V3C12

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Time Plaza.

Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing waited in the darkness for Dan Liang, but he never showed up.

Perhaps Dan Liang was prepared for their ambush and didn’t come to the plaza on purpose, or perhaps his luck was so good that he had already come and gone in the few minutes they had left to check on the corpse. As time ticked by, the one hour safety time on the plaza ended. Gu Fengyi’s patience was running short and an unspeakable anxiety shrouded her heart; she couldn’t help but be suspicious.

Was Liu Qingqing innocent? Could she be innocent?

From the start, Gu Fengyi had been the first to arrive at the plaza, and even back then she had been worried about Liu Qingqing. Gu Fengyi had been somewhat trained in martial arts but she had barely escaped, even with a fruit knife. Liu Qingqing had no weapon in her hand, but when she arrived at the plaza, she held a crowbar…

“Your crowbar is quite useful. Where did you get it?” Gu Fengyi held the crowbar and asked, feigning casualness.

Liu Qingqing was slightly stunned for a moment. She didn’t dare look up, nor did she dare to look straight at Gu Fengyi. Then, as if nothing had happened, she said, “I picked it up from the roadside manhole covers. If I had picked it up earlier, then I wouldn’t have had to suffer from the illusion… Fengyi, what was your illusion like?”

Liu Qingqing’s voice was gentle and sweet, sounding like a cup of iced honey water on a hot summer’s day. But only Liu Qingqing knew how hard she struggled to keep herself from breaking down.

Gu Fengyi was doubting her. It shot through her heart like an arrow, even breathing hurt. Anyone could doubt her, anyone but Gu Fengyi.

She screamed hysterically inside herself, how could I hurt you? How could I possibly hurt you? Even if I was going to die, I would never do that to you!

But she couldn’t say it. All she could do was smile and speak in a whisper like an obedient doll. Everyone liked her like that; they thought she was so kind and understanding. She was like a monster, scraping by from love from others, always trying carefully to please everyone, always thinking that she was doing her best, always trying so hard that she disgusted herself.

And then she had met Gu Fengyi. She was like her dream self: confident, strong, glittering, even her occasional arrogance seeming to be expected.

She was perfect.

Liu Qingqing carefully hid her past and put in ten times, no, a hundred times the patience and care, following her, stalking her, deliberately trying to approach her, fanatical to the point of morbid, blind adoration. She knew how twisted it was; she poured her ideals and desires onto Gu Fengyi as if that way, she could mend her broken soul. But the closer she became, the emptier she felt. She couldn’t be satisfied sharing Gu Fengyi’s attention with anyone else, anyone else at all.

Gu Fengyi knew nothing about Liu Qingqing’s inner strife. Liu Qingqing’s question made her recall some unpleasant memories that she didn’t want anyone to bring up.

But if she continued moving with Liu Qingqing, it would be revealed sooner or later in her illusions…

She saw a river in her illusion. A river of blood. She stood by the river and watched a ghoul struggle in it, its face crisscrossed with scars. Those malicious scars ruined its face and she watched its wounds turn outwards, swelling from the blood. It shrieked as it fought to crawl to shore, climb to safety. Its ten nails were all ripped off, but nonetheless, it climbed.

How could it climb up? Gu Fengyi looked coldly at it. It crawled towards her with all its might, the place where its feet were supposed to be under its knees empty. It dragged its broken body forward, dragged a ghastly trail of blood onward.

It was beautiful and had excellent dancing talent, but it had lost its footing and fallen into the water and drowned. Who could be blamed for that? Her sibling would only celebrate her death, her father would only say a light ‘what a shame’; she was an excellent girl, but as for her mother, oh, who knew which slut gave birth to her?

Gu Fengyi smiled and looked gently at Liu Qingqing. “I was very afraid of water as a child. I hated it when I was learning how to swim, I thought a ghoul would come out and drag me to the bottom. It’s because I saw a person drowning in a river when I was young. I didn’t know how to swim, I couldn’t save her, so I could only cry and look for help, but when help arrived, she was already dead. She was a very young girl, and very pitiful. That incident probably left a big mark on me; I saw a river in my illusion, and there was a ghoul in the river that tried to drag me in with it, but how could I bear to die like that? If I died, I would never be able to see Qingqing again. So I stabbed it to death with a fruit knife before rushing here to wait for you.”

