Chapter 408: Snow Mountain (8) “The Bone Trumpet is a Human Leg Bone”

The wind and the singing had faded into the distance, as had the cold around him. Qi Si stood up, realizing his height only reached the bedside.

He wore a long red robe embroidered with gold, its sleeves tangled around his limbs, fluttering with each step. Barefoot, he laboriously pushed open the wooden door and stepped into a world filled with light.

The blinding light, enough to cause blindness, filled every corner. Qi Si half-closed his eyes, slowed his pace, and cautiously moved forward. Someone was speaking in his ear; at first, he couldn’t quite make it out, but as he took a few more steps, the words became clear.

“Qi, where are you going?”

“Qi, don’t go any further, you shouldn’t go there…”

“Qi, wait for me…”

The light gradually receded, or perhaps his eyes had grown accustomed to the brightness. A gigantic golden tree stood between heaven and earth, its branches and vines interwoven like a spiderweb, resembling a cage.

Qi Si found himself standing at the edge of a cliff, below which stretched an endless expanse of ruins, broken flagstones and damaged stone walls intertwined, with a golden sunset hanging distantly over a collapsed temple.

He inexplicably felt this scene was familiar but couldn’t recall where he had seen it before. He stopped, looked back, and saw a child in a black robe standing behind him, expressionless, extending a hand towards him.

Qi Si dodged his touch and ran in another direction.

The sunset was gone; instead, a pair of silver-white eyes, cold and peaceful, hung in the sky where the sun and moon should have been, watching the world below. Mist-like white gauze spread in all directions, gradually enveloping the boundless land.

Qi Si suddenly felt a viscous sense of restraint, as if a tiny insect was immersed in amber. He wanted to speak but only heard a suffocating silence.

He once again reached the edge of the cliff, seeing the ruins below, his steps growing heavier and heavier, as if an invisible force was dragging him backward, almost tripping him.

“Don’t go down…” someone said behind him.

Were they worried about him? Or were they afraid? But if living meant being boringly trapped in a cage, then it would be better to try to die.

Qi Si smiled, then suddenly leaped downwards.

The fierce wind roared in his ears, yet he didn’t fall. When his vision settled again, the blood-colored robe on his body faded drop by drop, transforming into a white shirt in a few seconds.

A woman took his hand, bandaging the bleeding wound on his finger, scolding him as she did so: “Qi Si, you’re always so naughty, hurting yourself again…”

Qi Si looked at the woman and asked, “Who are you?”

The woman paused, then revealed a gentle smile, reaching out to touch his forehead: “What’s wrong? I’m Mom…”

…When Qi Si woke up, it was already dawn. The scorching white sunlight, reflected by the ice, pierced through the glass window, landing on his cheek, cold and dazzling.

The hymns that had sounded for half the night had stopped at some point, leaving only the sound of the fierce wind beating against the window and the scattered clatter of dominoes and wind chimes in the distance.

The self-inflicted cut on his index finger had stopped bleeding and didn’t hurt. Qi Si lowered his eyes and watched for a while, then, remembering something, tapped his chin with his index finger.

Gods don’t need sleep, yet he had slept last night. This meant he had returned to his human state, capable of death and harm from Ghosts… In a sense, the Eerie Game was quite fair to other players, at least it suppressed everyone’s abilities to the same level.

Qi Si sat up and walked to the window.

Corpses lay peacefully and intact beneath the ice, eyes closed, serene and obedient. The scene of numerous corpses standing last night seemed like just a nightmare, without even a trace of blood remaining.

Qi Si walked to the bedside table, picked up the diary left by Chu Yining, and casually shook it. The pages that had been impossible to turn last night now automatically fanned open, revealing a new entry.

【January 2, 2014, recorded at the Snow Mountain Inn:

【Vasilievna is dead, all blood, the room, the bed, the glass, all covered in blood… Her skin was peeled off and hung on a painting in the corridor, they say it’s a Human Skin Thangka.

【The old man who manages the inn said Thangkas need to be made from a girl’s skin because it’s finer and purer. So Vasilievna died… Who will die next? Will it be me?

