Chapter 121: Shuangxi Town (15) Dreams and Reality

Inside the God of Joy Temple, the right side chamber had been sealed off by the rotting old man and a ground full of maggots.

To the left were Coffins, and at the very back was the Idol; the players only had about twenty square meters of space to move in.

Two statues, one male and one female, giggled “hee-hee,” swaying their heads as they blocked both ends of the corridor, closing in on the players from two directions.

Qi Si leaned against a Coffin as if he were boneless, his right hand hidden behind his back as he picked at a nail in the corner. The nail, which hadn’t been very secure to begin with, loosened even further.

The Bride seemed to sense his movements and turned to charge at him, crossing the candlestick in seconds and raising her stiff arms to claw at him.

A gloomy chill rushed toward him, and the scent of decay lingered at the tip of his nose. Qi Si sidestepped to dodge the blue-black claws, his hand at the Coffin corner still gripping the nail tightly.

Finally finding the right angle, he twisted his wrist.

With a “click,” the Coffin nail popped out of its hole. The tip of the nail struck the bronze Coffin lid, producing a crisp sound.

As if some seal had been broken, the Coffin body—which had been warmed by his body heat and the light sweat from his back—suddenly erupted with an icy chill that stung the bones.

Qi Si’s hand remained pressed against the crack in the Coffin lid, touching a cold, sticky liquid.

Wisps of blood slowly seeped from the Coffin’s seams, just like the photo he had seen in the phone’s gallery on the first day.

“Wuwuwu… Save me…”

“Please… let me out…”

The sobbing, hesitant cries triggered resonance and echoes, rising and falling from all directions.

“Thump, thump, thump…”

One impact after another sounded from within the Coffin, which vibrated violently from top to bottom, as if something inside was about to break free and crawl out.

Shang Qingbei was startled by the commotion. His hand holding the paper and pen shook, forcing the character “Xu” into a bizarre “Yu.”

The Groom was already before him, his eerie smiling face drawing closer as his arms flailed toward him.

Shang Qingbei had to stop writing. Clutching the pile of items in his arms, he dodged toward the left side chamber, nearly colliding with The Bride, who was confronting Qi Si.

He cursed under his breath, narrowly changing direction to brush past her and retreat behind a Coffin, only to hear the sound of the Coffin lid being struck growing louder and louder.

Shang Qingbei: “…”

Recalling Qi Si’s suspicious behavior while leaning against the Coffin earlier, he ground his teeth. “Qi Wen, what on earth did you do?”

Qi Si gripped the nail tightly and leaped to the side of another Coffin.

Fortunately, the anomaly did not spread between the Coffins. Aside from the previous one, the other Coffins lay quietly, perfectly well-behaved.

Hearing Shang Qingbei’s angry shout, he raised the Coffin nail in his hand and waved it at him, his lips curling slightly.

Shang Qingbei caught sight of the nail hole in the Coffin corner and understood the whole story almost instantly.

He spat out a curse, feeling like he wanted to strangle Qi Si.

Are you a psycho? Aren’t two Ghosts enough? You want to release even more?

The “thump-thump-thump” sounds were incessant, echoing back and forth in rhythm with his heartbeat.

The Bride missed her strike and stumbled due to momentum, falling to the ground.

After a few seconds’ delay, she rolled over to stand upright, shakily steadying herself before raising her hand again to strike Qi Si.

Qi Si held the Coffin nail in front of him, meeting The Bride’s claws.

The tip of the nail collided with the palm, making a “pfft” sound as it pierced through flesh.

“Ah!”

The Bride let out a shriek of pain. Wisps of black smoke dissipated from her palm as if she had been burned by fire.

【Soul-Suppressing Coffin: There are Soul-Suppressing Nails at the four corners, which can ward off evil and suppress yin spirits.】

The entry’s description was vivid in his mind. Qi Si knew he had made the right gamble; the Soul-Suppressing Nails indeed had a restraining effect on the eerie.

