Chapter 28: New Clothes

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"Are you thinking the same thing as I am?" He glanced sideways at the man's chiseled profile.

Lu Qi's dark eyes narrowed slightly, and he remarked, "Probably not."

The conversation between the two sounded incomprehensible, but in fact, Shen Qingcheng had asked whether Wei Tian's death was related to this painting, and whether or not it was also related to Lu Qi's later stabbing, and Lu Qi had answered in the negative.

He Wei, who had been secretly paying attention to Shen Meiren's words, walked towards the two of them with a smile. "Meiren, did you figure something out?"

The two of them had quickly followed after the other duo.

Shen Qingcheng, who had been talking to Lu Qi, felt goosebumps pop up when he heard the gentle call of his name. He shivered and said to He Wei, "You should call me by my full name, otherwise it sounds like you’re a foolish emperor calling for his concubine¹."

"It really is a bit awkward." He Wei, who had lost some face², didn't change his expression, and smoothly asked, "Shen Meiren, did you and Lu Qi find anything?"

Lu Qi turned to look at him, and said, "Wei Tian is dead."

The other players in the room all gathered around and interjected their own questions.

"Dead? Right now he’s just missing, how can you be sure that he’s dead?"

"He and Shen Meiren weren’t here earlier, were they? Where did they go?"

"Yeah, at that time all the players were either following the servants to familiarize themselves with the environment or going upstairs to search the rooms, but I didn’t see either him or Shen Meiren. That’s just too suspicious."

"Could they be radicals³?"

"Quiet," Gao Shulin said, and when everyone had calmed down, she walked with Xiao Liu up to Lu Qi, asking in place of everyone else, "Are you sure that you saw Wei Tian's body?"

"En," Lu Qi hummed, his expression still calm and indifferent. "In the forest."

"Forest? What were you doing in the forest?" She looked suspiciously at Lu Qi and Shen Meiren.

"Because I was hungry, and the wild game in the forest was quite good," Shen Qingcheng said with a smile. Seeing Gao Shulin’s stunned expression, he said, "Don't look at us like that, we don't have any kind of hidden relationship, really."

Gao Shulin, who was skeptical at first, had her doubts dispelled by his “excuses⁴”. Shen Meiren was deliberately misleading her.

She pretended not to hear the latter part of his sentence and continued to ask Lu Qi, "Where did you find it? Was there anything suspicious about the body?"

Shen Qingcheng: "It was quite far from the old castle, blocking the way to the forest. Very suspicious--we didn’t know if it was safe."

Seeing Shen Meiren answering for him, Lu Qi allowed him to speak and just nodded at the end.

Gao Shulin was dissatisfied: they were so unhelpful they might as well have not said anything. How could they analyze the corpse? "Lu Qi, do you still remember the location of the corpse? Please take us to see it later."

Just as Lu Qi was about to answer, his shoulders suddenly felt weighed down.

Shen Qingcheng limply leaned on Lu Qi's shoulders, pulled his hand over to touch his forehead, and said weakly, "Lu-dage, feel it, do you think I got a fever after staying in the forest for too long?"

Gao Shulin was instantly furious. "You!" Shen Meiren was definitely doing it on purpose!

Lu Qi apologized to Gao Shulin and directed, "Leave the castle and head north."

"Then let's go now, and we'll have lunch later." He Wei timely rescued them, saying, "Shen Meiren, you stay and have a good rest, and tell Lu Qi if you need anything."

Then he addressed Lu Qi, "Lu Qi, sorry for troubling you."

Lu Qi didn't say anything.

Gao Shulin didn't do anything else, leaving with a cold snort.

After everyone else was gone, Shen Qingcheng said, "Times like these, I really miss Zhou An'an. She really seems to think that she’s a sun, that the whole world revolves around her."

He was referring to Gao Shulin.

After complaining about Gao Shulin, he began to complain about He Wei. "Is He Wei insane⁵? I don’t know him well. What gives him the right to tell you to take care of me?"

"Besides, you'd take care of me even if he hadn’t said anything, wouldn’t you, Lu-dage?"

He wanted to hug his thigh, he wanted to lie down and win, didn’t they get it?

He looked at Lu Qi eagerly, his eyes hinting wildly.

Lu Qi turned his head to the side, avoiding Shen Qingcheng's forehead, which was almost touching his chin, and said in a hoarse voice, "Stand still."

