Chapter 36: Team Formation

Shen Qingcheng thought at first that Lu Qi was talking about the players in the hot spring, but then he realized that he wasn’t. Lu Qi was talking about the animals that were making all manner of strange sounds.

Under the influence of the hot springs, the sounds, and other unknown factors, although the players were not in estrus, restlessness was inevitable.

The stiff-faced servants stood quietly by the hot springs, indifferent to the players' status.

In other words, this scene in front of them was exactly why they had come to the back mountain.

The cacophony of sound irritated the ears. The servants' objective seemed to have been fulfilled, and before lunch time came, they called the players who were soaking in the hot spring out.

All the players, whose feet had weakened from the soak, got up and put on their clothes. After being buffeted by the chilly wind, their minds finally became clearer, and they realized that something had been wrong just then.

But they couldn't tell what was wrong, they just remembered the feeling of relaxation when they had been soaking in the warm water.

After waking up, their hunger became more and more obvious, and their stomachs seemed just about ready to digest themselves.

At this point, they hadn't eaten for a day and a half, and they had exercised for half a day yesterday afternoon, exhausting their physical strength.

Shen Qingcheng wasn’t surprised to see that when lunch was on the table, some players picked up the cutlery. A boss had the taste of a boss, and small fry had their own way of living¹.

As someone who was holding onto a big thigh, he could savor the taste with a boss.

One of the players picked up the utensils, then a second, a third, a fourth.

What surprised Shen Qingcheng was Hong Ganglie was the one who ended up persisting until the end.

Seeing that everyone else had grabbed cutlery and begun devouring the food, Hong Ganglie angrily overturned the dishes in front of him. "You’ll even eat human meat? Aren’t you disgusted?!"

The dining table was silent for a moment, and after a few seconds, a player whispered, "There isn’t any roast suckling pig today. Don’t tell me we should starve to death instead?"

Immediately, someone backed them up, "That's right, no players died in the past two days, so we just need to ensure that no players will die in the future, and then we won't have to worry about food!"

He Wei and Gao Shulin didn’t count, they were taken back by the game.

Those who had touched the food felt that this sentence was very reasonable, as if it would relieve them of the psychological burden of eating human flesh.

Hong Ganglie's brows were still furrowed tightly.

Shen Qingcheng gave him a reassessing look: his temper was not very good, but he was unexpectedly quite principled.

He still had a few violet fruits tucked away in his pockets to satisfy his hunger, but it was impossible that he would give them away. At most, he would remind him, "The little girl isn’t here, so you can go out now."

Hong Ganglie glanced at Shen Qingcheng with a grim expression. Don't expect him to accept gays because of this!

He then headed to the servants guarding both sides, and walked out tentatively. Seeing that they didn't seem to plan to stop him, he left quickly.

The rest of the players at the table naturally saw this scene, but now they had something to eat and drink,, not to mention that they were eating roasted bear paws. Who would want to go outside and painstakingly find food when there wasn’t even a shadow of it anywhere?

Hong Ganglie came back very quickly. Shen Qingcheng didn't know if he had found anything to eat, and he wasn't going to ask. If he knew what to do but was still hungry, there was no hope for him.

He didn't communicate with Hong Ganglie, but he hadn’t expected that the other party would take the initiative to talk to him.

The two big men looked wrong, even their chairs closer together than the other players’. Hong Ganglie looked at them then withdrew his gaze, awkwardly saying, "I saw the skin that the little girl replaced."

"It was just thrown in the wilderness, with colorful hair and eyeballs still hanging on it. The skin should have belonged to Xiaoliu, but the hair and eyeballs did not."

The players that came in were all black-haired and black-eyed, and there were no foreigners.

"Eh?" Shen Qingcheng was a little intrigued.

Hong Ganglie immediately said fiercely, "This is the reward for reminding me just then, don't think that that will make me accept you. Keep dreaming!"

Shen Qingcheng blinked blankly, "Accept who?"

How come he could recognize each word separately, but not understand them together?

He was being very heartfelt. When he had fought with Lu Qi the day before, he had learned that Lu Qi's body was agile and his moves neat. He couldn’t be any more manly. It was impossible for a man like that to like Shen Qingcheng--he must have been deceived by his white lotus² appearance!

