The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 137

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 137: There’s Someone Under The Bed (2) 

After gazing at the mirror for a moment, Tang Cuo raised his hand to wipe off the shade of colour on his lips. After wiping back and forth, his lips looked as though they had been bitten on, but at least they seemed a bit more natural this way.

All of a sudden, a sound came from behind. Tang Cuo turned around in vigilance, and using the mirror in his hand as a knife, he instantly stopped the other party at their throat.

The other party stared at him with two round, innocent red eyes. Holding a hairbrush in his hand, he pouted and said with a rather squeamish tone: “What are you doing?! You’ve been looking in the mirror for a long time, can’t I comb my hair a bit? What a narcissist!”

Tang Cuo: “…”

Looking down, Tang Cuo found that neither of them had a shadow, so clearly, they were really ghosts. After pondering for a moment, he gave the mirror to the ghost that wanted to comb his hair and politely gave up his seat at the table.

Without making a sound, the ghost sat down and started to comb his hair in front of the mirror.

A while later, the ghosts in the other beds also got up. The one sleeping on the bed above Tang Cuo was a ghost who died due to hanging, with a rope still wrapped around his neck. On the opposite side were two ghosts who died due to some sickness, one looking as thin as a stick and the other as plump as a cow. The one who slept on the bed next to Tang Cuo was a ghost that died because of drowning. The bed he slept on was a pool of water, and he left behind a puddle with every step he walked, which seemed to make the other ghosts loathe him.

There were eight beds but only six ghosts here, including Tang Cuo. The remaining two beds were vacant.

As he turned his head to look at the clock on the wall, it signalled three minutes before midnight. It was likely that now was the ghosts’ wake-up time.

Sure enough, as the clock chimed twelve o’clock, all the lights inside and outside the windows both turned on.

To be precise, they were ghostly light orbs. The faint blue orbs weren’t very bright, and neither were they scorching hot. Even if one reached out and touched them, he wouldn’t feel any pain, but only a sense of soul-chilling coldness.

The light orbs inside their room were hovering near the ceiling, while the light orbs outside the window were illuminating the road like street lamps. At the top of the school building in the distance, four characters were glimmering – ‘Meng Ghosts Academy’.

Do ghosts in this school practise the philosophy of Confucius and Mencius? Tang Cuo calmly sneered in his head, but after two seconds, he noticed that ‘Meng Ghosts’ actually meant ‘Fierce Ghosts’1The first ‘meng’ is written as ​​孟, while the second ‘meng’ is written as ​​猛, with an additional radical 犭 on the left side.. The 犭 radical on the side wasn’t glowing, probably because it had gone amok due to the lack of maintenance.

‘Fierce Ghosts Academy’. Kinda interesting.

Seeing that the group of ghost friends had accepted his presence with no issue, Tang Cuo tried to test the waters: “Our academy has only ghosts and no humans, right?” 

As his voice fell, the ghost friends all looked over, and Hairbrush Ghost even let out a shriek. He screamed and threw his brush away: “Ahhhhh, how can you mention humans at night?! You’re scaring us ghosts to death!” 

The two sick ghosts also trembled together. Thin Ghost said: “Don’t do it at night. It’s scary to discuss this kind of topic.”

Fat Ghost nodded: “Yes, don’t you remember the movie Teacher Chu showed us last week? The living is too scary, we ghosts are so kind and weak. Xiao Dao, who sits in front of me, was so frightened that she cried. Her guts scattered all over the ground and her eyes almost fell out.”

“Okay, don’t scare yourselves.” Drowned Ghost picked up the brush and gave it to Hairbrush Ghost, comforting him: “We are Fierce Ghosts Academy, and the security has always been very good. I don’t think the living will ever get in.” 

Taking back the brush, Hairbrush Ghost glared at Tang Cuo again, then left the mirror and went to wash up angrily.

A brief moment later, he applied some foundation on his face and walked out of the toilet with a crisp “clang clang clang”. The layer of powder on his face was probably thicker than the wall, and the brush was stuck to his head. Perhaps this was the fashion sense of the underworld.

Hanged Ghost opened his closet and, standing in front of the row of hair bands on the hanger, he hesitated for a long time. Finally, he chose a leather one to wrap around his neck. Just as he saw the Hairbrush Ghost coming out, he asked: “Does it look good?” 

Hairbrush Ghost: “Not bad at all.”