It seemed that the one directly attacking him was not the supreme rule; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been given a chance to counter.

As long as the rule itself didn’t take the field, he still had a way out.

Qi Si believed that even if some entity was maliciously trying to kill him, it still had to be bound by the rules.

At the very least, the minimum death count mechanism would always be in effect.

After being wounded by the Soul-Suppressing Nail, The Bride retreated a few steps in a daze, her gaze toward Qi Si now full of wariness.

She quickly realized she could do nothing to the young man before her. She immediately turned forty-five degrees to the right, locking onto Shang Qingbei, who had just found an undisturbed spot and was taking out his paper and pen to write.

Having failed his previous attack on Shang Qingbei, The Groom now slowly followed behind The Bride, closing in.

Shang Qingbei was forced to interrupt his writing again. He ducked through the gaps between the Coffins and ran in another direction.

He had already noticed that both Ghosts were not fast. As long as he frequently changed positions, he wouldn’t be hit.

A sudden death point must have a time limit; he just needed to hold out until the crisis ended… Shang Qingbei thought in fragments. Panting, he circled around the still-vibrating Coffin, only to look up and see Qi Si sitting on a Coffin in the corner, calmly fiddling with the nail in his hand.

Wait… a nail? A Soul-Suppressing Nail?

A flash of inspiration struck Shang Qingbei’s mind as he belatedly understood the reason why Qi Si had pulled out the Coffin nail.

Right then, he ducked behind Qi Si and quickly pulled a nail from the Coffin Qi Si was sitting on. Following his example, he gripped it in his hand and held it across his chest.

The next second, the Coffin that had just lost a nail also began to emit cries and thumping sounds.

Two sound sources were squeezed into the cramped space, making it a bit too lively for a moment.

Shang Qingbei stared intently at the statues of The Groom and Bride, counting the seconds in his head.

The two Ghosts stopped a meter away, pacing hesitantly in circles but not advancing.

Shang Qingbei breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that the death point had passed.

With Soul-Suppressing Nails in hand, The Groom and Bride dared not approach.

Although two Coffins were each missing a nail, the corpses inside couldn’t get out, aside from making a lot of noise.

A delicate balance seemed to have been reached; neither the players nor the Ghosts could do anything to the other. All that remained to be overcome was the ethereal fear.

Du Xiaoyu’s legs had gone weak with fear from the very beginning. By now, his eyes had rolled back, and he had collapsed onto the ground, lying unconscious before the Idol.

Meanwhile, the red-robed Idol had somehow stepped down from the shrine. It stood a step away from Du Xiaoyu, maintaining a posture of slightly lowered eyes—looking both compassionate and mocking.

The “thump-thump” of impacts was incessant. The statues of The Groom and Bride paced anxiously nearby, emitting a palpable stench of decay.

It turned out that what was inside the shells of those two statues wasn’t clay, but corpses that had already turned blue and green.

The skin of the corpses had been treated with special techniques, giving it the smooth texture of plastic sheeting. Clay and glaze had been crudely brushed onto the surfaces of the corpses, falling off like dead skin as they moved.

Out of sight, out of mind—Qi Si lowered his head amidst the “thump-thump” soundtrack of the Coffin lids.

The paper money in his pocket had scattered onto the ground during his earlier maneuvers with the statues.

He stared at the white circles for a while before suddenly asking, “Shang Qingbei, did the Ghost with my face in your dream last night take any paper money?”

Unsure of the reason, Shang Qingbei answered truthfully, “Yes. At the time, I even advised ‘you’ to wait until daylight to investigate, but ‘you’ said danger and opportunity coexist and insisted on dragging me out.”

Qi Si narrowed his eyes.

He remembered that in last night’s “dream,” after he and “Li Yao” walked out one after the other, paper money showered down from the sky.

“Li Yao” had been the first to grab a handful of paper money and stuff it into her pocket. Seeing that his tool of a teammate had done what he wanted to do, he hadn’t bothered to move.

