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墨書 Inktalez
The room was filled with corpses.
The structure of the Supply Station was familiar to her from memory, but this time, their familiar living room was piled high with bodies in various positions.
"Ah!"
Deng Yinyin was the first to scream, for among the dead, she saw a familiar face.
Xie Huai.
Xie Huai lay beside the sofa, a short knife embedded in his chest. The blood flowing from him mingled with that of the other corpses, and his eyes were wide open, pupils dilated, staring in her direction. This was the first time she had seen a companion's corpse; when Tang Jingshu died, there had been no body left behind. Although she often woke up in terror during the night, there weren't many horrifying images to haunt her. The sight of Xie Huai's lifeless form shocked her to her core.
After her scream, Deng Yinyin realized something was wrong. She had entered the Supply Station with Xie Huai; there was no reason for him to die before her eyes.
"Xie Huai?"
She turned to look for her companion, hoping to find Xie Huai among the others, but all she saw were Gu Ze and two others—no sign of the slender, refined man.
"Gu Ze, have you seen Xie Huai? Where is he? Didn't he come in with us?"
She grabbed Gu Ze's sleeve, her tone urgent and filled with hope.
"Huh? Isn't Xie Huai right in front of you?"
Gu Ze gently pulled away from Deng Yinyin's grip, pointing in confusion toward where she stood. There stood Xie Huai, gasping for breath in shock and fear. Upon hearing Deng Yinyin's voice, he looked at her with a puzzled expression.
"Deng Yinyin, what's wrong?"
Deng Yinyin didn't hear his voice; instead, she stared in terror at the direction Gu Ze pointed—there lay Xie Huai's corpse.
What was happening? Deng Yinyin suddenly clasped her head in her hands, feeling both afraid and confused by what lay before her.
"Why am I seeing this scene? Where is Xie Huai? Where is he?"
Deng Yinyin's loss of control made Xu Hang and Xie Huai abandon their fear of the room full of corpses and instead surround her, asking her about her condition in detail.
Standing aside, Gu Ze and Xu Nuan witnessed a bizarre scene. In the corpse-filled Supply Station, Xu Hang and Xie Huai were trying to comfort Deng Yinyin, while she kept holding onto Xu Hang, asking where Xie Huai was.
"Can't she see Xie Huai?"
Xu Nuan was puzzled by Deng Yinyin's behavior. Before she and Gu Ze could figure it out, they noticed that Xie Huai, who had been comforting Deng Yinyin, suddenly pointed in a direction and shouted loudly.
"Tang Jing Shu, how did you end up here?"
Hearing the long-lost name, Xu Nuan and Gu Ze instinctively looked in that direction. All they saw were a few lounge chairs and some unfamiliar corpses; there was no familiar figure in sight.
After exchanging glances with Gu Ze, Xu Nuan murmured.
"It seems like they are seeing something we can't? Are they under the influence of drugs or hypnosis?"
Xu Nuan didn't really understand hypnosis or psychological suggestion. She just knew that there were many things in this game that she couldn't explain with common sense, so she could only attribute it to psychological suggestion or some advanced technology she didn't know about.
"We can't jump to conclusions yet," Gu Ze said, slightly retracting his smile and looking seriously at Xu Hang, who had already realized something was wrong. "The number of corpses here is strange; it's impossible for so many Players to suddenly die here. It doesn't match the total number of Players."
"These corpses seem deliberately placed here to create a terrifying atmosphere, or perhaps they want us to see something?"
Xu Nuan immediately followed Gu Ze's line of thought. Just as she was about to analyze further with him, she suddenly spotted a familiar figure in a corner of the Supply Station. A voice inside her told her 'this isn't real,' but she still found herself walking toward that direction. The warning Gu Ze had given her about the difficulty of this level involving the Special Tree and Supply Station slipped from her mind.
Even though many things had happened since entering the game and she knew she had been designed into it, Xu Nuan still had to admit that her initial motivation for entering the game was Qin Yaojie.
When she saw that man curled up silently in a corner, Xu Nuan felt as if her heart was being tightly squeezed by someone; it was a pain that made it hard to breathe.
She realized her blood seemed to freeze, leaving her feeling no warmth at all. Crouching down, she tentatively reached out her hand to turn the corpse over and confirm its face, but her hand stopped mid-air, refusing to move.
Not real?
Real?
As she witnessed the scene she dreaded the most, she could no longer consider herself calm and rational.
“Yao… Jie?”
The voice was uncertain and filled with fear.
Xu Nuan tried to reach out again, slowly attempting to touch the lifeless body, when a sudden pain shot across her face.
“Hiss.”
Xu Nuan instinctively swatted away the hand gripping her face and turned to glare at Gu Ze.
However, upon seeing the evident worry on Gu Ze's face, Xu Nuan managed to hold back her reprimand. But when she glanced at the scenery behind Gu Ze, she suddenly stood up and looked back at the spot where the body had been—it was just yellow-brown earth.
