Chapter 25

Parsed with an automated reader. The content accuracy is not guranteed.

**This is an edited machine translation. For more information, please [click here]**

[<<< | Table of Contents | >>>]

—–

Chapter 25: Star Death Reality Show (VIII)

The leaking of a virus from an underground biochemical research institute under a luxurious villa has caused animal and human variation—this traditional horror game routine developed by the first generation of Resident Evil games was so familiar that when the three people discovered that there might be huge space hidden underground in this polar village, they immediately thought of an underground research institute.

But if this was the case, the culprit that caused the extinction of civilization on this planet may originate from this underground research institute, and the most terrible thing was that it had been released.

Qi Leren couldn’t help but sweat. After a long time, he said, “Have you found the ID card?”

“No, according to the routine… Well, according to the actual situation, this important ID card may not be placed here… Let me see… I can’t understand the text on the electronic lock, but it seems to be based on fingerprints.” Dr. Lu carefully stared at the electronic lock for a while.

“Don’t bother, we can’t even find an ID card let alone fingerprints. There are no living intelligent creatures here,” Qi Leren said.

“Let’s look for it again,” Dr. Lu said without hope.

The three people searched the basement, but still found nothing. They had to push the bookshelf back against the iron door to block it and left the basement. Before leaving, they searched the house and found an attic, but there was only some old furniture in it, no important items that they needed.

The rotation cycle of this planet was twenty-four hours. The universe’s standard length for a day in Qi Leren’s memory equated to this planet was twenty hours a day. After coming to this planet, the extra four hours per day made the people feel that the days were particularly long, especially tiring, and especially tempting for sleep. Obviously, this copy also adjusted their biological clock.

Dr. Lu yawned and Qi Leren wasn’t much better. Du Yue became more and more energetic at night, and he was a young man with good physical strength. The three men were on their way to the church, and Qi Leren was responsible for leading the performance. This was a piece of cake for a man who had done undercover missions. He showed a worried look: “On the first day we came here, Lara and Francis found that glowing stone in a cave. I’ve been thinking about it a little, I always felt…”

Dr. Lu’ s acting was stiff: “I also think it seemed to be a bit worrisome.”

Du Yue, a loser in acting, simply stopped talking, bowed his head, and silently followed.

“In short, let’s go and have a look,” Qi Leren said.

“Right, right, let’s go and see!” Dr. Lu tried to seem eager.

This act was like a primary school student on a spring outing… Qi Leren disdained his little friend’s acting skills in his heart, hoping that the audience wouldn’t see the problem.

In the polar day, the sun lingered near the horizon but would never fall again. This cold light without warmth couldn’t make people feel comforted at all. If they hadn’t all been wearing ultra-thin temperature regulating clothes, the temperature in this polar region would be enough to make these pampered people of the future suffer. However, this was not a problem for Qi Leren. Thanks to Maria’s blessing of holy light, his body had been altered so that he didn’t have to fear the cold.

The church was just around the corner. The three people pushed open the door and went in and passed through the rows of pews to the church’s back room, where the glowing stone was.

It no longer shone. It was as dull as an ordinary piece of rock, but…

This “stone” had been pried open.

In the center of the stone, which was broken into two large pieces, there was a hole the size of an egg. Under the illumination of a flashlight, something like dry mucus was left in the hole, suggesting that it was not an ordinary stone.

All three people were silent, even though they had already learned this information from the task prompts, when they saw it with their own eyes, they still couldn’t help but feel fear—Pandora’s Box had been opened and the monster that had destroyed civilization had been released. In this polar village isolated by the laser grid, a terrible and bloody massacre was about to begin, and they still knew nothing about the executioner.

“Well… this stone… is not quite right,” Dr. Lu said drily.

Qi Leren squatted down and looked at the stone carefully: “Why isn’t its surface shining?”

“I don’t know….. Who broke it? There seems to be something in the stone.” Dr. Lu pretended not to know and tried to show it to the audience hundreds of millions of light-years away.

“Let’s ask when we gather tomorrow,” Qi Leren said. “Also, I have something to ask Xue Jiahui. It’s not polite to go to her door alone in the middle of the night. Please accompany me.”

“It’s rude for three big men to knock on a sister’s door in the middle of the night,” Dr. Lu spat at him.

“It really… can’t wait,” Qi Leren murmured.

He knew that his actions were a bit risky, because logically speaking from the audience’s perspective, he shouldn’t know that the monster that had escaped from this stone was a space alien octopus, so it would be odd If he suddenly went to Xue Jiahui to ask after information on octopus. Qi Leren intended to find a suitable topic to cut into—He Yi.

Qi Leren believed that Xue Jiahui had to be worried about He Yi’s disappearance. He decided to start from here and talk about the possibility of an attic in Annie’s house first, and then find the opportunity to let her identify the notebook they had just found in the basement of Jing Siyu’s house and see if the hand-drawn creature looked like the amphioctopus.

