Chapter 90: Hopeless Sea (14) – Neglect

“I told Yuna that if she didn’t let Uncle Zhang and me go, I would smash that painting.”

Liu Yuhan sat on a low stool, hiding herself in the shadow of the corner, her eyes behind her lenses staring blankly at the ceiling.

“She seemed to care a lot about that painting. I let Uncle Zhang go first and used the painting as a shield to cover our retreat. She kept a two-step distance from me the whole time. It wasn’t until I backed out of the kitchen that she finally couldn’t help herself and tried to snatch the painting from my hands… I had no choice but to give it back to her.”

“By the way, there was a passage written on the back of that painting: ‘We imprisoned an angel and tore off its feathers to fulfill our wishes; until one day, it gathered the lost feathers, spread its wings, and flew away, escaping the isolated island at the edge of the sea.'”

Liu Yuhan briefly recounted everything she had seen and heard throughout the day, from the coconuts turning into human heads to triggering a death point in the kitchen.

Zhang Hongfeng nodded from the side, confirming that what the girl said was true.

“The paintings hanging in the hotel rooms are likely all ‘Moses Leaving Egypt,’ a metaphor for the believer’s devout faith and following of the prophet. Yuna hopes to gain faith and followers, so she replaced Moses in the image.”

“Combined with the hallucinations Brother Chang and I saw at the top of the Clock Tower, Yuna, having been treated as a witch in her childhood, is particularly eager to transform the fish scales on her body into feathers and become a true angel.”

“Perhaps in her own view, she is an angel, just trapped in malice and on an isolated island because she lacks feathers; as long as she gathers enough feathers, she can spread her wings and escape.”

“So, she messes with us travelers, turning us into bait that can produce feathers, and lets those fish monsters eat us, providing her with the feathers needed to make wings.”

Qi Si analyzed this with interest and asked, “How do you think one goes about creating a god?”

Liu Yuhan suddenly looked up and murmured, “Those with two wings are angels, those with four wings are demons, and those with six wings are gods. Yuna covets godhood, so she needs six wings.”

Qi Si smiled and asked the next question, “Then, where do the wings come from? Why do angels have feathers?”

Liu Yuhan’s lips trembled: “The world believes in gods and hopes to receive blessings, and thus angels came to be. Wings are the power of angels to fulfill the wishes of believers. Consuming one feather can grant one wish, including health, money, personality, life…”

She thought of something and fell silent.

Qi Si continued, “Yuna said at the very beginning that everything—health, personality, conscience, life—can be exchanged for money. Since angels consume feathers to satisfy believers’ wishes, surely they can also exchange for these things.”

“So, conversely, can these things be used to exchange for an angel’s feathers? As the saying goes, ‘money makes the mare go.’ In the history of certain religions, money could buy ‘indulgences,’ so surely there is a channel to exchange for angel feathers.”

He laughed as if he had thought of an amusing joke: “Hypocritical religions extract the flesh and blood of believers to offer to gods. Yuna cultivates feathers with the lives of travelers. Since people are going to die anyway, why not skip the middleman who earns the price difference and sacrifice directly?”

Chang Xu always felt that these words were laced with poison, as if a thick, bloody storm could be stirred up at any moment, yet he didn’t know where the murderous intent was hidden.

Liu Yuhan said softly, “I understand what you mean, and I’ve long had this suspicion. Fish and birds are two ways to leave this island. ‘Fish’ corresponds to leaving the island by boat, and ‘birds’ corresponds to growing wings to fly off the island.”

“Since Yuna can make wings, as long as we understand the mechanism of feather production, we can also collect feathers ourselves, grow wings, and escape like Icarus in Greek mythology.”

“Exactly,” Qi Si added with a smile, “And the risk of the latter is much smaller than the former. After all, feathers are materials produced from our own bodies.”

“The rule says not to take anything from the island. Although the wooden boat you found is clearly a product of a shipwreck and doesn’t strictly belong to this island, who knows if the rule might be playing word games?”

“Thanks for the reminder,” Liu Yuhan nodded earnestly, “I really took that for granted and didn’t notice. I will credit you in this part of my strategy post.”

“No need for credit, I was just guessing.”

While the two groups were exchanging information, the other players returned to the hotel one after another.