Yet after waking from the dream, there was paper money in his pocket. It naturally couldn’t have been stuffed there by the Ghost masquerading as “Li Yao,” so only one possibility remained… Qi Si smiled. “Little Qing, perhaps the ‘Ghost’ in your dream really was me—or at least, it was me for part of the time.”

Shang Qingbei almost blurted out, “You really aren’t human,” but he suppressed the impulse and listened quietly as Qi Si continued.

“At the very beginning, only the two of us woke up from the dream. I went out with you to explore, hoping to find clues pointing to the worldview of this instance.”

“And after we went out—specifically, at some point after I stuffed the paper money into my pocket—we were unknowingly pulled into a nightmare.”

“Your nightmare continued along the course of events, though it became more eerie, and ‘I’ was replaced by a Ghost. My nightmare, on the other hand, started from the beginning; I dreamed of Li Yao, forming part of a chain of dreams.”

Having stated the facts, Qi Si drawled, “Tell me, why would the instance go to such lengths to create a chain of dreams involving all the players?”

“If it were just to disturb our judgment, it could have simply continued the plot of the two of us exploring together and thrown in a bunch of messy imagery. That would have achieved the interference effect without making me notice something was wrong because of the paper money.”

“The Eerie Game didn’t do that. Doesn’t that precisely suggest that separating the two of us in the dream was a necessary condition?”

“Why did the instance want to separate us? Was it to have us experience different plots, or did it simply want to do something with one of us?”

Qi Si suddenly thought that if some entity really wanted to target him, the most convenient method would actually be to incite the players.

By cultivating fear and suspicion among the players and turning one of them against their companions—according to the ‘Gunfighter’s Game’ theory, he, as the leader, would inevitably be the first target.

This also seemed to explain why, up until now, there hadn’t been any casualties in the instance—

Naturally, it was because some entity wanted to reserve enough strength to deal with him.

This might sound a bit conceited, but even if there was only a 1% probability, once it actually happened, it would be 100% misfortune.

Moreover, there was more than one deity in the Eerie Game; in the Gods Gamble, he was naturally hostile to any existence other than Qi.

Qi could help him deal with the “Puppeteer,” so what reason did he have to believe that other evil gods wouldn’t step in to deal with him?

Qi Si gazed into Shang Qingbei’s eyes with a half-smile. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, how exactly did you wake up from that dream within a dream?”

“Didn’t I say it before? I suddenly tripped and woke up. Do you suspect I’m hiding clues?” Shang Qingbei spoke very rapidly. “If some entity really wanted to do something with me and didn’t want you to find out, it could have just continued the plot of us exploring together in your dream…”

Qi Si asked with interest, “How are you so sure that what I suspect is’some entity wanted to do something with you’ rather than ‘the instance wanted us to experience different plots’?”

Shang Qingbei realized he had been trapped and quickly retorted, “Your context clearly suggests you suspect I have some connection with an NPC. If you want to know something, just say it directly. There’s no need to set such a garbage trap.”

Qi Si gave a listless “oh.” “I do suspect that someone among us is in contact with an entity in the instance. Constructing the chain of dreams was a smoke screen, creating the illusion that what happened last night was just an inevitable plot point.”

“If only the two of us had dreamed of each other, then the problem would clearly lie with one of us. But if five people happen to form a circle and the dream contents are more or less the same, then the scope of suspicion expands. Everyone could be a problem, which is about the same as no one being a problem.”

He slowed his speech, asking word by word, “Illusions are for covering up the truth. So, what would the truth be?”

Outside the temple doors, a crisp sound of bells drifted in, approaching from afar.

Shang Qingbei pursed his lips and pricked up his ears, carefully listening to the movements outside.

Qi Si also held his breath and stayed silent.

He noticed that after the bells rang, the statues of The Groom and Bride clumsily turned their bodies and moved toward the shrine.

They weren’t slow, quickly reaching the side of the unconscious Du Xiaoyu, but they didn’t stop for even a second.

They went straight back to the base of the shrine, returning to their respective positions and remaining motionless.