Chapter 407 Snow Mountain (7) “Wastayan is the Large Intestine”

In Room 9, Xu Yao lay on the wooden bed, tossing and turning, unable to fall asleep.

Although she had long since become a ghost and had soaked at the bottom of a well for centuries, her pursuit of quality of life had returned after resting in Qijia Village for a while. She found this inn disagreeable no matter how she looked at it.

The bedboards were too hard and in disrepair, creaking with the slightest turn; the bedding hadn’t been aired out in who knows how long, and the damp, musty smell tickled her nose, making her feel nauseous.

Ghosts don’t need sleep, and by the same token, they shouldn’t have the five senses. However, as soon as Xu Yao entered Shangri-La, she regained her long-lost sense of smell and taste, as if she had become a living person again.

Even the soreness in her eyes and the fatigue in her marrow were so realistic, as if she truly felt exhausted from a day of traveling.

Xu Yao tried for a while but found she still couldn’t sleep. Simply refusing to suffer any longer, she sat up to study Lu Li, who was crouching by the nightstand: “Hey, you’ve been rummaging through everything over there for ages. Have you found anything?”

“I’m thinking about the purpose of this instance.” Lu Li pulled out the manuscript paper tucked into the drawer’s hidden compartment, placed it on the bed, and spread it out to read the text carefully.

“If the purpose is just to recover Identity Cards and restart the world, then no matter what we do, we will eventually be trapped in Shangri-La Town until we die one by one.

“If there is a need to screen for a winner in addition to recovery, then what would the screening criteria be? The simplest method is a Battle Royale, letting us kill other participants until only the last team remains…”

Xu Yao said dismissively, “I’m actually good at killing. Based on my understanding of Qi Si, he would definitely be interested in your suggestion and would have me strike first to gain the upper hand.”

The woman in red stretched, attempting to float to the ceiling, but her body was unusually heavy. In the end, she only managed to bounce once on the bed, making a muffled “thud.”

“It might not come to that.” Lu Li shook his head, took out a blank notebook from somewhere, and began writing and drawing on it with a pen.

As he wrote, he said, “Lin Chen is also an Identity Card holder. If Qi Si wanted to take the ‘kill everyone and become the sole survivor’ route, he would inevitably have to kill Lin Chen. He won’t do that.”

Xu Yao tilted her head and thought for a moment, clicking her tongue. “You still don’t understand what kind of person Qi Si is. In my memory, he’s someone who could even die once just to achieve clearance. In his eyes, things like relatives and friends might be more convenient to kill off as soon as possible…”

“No, if Lin Chen dies, it would be very troublesome for him.” Lu Li didn’t look up and continued, “Qi Si is very suspicious, even somewhat paranoid. Currently, in this instance, including him and Lin Chen, only four Identity Card holders have appeared, yet there are twenty-two Identity Cards in total.

“Combining the existing information, the conclusion he can draw is: there is more than one Final Dungeon, and clearing this instance doesn’t mean the end of the screening. To gain an advantage in the upcoming competition, he will definitely keep Lin Chen until the end as much as possible.

“So, to leave Shangri-La Town, there is only one last path left…”

Xu Yao leaned over to Lu Li’s side and finally saw what he was writing. It was a record left for those who would come later:

【May 5, 2035】

【My name is Lu Li, from Jiuzhou Guild…】

“Eh, Lu Li, aren’t you one of Sera’s people? How did you become one of Jiuzhou’s?” Xu Yao asked curiously. “As far as I know, Jiuzhou and Sera have always been at odds…”

Lu Li didn’t answer, and Xu Yao didn’t care, changing the subject: “By the way, what exactly is your relationship with Qi Si? I think his attitude toward you is a bit strange…”

Lu Li put down his pen. Still not answering, he frowned and looked toward the door.

A “thump, thump, thump” sound echoed unhurriedly, like knocking or drumming. Floating above that rhythm was a layer of low, urgent chanting, pressed against the wooden door and entering the room through the thin panel.

Xu Yao listened for a while and inexplicably got goosebumps. She really hadn’t expected that even after being a ghost, she would still feel fear toward Ghosts.

No, what was outside the door wasn’t a ghost; Ghosts don’t recite scriptures. And precisely because it wasn’t a ghost, it caused her an irrepressible discomfort… It was a god, a Buddha, a practitioner, a demon subduer—an existence clad in a holy shell, burdened with the duty of punishing evil and eliminating demons.

A word suddenly popped into Xu Yao’s mind—”Salvation.”