Liu Qingqing let out ‘ah’ and pulled on her elbow nervously. “What an annoying ghoul, did it hurt you?”

Gu Fengyi smiled and shook her head. “No, it couldn’t beat me.”

A failure in life wanting to turn the tables in death? Keep dreaming!

Liu Qingqing smiled obediently. “Fengyi is amazing.”

So amazing that her expression didn’t change at all when lying; even though she doubted her, they still appeared to be so close and intimate. Her heart was clenched beyond measure, yet it was strangely satisfying.

So what if she doubted her? Who could be closer to Gu Fengyi than her? All she needed to do was to monopolize her so that she could never get rid of her whether in life or in death.

She wanted Gu Fengyi to have only an equally perfect her in her eyes.

Dark and malicious thoughts grew in her like wild grass in March, unable to be eradicated no matter how hard she tried to push them out. She finally gave into them. Maybe this malicious and twisted desire was her true self, maybe she was already a monster.

But, even if she was the monster who had unrightfully taken over the songbird’s nest, she would push out every fledgling and make them drop to their deaths at her feet!

&&&

The roof of the school building on the outskirts of the square.

Dan Liang licked a finger and used it to feel the direction of the wind.

The wind had changed. Dan Liang sighed and walked to a neighboring building along the skywalk.

Gu Fengyi’s snake-sense was too powerful; he didn’t dare to approach at all, only able to wait carefully for the right time. Once he was found by Gu Fengyi, he would most definitely be chased around all over the place, and Liu Qingqing also hated his guts. If they ever met, it wouldn’t end well.

I really am good at offending people, huh? I managed to offend everyone, Dan Liang thought gleefully.

After changing places, the angle he was observing Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing from wasn’t as good. Dan Liang sighed in regret and continued waiting patiently. He was confident he wouldn’t have to wait for too long.

As expected, looking down from the rooftop, the ‘black holes’ scattered around the school were slowly moving around, one of them approaching where the two were standing. The two hidden near the reward platform didn’t notice its arrival and were immediately devoured by the illusion.

Dan Liang let out a breath and happily slid down the handrail, jumping along to the reward platform.

The spray from the last round hadn’t been used up and could still be used in this round. That spray which could reduce presence and scent was one of the main reasons he had stayed alive until now. Now that it was back in his hands, he was greatly relieved.

There was also the medical bag which belonged to Xia Huan from the last round, which ended up in his hands in the end. It was now seen as his reward as well.

What would be the reward for this round? He stood on the platform, excitedly anticipating it.

The light converged into a small round ball, falling onto his open hands. Dan Liang held the ball and looked at it greedily, smiling the moment he received the description.

[Bead of Deception: When used, the holder can take on the appearance of any player through physical contact, and duplicate all items and skills of the disguised player. Duration: 60 minutes. Number of uses remaining: 3/3]

Dan Liang kissed the bead and thought happily, he still had more to play with.

&&&

23:47.

There was only thirteen minutes until the proposed meet-up time. Lin Jue was lying on the ground, wailing into the crook of his elbow as Song Hanzhang healed him.

“Why are the monsters in your illusions so difficult to deal with?” Lin Jue asked him, wilted from the previous battle.

“My mind has many paradoxes, so it’s to be expected that there are many monsters of great power within it,” Song Hanzhang said in a matter-of-fact manner.

Up until now, the two had met a total of seven monsters, five of which were drawn out by Song Hanzhang, each of them terrifying in their own way. The monsters in Lin Jue’s worlds were much easier to deal with: of the two monsters, one was the bougieman lying under one’s bed, and one was the ghastly ghost which haunted midnight alleyways. It was obvious that Lin Jue lived a happy life, as even his greatest childhood traumas were ghost stories used to scare children.

