Chapter 29

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Chapter 29: Star Death Reality Show (XII)

{cw: brief discussion of menstruation}

This conversation between guys didn’t last long. After all, Qi Leren and Du Yue weren’t too familiar with each other, and they wouldn’t be as casual as with Dr. Lu. It was almost two o'clock in the middle of the night. It was time for Qi Leren to watch the speaker.

The temperature difference between night and day was not much in the polar region, and the sunshine of the polar day fell on the tundra, quiet and serene. If it weren’t for the danger stirring, that was spying on these poor lambs, Qi Leren probably wouldn’t be as uneasy as he was now.

When he came to the outside of the church, Qi Leren saw Janet’s bright clothes at a glance. She was breathing on her hands. After a while, she pulled thick gloves on her hands: “This damn weather is really enough to freeze penguins.”

—It’s cold enough to freeze penguins. Someone had once described a polar environment to Qi Leren like this. When Janet’s words, he couldn’t help but think of that. Qi Leren showed a smile: “There are no penguins here, and we have temperature-control suits. We won’t freeze to death.”

“Hey man, this is just an exaggerated metaphor. Can you have a sense of humor?” Janet rolled her eyes at him.

Dr. Lu and Alex came out of the church. Both of them were a little sleepy. They went back to rest after the handover with Janet. Janet walked into the church, sat down on the couch, and chatted with Qi Leren boredly: “You and Lara have a good relationship?”

“Not bad,” Qi Leren said perfunctorily.

“Uh-huh, I guess you’re being condescending now,” Janet said with a smile.

“You’re not a worm in my stomach.” Qi Leren refused to admit it.

“Come on, I still have self-awareness. I never wanted to be likable.” Janet shrugged her shoulders and said casually, “Let’s change the subject. What do you think about the disappearances these past few days?”

“…It’s hard to say, but I don’t think this is a ‘script’. The situation has been somewhat out of control.” Qi Leren frowned. “I feel that it’s dangerous. A great danger…”

“Interesting. What kind of danger is it?” Janet asked curiously.

Qi Leren glanced at her. He wasn’t sure what this woman was thinking: “In many ways. Although intelligent life on this planet is extinct, there are still large animals alive, the vegetation is well preserved, the air quality and temperature conditions are suitable for survival, and it may be used as a colony planet or sightseeing planet in the future.”

Janet was suddenly taken with him and followed along his topic: “I don’t want to come to this hellhole again. Unless some discerning producer invites me to be the heroine and let Lara play the villain, then I may think about it, haha.”

“You hate her that much?” Qi Leren was surprised. He thought Lara was easy to get along with.

“It’s the war between women, men wouldn’t understand.” Janet spread her hands. “Anyway, I just hate the way she carries herself all the time. She acts like she’s the smartest, most powerful, most understanding in the world. It’s hypocritical, but you men eat this up.”

Qi Leren declined to comment.

When Janet saw that he didn’t speak, she curled her lips in boredom and found a place to sit down.

It was getting late into the night, Janet complained about the importance of beauty sleep, and absently dozed off. Qi Leren had had enough sleep during the day, so now he was very energetic and wandered around the church. This church should be quite old. If it wasn’t in the polar region, it would have been overwhelmed by lush vegetation and become a green ruin.

Looking out from the church window, Qi Leren could just see He Yi’s house in the southwest. He suddenly remembered that He Yi had talked about something. On the first night, he saw…

What did he see? Did someone enter the church? If so, who did he see?

Unless He Yi reappeared, it was impossible for him to know.

This night was calm, Janet slept for a while and woke up after a while. At 7 o'clock, she finally got up. She tidied up her hair and complained: “I have never lived so rough in my life, and I have never desired to before!”

Qi Leren was about to speak when he saw Lara coming with Xue Jiahui from the window, so he asked, “How do you feel?”

Xue Jiahui looked at him in confusion and shook her head: “I still can’t remember…”

“It’s good that we’re returning to our parent star when the program is over. It should be only temporary,” Lara consoled.

When the contestants came one after another, Lara pulled the Qi Leren aside when no one was paying attention and whispered, “When you searched for materials a few days ago, did you find anything like cotton and cloth?”

“Yes, I did. What do you want this for?” Qi Leren wondered.

“I don’t want it, it’s Xue Jiahui. I saw that she discarded a cloth in the bathroom with blood on it. I think she probably encountered the same problem as Annie,” Lara said.

Qi Leren: “…”

“Even I don’t think it’s very good. You may not know this, but this physiological condition can be contagious,” Lara said embarrassedly.

Qi Leren felt that, as a man, he didn’t really want to know this kind of thing. He was a little concerned that Lara didn’t tell others, but instead had taken him aside to borrow necessities. Did he look like a “best friend”?

Probably seeing Qi Leren’s depressed expression, Lara added: “I asked Francis to look after her for a while yesterday and went everywhere to borrow something, but unfortunately none of them had anything.”

“Then how did you deal with it?” Qi Leren asked.

Lara gave a complicated look and said, “Xue Jiahui cut up her pillow… The pillowcase was used as a liner.”

As the two people whispered, the contestants had already arrived one after another. This time, the atmosphere was more dignified than the previous two times. It even faintly appeared somewhat strange, because this time, what would be announced by the speaker was not the person who had won the Best of the Day, but the person who had knocked out Xue Jiahui and left her in the church. And this man was among them.

Time passed, and at eight o'clock the speaker started. The answer they eagerly wanted to know was given in a mechanical voice: “Now broadcasting the voting results. The winner of the Best of the Day is: Mark.”

“Mark?”

“How can it be him?”