She would be “saved,” and then her soul would be scattered and her body reduced to ashes… “Calm down, calm down. I’ll go take a look,” Lu Li comforted her. He stepped lightly, approaching the door step by step, and looked out through the peephole.

A mangled figure stood in the hallway outside the door, holding a long whip in its hands, its uneven surface stained with crimson blood.

Looking closely, she realized that it wasn’t a whip at all, but a large intestine that had been forcibly pulled out from that person’s abdominal cavity!

The person being covered in blood wasn’t because of an injury, but because they had been forcibly skinned and disemboweled, revealing bloody flesh and internal organs.

The skinless humanoid creature stood for a while, the dripping blood pooling into a lake at its feet. It seemed completely unable to feel pain, mechanically raising its right hand and knocking on the door one stroke at a time.

“Thump, thump, thump…”

…Qi Si lay on the bed, listening to the lingering hymns in his ears, and began to review everything that had happened today.

First was the record left by Chu Yining.

From the results, the group of people from twenty-two years ago seemed to have died in the Twilight of the Gods, but they were actually pulled into the Final Dungeon, trapped here with their lives uncertain.

The name Lin Jue was not unfamiliar to Qi Si; he was the leader of the Ark Guild and the first batch of players to enter the Eerie Game. From being first on the rookie rank thirty-six years ago to the top of the overall rank, he couldn’t have been more dazzling.

Even such a person couldn’t leave Shangri-La, so the difficulty of the upcoming death points can be imagined.

Next was Fu Jue’s situation.

He had already taken power. From what he did to the representatives, it could be seen that his process of seizing power must have been unpeaceful and filled with blood.

But from the players’ performance, Fu Jue obviously hadn’t disclosed his identity as the Puppeteer to them; at least most of them didn’t know this secret.

After all, the Puppeteer was notorious. This identity was no different from a deep-water bomb; once detonated, it would surely cause even greater turmoil on top of the existing chaos.

Fu Jue wouldn’t allow the situation to go beyond his control. As long as he had the strength, he would most likely keep this identity hidden from the public.

And this might serve as a point of mutual checks and balances in future cooperation… Finally… Qi Si found his state very strange, as if he couldn’t muster interest in many things or make clear reactions.

He once thought that if he saw Lu Li again, he would definitely laugh at him from beginning to end, or at the very least, mock him with a few biting remarks.

After meeting Jiang Junjue, a dead man who was barely surviving, he should have also taken the opportunity to mock the favoritism and double standards of Jiuzhou and Tingfeng.

But the truth was, he didn’t feel any of the surprise of meeting an old acquaintance or the innate malice at the time. The other party also didn’t show any of the expressions or behaviors one should have when meeting an acquaintance.

Everything seemed perfectly natural, no different from eating or drinking in daily life, as if everyone had long anticipated the future and felt it should have always been this way.

Not just him, Lin Chen’s state wasn’t quite right either.

Based on Qi Si’s understanding of Lin Chen, although this guy had gone through a lot of training and was much more stable than during the time at Rose Manor, he was far from reaching the level of being completely unfazed.

After seeing the name “Lin Jue” in the diary left by Chu Yining, Lin Chen’s normal first reaction should have been to make a fuss, analyzing this and that, and making a series of irrelevant comments.

He would definitely not be like he was now, calmly accepting the setting that “Lin Jue once entered the Final Dungeon” without changing his expression.

Qi Si had a faint feeling that since coming to Shangri-La, everyone’s emotions had been weakened, or rather—become dull.

It was as if everything from the heart to the brain had been swept by the cold air of the snow mountain, and after condensing, it was covered with a layer of thin frost—pure, bewildered, and empty.

This most likely wasn’t a mechanism of the instance itself; after all, judging from Chu Yining’s diary, that girl was very emotional.

So… exactly which part had changed?

“What Kapala

“A dead man’s skull

“Wastayan is the large intestine…”

Outside the window, the hymn surrounding the entire inn finished once and started over from the beginning with the same tone.

Perhaps because his ears were familiar with the melody and lyrics, the hymn this time sounded clearer, as if it were right against the window, sounding just a step away.

Qi Si opened his eyes a crack and, through the window that went almost from the ceiling to the floor, saw figures standing densely on the snow mountain, as orderly and solemn as pottery figurines in a burial pit.

These people had no skin, their bloody flesh exposed. On their blurred and festering faces, bloodshot eyeballs stared out from their eye sockets, all looking at Qi Si in unison.

