Chapter 18: Rose Manor (17) Fatal Destiny

“Lin Chen, are you inside? Yezi is dead, but I’ve obtained a key clue. Let’s meet up first, please open the door…”

On the second floor of the ancient castle, in Room 2, Lin Chen curled up on the bed. Listening to the female voice outside, he couldn’t help but grip the door key in his hand tightly.

The voice was separated from his ears by a door panel, and combined with a tremor likely caused by fear, it sounded muffled and distorted, but he could still identify it as Zou Yan’s voice.

Lin Chen didn’t have a deep impression of Zou Yan; he only remembered that she was a psychologist, had spoken a few words advocating for unity, and maintained a calm, gentle demeanor that made others feel at ease.

This was the first time she had lost her composure like this…

Lin Chen subconsciously climbed off the bed, walked to the door, and grasped the cold doorknob.

The second before he was about to turn the handle, he hesitated, and a scene from his memory surfaced.

An hour ago, as Qi Si was leaving, he placed the room key into his hand with unprecedented seriousness: “We are all adults, but I still want to remind you of one thing: do not open the door for anyone but me.”

At the time, he didn’t understand the meaning and asked, “Why?”

Qi Si laughed coldly: “In this zero-sum game, other than me, who is your partner in interest, you cannot trust anyone.

“Your hands and feet are attached to your own body, so of course you can open the door, but then I will only regret trusting the wrong person and die along with you.”

This scene was too vivid; the moment Lin Chen recalled it, he took a step back and stared at the door vigilantly.

Outside the door, Zou Yan’s voice suddenly became urgent: “Lin Chen, please, save me!… It’s coming! I’m going to die!”

The fear and despair in that voice were genuine and did not seem fake. Hearing this, Lin Chen was secretly alarmed.

Although the other players couldn’t be trusted, they were ultimately just under suspicion, not proven to be heinous beyond doubt. What if Qi Si’s suspicion was wrong?

If he didn’t open the door, Zou Yan might really die…

But whether or not to open the door involved not only his own safety but also Qi Si’s…

Lin Chen’s forehead beaded with sweat. He began to hesitate, and the key in his hand was gripped tighter and tighter, embedding itself into his skin.

…

On the Third Floor, Qi Si retreated from the room containing skeletons, and in an instant, he heard the sound of rain.

The castle’s corridors had no windows, and the thick, ancient stone walls isolated the world outside. After losing the corroboration of sight, his hearing also faded in the silence, and what he had heard just a moment ago felt like an illusion.

However, Qi Si felt that it really should be raining.

After all, in third-rate TV dramas, when a tragic plot reaches its climax, there always needs to be a heavy rain to set the mood, doesn’t there?

The first room had been explored enough; wasting more time there wouldn’t yield any more clues. Qi Si walked towards the room numbered “2,” took out a thin wire, and unlocked the door in the same manner.

A worn-out doll lay in the corner, wearing a red dress and braided pigtails. Its mouth opened and closed, singing a strange nursery rhyme:

“She is here, she is here, she is in the rainstorm…” “Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, I am in the wardrobe…”

Qi Si stopped at the doorway and looked at Chang Xu: “There seems to be a situation inside. Shall we go in?”

Chang Xu’s gaze was dim: “We’re already here…”

“Then I’ll leave it to Brother Chang!” Qi Si stepped aside, clearing the way at the door.

Chang Xu: “…”

He strode into the room, grabbed the doll in the corner, opened the window, and threw it out.

The world became quiet in an instant. Qi Si waited for two seconds, confirmed that the tool person scouting the path was fine, and then slowly walked into the room.

What came into view was a huge floor-to-ceiling window that occupied almost the entire wall. The grayish-purple sky reflected into the room, staining the floor and four walls with a hazy gray.

Through the glass covered in spider webs, one could see curtains of rain weaving from top to bottom. The crisscrossing streaks of rain were layered, momentarily tangled and inseparable from the spider silk.

Qi Si sighed: “There might have been important clues on that doll. It’s such a pity you threw it away like that.”

Was he acting innocent after benefiting? Chang Xu remained silent, not intending to play along at all.

Performing a monologue was boring. Qi Si lost interest and dismissed the idea of teasing him further.

He scanned the layout of the room, determined there was nowhere else to explore, and walked straight to the wardrobe by the floor-to-ceiling window, saying with difficulty: “There is a bit too much dust on this wardrobe…”

Chang Xu glanced at him, consciously stepped forward to open the cabinet door, and picked up a yellowed old photograph from the dust-covered corner.

The composition of the photo was very sloppy. Nine people sat upright at a long table filled with delicacies, all facing the camera with stiff postures.

Among them, the faces of four people were clearly visible, while the faces of the other five were blurred.

