Chapter 87 Hopeless Sea (XI) Knowledge

Amidst the dense coconut grove, Angela followed closely behind Lu Li, heading toward the altar.

After following silently for a stretch, she feigned concern and asked, “Expert Lu Li, how did you enter the Eerie Game?”

Lu Li sighed, a layer of sorrow clouding his eyes: “My family member fell seriously ill and needed a lot of money. With my abilities, I couldn’t raise such a large amount without breaking the law… When I was at my wit’s end, the invitation appeared.”

“I see.” Angela gave a dry laugh and didn’t continue.

Just a moment ago, she noticed that the money distribution displayed on the system interface had changed.

In the direction of the altar, one point was rapidly approaching another; after making contact, they separated, and one of the points stopped moving…

Something was wrong.

Angela stopped and stared at Lu Li’s back, saying, “Expert, then you should prioritize your own safety even more; only by surviving can you earn more money. Let’s go back; there’s no rush to explore the altar right now.”

Lu Li turned his head to look at her, his gaze flickering with a confused luster: “No, I feel the key clue is just ahead, and we’ll have clearance soon… I won’t go back. If you’re scared, you should leave. I won’t go back…”

His words were repetitive and vague; his mind was clearly no longer clear.

He had been ensnared!

‘He actually got into trouble himself without waiting for someone else to act? Acting so impressive, turns out he’s just a straw bag…’

Angela thought to herself, but also realized the danger of the altar.

Even a veteran player like Lu Li had fallen for it without realizing, let alone a newcomer like her.

She couldn’t keep moving forward. Stay away from the altar, she must stay away… Her life was precious; she couldn’t just throw it away here for nothing…

Angela tentatively said, “Expert, do you want to leave some money with me first? In case something happens to you, I’ll be able to find a way to save you!”

Lu Li seemed not to hear her, turned his back, and continued walking step by step into the depths of the altar.

Angela was a bit unwilling, but ultimately didn’t dare to follow, fearing she would also be ensnared by the power of the instance.

“Then take care, Expert. I’m going back to call some people over!”

She threw out these words and ran toward the hotel without looking back.

Whether Lu Li lived or died had nothing to do with her.

Everyone has to die; no matter how many corpses there are, they are just her pledge of allegiance to join “that guild.”

…

“My intuition for Ghosts is very accurate. I’ve been able to see Ghosts since I was a child, and I know when and where they will appear.” Chang Xu stopped walking and inserted a playing card that appeared out of thin air between his fingers diagonally into the wall.

The Clock Tower was covered in dust. In the narrow and cramped space, a staircase that could only accommodate one person spiraled upward, reaching toward a glimmer of light high above.

That light was natural light cast from high above. The dimness of twilight was of no help, only allowing the two people walking one after the other to barely see the path ahead and the walls on both sides.

Every few steps on the wall, patches of suspicious whiteness protruded; looking closely, they were the edges of white feathers, dripping with golden blood.

The “rustling” sound was intermittent, like the sound of feathers rubbing, or perhaps the sound of plants growing inside the wall, waiting to burst out at any moment.

“So?” Qi Si put his hands in his pockets and smiled nonchalantly. “I could also see Ghosts when I was a child. When I was bored, I even played a few games of Ludo with a little girl under my bed.

“According to the Federation, I was either sick or deliberately spreading rumors, so I had to be sent to a mental hospital for treatment.”

“Sorry, I was also feared and shunned as a monster when I was a child because I often talked to Ghosts…”

Chang Xu’s fingertips flickered with a blue, glowing dim light, and playing cards changed rapidly there: “Did you hear any sound?”

Qi Si didn’t answer and continued to speak to himself: “Later, I don’t know what happened, but I suddenly couldn’t see Ghosts anymore. The doctor said I was cured—do you want me to give you the contact information of my attending physician after we get out?”

“I just heard the sound of fingernails scratching the wall; didn’t you hear it?” Chang Xu inserted the last playing card in his hand into the wall, shockingly outlining a square half a person’s height.

The blue light connected into lines, and the part between the squares disappeared into thin air, revealing yellowish, deformed white bones behind the Clock Tower wall, belonging to a human.

It was a complete skeleton, but because it had been bent and buried inside, at first glance it was curled into a ball, twisted so it didn’t look like a human shape. The limbs seemed to have undergone some kind of mutation; the arm bones had grown dense bone spurs, like the feathers of a bird.

Qi Si became interested, leaned forward to pull out the skull, and played with it in the light: “It’s a modern human’s bone, most likely belonging to a player.”