They seemed to have crawled out from under the ice, their outer surfaces covered in a layer of ice crystals. After blood droplets condensed, they appeared pale pink, translucent under the blood-red moonlight.

Qi Si watched for a while and only felt a sympathetic sensation of pain and itching on his own skin, as if icicles were growing from beneath his skin.

He turned over to face away from the window and stopped looking outside. Only then did that itching sensation gradually subside.

Sleeping on the side near the door, Lin Chen hugged a corner of the quilt, his eyes tightly closed, occasionally smacking his lips, sleeping exceptionally soundly.

He didn’t know the situation outside the window, so naturally, he wasn’t affected by the abnormality, making Qi Si think of the time at Rose Manor for no reason.

It had to be said that this tool man’s sleep quality was as good as ever; in a sense, it was a constitution suitable for the Eerie Game.

Shallow breathing sounded softly in the room, clearer and more real than the noise outside the window, inexplicably possessing a power to soothe the heart.

Qi Si listened for a while and gradually felt sleepy, falling into a daze… On the other side, in Room 6, Dong Xiwen and Zhang Yiyu sat in the corner, looking at the full-length mirror facing the bathroom door, chatting idly.

The full-length mirror didn’t reflect their shadows. After their initial surprise, they quickly accepted the conclusion that “they weren’t bound to a Main Card and weren’t considered human in the eyes of the Final Dungeon.”

Zhang Yiyu looked into the void in front of her and murmured, “I think I saw my dad.”

“Stop, let me analyze this,” Dong Xiwen clicked his tongue. “I remember you saying your dad died in a car accident when you were two years old, and from then on, you followed the plot of living with your mother… So was that sentence just now an expression like ‘I saw my great-grandma’?”

“I really saw my dad.” Zhang Yiyu’s expression was dazed. “Just now in the lobby, he was wearing a yellow T-shirt, exactly the same as the one he wore on the day of the accident. That day before he left, he just happened to take a photo with me and my mom. It’s been hanging on my wall for over ten years; I couldn’t have remembered it wrong.

“He called out ‘Zhang Hongbin,’ I think I heard someone calling that name. I’m wondering… could my dad have also been a player and died in this instance…”

The girl’s last few words were tearful. Dong Xiwen turned his head and saw a pair of red eyes, and hastily comforted her, “You have to think on the bright side. Your dad is still alive in this space-time. Traveling to the past to save one’s parents is already a cliché movie plot.

“Even if the two of us together don’t have the ability to save your dad, Qi Si is here. Maybe he’ll find a way for a te clearance tomorrow.”

Outside the window, Zhou Ke, in a blood-stained white shirt, was walking back and forth in the ice and snow with a Recorder, causing the skinless corpses all over the mountain to walk closer and then further away.

If one didn’t consider the horror of the scene, it actually looked quite fun. No one knew what Qi Si was doing by wandering around for so long; surely it wasn’t just for fun?

Dong Xiwen sighed in his heart again: the thought process of a humanoid ape is hard to understand.

Zhang Yiyu was coaxed by his few words and wiped away her tears, but she couldn’t help but recall those scenes of a terrifying living hell in Jiangcheng.

She was induced to hold a sharp blade, hatred filling her chest, the instinct of a ghost briefly overriding her humanity, and then there was blood… blood everywhere… Tears blurred her vision, and she gradually couldn’t distinguish between humans and Ghosts. She could only use her sense of smell to capture the locations of that sweet human flesh. Amidst the screams of the crowd, she tasted a salty, fishy flavor… Zhang Yiyu shuddered and asked softly, “Do you think Qi Si would be willing to save them? I always feel it’s already good enough if he doesn’t harm people…”

“No, things are different now.” Dong Xiwen said seriously, “Survival on the snow mountain still requires more hands. Even if it’s just for the quality of life in the next few days, Qi Si will probably save a few people in passing…”

He was talking nonsense without much confidence, but he thought of the worst-case scenario.

The players they met in the lobby were all dead people who were confirmed to have died. What about them?

Were they like those players, having already died in the Final Dungeon without knowing it?

Otherwise, why would they, of all people, leave the main group and appear in this space belonging to the dead?

The door opened. Zhou Ke had turned off the Recorder at some point and returned to the inn.

Seeing the two looking uneasy, the young man seemed to have seen through their thoughts and clicked his tongue: “What are you thinking? Can’t you tell if you’re alive or dead by touching your own heart? It’s not like you need me to help you perform an autopsy, right?”

Dong Xiwen saw that on his right index finger, a long, narrow bloodstain was stretched across it, as if it had been cut by a knife…