Hanged Ghost: “You look good today too, have you switched to a new powder?”

Hairbrush Ghost: “Yeah, this is the bone powder I just bought two days ago. I heard that it was scraped from the bones of a thousand-year-old zombie, very nice, very good for skin.”

Hanged Ghost: “There are a lot of fakes now, be careful… Aiz, it’s time to head to class, let’s quickly run.”

Tang Cuo felt a tinge of regret now. He should’ve let Jin Cheng take this dungeon; the ghosts and he certainly would speak a common language.

At this point, Jin Cheng was still fighting with Scarlet.

Although Scarlet was wounded as well as cursed by Zheng Yingying, and her combat power had been massively reduced, Jin Cheng had drained a great deal of energy during the fight with Yan Ye. The two sides were pretty much on par, so the outcome of their battle wasn’t easy to tell.

In fact, the smartest, most energy-saving method was to wait for Tang Cuo to come back, but Scarlet had gone batshit crazy.

Jin Cheng liked to call this ‘mania before death’. With Tang Cuo taking the card into the dungeon, it was very likely that he could just get the phylactery and sent Scarlet to death. Not to mention, this card was handed over by Jiang He himself; it would be difficult for Scarlet not to go mad.

No doubt, this would make a fine example of how one individual wanted everybody to be buried together with her.

Scarlet’s attack didn’t focus on Jin Cheng alone. If she could kill one more person, she wouldn’t hesitate. The dead person would be poisoned with corpse poison and turn into a living corpse, then he would infect more people. Very soon, a heap of corpses was piling on the ground.

“A one-man army”. This was the secret comment that players in Zone A often gave to Scarlet. By herself, she was as good as the whole army. When it was said that she ranked third on the Red List, it really meant she ranked third on the Red List.    

Compared to Rong Yi, who didn’t live an easy life, she seemed a lot more fitting with her ranking. Till today, it remained an absolute mystery as to why she ranked behind Rong Yi.

Scarlet was getting fiercer, but Jin Cheng wasn’t holding back either.

It was rare for Jin Cheng to rely on lethal equipment when fighting. When he used ‘Shoot The Sun’ and homing arrows on Scarlet earlier, it was the only time he had to pull out such a move since he got sent back to Zone F. It wasn’t that he couldn’t use them, rather, he deliberately refrained from doing so.

No one knew the true strength of the player who was able to climb to the fifth position on the Red List merely in his second year at Yong Ye City. The players only knew that he was stellar at being a troublemaker, and that he ranked first on the Black List.

Yet at this moment, all players had seen his real power.

Scarlet’s red threads that were around Jin Cheng’s arm instantly stretched straight, but it seemed as though he wasn’t affected in the slightest. With a flip of his hand, he grabbed the silk threads and clutched them tightly.

Scarlet’s eyes had been dyed with mania by now, but it didn’t mean that she had lost the ability to think clearly. Seeing this, her expression couldn’t hold back a trace of surprise, looking even more taken aback than when she saw Tang Cuo take out the scissors.

The scissors could restrain her threads, which still abode by the rules of Yong Ye City. But Scarlet knew how sharp and tough her threads were. Jin Cheng clutched the silk thread so tightly, yet nothing happened?

In the next second, Jin Cheng suddenly vanished from the spot, and when he reappeared, he was already dozens of meters away, his speed as swift as teleportation.

As the red threads stretched straight and caught completely off-guard, Scarlet was pulled away. Jin Cheng turned in the other direction and, “Smash!”, the red threads with Scarlet dragged along with them hit a high tower, blowing the top to pieces.

This wasn’t over. Scarlet spurted some blood, but before she could get up, like a meteor falling from the sky, Jin Cheng plummeted towards her with a speed so fast that everyone could only see the golden gleam of light glowing around him.

“Boom ​​—” Another loud bang reverberated and the meteor crashed on the damaged tower, directly piercing Scarlet and the entire tower, but the sound that spread to all corners was the faint chime of a bell. As the land entirely trembled and smoke and dust fell all over the sky, filling the air was a rumbling, non-stop sound of collapse. For a moment, everyone stopped knowing how to let out a sound.

It took a long time for them to find their voices back.

“He — isn’t he an archer? Where did he f**king get such a power?!”

“Skill, it must be a skill!”

“What’s with that sound???”

