered him with a blanket."

"I didn't know when Grandpa would wake up, so I stayed by his side every day. When I was thirsty, I drank water. When I was hungry, I dug things out of the fridge and stuffed them into my mouth, not caring whether they were raw or cooked."

"I don't even know how many days passed. Five days? Ten days? Maybe half a month?"

"The door to Grandpa's house was kicked open by the police, and many people rushed in. Their first reaction upon entering was to tightly cover their noses and mouths."

"The neighbors had called the police, saying a foul stench was coming from Grandpa's house. I looked at the people rushing in and hid behind Grandpa in fear."

"They pointed at Grandpa, their eyes filled with fear and shock."

"They said all kinds of things. I can still vaguely remember a few sentences."

"'He's been dead a long time?'"

"'He's completely rotting and reeking!'"

"'Why is there a kid in here?'"

"'How long has that kid been staying with the corpse?'"

...

"I didn't really understand what those people were saying at the time, but I remembered the key words in their sentences—stench, and Grandpa."

"Ever since then, my sense of smell changed. It became different from everyone else's. I couldn't smell fragrances, but I could finely distinguish every kind of stench. Furthermore, I became almost insanely obsessed with all sorts of different foul smells, unable to help myself." Tian Teng seemed to have fallen into his memories, speaking with utmost sincerity.

"You might not believe it, but I can estimate a corpse's approximate time of death purely by scent. There is a subtle difference in the stench emitted by a corpse that's been dead for ten days versus one that's been dead for eleven."

"Sorry, I'm not showing off. In reality, this special ability didn't change my awful life at all."

"My brain works slowly, so I was frequently bullied by my peers. My grades were terrible, and my classmates, teachers, and even my own father despised me."

"The thing my father said to me most often was—'You piece of trash, why don't you just go die?'"

"He was a crude, hot-tempered man. Otherwise, my mother wouldn't have eloped with someone else."

"Well, that was my gloomy, ash-gray childhood. Up until I was sixteen, my greatest hobby was eating."

"I didn't know how to play games, and I had no friends. The only thing that could bring me satisfaction was the feeling of my stomach being on the verge of bursting."

"It was incredibly fulfilling. It was a kind of enjoyment."

"My father naturally didn't allow me to keep eating like that. He was very poor."

"To experience that thrill of bursting my belly, I could only go to the restaurant snack streets. Not to buy food with money, of course. Before the garbage trucks arrived, I would dig through the dumpsters behind the restaurant kitchens to find those discarded delicacies."

"The whole process was very exciting, like a grand adventure."

"This kind of life continued until I was sixteen, when I started high school at a third-rate school."

"It was a brand-new environment for everyone else, but for me, there wasn't much of a change."

"I still instinctively took a seat in the back corner of the classroom. No one was willing to sit next to a fat pig reeking of stench, and I never harbored any grand hopes of fitting in with them."

"But destiny is a funny thing."

"On the first day of school, morning classes were already half over when a female classmate ran into the room."

"To maintain his authority, the teacher made the late girl stand in the very back row of the classroom."

"She walked toward me."

"Her tailored uniform clung to her waist, and her skirt was significantly shorter than the other girls', exposing most of the skin above her knees."

"Most importantly, when she walked past me, I discovered a faint stench coming from her!"

"I didn't dare look at her face. With my eyes hidden beneath my bangs, I just stared at her legs and feet for the entire class."

"I thought I was being very subtle about it, but to my surprise, she still noticed."