As they fought, Song Hanzhang attempted to summate the monsters: they were without exception the result of the players’ negative emotions. He had even experimented with self-hypnosis, forcefully drawing out the negative emotions within him to great effect and even greater consequence. The two almost died from an ‘experimental accident’. Their final conclusion was to never try to find out ‘just how dark your heart really was’.

Leaving the illusion, the two saw that it was almost time and prepared to rendezvous with Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing to ask them about Judas. Song Hanzhang didn’t expect any result; even though Dan Liang was constantly jumping on everyone’s nerves, he still managed to survive until now, showing that he was no easy opponent.

Before heading to the plaza, the two also observed the black holes from the top of a building. These black holes weren’t confined to one place, they appeared and disappeared from time to time and moved around slowly. After a few hours, Song Hanzhang was able to calculate the general movement pattern of the black holes. Even though the accuracy was only about seventy to eighty percent, it was better than nothing.

In those few hours, the two also found the corpses of a few unfamiliar faces, like last round in the rainforest.

Lin Jue still felt confused about these players who had evidently died in a previous round. “Won’t their corpses be disposed of? Why did they show up here? Didn’t you say that every time we entered the game, it was a brand new domain? So why are these bodies here?”

Song Hanzhang analyzed, “My guess is that everytime a new domain is formed, the players who had died previously are used as elements of the domain, or rather, placed here as data similar to us players. They’re also a part of the composition of the domain.”

“Isn’t that redundant?” Lin Jue was still confused. “What are they used for?”

“It’s not the problem of their usage, it’s the problem of their ‘existence’. Perhaps this tutorial quest which was cut off from the overworld doesn’t have the right to deal with the corpses, or maybe these players have some sort of special meaning which we don’t know yet…”

“It’s a bit creepy,” Lin Jue complained.

“The deeper you think of the happenings here, the more you fear them. When I found out this was the 0708 tutorial quest, I thought, are we still using our bodies as humans? Or did we become a string of data that can be transferred whenever, casted into one fake domain after another, becoming a pile of rubbish data after death and getting deleted,” Song Hanzhang said.

Lin Jue could see that Song Hanzhang was probably a cyberpunk lover. Relating that to his childhood, it was very natural.

Leaving the illusion, the two chatted as they arrived at the time plaza. Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing were already there and said the moment they saw them, “We didn’t find Dan Liang, he was very careful.”

Lin Jue couldn’t help but frown. It appeared that the question of who Judas was wouldn’t be solved any time soon.

Song Hanzhang surveyed around him and said, “He is indeed careful. Whether or not he has taken the reward, he wouldn’t show his face that easily.”

The four could do nothing about Dan Liang’s disappearance and briefly exchanged the information they had. After these few hours, the number of monsters the four had hunted had also increased. Lin Jue had six markings on his hand, Song Hanzhang had five, and Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing both had four. The difference between their numbers wasn’t large.

Just as they were talking, Gu Fengyi suddenly looked behind her. “Lu Ren is coming.”

Lu Ren was indeed coming, slowly walking towards them, brazenly looking at the back of their hands. From Song Hanzhang to Lin Jue, then to Gu Fengyi and Liu Qingqing, before asking indignantly, “Why are you so lazy?!”

The four looked at the back of his hand in unison. After a few seconds of indignation, Lu Ren stretched out his hand proudly like a child showing off a toy to his friends, showcasing the two ‘zheng’ characters and the first stroke of a third. A total of eleven markings.

“Why is no one praising me?” Lu Ren had been waiting for someone to compliment him on his hard work, but the four were silent, either looking up at the sky or staring at the ground, as if that momentary flash of surprise when they saw the tally on the back of his hand was an illusion.

It made Lu Ren very unhappy. And when he was unhappy, the situation became a little dangerous.

Dong… dong… dong…

The clock struck midnight. At the same time, all five people’s phones rang. Lin Jue instinctively took out his phone which displayed the message he had received: [Player Lin Jue: opening conditions met, entering new domain.]

A hint appeared in his mind out of nowhere: [Data loading… 2002… 2012… 2022… loading successful.]

|TOC|

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