Chapter 26: Hallucinations

Gao Shulin had a distressed expression on her face, but she still had questions, so she while comforting and encouraging her, she asked, "You didn’t call for help?"

Xiao Liu shook her head with tears in her eyes, and choked out, "I called for a long time, but no one came."

In reality, Xiao Liu was a prospective college student. She was seriously reviewing and studying for the Gaokao¹. She had never expected that she would be pulled into such a weird and terrifying game. Although it was called a “game”, who was to say whether or not she could go home, even if she died?

She missed her parents, her friends and classmates, and her mother's corn and pork rib soup².

She was lucky. Her two previous copies had been relatively simple, and some players had seen that she was young and took care of her. In this dungeon, she even met the kind-hearted Gao-jiejie.

Before the break, Gao-jiejie had said that she could call her if needed, so Xiao Liu had a little peace of mind and had been able to sleep, but she hadn’t expected to encounter such a terrifying thing.

It had been very dark, and Xiao Liu hadn’t turned off the bedside lamp because she was afraid to sleep, so when she woke up she could see the thing on the other side of the window clearly.

It was a bloody face, with only red holes in the bloody face where the eyes, nose, and mouth should’ve been, as if it was a person who had been skinned alive.

Seeing that it had been discovered, the thing grinned and tried to climb in, leaving bloodstains on the windows. The locked window made a creaking noise as it was pried at, each sound increasing in urgency.

Xiao Liu screamed in horror, pulling up the quilt and wrapping herself up tightly, with trembling all over. Remembering what Gao-jiejie had said, she stumbled towards the door while shouting, but the door would not open.

She was terrified, and the creaking sounds behind her became louder and louder. She slapped at the door and screamed hysterically, not daring to look back, as if the thing wouldn’t come closer if her screams drowned out the creaking.

He Wei: "What happened next? How did you escape it?" With all due respect, it didn’t seem like that little girl could’ve escaped that thing, based on how she was acting.

Gao Shulin gave him a stern look for asking so directly, and but repeated the question.

Xiao Liu sobbed and said, "I don't know, I just remember that I kept hitting the door, but then I fell asleep for some reason, and woke up in the morning when the servant began knocking."

She had woken up and found herself lying in the doorway, both happy and scared: it was fortunate that she had survived, but she was also terrified that she had fallen asleep at such a dangerous time.

Unknowingly falling asleep? The little girl was wrapped in a thick coat, and her eyes were red. Shen Qingcheng was amazed that her physical fitness was good enough that she hadn’t caught a cold after lying at the door all night.

He Wei: "Is that diary still there? Was your experience last night exactly as described by the husband of the hostess of the castle?"

Xiao Liu: "The diary is in my room, but I didn’t finish reading it, so I don't know if it's the same."

He Wei frowned. "You didn't finish reading?"

Xiao Liu shrank, her shoulders coming forward. "I was scared." What the hostess had recorded was too terrifying--she didn't dare to read further after going through half of it.

"Okay," Gao Shulin interrupted, "It won’t make a difference if you go up and finish the diary later. Anyway, the diary can't exactly escape, so I think another issue is more worth discussing than this."

"If the diary owner and her husband are the castle owners, who entertained us last night? Was it the next owner of the castle or…" Or was there some messy, indescribable history?

She looked at the other 14 players sitting around the long table, and paused when she glanced at Shen Mei and Lu Qi.

Gao Shulin said, "Lu Qi, you were not there when we were having a discussion yesterday. You two should have chosen solving the story line as a way of customs clearance?"

Lu Qi nodded and said in a deep voice, "En."

Shen Qingcheng didn't speak, and glanced at Lu Qi silently.

Lu Qi: "..." Understood.

Before they could discuss for too long, the little girl who had sung and danced the previous night led the tall man, the bear man, and a group of servants with food in.

The girl had changed into a colorful dress, which matched the colorful feather ornaments on her head. She came into the hall humming a song, and the men followed her silently, arranged like an iron tower³.

Plates of food were brought to the table by the servants.

Their breakfast today was very simple, it was identical pieces of bread with milk and a small bottle of ketchup set in front of the bread. The ketchup was bright red and sticky, and the milk was packed in transparent glass containers, still warm to the touch.

Shen Qingcheng picked up the milk and smelled it. There was a milky smell unique to fresh milk.

"You must have a good rest today." The little girl walked between Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi, and tilted her head to look at Shen Qingcheng.

Shen Qingcheng nodded, "Thank you for your concern, my rest last night was quite good."

There was a happy look on the girl's face, but she within seconds she heard the human in front of her say, "But I'm allergic to milk."

Her expression immediately chilled.

Shen Qingcheng was very apologetic. "I'm really sorry, we shouldn’t waste it--why don't you drink this glass of milk?" He passed the plate forward.

"Shut up! Shut up!" the girl screamed, like a plucked bird.

"Ying Ying." The man behind her called.

The girl closed her mouth, looked at everyone gloomily, and then began laughing and humming a ditty. "No one can escape, no one can escape." While singing, she led the men out of the hall.

In the hall, the servants stood behind the players' chairs with their heads down, and the players in front of the long table shot silent glances at each other.

Gao Shulin watched Shen Meiren put the milk back and not make a move towards anything else, and said, "Shen Meiren, why aren’t you eating?."

Not only did he not eat anything himself, but he also didn't let Lu Qi eat. She scrutinized the silently cooperative man next to her.

Shen Qingcheng didn't hide his thoughts, but he also knew that others would not necessarily believe him. He said, "It just doesn’t feel like it was meant for people to eat."

"Don't ask, it's really just intuition."

Gao Shulin really didn't believe it. Not only her, but also everyone else didn’t believe him.

