V3C4

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Lu Ren threw the head over and it rolled to a stop by Lin Jue’s feet. Lin Jue looked down. Vaguely, he felt like the face was somewhat familiar, then sharply remembered that it was the same face as the zombie that Lu Ren killed had when they first met. Just, now, her face didn’t have that hideous zombified expression, her pretty features filled with surprise and disbelief.

Lin Jue still remembered Lu Ren saying that she had confessed to him once.

“Look at the blood on the ground,” Song Hanzhang reminded him as Lin Jue’s thoughts rambled on.

Lin Jue obediently looked over. The scarlet ground surged with an eerie sheen in the setting sun. The blood was still spreading in every direction. There was too much! It must have already exceeded the total amount in a human body!

“The setting here will automatically rationalize the behaviors of the players. For example, if I hit someone, I’ll get berated by the security guards. Small-scale chaos won’t cause the setting to collapse, but if it gets out of control, there’s nothing it can do, so an open murder like this is its threshold. According to normal rules, see, right now, I should be taken away from the police, sentenced, and sent to prison, maybe even outside of this city. But how can I do that? I still have to participate in the game, I can’t go hide in prison. It’s frustrated too.” Lu Ren spread his hands, looking innocently worried. “So, it has to act without following the rules. Since we already know this isn’t the real world, we might as well act more honestly to each other.”

As Lu Ren spoke, the blood had already reached Lin Jue and Song Hanzhang’s feet. It continued to spread even further. Everywhere their eyes could reach, it was a bloodbath.

Song Hanzhang’s phone rang again. He picked up the phone and Gu Fengyi asked in rapid-fire, “What happened? Qingqing and I are in the dorms, there’s a lot of commotion outside and people are fighting like mad!”

“Fighting?” Song Hanzhang looked around him. It was as if the area by them had been cleared; apart from the corpses next to Lu Ren’s feet, there was not a single other student in sight.

“Yes. From my window, it looks like a riot is happening; everyone’s fighting each other. Are they not where you are?”

Song Hanzhang glanced at Lu Ren, his eyes saying ‘look at what you’ve done’.

Lu Ren played with his knife, throwing it up and catching it again and again. Though Lu Ren didn’t bat an eye, Lin Jue felt anxious for him; if he wasn’t careful, he could cut his hand.

“Oh, it’s changing!” Lu Ren exclaimed, looking at the surrounding buildings and smiling.

Lin Jue noticed it as well: the buildings near them were aging rapidly, the greenery next to the roads wilting. Even the sun to the west quickly sank beneath the horizon, darkness swiftly approaching.

“The sky’s turned dark,” Gu Fengyi said from the other side of the phone.

“It appears that the order is collapsing. Get ready for round three to start early; I’ll go take a look at the plaza first, you do as you please.” Song Hanzhang hung up.

A waxing crescent moon hung high overhead, its pulsing light illuminating the altered landscape.

Under the thick of night, electric lights jumped randomly from heavily rusted lamp poles, as if they would go out any moment. Either ghastly white or dim and faded, the low glow added even more horror to the ground they stood on: whether concrete or soil, it was all covered in a thin layer of blackened blood. In some places, the blood had already dried, but there was still a slimy feeling when one stepped on it. Blood and rust permeated through the air, a sickening, metallic stink. Everything around them seemed to have been corroded away by some evil power: the dormitories were old and dilapidated, the colors of the walls now changed, red paint flowing down like trails of blood, the surfaces of the walls even flaking off in large areas.

Lin Jue’s phone rang, along with Song Hanzhang and Lu Ren’s. The three of them took out their phones in unison, a message displayed on each.

[ Player Lin Jue (Song Hanzhang/Lu Ren): Opening conditions met. Advancing early to the next round… ]

With a light click, the power to the nearby lights cut off. Lin Jue suddenly felt the world spin around him. Darkness descended onto him.

&&&

Gu Fengyi was thinking about where she could get some better weapons. Even though she could use blades, she was better with bows and crossbows…

“Fengyi, there’s something wrong.” Liu Qingqing suddenly grabbed onto Gu Fengyi’s sleeves and motioned for her to look at the walls.

Gu Fengyi focused back in on the real world and looked in the direction where Liu Qingqing was pointing. The walls which had been painted white were flaking away as if they had absorbed all of the nearby moisture and had dried out. Even more appalling was a dark red liquid soaked in rust that was making its way up the wall; it was as if years had passed in an instant for their once clean and tidy dorm room. Everywhere became covered in rust, and even the tiles on the ground grew visible cracks, wilted vegetation appearing in between them.