Did that mean he had succeeded or failed? Shen Qingcheng straightened his back and stood steadily.

He was in good health, so naturally he wouldn't really go and rest. The two of them checked the rooms upstairs one by one for a while, then when it was almost noon, they prepared to go downstairs.

As he was on the stairs, Shen Qingcheng saw He Wei and the others on their way back from the forest through the open door, and suddenly stopped, calling, "Lu Qi."

Lu Qi, who was walking behind Shen Qingcheng, stopped. His gaze fell to the top of Shen Qingcheng's head. "En?"

Shen Qingcheng: "I just remembered, when I saw He Wei--the way you played along with me to fool Gao Shulin really made you seem like a foolish emperor."

After speaking, he smiled to himself, "Hey, why don't you call me Meiren too?"

He stopped following behind and drew level with him.

Ignoring him, Lu Qi passed Shen Meiren and made it down the stairs first.

Downstairs, servants dressed in black and white maid costumes silently set out lunch. The expressions of He Wei, Gao Shulin and the others didn’t look good.

They hadn’t found Wei Tian's body, but they didn't think that there was any mistake with the location Lu Qi gave them, because there was blood all over the scene.

Someone had died inexplicably, and now even their body could not be found.

"Raise pigs, raise pigs, raise pigs to be white and fat~" The girl named Ying Ying appeared in the living room with a man, humming. Her colorful skirts bounced up and down.

"Everyone seems unhappy today?" She tilted her head and looked at them with a smile. "Da Xiong, they’re unhappy~ unhappy~"

The tall man said in a muffled voice, "En."

The little girl then asked, "Why aren’t you happy?"

The man replied, "Because their companion died."

"That’s right, it’s because your companion died," the little girl clapped happily, "He’s dead, serves you right for being disobedient~ being disobedient~"

"Sing, your fucking mother⁶!" An impatient male player banged the table and was about to get up. It was the player who had picked up a mask first.

Hong Ganglie had long thought that the blonde girl was displeasing to see. He was already pissed at being thrown into a ghost game, and that little girl was always poking the bear⁷!

He Wei held him back. "Calm down."

"Wei-ge, I think we might as well just grab this little girl and interrogate her. Maybe we can even complete the task faster," Hong Ganglie argued.

He Wei had persuaded him to try winning by clearing the story line for the first time. From his perspective, the ghosts in the copies were nothing to be afraid of, so he easily killed a few with his props.

This idiot thought he was invincible after passing a few low-difficulty copies. He Wei suppressed his impatience, saying, "Don't be impulsive."

Gao Shulin’s expression turned mocking when she saw that he couldn't even control the people following him.

"Wei-ge-"

"You want to catch me?" A head popped out between the two of them. The little girl glanced left and right at their stiff expressions, but then her eyes fixed onto Hong Ganglie's face. Her dark green eyes rolled in their sockets, and she asked, "Or do you want to kill me?"

He Wei covered Hong Ganglie's mouth and said, "No, you misunderstood."

"Hee hee, you actually want to kill me, you actually want to kill me."

She laughed, as if she had heard something funny. When she stopped laughing, she repeated the sentence again, making aimless loops in the hall as she did. She didn’t even care that Shen Qingcheng hadn’t eaten the lunch provided.

After coming there multiple times, did the players think they were immune? Just look at how calm they were eating. Shen Qingcheng sighed and thought, "If the NPCs knew that Wei Tian died, was his death related to them?"

After the meal, the players saw the beautiful woman who had appeared the previous night.

The woman now wore a long red court dress with a black hair shawl. The gems on the skirt sparkled as she walked, and the complex dress could not conceal her graceful figure.

She appeared at the entrance of the stairs, but did not come down.

"Ying Ying."

The little girl glanced toward the sound and suddenly screamed, "Hu Lili! Hu Lili!"

The players endured her harsh voice, thinking to themselves that the little girl named Ying Ying was quite spirited. Couldn’t the two NPCs deal with it?

Ying Ying lifted her skirts and ran upstairs to Hu Lili's side. She examined the skirt and shawl on her body with admiration, "It's so beautiful, so beautiful."

The players sighed regretfully in unison. It wasn’t.

Hu Lili showed the little girl the gems on her skirt and stretched her sleeves out to show off the smooth fabric.