【Lin Jue said the Eerie Game emphasizes fairness and won’t specifically target a certain gender, telling me not to worry. I know he’s just comforting me; we are all the dead, and the Final Dungeon has no reason to be fair to us… 【I must leave the inn today. If one person dies a day, it will be my turn tomorrow… The road we came on is gone, we can only cross that snow mountain. As long as we cross the snow mountain, we can leave Shangri-La. Yes, cross the snow mountain, and we can clear the instance…】

The handwriting on the page was fresh, the ink not yet dry, as if one could feel the recorder’s warmth through the paper, smudging the freshly written strokes.

Anyone witnessing this scene would inevitably suspect the existence of a parallel world overlapping this one, where another unseen team of players was experiencing the same instance, leaving real-time records on paper as time progressed.

But for most people, the existence of that team of players was already a thing of the past; twenty-two years of time was enough to bury the history of an entire generation.

In the new diary, Chu Yining was not as calm as on the first day; her language was rambling and her logic chaotic.

After a female player’s tragic death, she quickly realized that danger was imminent for her, so she made the adventurous decision to cross the snow mountain.

Who would accompany her? What would be the outcome? It was temporarily unknown.

Qi Si tentatively flipped through the diary in his hand; the subsequent pages were still stuck together, probably unable to be opened until tomorrow.

He casually rolled the diary into a bundle and stuffed it into his pocket, his gaze falling on the large bed beside him.

Lin Chen lay on his side, completely wrapped in the quilt, sleeping soundly. He was deeply nestled in the bedding, mouth slightly agape, breathing, looking as if he intended to sleep until late morning.

Qi Si leaned over and patted his back, neither too lightly nor too heavily: “Lin Chen, wake up, it’s morning.”

Lin Chen covered his head with the quilt and mumbled indistinctly: “Mom, I’ll sleep for ten more minutes…”

Qi Si lost his patience, directly pulled off the quilt, and lifted him up.

Outside the door, a commotion of human voices gradually arose, messy footsteps sounding suppressed, then gathering in one spot.

“It’s Mu Chuqing! Mu Chuqing is dead! I didn’t see her when I woke up this morning, and I thought she went out to gather clues…” A sharp female voice rang out, from the talkative female player named Yu Su yesterday.

Qi Si pushed open the door, and a strong smell of blood rushed towards him.

A crowd had already gathered at the doorway, obscuring most of the bloody scene, and fear was written on everyone’s faces.

Xu Yao and Lu Li were also among the onlookers; the former looked indifferent, curiously scrutinizing, while the latter frowned deeply, lost in thought.

Through gaps in the crowd, one could vaguely see a bloody, mutilated corpse standing like a statue at the doorway, blood gushing from its sunken eye sockets, and guts spilling from its ripped-open abdomen.

Behind the corpse, on the wall that had been empty last night, a new picture frame appeared, with a freshly peeled human skin hanging prominently in the center. Blood still dripped from its edges, leaving streaks of red vertical lines on the wall.

Lu Li pushed through the crowd, walked to the human skin, bent slightly, and wiped away the bloodstains on its surface, saying: “This is a Human Skin Thangka. Looking at the patterns and inlaid gems, it depicts Mahakala. Orthodox Tantric Human Skin Thangkas require the entire back skin of a deceased high monk to be tanned after his nirvana, but this one—”

He paused, his finger tracing the edge of the human skin: “The knife marks on the side of the neck are messy, and the skin of the limbs shows tearing fractures, indicating that the victim struggled violently when being flayed alive and cried out for help loudly. But none of us noticed anything abnormal or offered help last night, so it’s basically confirmed that once targeted, death is unavoidable.”

Lu Li’s voice was cold and his words clear, and a terrifying scene almost materialized before the players’ eyes:

The woman’s skin was forcefully peeled off her body; throughout the process, she frantically thrashed her limbs but couldn’t break free from the invisible restraint; she screamed and cried for help, but no one could hear her.

It wasn’t until the entire human skin was completely stripped off, and the living person turned into a bloody corpse, that the sense of despair truly ended with the cessation of life.

She stood silently and unwillingly in the center of the corridor, her muscles still twitching reflexively, only settling into stillness after a night, yet seeming as if she could be awakened at any moment… “This is an instant-death death point. The only solution is to avoid being chosen.” Fu Jue made his judgment, glancing at the female player cowering and trembling in the corner, “Yu Su, you were always with Mu Chuqing. Did she do anything special yesterday?”