This was no longer the room they were familiar with. It was a horror room that had been abandoned for who knows how long!

The overhead light jumped. Gu Fengyi quickly stood up and rushed to grab a metal fruit knife from the table before it was consumed by the rust and blood. “We’re leaving immediately. We’ll go to Time Plaza.”

A phone rang. Both of them took out their phones: [ Player Gu Fengyi (Liu Qingqing): Opening conditions met. Advancing early to the next round… ]

The light overhead clicked shut. The two were caught off guard and swept into the darkness.

&&&

“Eh?” Sitting on a road-side bench, observing the passing students, Dan Liang hummed softly.

The students who had been all walking around normally started running in panic in an instant, as if manipulated. The panic suddenly turned to unrest and they started grabbing each other, flipping each other over and tripping others down, throwing themselves to the ground to fight, as if the stranger from a second ago had suddenly become their enemy.

Dan Liang watched them with interest and confusion.

Did the others do something?

Even if they did, he didn’t dare go ask them now.

Even ignoring everyone else, Lin Jue had wordlessly gone after his life with his spear last round. If he hadn’t run fast enough, he would have been dead by now.

Thinking about that, Dan Liang tugged helplessly at his hair again. It was true that lying to people was fun, but it was no good being chased up and down all the time, so he had to avoid them for the time being.

As he stood up, something clinked in his pocket. Dan Liang took it out: it was a plastic bottle of pills. After shaking it a little, he determined that there was still almost half of the bottle left. According to his doctor’s orders, he should take two pills every morning and night to stabilize his emotional and mental state.

But…

Dan Liang threw the bottle away and watched as it rolled over towards the mad crowd.

He felt better than ever, as if a knife had dug away the rotten piece of flesh from his heart. He felt so good that his entire body was trembling. He had only felt this feeling once many years ago, but he couldn’t stop as if he was addicted. Whether it was in the mental asylum or the rich mansion, he couldn’t forget this temptation from the bottom of his soul.

Lying made him happy, but what went deeper than that happiness was the joy of having his lies seen through.

He had played with people’s hearts, trod on their kindness, cruelly ripped open their wounds, watching as they broke down completely, their faces covered in the despair and pain of having the truth shown to them. That was his spiritual opium. He was addicted to it.

A madman should only live in such a mad world, going down with their ship.

[ Player Dan Liang: Opening conditions met. Advancing early to the next round… ]

&&&

The electric buzz of power sounded. The old overhead light lit up, flickering on and off a few times before finally illuminating the room it was in. As if the lightbulb had been in use for too long though, it was covered in a dull yellow crust, the light it gave off hazy and indistinct.

Lin Jue realized that he was lying on a bed, flakes falling occasionally from the painted ceiling, the scent of rust and blood flooding his nose from all directions. He put his hands flat on either side of his body, then brought them up to his eyes, his palms covered in bits of wood chips from the bed.

He was on the bed in his dormitory… No, this should be the guest house he moved into with Song Hanzhang. The bed was similar to the ones in the dorms, with a mattress on top and a desk underneath, but it was heavily rusted as if it had been abandoned for ten or so years.

There was no mistaking it; this was the guest house he and Song Hanzhang lived in. But where was Song Hanzhang?

Experience from the previous two rounds taught Lin Jue caution. He didn’t get up immediately, but rather looked around him as quietly as possible, and even looked down through the railing of the bed. Just one look and he froze.

What was that thing… next to the window?

Lin Jue had never faced such a hideous creature. Even when he was facing the zombies, he had trained his courage to not be affected, but when he faced this thing, a huge fear erupted from the depths of his heart. He couldn’t help but tremble. It wasn’t because it was oddly shaped or ugly beyond recognition, it was because it looked exactly like a human!

It was a vaguely humanoid figure, no hair or skin down its entire body, its veins and muscles clearly visible. It had a head, but it was as if its skull was wrapped tightly in a layer of muscle-textured plastic film, not a single hair growing from it and its ears nowhere to be seen. It had hands but they had neither fingers nor palms, looking like two bent sticks. It had legs, two twisted appendages dangling from the sides of its body, bent at an angle that made one suspect that those legs have been broken.

The most bizarre thing about it was its back. On the two sides of its spine which appeared as if it had been ripped apart, was a pair of half-open wings! Those wings seemed to have been subjected to countless toture. Not only were they bloody, but they had also been cruelly stripped of their feathers. Large, bloodstained feathers lay on the ground next to it, trampled on and scattered.

This human-like monster crouched in the pile of feathers silently raised its featureless face, ‘gazing’ at Lin Jue who was watching it in fear!

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