Ying Ying stroked it and said, "I want it too, I want it too!"

Hu Lili glanced at the people downstairs and smiled enchantingly. "Wait a little longer and it will be your turn."

It seemed that the woman had only appeared to show off, and once she was done, she disappeared. Thinking of the beautiful dress, the little girl anxiously twisted around a few times, then ran downstairs to the players.

She looked at each of them with covetous eyes. When she saw Shen Meiren, her eyes became even more eager. After staring, she said sharply: "You’re done eating, it's time to move, it's time to move!"

The servants standing on both sides with their heads bowed took a step forward and said in unison, "Guests, please follow me to the outdoors."

More than a dozen people with identical expressions, as if carved out of a mold, said the same sentence in unison, with exactly the same tone and pauses. The players shuddered.

Wei Tian had disappeared when he left to collect clues on his own, and had just been confirmed to be dead. The song that the little girl sang repeatedly seemed to echo in their ears:

"Serves you right for being disobedient~ for being disobedient~"

The players didn’t dare to leave.

He Shi and Gao Shulin knew this. They quickly looked at each other, and made no other arrangements.

The players were taken to a special sports field in the castle.

The stadium and facilities were complete. When the servants appeared with equipment for table tennis and badminton, as well as skipping ropes, the players were puzzled.

Shen Qingcheng picked up a skipping rope and tugged it. It was very elastic, and indeed seemed to be a genuine skipping rope. Strange… Did NPCs care about the players’ physical fitness? Did they believe exercise would make them healthier?

He put down the skipping rope and picked up a pair of badminton rackets. "Lu Qi!"

It was unclear if it was because they didn't go anywhere else in the stadium, but no one died among the players all afternoon.

When it was time to rest after dinner, Xiao Liu tugged at Gao Shulin's sleeve and said, "Gao-jiejie, I'm afraid."

Gao Shulin looked worried, but she shook her head ruthlessly, "Have you forgotten what those servants said?"

After nine o'clock in the evening, players were not allowed to leave their rooms or wander around.

Xiao Liu begged with teary eyes, "Gao-jiejie."

Gao Shulin patted her back. "It's not that I don't want to sleep with you, but maybe Wei Tian died this morning because of behavior like this. I don't care, I'm alone, but you're still young. I can't take this risk."

Xiao Liu: "But..." But what if the red faceless man appeared at night? She couldn't get out, and the people outside couldn't hear her calling for help.

One of the nearby players overheard and persuaded, "Just look at what happened this afternoon. If we comply with the NPCs, nothing will go wrong. Do you want to force Gao-jie to take risks for you? "

Xiao Liu had no choice but to let go in disappointment.

The next day, Xiao Liu died.

TLN:

¹ Specifically he says something akin to “a foolish emperor calling for his demonic concubine” (昏君在叫他的妖妃). 君 means emperor, and 昏 modifies it to mean an emperor who doesn’t take good advice and doesn’t make good decisions. 妃 means concubine, and 妖 is basically the Chinese word for demon (although it encompasses more than just that). Together, they generally refer to a group of six historical concubines who brought disaster through their influence over their emperors. So SCQ is comparing HW to an emperor who thinks with his dick. He’s doing this to point out how HW is addressing him inappropriately, since generally only close relatives would call him by his first name. Anyone else would use his full name.

² Meaning he was embarrassed/insulted. “Face” is basically dignity.

³ Quick refresher--radicals are players who are willing to kill other players for survival points.

⁴ Technically it translates more to “words that are trying to cover up something” (这句欲盖弥彰的话), but obviously that’s a bit clunky. If it’s unclear, he’s making such bad excuses in an attempt to “hide” a “secret” (their relationship) that she assumes that she knows what he’s actually trying to cover up, and therefore doesn’t look further.

⁵ He actually asks whether HW has 毛病, which can refer to physical illness but is generally used instead to refer to mental problems.

⁶ “Your mother” (你妈) can mean a lot of things but it’s mostly used like an expletive. Think of it as equivalent to “fuck you”, “the fuck”, “your ass”, or any variation thereof.

⁷ Literally “seizing the tiger’s whiskers” (撩虎须). Means about the same thing as “poking the bear”, so I subbed it, but it still sounds a little awkward… LMK if you’d prefer it to change back.

By the way, Ying Ying’s name is composed of two different words, not the same one repeated (应樱).