Someone sneered, "It's not for people to eat--you mean that those of us who eat are not people?"

He had been really frightened by this man the previous night and hadn’t dared to eat more, but he had been quite hungry in the middle of the night. In the morning, he saw that those who had eaten a lot were fine.

If he was fooled again today, then he would change his name to Shen Meiren!

Shen Qingcheng shrugged. He said what he had to say, and there was nothing he could do if the others didn't believe him.

He turned his head and, touched, said, "Lu-dage, you’re so great." He believed him without any evidence. He was nothing like those coquettish bitches who doubted him!

Lu Qi's sharp jawline suddenly tightened.

After breakfast, except for Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi, the other players’ food all showed some signs of having been picked over. They went upstairs to Xiao Liu's room to read the diary of the suspected former hostess of the castle.

Unlike the previous copy, where the players had acted independently, in this copy, despite He Wei and Goa Shulin’s conflict, they had a certain degree of tacit understanding when it came to customs clearance, such as sharing clues.

Shen Qingcheng also preferred their method, if he chose to do customs clearance through understanding the story line.

The diary Xiao Liu mentioned was incomplete, with the second half torn up, and the first half was mostly the hostess recording what her husband told her about at night.

Because she couldn't see any of those things, she guessed that her husband had had hallucinations because of the stress of writing.

She told her husband about her hypothesis, and he began to doubt himself, but he thought that his problem was not serious and was reluctant to go to the doctor, so he just bought some soothing medication for himself.

The husband didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night and disturb his wife’s rest, so the two began to sleep in separate rooms.

But the husband's symptoms did not abate.

He was often awakened by the same thing that Xiao Liu had seen. The wife in front of him was like a stranger in human skin. There was a fifth person in the castle, upstairs, in the next room, behind him, stalking and peeping at him.

He was suspicious and began to have hallucinations during the day. Sometimes he was talking to his wife one second, and the next second he would raise his fist at his wife with a grim face, but when his wife was knocked down and cried out in pain, he would suddenly wake up with a start, suddenly aware she wasn't a monster that wanted to kill him.

The husband was in pain and he didn’t want to hurt his wife and children.

The couple had two children, a boy and a girl. The girl was seven years old, and the boy only two. The wife did not tell the two children about her husband's mental state, but just silently endured it and only told them not to disturb her husband.

Until one day, her eldest daughter asked her: Who was the person who entered Dad's room last night?

No one had come to the castle except the four of them, and she had slept well the night before.

He Wei: "So what the husband saw was not a hallucination."

Shen Qingcheng thought to himself, This was a horror game, it was pretty normal that it wasn’t a hallucination, wasn’t it? The back pages of the diary were torn out, and it was impossible to tell whether anything had happened in the future.

Gao Shulin: "The story line of the copy revolves around this family of four?"

He Wei: "There’s no hurry, let's wait and see."

Gao Shulin glanced at He Wei and didn't refute his words. In this type of dangerous game where their lives dangled by a thread⁴, you couldn’t be too cautious.

On the other side of the room, He Wei was discussing how to arrange people when collecting clues with Gao Shulin, while Shen Qingcheng was poking at Lu Qi, "Lu Qi, I'm hungry."

Alas, his clothes are too thick, and he didn’t feel like poking Lu Qi if he couldn't even feel it.

Lu Qi was looking at the oil painting on the wall. The oil painting was the same as the one in his room, bold and bright with a red fox lying on black gravel with its eyes closed, resting. Its fur was bright and its abdomen was slightly bulging.

The person beside him had lowered his head and was muttering, rubbing his stomach. His beautiful brows raised slightly, he withdrew his gaze, and said, "Check out the kitchen later."

Unexpectedly, Shen Qingcheng looked at him suspiciously after hearing this. "Are you eating delicious food behind my back?"

Lu Qi: "Huh?"

Shen Qingcheng: "Otherwise, why aren't you hungry!"

Lu Qi: "..."

"Shen Meiren," He Wei interrupted the two of them, "We decided to collect clues about this building today. Would you like to come with me?"

There were many ancient castle buildings, and the building they lived in was only one of them. There were five floors in the building. The players lived on the second floor. The gorgeous woman who had appeared the previous night could only be living on a floor above, so they must pay attention when looking for clues lest they bump into her.

As one of the leaders of the players, He Shi was very calm and reliable from beginning to end, so when he offered to bring Shen Meiren, many players showed dismayed expressions.

Even He Wei didn’t think he would be rejected.

However, Shen Qingcheng never played his cards according to common sense. He hugged Lu Qi's arm and said nervously, "No need, I have Lu-dage."

Lu Qi glanced at the man on his arm, but did not refuse.

This made Gao Shulin restrain her own invitation to Lu Qi.

Just when the atmosphere was about to become embarrassing, a servant of the ancient castle knocked on the door, "The master ordered me to familiarize the guests with the environment, please come with me."

He Wei cleared his throat, "Please thank your master for your kindness, but we want to rest in this room first."

The servant repeated, "The master ordered me to familiarize the guests with the environment, please come with me."

Next, Gao Shulin also tried to refuse, but the servants outside only repeated their words.

He Shi and Gao Shulin had to temporarily change their plan. Most of them went to get acquainted with the environment with their servants, and they picked a few people to leave in private and go upstairs to check.

Unless it was a last resort, it was definitely not a good choice to completely destroy relations with the NPCs.

The plan went very smoothly. The servants in black and white skirts led the way in front, and they didn't seem to notice that there were a few players missing from the team behind them.

Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi were among the few players missing.

They avoided the crowd and found the kitchen. Contrary to Shen Qingcheng's expectations, the kitchen didn't have any of the "unclean" things he had imagined--rather, it was too clean.

There was nothing in the kitchen.