Hong Ganglie snorted, "I also saw a lot of tombstones nearby. They were submerged in snow, only half of them exposed, and they didn't look newly built."

Shen Qingcheng: "You are too honest, no one would know if you didn’t say it."

Hong Ganglie sneered, "I have a clear conscience!"

Shen Qingcheng nodded, "Much better than some people."

Some of the others had also been reminded by Shen Qingcheng, and managed to sleep with someone else and survive safely as the night passed, but still chose to turn a blind eye when Shen Qingcheng was targeted. They only had lowered their heads a little and gripped their knives tightly.

Colorful hair and eyes, many old tombstones.

Shen Qingcheng: "What do you think?"

Lu Qi: "This is an ancient castle." The implication was that the ancient castle may have had more than one owner.

Shen Qingcheng was of the same opinion as Lu Qi. How unlucky of the master, to have bought a batch of animals that were all spirits.

He was inclined to believe that those animals were foreign, otherwise he really couldn’t explain the bear³.

After the meal, the little girl showed up along with Da Xiong, and the servants who were standing quietly on both sides immediately vanished then brought 11 trays out. On the trays were 11 upside-down masks.

The scene coincided perfectly with the night when they had just entered the copy.

"The day after tomorrow is the dance, so today it's time to choose a dance partner."

The little girl sat on a high stool, her legs dangling. "Guests without a dance partner may have some not-so-good things happen to them at night."

She tilted her head and spoke innocent words in a sinister tone, "Only people with two different masks can form a team."

Hong Ganglie’s disgusted voice emitted from the group of players, "Damn it, laozi clearly smashed that mask apart and flushed it down the toilet, there’s no way it was picked up and glued together again!"

The little girl restrained her smile and looked over with a blank face, "I hope you won’t be alone tonight."

First, he deliberately left the mask downstairs, and then he smashed the mask and flushed it away. Hong Ganglie's courage was really great--Shen Qingcheng was ashamed.

His mask had a red background, and Lu Qi's mask had a white background. They had two different masks, so they could just form a group.

The other players didn't have as much success as they did.

There were a total of 11 players. How many masks with a red background…there were 4 with a white background, so excluding Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi, there were 5⁴ red masks.

Some players who had received red bottomed masks were destined not to find a dance partner.

Hong Ganglie happened to be one of the players who was assigned a red mask and hadn’t found a dance partner. He glanced around the hall, automatically skipping over Lu Qi, and his eyes fell on the thin Luo Ming.

He walked over, ignoring the vigilant eyes of Luo Ming's dance partner, and patted Luo Ming's shoulder, "You’ll do. The day after tomorrow, you will dance with laozi."

"Hey," the dance partner was dissatisfied, but Hong Ganglie glared at him, and the man was immediately silenced.

The other two players with red bottomed masks also wanted to follow suit, but they weren’t as tyrannical as Hong Ganglie, and the two dance partners they targeted were not vegetarians⁵ either.

The little girl watched this scene quietly, with strange excitement in her eyes. She said with a smile, "Players who were assigned a white mask can have more than one dance partner!"

They could have more than one dance partner? You should’ve said that sooner!

The differences were quickly resolved, and all the players had dance partners. Except for Shen Qingcheng and Lu Qi, who were one-on-one, the other players were one-on-two.

There was only one lonely Shen Meiren beside Lu Qi, and it was these two who had ruined her new clothes. The little girl looked at Lu Qi with half resentment and half regret, "You are very strong. What a pity, what a pity!"

Lu Qi was unmoved.

They had finished choosing dance partners, and the little girl soon announced another decision that was inexplicable to the players.

In order to cultivate a tacit understanding with their dance partner, the players in each team that night must sleep in the same room, and they could not leave the room before dinner the next day. Their meals would be delivered to the door by a servant.

Shen Qingcheng immediately went to Lu Qi's room to pack his luggage for him.

The big bed in the center of the room looked soft and warm, but Lu Qi no longer needed it!

Shen Qingcheng wiped some nonexistent sweat off his forehead, turned his head, and said proudly to Lu Qi, "Look, Lu-dage, fate can't be stopped. Although you rejected me, now we have to sleep in the same bed."

Pettily⁶, he still remembered the first night, when he invited Lu Qi to sleep with him and was rejected.

Lu Qi stood at the door as if he was the guest in this room. His lips moved, and finally he breathed out a low noise, "En".