The female player called “Yu Su” had now gone from being boisterous to the other extreme, looking distraught at the bloody floor, her voice tearful: “I don’t know, she and I went to bed very early, I don’t know what happened later… Wuwuwu…”

Her helplessness didn’t seem feigned, so it appeared she couldn’t provide much useful information. However, as a player chosen by Fu Jue and brought into the Final Dungeon, her behavior was quite peculiar.

Logically, they were all top-ranked players, accustomed to life and death, having witnessed countless terrifying scenes. How could she be so panicked at the sight of a corpse, worse than a newcomer to the Eerie Game?

Many people had basically reached a conclusion: although Yu Su was still alive, she was probably already afflicted. This “affliction” was even more insidious than Mu Chuqing’s death, not a physical injury, but an erosion of the soul and spirit, its trigger mechanism unknown… The players exchanged glances, their expressions solemn.

Qi Si thought of the entry in Chu Yining’s diary and looked at Yu Su: “Did you reveal your room number to any NPC yesterday?”

Yu Su wiped her tears and stammered: “Maybe… yes. Yesterday, Mu Chuqing and I encountered a Ghost on the way, and the old man downstairs eventually escorted us back to our room…”

Fu Jue said: “If the situation is true, telling a Ghost your room number is very likely one of the trigger conditions for the death point.”

“That’s not right,” Jiang Junjue blinked twice. “Shuomeng and I didn’t avoid anyone when we entered the room. I even saw that old man hiding sneakily at the end of the corridor and greeted him.”

Shuomeng said with lingering fear: “I felt that old man was no good yesterday and was scared all night, but thankfully nothing happened. It’s a pity about Sister Chuqing…”

Fu Jue glanced at the two of them and said flatly: “The second condition for triggering this death point is being female. In Tantric Buddhism, female skin is considered finer and purer, making it the best material for Human Skin Thangkas.”

“Huh? No way… Does this Eerie Game really discriminate based on gender?”

The clacking sound of the prayer wheel came from the staircase at just the right time, as Sang Ji, the innkeeper, tremblingly climbed to the second floor, walking through the corridor as if no one else was there.

The players all fell silent, consciously moving to either side to clear a narrow path for one person to pass.

Sang Ji walked slowly, without looking left or right, limping towards the bloody human skin on the wall. Suddenly, he put his hands together and murmured: “Mother Goddess, this Thangka comes from a pure maiden, surely it can bear your purest power…”

The old man mumbled some more incomprehensible words to himself, then turned to the players, revealing a toothless smile: “Guests, a new Thangka has arrived, please enjoy it. Everyone in our Shangri-La loves Thangkas, and I believe you will too.”

Yu Su opened her mouth as if to say something, but Li Yunyang, quick as a flash, covered her mouth before she could speak, forcing a smile as she said to Sang Ji: “Thank you, old man, we will appreciate it carefully.”

Sang Ji nodded with satisfaction, then wobbled and turned to leave.

Li Yunyang didn’t release her hand until his figure disappeared at the stairwell.

Yu Su began to cry piteously: “Mu Chuqing is dead, will it be my turn tomorrow? Wuwuwu, I don’t want to die…”

Xu Yao finally couldn’t stand it anymore and whispered to Lu Li: “Didn’t they say the spots for the Final Dungeon were very precious? Now it seems anyone can get in?”

A male player from Kyushu looked a bit embarrassed, muttering to himself: “Yu Su wasn’t like this before; I’ve never seen her expression change in so many instances, always tough and quiet. I don’t know what’s wrong this time…”

Yu Su was still crying uncontrollably, her face crumpled, showing no trace of her former “tough and quiet” self.

Li Yunyang frowned slightly, knelt down in front of her, and asked: “Yu Su, how do you feel now? Are you uncomfortable anywhere?”

Yu Su shook her head vigorously: “Sister, I’m scared…”

Everyone’s expressions froze. Yu Su and Li Yunyang were roughly the same age, both around twenty-five or twenty-six, so there was no way Yu Su would call her “Sister.”

The situation had become extremely strange. Jiang Junjue, as if remembering something, pulled a stack of papers from his In my arms and handed them to Fu Jue: “I found these records in my room last night. I didn’t know what they meant at the time… Everyone should take a look.”

Fu Jue took the pages, glanced at them, then passed them to Lu Li beside him, who then passed them to Xu Yao.

After being passed around, everyone saw the contents of the papers.

Various crooked, distorted characters, like children’s scribbles, densely covered the pages with the same sentence—

【We’ve turned back into children.】