Seeing four people already huddled in a corner discussing something, the latecomers naturally followed the gathering effect, came over, and joined the discussion.

Qi Si briefly summarized the known information and the two clearance plans of “Fish” and “Bird,” earning grateful looks from the players who didn’t fully understand but felt it was impressive.

After learning of the terrifying experiences of Liu Yuhan and Zhang Hongfeng, the players exploring the coconut grove quickly expressed that they dared not mess with the island’s produce anymore.

The blood on Zhang Hongfeng’s body hadn’t been washed clean and had now congealed into black mud.

He said with lingering fear, “I’ll be able to fix that boat by this time tomorrow at the latest. Since I’ll be able to leave soon, I won’t be greedy for this bite of food…”

The players who went to the Clock Tower generally didn’t encounter any dangerous situations.

The four people, split into two groups, returned unscathed. Except for the long-haired girl who was retouching her makeup without a word, the other three were very talkative, describing their experiences in a jumble, which was roughly the same as what Qi Si and Chang Xu had seen and heard.

What was strange was that the three groups, including the four of them and Qi Si’s team, had gone at roughly the same time, one after another, yet they hadn’t met each other at all.

The long-haired young man named “Ye Linsheng” joked, “We have so many people and didn’t run into a single one. Could it be a setting like parallel spaces? It’s precisely because each of our teams entered different parallel spaces that we were completely staggered and couldn’t meet.”

Since they were speaking freely, an unkempt middle-aged man beside him also offered his opinion, “Maybe it’s a ghost wall. The feng shui layout of this island is very strange, winding and twisting. Where in reality is an island shaped like this?”

Talking about feng shui in the Eerie Game is like pointing at the heavy rain outside and saying the ground will get wet; in every horror instance, the feng shui of the building layout is rarely good.

“Has anyone been to the altar in the center of the island?” Qi Si interrupted the endless nonsense and looked at Angela beside him, “Angela, I remember you and Lu Li went to explore the altar together, right?”

Angela had been keeping her head down since entering the hotel, trying to minimize her presence.

Seeing everyone looking at her, she had to speak, “The altar is very far away, I don’t think I’ll be back for a while. I did go with Lu Li, but halfway through, I don’t know what happened, he insisted on sending me back…”

The girl pouted aggrievedly, as if she were genuinely sad about being abandoned by Lu Li, “Maybe he made some discovery and looked down on me because I couldn’t do anything and would only hold him back…”

Liu Yuhan shifted her gaze to look at her, her eyes deep, “There are only ten of us here, and three people haven’t returned yet. They are all players who went towards the altar.”

Actually, only two were left, and one person’s head had already been smashed into tofu brain.

Qi Si told himself a hellish joke in his heart, his face remaining calm.

Chang Xu glanced at his teammate beside him casually. Seeing the latter looking innocent, he pursed his lips sensibly, his expressionless face revealing no flaws.

Although he didn’t know what kind of mischief Qi Si was brewing, as they were in the same boat, it was better not to undermine him.

At worst, he could stop him after Qi Si clearly showed his intent to harm others—anyway, with his combat power, he wasn’t afraid of being unable to turn the situation around.

The short man laughed, “Isn’t it still early? What’s the rush? Let’s continue to sort out the clues.”

With some time left before mealtime, Chang Xu took the lead and recounted the hallucinations he saw at the top of the Clock Tower.

The dry narration was plain and simple, but fortunately, the thread of events was explained clearly enough.

If building a boat or wings could only solve the main quest of escaping the island, then exploring the Clock Tower was undoubtedly of great benefit to cracking the worldview.

The main quest was just the foundation. After giving up the side quest of killing each other, if one wanted to gain more points, one would inevitably have to work on the worldview and exploration degree.

“The instance background can be divided into two time periods. In the first period, Yuna, through unknown means, established a connection with the Sea God, causing a ship full of people to perish in the sea and become fish-man monsters. Those fish monsters are completely under her command and are her weapons and accomplices.”

Qi Si leaned against the table, analyzing calmly.

“Yuna likely also reached some kind of deal with the Sea God. In order to achieve her own wishes, she stayed on the Hopeless Sea, receiving batch after batch of travelers, letting them die in sin, and becoming sacrifices to the Sea God.”