Whether it was true or not, Qi Leren would get as much information about amphioctopuses from Xue Jiahui’s mouth as possible. After all, she had done a program about amphioctopuses, and he suspected she knew them best among this group of save for Annie.

The three men left the church and walked along the shoveled road to Xue Jiahui’s house. On the way, Dr. Lu also talked with Qi Leren about the bizarre disappearance that had happened today.

“How did two living people suddenly disappear from the house? Is there really a room we didn’t find?” Dr. Lu muttered.

“Hard to say. Now that I think about it, we did miss a lot of places. At that time, we concentrated on looking for the basement, but maybe Annie’s house has an attic instead of a basement. Or maybe there are some compartments in her house? There’s also the exhaust pipe outside her house, which is square and quite thick. It runs from the roof to the ground, and it could be used to hide two living people,” Qi Leren said.

Dr. Lu flattened his mouth: “Back to that question, why did they hide?”

“Because they were afraid,” Du Yue suddenly said.

Qi Leren and Dr. Lu looked back and looked at the newcomer. Du Yue, who was watched by the two men, looked down abruptly. “I mean… That is… If you hide… you definitely don’t want someone to find you. So did they feel they were in danger?”

Danger? The biggest danger of this copy obviously came from the “octopus” in the task prompt.

“Well… If you think from this angle… is there something wrong with any of us?” Dr. Lu asked broadly. Because there was a camera, he couldn’t talk indiscriminately. He could only implicitly imply, “For example, there’s a killer among us or something.”

Qi Leren squinted at him: “But before, there was nothing different about them, they always acted with us. It didn’t make sense for Mark to knock himself out. When he woke up, did he suddenly think that other people were dangerous and then hid?”

“Maybe! Maybe Mark recovered some memories of the past when he hit his head,” Dr. Lu posited.

Du Yue also nodded quickly: “Yes, it’s possible!”

“…You might as well say that after Mark woke up, he went mad and killed He Yi, and then took his body and hid it.” Qi Leren paused and said, “I suddenly remembered one thing. At that time, He Yi and I waited at the door for Mark to enter the house to get the axe. He Yi told me something. He said that he saw something last night…”

“What did he see?” Dr. Lu asked nervously.

“Before he finished speaking, there was a loud noise in the house. Mark had stumbled and fainted. We went in and lifted him onto the bed. After that, He Yi was responsible for taking care of him. I came to you with the axe,” Qi Leren said.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt that something was wrong. So did Dr. Lu. He murmured, “This routine… He definitely saw something he shouldn’t see. Hey, do you think Mark heard it and made a noise intentionally to interrupt your conversation? Then when He Yi was alone…”

“But the person who stayed at that time could have also been me,” Qi Leren said.

“It doesn’t matter, just interrupt his conversation with you and avoid him saying things he shouldn’t say. In the end, the more I think about it, the more I think it may be like this. Is He Yi still alive?” Dr. Lu became anxious.

“It seems that we need to pay more attention to Annie. There’s something more to Mark’s relationship with her,” Qi Leren said.

“We have to pay more attention. Even if we ask her, she’ll definitely pretend not to know.” Dr. Lu said helplessly.

“Qianbei, do you want me to tie her up and torture her?” Du Yue suddenly said, startling both of them.

“Tie- Tie her up? That would be criminal!” Dr. Lu had to say.

“But there are no police here,” Du Yue said.

“Right… No police,” Dr. Lu murmured and collapsed. “So even if there really is a perverted killer, we have to do it ourselves.”

“Du Yue’s idea is very good, but we have to consider the feelings of other contestants. If you rush to do so without evidence, it will easily cause opposition and exclusion and intensify the differences between them… If we still have other options… I don’t recommend using violent means.” Qi Leren thought for a moment and reluctantly offered up this attractive proposal.

In fact, if they were hardhearted enough, they could sneak into these NPCs’ houses at night and kill them one by one so as to avoid this group of NPCs dragging their feet. Furthermore, if the octopus really was a parasitic monster, this course of action would put an end to any future trouble once and for all. However, Qi Leren couldn’t do it. He still couldn’t regard NPCs in these copy tasks as sets of data. He felt that if he really aimed his butcher knife at an innocent, ordinary NPC, even if he wouldn’t be punished for it, he would still feel inhuman.

The three people had arrived at Xue Jiahui’s house and Qi Leren knocked on the door. The door had been left unlocked and opened from his gentle push.

Xue Jiahui hadn’t closed the door? Qi Leren walked in in amazement, and there was a mess left on the ground. The vases and dishes on the table had spilled all over the floor and smashed to pieces as if someone had fought here. When he thought of the disappearance during the day today, Qi Leren immediately had a bad premonition in his heart.

“Xue Jiahui? Xue Jiahui, are you here?” Qi Leren shouted.

In fact, he knew very well that Xue Jiahui could no longer be here.

She had disappeared too.

—–

[<<< | Table of Contents | >>>]