"By the way, about choosing a dance partner." Shen Qingcheng sat unceremoniously on the side of the bed.

He propped his hands on the bed, leaning back slightly, his beautiful neck so white it was almost glowing, "I thought about it, and including the dead Wei Tian and Xiao Liu and the ones who failed the mission, He Wei and Gao Shulin, the mask colors were 10 red and 5 white. No matter how you count it, teams of two are impossible."

Lu Qi: "En."

For a dance, even if it wasn’t a serious dance, a one-on-one with a partner was a basic requirement, but here it was one-on-two. And, to cultivate tacit understanding, they were not letting them practice dancing together more, but rather directly locking a group of people in one room?

It didn’t sound like a dance, but rather like a blind date meeting where the parents were urging marriage, wishing to directly take rice from raw to cooked⁷.

Something suddenly flashed in his mind, and Shen Qingcheng was about to catch that ray of inspiration when he suddenly caught sight of the painting beside Lu Qi.

Shen Qingcheng: "This painting is of a rabbit?"

In the oil painting, a mother rabbit was leading a litter of little rabbits to graze in a patch of green grass. They had white fur and red eyes, lively and spiritual.

Lu Qi closed the door and walked towards him, "En."

The wuwuwu calls, the white hair in the holes, the fourth NPC with the surname Tu⁸--

Shen Qingcheng: "The fourth NPC is a rabbit!"

Lu Qi stood in front of Shen Qingcheng, his eyes darken, "En."

Shen Qingcheng finally realized that something was wrong. Why did he keep humming? He looked at the condescending man dumbfoundedly, "What are you doing?"

【Fuck⁹! 】

【 God, listen to me, don't be cowardly and just do it! 】

【 I didn't see him at the hot springs, I thought I remembered wrong. I didn't see the indescribable temptation of Beauty, I really thought I remembered wrong, but unexpectedly! Dad, the horror game production company is my dad! You¹⁰ really understand it too well! 】

【 The sisters upstairs are dreaming¹¹, think about the mosaics for a second 】

【 Okay, you guys don’t have to struggle anymore, now not only is the main boss pushing¹², the game company is pushing, and even the NPC is pushing 】

【Weifen¹³ have no way to continue surviving :) 】

【 This may be purification, purified into p powder¹⁴ [dog head] 】

【 God, what are you still hesitating about, Beauty is already in position, you should kiss him! 】

【 I imagined this kissing posture, God knelt on one knee beside the bed, holding Beauty's face ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah, I'm dead! 】

TLN:

¹ Sounds weird translated, but what it basically boils down to is that both the strong and the weak have their own ways of survival (大佬有大佬的滋味，菜鸡有菜鸡的活法嘛).

² White lotus (白莲花) refers to a woman who is regarded a “pure” and innocent, the type of person to naively forgive any wrongdoing. However, she will often take advantage of this reputation to backstab others or act like the wronged party despite being the instigator. Like the lotus, she appears perfect and beautiful above the water, although muddy roots hide underneath. Similar to the green tea bitch (绿茶婊), who also appears kind but is internally scheming.

³ Not really sure what this is supposed to mean? China is home to both Asiatic black bears and brown bears, as well as (famously) the giant panda bear.

⁴ Raws say 6 red masks, but that’s faulty math.

⁵ Lit. “vegetable-eater” (吃素), means they aren’t pushovers.

⁶ Lit. “small heart eye” (小心眼), means narrow-minded or overly focused on trivial things.

⁷ Another way of saying they want a quick marriage.

⁸ Didn’t mention this earlier because I wasn’t sure if it was significant, but yes, the surname Tu (涂) is a homophone for tu (兔), or rabbit.

⁹ Lit. “dry” (干), is also slang meaning “to fuck”.

¹⁰ Lit. “thinking of farts to eat” (想屁吃).

¹¹ Lit. “peaceful” (宁). My guess is that it’s a typo of its homophone 您, which is a respectful way of saying “you”.

¹² Lit. “struggle” (挣扎), means strive to support something. In this case, probably refers to fanservice/supporting the ship.

¹³ Lit. “only powder” (唯粉), means fans who only like a certain person within a larger group, and either don’t care about or actively dislike the other members.

¹⁴ Yeah, I have no idea what this means. (这可能就是提纯吧，提纯成p粉)