“Isn’t he missing?”

“It turned out to be him?”

They were all whispering in amazement, but Qi Leren was not too surprised. It had seemed like Mark had gone missing at the beginning, but he wasn’t really missing, he was hiding somewhere… He quietly glanced out of the corner of his eye at Annie who was standing in the shadows, and she was expressionless.

……

……

……

The discussion was still inconclusive, so they had to split up again. Qi Leren was in a faint hurry. Today was the fourth day. If there was no breakthrough, even if he risked being seen through by the audience, he would identify the dangerous creature “amphioctopus”, or risk being parasitized or injured. He would forcibly enter Annie’s house.

Although Annie’s own fighting capacity shouldn’t be strong, Qi Leren strongly suspected that she was already a puppet of the octopus, and he doesn’t know anything about the octopus’ fighting capabilities. He didn’t have the confidence that he could kill an octopus without using a skill card. Fortunately, after listening to the broadcast results, Annie returned to her house and then left the house again with the axe to go look for materials.

After waiting for the opportunity for such a long time, Qi Leren immediately climbed into Annie’s house through the window, focusing on searching for the attic. This time, they had a clear goal and had good luck. In less than ten minutes, Dr. Lu found a dark panel on the second floor ceiling, from which an iron ladder could be pulled down after it was lifted.

Qi Leren looked at the dark attic above his head and was excited. His guess was right. Annie’s house did have an attic! Mark and He Yi didn’t disappear, but hid in the attic!

After entering the attic, it was dark inside. Under the illumination of the flashlight, the desks, chairs, and bookshelves here all looked grim. Qi Leren noticed that the attic was also like a laboratory, just like the basement in Jing Siyu’s house.

Dr. Lu also came up, looked around to search, and soon felt that there was something wrong with the floor in the attic. Du Yue came up to help and lifted the floor. It turned out to be a straight, dark passage below, leading underground!

“So the structure is like this,” Dr. Lu said, looking at this passage “It’s not that there’s a trapdoor on the first floor that’s used to enter the basement, but there’s a passage through the attic, which isn’t connected with the first floor or the second floor, but goes straight to the basement. Um… For example, it’s like an enlarged version of a sewage pipe embedded in the wall.”

“Why would they have such a design?” Du Yue asked curiously.

“God knows, I don’t have a clue. Oh, it’s also possible that the owner was a hikikomori and hated to see the sun. His scope of activities was the attic and the basement, so when building the house, he simply made such a passageway,” Dr. Lu said.

Although he didn’t hear any movement, Qi Leren was a little worried that someone could be in the basement, so when he grabbed the metal cross section and climbed down the pipe’s ladder rung by rung, his heart beat fast and he was extremely nervous. But after reaching the bottom, he found everything was normal and the basement was empty.

“Wow, what is this? Was there an explosion?” Dr. Lu also climbed down and was surprised to see that there was a pile of messy rubble deep in the basement and a big hole punched out of the wall.

“Do you remember that when we were in Jing Siyu’s basement, there was the sound of an explosion outside? At that time, I thought it was the church or something had collapsed, but now it seems that… It happened here,” Qi Leren said thoughtfully.

Du Yue also came over. He was more active. He simply rolled up his sleeves and moved the rocks. However, several huge rocks blocked the hole and couldn’t be removed without tools: “No, I can’t move them. Can I explode it again?”

Qi Leren looked at the rocks on the ground that had obviously been manipulated but still blocked their way. He could imagine what Annie and Mark had been busy with these past few days… Hey, but where had Mark gone? They didn’t see Mark go in or out of Annie’s house all day yesterday. Maybe he was here the whole time, or maybe he was outside the whole time.

There came a squeak sound, the hatch that connected the attic to the basement was lifted. Qi Leren immediately turned off his flashlight, as did Dr. Lu.

Deng, deng, deng, the sound of shoes stepping on the metal rungs came, and Qi Leren felt like his hair was about to fall out. He looked in horror at the metal pipe with its iron ladder. Someone was coming down!

“Did we close the attic door when we entered the pipe?” Qi Leren lowered his voice and asked.

“It was closed, I was the last one, I closed it,” Du Yue replied nervously.

“Okay, don’t make any noise, stick to the wall, I’ll handle it.” Qi Leren said after a pause, guessing that the other party didn’t know they were in the basement.

After turning off the flashlights, only pure darkness remained in the basement, almost opaque. Qi Leren closed his eyes, stroked the palm of his right hand with his left hand, and silently counted the sound of the steps on the rungs as he readied himself.

He felt as if he had returned to the sea. The sea water was cold, and the pressure from all directions became stronger and stronger with his dive. He forced himself to slow down his heart, because at this time, panic would only make his oxygen consumption faster and make him closer to death.

Just as Qi Leren constantly adjusted his own state and brought himself closer to his peak level, that person had already reached the bottom. When they were about to step off it, the person fumbled in their trouser pocket and took out a flashlight…

The flashlight’s switch gave a click, and in a moment the light lit up the people hidden in the darkness. It was at this instant that Qi Leren shot out like lightning and kicked their calf! Kicked their face down to the ground!

“Ah!” A woman’s voice let out a painful cry and the flashlight fell to the ground. She wanted to look up and see who it was, but Qi Leren swung his hand down like a knife on the back of her neck! The strength was so great that she passed out instantly!

Looking at Annie, who had collapsed to the ground and passed out, Qi Leren breathed a long sigh of relief. He felt that he had returned to the surface from the bottom of the sea and felt renewed life thrum through him.

Thank you Chen Baiqi, thank you diving training, and thank you three-headed hellhound.

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