Qi Si leaned over and examined it carefully. Among the four distinct faces, there was surprisingly a familiar one: Shen Ming!

Of the remaining three faces, he had seen one before—it was the first deceased person that Chang Xu had dug up from the dirt pit in the garden.

A guess sprouted in his heart, and the next second it was verified.

Chang Xu’s slender index finger pointed at the three more unfamiliar faces: “The bodies of these three people are all in the garden; I dug them up myself.”

Qi Si stared at the portrait closest to the head of the table and analyzed softly: “After a player dies, their face appears in the photo. There are five empty spots, corresponding exactly to five players. It seems this instance never intended to let the players leave alive…

“Do you think it’s possible that the time loop already started when the instance began? Three days per round, three people die, and we are in the second round.”

“Impossible,” Chang Xu shook his head. “I wouldn’t have left places with obvious important clues, like the garden and the Third Floor, until the second round to explore.”

Qi Si sneered: “Perhaps we already explored it once in the first round, but unfortunately, we failed to break the deadlock. And so, everything reset.”

The meaning behind his words was bone-chilling.

Exploring over and over, failing over and over, losing all memories, and being thrown back into the cycle.

The cycle was repeating. One companion after another died, the people around him became fewer and fewer, and the hope of breaking the deadlock grew increasingly faint…

Being in despair without knowing it, thinking they were struggling with the hope of survival, until they were silently devoured by this eerie manor and became fertilizer for the roses…

Thoughts spread in his mind like vines. Before Qi Si’s eyes, a rain-season-like abundance of blood-red color surged, and his breathing became rapid due to the bleak beauty of the imagery.

Disregarding the grime, he took the photo from Chang Xu’s hand.

The front of the black-and-white photo began to bleed ink like it had fallen into water, and the previously clearly visible image became blurred within a few breaths.

Red characters written in blood seeped through from the back, already congealed: 【We will all die】

…

Later, much later, the girl got her wish and lived with her sister, until that man appeared.

The girl couldn’t understand why a stranger who suddenly broke into their lives would take away her sister’s attention.

That person was clearly not good-looking, far worse than her sister and her. Why would her sister fall in love with that person regardless of everything, and not her?

The girl spread rumors that the manor was bankrupt and in debt, causing the man’s father to learn of this and refuse their marriage. She also tampered with the clock, causing the man to finally leave alone, unable to take her sister away.

The girl watched her sister, whose face was the same as hers, wash her face with tears all day long, and could not understand why she was so sad.

She watched in vain as that beautiful face became dull and lackluster, blooming and falling with the seasons when the roses in the garden withered, as if seeing her own death.

Beside her sister’s corpse, the girl was terrified to the extreme and had to climb to the attic again to pray to the god.

The god said: “She is sick and will die. Only the heart of the one she loves most can bring her back to life.”

Although the girl was unwilling to admit it, she knew who her sister’s beloved was.

She did her makeup in front of the mirror, her eyebrows like ink, a smile on her lips, drawing herself stroke by stroke to look like her sister’s every frown and smile. She hugged the mirror as if hugging a ghost that had returned from the dead, understanding that her fear was mistaking the deceased person for herself.

She couldn’t tell the difference, so both people had to live together. So when the man returned to the manor, she stood by the door wearing the red dress her sister often wore.

She smiled like her sister, spoke softly like her sister, and invited the man to dance with her. They embraced tightly, she fell into his arms, and she plunged the dagger hidden in her hand into his chest.

The rain poured down, washing away the color of the sin. The girl dug up her sister’s grave and put the heart that had lost its warmth inside.

The sister’s corpse in the coffin opened its eyes, but it was a Ghost parasitized by roses, which would no longer call her name, would no longer look at her with sad eyes, and would grow old, rot, and wither with time every moment.

She was afraid and went to pray to the god.

The god sighed: “I said, destruction is easy, but repairing is very troublesome. The authority of time and space does not belong to me; I have to borrow it from an annoying guy.”

The girl didn’t understand the complications, just kept begging for the god’s mercy.

The merciful god finally intercepted three days of time for her, allowing her and her sister to linger in an endless cycle.

She watched her sister repeat the rotting process in the endless three-day cycle. Although the situation no longer deteriorated, her face was already rotten and unbearable.

She discovered with fear that she could not accept her sister’s ugliness.

Every time she saw that face rotting to the bone, she would suspect it was herself, afraid that one day she would become like that.

She felt disgusted, wanted to vomit, and even began to regret the efforts she had made in the past to gain her sister.

She asked the god if her sister could be restored to beauty?

The god opened his scarlet eyes, his smile bloodthirsty: “If the guests who stay at the manor use their flesh and blood to nourish the roses, everything will be as you wish.”