Chang Xu raised an eyebrow: “Why are you so sure?”

Qi Si stuffed the skull back into the wall and answered vaguely: “The background time of this instance is between the 15th and 17th centuries. Commoners at that time were malnourished, which would be reflected in the thickness and quality of their bones; while nobles, due to some strange etiquette, attire, and aesthetics, would have bones that presented a certain degree of deformity.”

Chang Xu glanced back at him: “You know a lot.”

Qi Si narrowed his eyes and smiled: “Of course, I’m a professional in this field.

“Specimen preparation involves more species than you imagine—otherwise, how do you think the human specimens displayed in those universities and museums came to be?”

Chang Xu didn’t make a sound.

Qi Si lowered his eyes, and from the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the pale hands of the person in front of him.

They were clearly no longer human hands; they were stark white and ghastly, just like the finger bones of the skeleton in the wall, flat and long, hanging down coldly.

Phantoms appeared one after another; white bones shattered into joints, sturdy as human bones, flexible as fish bones, all turning into feathers, layering and clustering into the shape of wings—one, two, three…

The wings that blotted out the sky cast shadows on the wall. A girl knelt by an oil lamp, her hands folded to make shadow puppets.

The shadows of six wings appeared on the wall. A smile appeared on the girl’s face, her arms flipping nimbly, signing quickly.

“I heard that those with two wings are angels, those with four wings are demons, and those with six wings… are gods.”

“Mom, look! I’ve created a god!”

Qi Si held his breath, stepped back, and silently put distance between himself and the figure with wings growing in front of him.

The light overhead grew further and further away, as if it could never be reached; the cold, dark, and cramped building surrounded him from all sides, molding and rotting along with the corpses inside.

His back seemed to bump into something, and a face stretched out from behind his neck, pressing tightly against the tip of Qi Si’s nose.

It was a stark white skeleton with teeth clenched tight, without the covering of lips, as if it were smiling…

It asked: “Do you want to be a fish, or a bird?”

The voice was seductive, making the listener eager to answer, as if just saying the answer would make it come true.

Qi Si tilted his head and thought for a moment, then smiled brilliantly: “I want to be a god, is that okay?”

…

“Are you feeling any better?” Chang Xu stood on a pile of broken bones, turning his head to look back.

Just having pulled himself out of the anomaly, Qi Si reflexively pulled out a blade and slashed toward the back of the former’s neck.

The thought could not be converted into action; blood-red prompt text popped up before his eyes.

【In this instance, you cannot kill players with the status of “Noble”】

【Violating instance rules, one warning! Accumulating three warnings will result in clearance failure!】

The cold electronic voice poured down; Qi Si chuckled twice: “Still alive, didn’t die.”

He didn’t know if it was an illusion, but he always felt that when he was with Chang Xu, it was easier to trigger a death point. It was like that in Rose Manor, and it was the same this time…

To use Jin Yusheng’s words, perhaps it’s called “incompatible horoscopes”?

Sensing Qi Si’s unfriendly attitude, Chang Xu silently put away the playing cards in his hand and asked: “Do we still want to go up?”

The corpses in the wall were sending a terrible warning, almost threatening the players directly by saying “Be careful of dying here if you go any further.”

They had only climbed halfway and encountered this; there was still a long way to go, and he didn’t know what kind of crisis might be lurking.

Qi Si pondered for a moment and said: “Someone has to go up, otherwise this clue will remain blank forever. Moreover, I also want to stand at a high point and see the full picture of this island.”

Chang Xu couldn’t help but look at Qi Si a few more times with suspicion.

In his impression, Qi Si was the type who always made others walk into mines; how could he be so righteous and risk his own life?

Then he saw Qi Si make a “please” gesture to him: “Brother Chang, my health has always been poor; you’re the martial artist, so you should take the lead.”

…As expected.

Perhaps because the bad luck had been exhausted by that previous encounter, or perhaps because nothing would happen as long as one didn’t have itchy hands, the rest of the way was smooth sailing, without even a mouse, let alone Ghosts.

The light overhead grew closer and closer. After crawling out of the dark building, Qi Si stood on the platform at the top of the Clock Tower, even developing the illusion that he could reach out and touch the firmament.

The dark yellow sky was spread out like drawing paper, and the purulent yellow clouds hung heavily like large globs of oil paint, forming the closed eyes of an unknown giant, not knowing when they would open.

In the center of the top floor, a bronze bell hung quietly and solemnly, giving one a mysterious feeling of an ancient life nearing its end.