“What did you see? Your expression is…”
Before Gu Ze could finish his sentence, Xu Nuan stood on her tiptoes and pinched his cheek hard.
“Nuan, is this revenge?”
Gu Ze covered Xu Nuan's hand with his own, intending to make a joke, but then he noticed that their surroundings had changed.
“Noticed it yet?”
Xu Nuan unapologetically withdrew her hand, managing to suppress that suffocating feeling from earlier.
They were now in an open area, surrounded by yellow earth on three sides, with one side very close to the Special Tree. The wind blew from all directions; there was no White Supply Station and none of those terrifying corpses.
“Aren't we in the Supply Station?”
Gu Ze was puzzled for a moment before suddenly realizing something. He quickly walked over to Xu Hang and unceremoniously tapped Xu Hang on the head. The force was enough that even Xu Nuan winced at the sight, internally mocking Gu Ze for forgetting his own words.
The two of them repeated the action, waking up Deng Yinyin and Xie Huai as well.
After the chaos subsided, the two of them realized that everything they had just witnessed was merely an illusion. Although they were unsure how they had fallen victim to it, both felt a lingering unease. Compared to Xie Huai's pale complexion, Deng Yinyin's complex expression was even more perplexing.
Among the five of them, Xu Nuan, Deng Yinyin, and Xie Huai had seen the corpses of familiar people.
Xu Nuan's murmured voice was too soft for anyone else to hear what she said, and Gu Ze followed her lead without probing further. The name that Xie Huai called out was familiar to everyone, and they assumed he still felt guilty about Tang Jingshu. Meanwhile, Deng Yinyin kept calling out Xie Huai's name, leading the others to speculate whether she had seen Xie Huai's corpse.
However, Deng Yinyin refused to elaborate, and the others felt it inappropriate to ask.
Unaware of why they had been affected, they could only remain vigilant as they continued forward, constantly reminding themselves that the unreasonable scenes they encountered were illusions not to be trusted. They needed to use pain at any moment to bring themselves back to reality.
Yet these so-called illusions seemed to strike when they were most fatigued or relaxed, catching everyone off guard. Even Xu Hang and Gu Ze, who were considered the most mentally resilient among them, fell victim to varying degrees.
As they encountered one Supply Station after another, they saw different scenes each time. From volcanic eruptions to floods, from deep-sea sharks to snow-capped mountains, all their painful memories were projected before them, directly stimulating their brains.
Every time Xu Nuan reminded herself not to let her guard down, she would be startled by the grand scene revealed upon opening a Supply Station. It would either be her waking Gu Ze or him waking her. Surprisingly, Xu Hang remained unfazed by these scenes as he took charge of watching over Deng Yinyin and Xie Huai during these disturbances.
After being deceived by the Supply Stations countless times, their group of five finally welcomed a moment of clarity.
This time when they opened a Supply Station, they found nothing extraneous; everything appeared as they remembered it.
However, due to the repetitive scenes from earlier in the day, the group had become somewhat neurotic. When eating hastily, they would check if the food in their hands was real and not something bizarre. While showering, they would scrutinize the color of the water; while packing their bags, they would inspect every item going inside multiple times.
While everyone was engaged in their own activities at the Supply Station, Xu Nuan stayed among the piles of medicine, picking and choosing. Although her previous allergic rash had disappeared from her face, she still wanted to take some medicine just in case.
As she sifted through the supplies while rubbing her face and muttering bad things about Gu Ze under her breath, she spotted a mirror left behind in a corner. Picking it up and looking into it revealed a large red patch on her cheek, igniting a fire of indignation within her.
"Gu Ze!"
"What do you want?"
Startled by the voice coming from behind her just as she was brewing her emotions, Xu Nuan turned around nervously. She found Gu Ze leaning against the doorframe with his messy hair tousled and a hint of sleepiness on his face. Dressed in simple sweatpants and a short-sleeved shirt, he looked particularly relaxed at home.
"Cough," noticing that Gu Ze also bore her handprint on his face made Xu Nuan feel even guiltier; she couldn't muster any anger at all.
"Didn’t call you, did I? Are you still half asleep and mishearing things?"
Xu Nuan opened her light brown almond-shaped eyes to show her innocence, casually tossing the mirror into the corner to prevent Gu Ze from looking at himself as well.
"Is that so?"
Gu Ze was indeed still groggy. He asked this question in a daze, rubbed his hair, and left, not like before when he would create some unexpected excitement for Xu Nuan during their alone time.
"Then I guess I'll go take a shower."
"Sure."
Xu Nuan raised her hand in a symbolic gesture, but suddenly felt a bit warm in her face; it seemed like this was the first time she had seen such a dazed Gu Ze.
However, it didn't take long for Xu Nuan to remember the markings she had seen in the Stone Forest, and her heart sank. She realized she needed to speed up her progress.
The Supply Station was merely a resting point for everyone. After they believed they had rested enough and were ready to open the green door, they were greeted by an entirely different scenery.
Hidden Valley.
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