“What about Scarlet? Is Scarlet dead? “

“Scarlet —” 

Amidst the noise, another chime shook everyone’s hearts. It was at this moment that a small part of the smoke finally dissipated, and the people standing on the high-rise buildings watching the battle caught sight of a blurry red figure.

Those with the sharpest eyes finally located the source where the chime came from — Jin Cheng’s feet.

Every time he landed, it sounded like a bronze bell was ringing. If he was the bell striker, then the ground would be the bell. Huge sound waves spread from the soles of his feet, causing the ground to crack inch by inch.

Then he nimbly turned around, raised his bow and mounted an arrow.

“Swoosh —” The golden arrow pierced through the night, neatly aiming at Scarlet’s chest. The moment it was about to pierce her chest, the tail suddenly split into a barb, which firmly hooked onto the woman.

The arrow continued its path completely unabated, nailing Scarlet into the outer wall of the gaming hall.

As the black steel frame on the outer wall was smashed to bits, Scarlet tried to grab the arrow with both hands but she couldn’t pull it out at all. Her whole body was drenched in struggle and dripping with blood.

The entire central area, where the game hall could be seen, was engulfed in complete silence. Even Jiang He and Leng Miao, who had finally arrived, were stunned at Jin Cheng’s strength.

Only Wen Xiaoming knew the name of his move.

‘Wu She’, the 11th of the twelve laws of Chinese tones,2Refers to the twelve rules of Chinese traditional tone system, which consists of 5 notes namely Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zhi and Yu, which roughly coincide with the 5 Western tones Do, Re, Mi, So, La., which was also the name of the bell.

In addition to archery, Jin Cheng also trained in sound-type ability, and the skill ‘Wu She’ was a perfect fit for him. Using his own body as the musical instrument to play the tone of Heavens and Earth allowed him to produce a sound so loud that it could shatter everything.

Of course, this move had serious side effects and consumed a great deal of power, so Jin Cheng never used it often. It wasn’t because he was trying to hide it, but because the risk was far too big.

At this moment, Jin Cheng’s body was shaking and his internal organs seemed to have been displaced by the shock, not to mention the salty taste in his mouth. But he managed to hold back and didn’t fall down.

Outside, he was carrying his usual look. With his hand, he wiped away a trace of blood from the corner of his mouth. The action was exactly the same as when Tang Cuo stood at the top of the game hall before.

It was just that one man was cold and the other was devious.

That arrogant, mischievous look that screamed ‘I am No.1 in this world’. Overwhelming, yet also borderline evil.

Scarlet looked at him, feeling her eyes horribly dazzled. As she clenched her teeth tightly, an air of ruthlessness exuded from her body. Even if she had to dig out a piece of her own flesh, she must pull this arrow out of her chest.

She slumped to the ground the moment it was pulled out, but with much struggle, she stood up. The high heels on her feet had long been gone. She stepped on the gravel on the ground, heaved one long breath eventually, and said: “So what if you kill me? I have to thank you for the new law. If you kill me, you’ll have to come with me to jail…”

But before her words came to an end, she seemed unable to hold it any longer. Staggering, she knelt on the ground, the blood that was dripping from her chest almost dyed her whole body crimson. but she still stared at Jin Cheng with such intent eyes. Even when her breath was getting weaker by the second, she still wanted to say: “Even if you kill me again in prison, what will that do? If Tang Cuo doesn’t come back, I’ll be resurrected, and I’ll live forever! I could just resurrect, but you are still in jail, can you stop me then? I will kill Jiang He, the little girl, and all of you—”

Crazy.

This woman has really gone crazy.

The players around looked at her hysterical eyes, and even though they weren’t facing those eyes directly, they could still feel a sense of terror. But at this moment, a smoky voice came from the side.

“You will indeed live forever.” 

The one who just arrived was Rong Yi. Looking totally plain as usual, he stepped on the gravel that had cast all over the ground and slowly made his entrance, carrying with him a style that looked nothing like the man who ranked second on the Red List should have.

But the moment he raised his hand and a golden pocket watch swayed between his fingers, Scarlet’s expression changed at once.

“Tick.”

“Tock.”

Scarlet’s time was set back by three minutes. She should have died immediately, but she remained alive. She was the only one whose time was reset.

Jin Cheng understood. He raised the bow again and pointed the arrow at Scarlet.

Rong Yi The Time Master said: “I will give you eternal life.”