Qi Si stared at the striker next to the bell, really wanting to strike it ten times to see if the rule 【Please fall asleep when striking ten times】 would still be effective.

Considering that Chang Xu was still nearby, reason finally triumphed over his wicked sense of humor, and he could only regretfully shelve the dangerous idea.

Chang Xu also stared at the bell.

A few seconds later, he walked behind the bell and pointed to a pile of decayed white bones piled up in the shadows: “The bell ringer is already dead.”

To be precise, he was dead as a doornail; he had never seen anyone who could still be alive after becoming a skeleton.

As for what kind of thing was ringing the bell every day, that was terrifying to think about.

Qi Si leaned over to the skeleton and said with reverence: “How dedicated; he’s been dead for so many years and still insists on ringing the bell.”

Skeleton: “…”

Chang Xu was also unable to understand Qi Si’s unique sense of humor. He squatted down and his fingers brushed over a few lines of small text on the wall that had been covered by the skeleton:

【Fearful and praying, I only see the sea and the souls who fell into the water】

【They say, we can’t go back, we can’t go back, we can no longer see our hometown】

【Oh God, save me, the cabin is crowded, corpses and cargo are piled up】

【They say, give up, give up, there is no hope of going home】

These characters were crooked, the strokes thin, appearing to be carved with fingernails. The moment they were touched by his gaze, they burrowed into his consciousness like roots and worms.

Unfamiliar cognitions flooded into his mind one after another, and in a second, they were translated into scenes: Moses parting the Red Sea, ambitious explorers seeking new trade routes, all the people, beasts, and objects that had passed through this sea for thousands of years… Everything overlapped; the same emotions and different people were twisted together, as if it were a religious metaphor.

If one person opens up a path, making millions of people homeless; if a nation occupies a piece of land, causing devastation and ruin from then on; if a religion advocates for the above actions… no matter how great the feat or how sacred the journey was at the beginning, they are all guilty.

In an instant, Qi Si felt countless emotions that did not belong to him—sadness, anger, confusion, despair…

He frowned slightly, pulling himself out of the ocean of thoughts, and instead gained a God’s-eye view looking down from above.

A sailing ship was embedded in the center of his vision, sailing alone on the boundless sea, getting closer and clearer.

It was night; only the stars and the moon were shining in the sky, and the waves hitting the hull made a soft “swishing” sound.

On the deck, the sailors sang happy songs, imagining how much gold they would get after selling slaves to the new continent; below the deck, people were stacked on top of each other like cargo, sweat and rotting corpses mixed and fermented into a foul stench, and large patches of ringworm crawled on their bodies.

People died every day; no one knew if the companion beside them had already become a corpse. The first few who died were thrown into the sea, but there were still uncleared dead bodies rotting in the bottom of the cabin.

Death, sickness, sultry heat, fear—this was the boy’s entire memory of this voyage. He and his tribesmen curled up in the dark cabin, singing songs of their hometown and praying to the great god who ruled the ocean—

Let the wind and waves be greater, let all ships be unable to reach that land, and get lost in this sea area…

I don’t know how long it had been, but the sound of a lock opening rang out in the silence, and starlight shone through the crack of the cabin door, illuminating a small, hazy scene.

The person opening the cabin door was not a god, but a beautiful woman wearing a blue dress.

The woman smiled, didn’t say a word, and only gestured with her hands for them to get out as quickly as possible.

The boy watched his tribesmen scramble to climb onto the deck, follow the woman’s instructions to rush into various rooms, drag out the unconscious men inside, and throw them into the sea.

The boy was timid and didn’t follow out immediately. He hid carefully in the shadows, looked away, avoided looking into the woman’s eyes, and only cautiously observed his tribesmen.

He saw strange smiles on the faces of his tribesmen, and one by one they jumped into the sea, as if that way they could return to their hometown.

He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t make a sound. His consciousness gradually blurred, and when he opened his eyes again, the wooden boat had already run aground on the shore of a small island.

The sky presented a strange orange-yellow color, and the island was surprisingly quiet. There were clearly newly built buildings, but there were no people on the beach.

The boy, as if by some divine intervention, got off the boat and explored into the depths of the forest.

In front of a wooden building, he saw the strange, beautiful woman again.

The woman looked at him and smiled, gesturing something with her hands.

Rustling sounds moved, and hundreds of monsters with fish scales on their bodies walked out of the coconut grove; among them were many familiar faces—his tribesmen.

Those monsters bit off his flesh, the fish scales on their bodies turned into bird feathers, wriggling like snakes and insects on the surface of their bodies, then falling off, to be picked up by the woman…