“During this period, whether out of a childhood obsession with angels or ambition spurred by the power of life and death, she coveted being worshipped as a god. So, she used some means to cultivate feathers with the lives of outsiders who strayed into the Hopeless Sea.”

“At the same time, she also transferred the power of life and death from the Sea God to herself through the Calming Soup. Those who couldn’t get the Calming Soup would surely die, so they had to please her to get it. She had become another god under the Sea God.”

“The earliest religious beliefs stemmed from awe of nature’s greatness and the unknown. Humans only believe in and worship gods when they have requests of them. It must be said that Yuna’s plan was not wrong.”

Qi Si commented and continued to state the background in a calm and almost indifferent tone: “The second period belongs to the crew members who were accidentally swept into the Hopeless Sea, as well as us players.”

“The isolated, timeless Hopeless Sea has taken shape, and the Sea God Island has become Yuna’s territory, possessing a complete set of eerie rules. The coconuts that Liu Yuhan mentioned would turn into heads, and the fish Yuna gave us to eat, are likely the crew members who died on the island before us.”

“In order to obtain more sacrificial offerings, Yuna is no longer satisfied with waiting for unlucky people to bump into her passively. She spared the life of a guy named ‘Crouch’, perhaps using hypnosis, to make that fellow collude with her and lure more and more travelers here.”

“Hmm, that Viscount Crouch is likely Captain Crouch who sent us here. We are all heads offered to Yuna lured by him. As for why we are still alive, it may be because feather production requires a gradual process.”

Qi Si appropriately concealed the diary he and Chang Xu found in the room and attributed the existence of Viscount Crouch and his gang to the clues provided by Liu Yuhan.

The players continued to think along with his analysis, each saying a word or two.

“The main NPCs harbor malice towards us and completely treat us as pigs that can be slaughtered at will. This is tough…”

“Do you think there’s any hope for the Calming Soup tonight? Two people died and turned into feathers last night, so the sampling experiment should be done…”

“Except for us, everyone on the island is dead. Whose words can be trusted? Even the angel was slaughtered by Yuna and put in the kitchen. Are we going to trigger the minimum death count mechanism again this wave?”

Anxiety spread quietly, and a shade of worry, either thick or thin, appeared on everyone’s faces.

Qi Si thought for no reason that Yuna’s current behavior was very much like a cat playing with a mouse, showing her malice to the players without concealment, letting them wait for the final outcome in fear and unease…

Just like a certain religion’s prophecy of the end of the world, using an ethereal future to threaten believers to offer devotion, and occasionally holding a few witch burnings to intimidate those who don’t listen.

In a sense, this way of playing is truly enduring.

Angela shrugged and changed the subject, “Why haven’t those three returned yet? It’s almost mealtime. It’s just one altar, is it worth it?”

The white man who had been wandering outside muttered vaguely, “Maybe something happened, and they died outside.”

The long-haired young man glared at him, “What are you saying? If a big shot of Professor Lu’s level were to have an accident, few of us would survive the clearance!”

These words were harsh, but they were close to the truth.

A veteran player who has cleared eighteen official instances has not only a considerable number of life-saving props but also intuition and experience honed and accumulated in countless life-and-death crises.

The official pool doesn’t have a major threshold to eliminate players like the Novice Pool. It can be said that among official players, the more instances cleared, the higher the survival rate.

“That’s just a pretty boy. It’s a pity that you people still believe his nonsense!” The white man sneered and straightened his back, actually a head taller than the long-haired youth, “You’ve been picking on me until now. Does your kid think I don’t know how to hit people?”

He was tall and big, standing out from the crowd of players. If a physical conflict really broke out, no one would be willing to stand up for the young man and touch this person’s bad luck for no reason.

“It’s useless for us to think blindly here. If they come back, everyone will be happy; if they can’t come back, we’ll just remember not to go to the altar,” the short man laughed and smoothed things over, “Isn’t it still early? They haven’t served the food yet…”

“Bang!” A heavy thud interrupted his words, followed by rapid panting and groaning.

Everyone turned their heads in unison, looking toward the direction of the hotel entrance where the sound came from.

A figure in a long brown trench coat fell to the ground weakly, crashing into the hotel lobby with a thick smell of blood.

It was Lu Li!