The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 138

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 138: There’s Someone Under The Bed (3) 

Rong Yi took three minutes to explain to everyone why he was able to beat Scarlet on the Red List. Everyone finally understood how terrifying the word ‘Time Master’ really was.

Three minutes later and three minutes later, ordinary players had no other thoughts other than fear, but elite players such as Jin Cheng and Jiang He could see something.

As everyone all knew, powerful skills such as ‘Time Manipulation’ and ‘Mega Rift’ have usage restrictions, and the more powerful the skills, the greater the restrictions.

Rong Yi had just fought with Yan Ye and was already exhausted, but at this point, he was still able to control Scarlet’s time, so smoothly that people couldn’t figure out where his limits lay.

His capability now seemed much stronger than how he performed back in the dungeon [Before Dawn]. Thinking of this, Jin Cheng tilted his head and looked at Rong Yi for a moment.

If Rong Yi’s time manipulation has reached such an outstanding level, he should still be able to compete for the [6th Movement]. Why was he willing to give it up?

Jin Cheng might be inwardly throwing a question mark at Rong Yi, but the movement of his hands remained stern, piercing yet another arrow through Scarlet’s shoulder.

Scarlet was already at the end of her rope. Even if Rong Yi rewound her time again and again, her state couldn’t be completely recovered with the reversal of time, because the mental load was far too severe. After a few times, she couldn’t even lift her hands, her fingers shaking and her head tingling. The red dress she was wearing had been badly ripped and smeared, and every breath she took now felt like torture.

But still, she wasn’t able to die.

How ironic.

But no matter how much pain she was in, those crimson eyes kept gazing at Jin Cheng without blinking, with absolutely no trace of remorse in them: “I didn’t lose to you… Jin Cheng, if…”

If I had attacked Jiang He in the first place and forced him to hand over the card, I wouldn’t have lost.

Scarlet didn’t let out the second half of the sentence and suddenly laughed again. The laughter affected her wound, making her grimace in pain. After being able to finally heave a long sigh, she propped herself and sat up from the ground. Like a rag doll that had been thrown in the garbage, her shoulders stooped low, looking unsightly and full of struggle: “And what if you win… People from Yong Ye City… The more you help them, the likelier they will hold a grudge at you… Haha…”

She let out a bitter sneer. There seemed to be a long story hidden in the unfinished words, but Jin Cheng had no intention to hear it. Putting away his bow and arrow, he cast a glance at Wen Xiaoming, who was scouting for news among the crowd.

Wen Xiaoming understood at once and strode over. He told Jin Cheng everything that he had heard just now, focusing on the card and Lawless’ situation.

“So that’s how it turns out.” Jin Cheng temporarily handed Scarlet to Rong Yi, and his eyes swept one full round, making every player who got into his line of sight shudder. If one had to use a sentence to describe that gaze of his, it would probably be ‘it’s getting cold, time to make the Wangs go bankrupt’.1A famous Chinese internet quote referenced in many novels and movies, often used to describe the overbearing nature of a typical CEO male lead in romance fiction.

Sure enough, he said loudly: “Lawless wants to screw me over and over again, and not only me, but also my boyfriend. Really — what was that phrase again?”

Jin Cheng seemed unable to remember. He nodded his head in distress, and finally, he recalled it and said with a smile: “Ugly folks are always making trouble. I don’t know if there are any Lawless members here, but if not, please help me to tell them: I don’t accept any apology, nor do I accept any reconciliation. Please just go to jail.”

Wen Xiaoming bluntly exposed his own thoughts: “Just go to jail?”

Jin Cheng: “After all, our hearts are full of kindness.”

Wen Xiaoming: “But they beat me up!”

Beating people up wasn’t a good thing. Jin Cheng tilted his head for a moment and said: “Then you can beat them up before they go to jail.”

Wen Xiaoming: “Then boss, can you make a rule that allows me to give them a good beating first, then they can go to jail. Else, it won’t count.”

Players: “…”

What a vengeful genius.

On the other side, Tang Cuo had followed his ghost friends to the classroom.

This classroom looked no different from a human classroom, except that the podium was replaced by a coffin, and the table was replaced by an altar. These ghosts have to give themselves three incense sticks before class. Where did this ominous rule even come from?

Tang Cuo offered incense sticks to himself with a blank expression, then was forced to learn a lot of ambiguous knowledge about the underworld. If the starving ghost next to him wasn’t eating and slamming his mouth up and down all the time, the studious atmosphere here would actually feel very strong.

In the class, the teacher also taught them to how cut paper figures. After cutting out the figure, each of them would write the eight characters of their birthday on it, then poke it with a needle. In front of Tang Cuo, a classmate was poking the figure so intensely, as though she harboured such a serious grudge. She was mumbling something under her breath, with blood and tears heavily trickling out of her two empty eyes, so much so that they drifted all the way to Tang Cuo’s feet.

The blood was very sticky, carrying with it a bad stench and ghostly aura. Reflexively, Tang Cuo raised his feet, and he was called out by the teacher at once: “Student, how can you sit cross-legged in class?”

Tang Cuo’s eyes swept one round around the class. A ghost was eating unstoppably, another was grinding his claws against the window, while two other students in the back were playing ping-pong with someone’s fallen-out eyeball. All of them never got called out. Yet he got, for sitting cross-legged? 

Tang Cuo was always a daredevil. Really, he wouldn’t simply sit cross-legged; how about performing a death scene on the spot?

“Teacher, I —” Tang Cuo was about to speak when an announcement suddenly rang.

“Urgent! Urgent!

“This is the headmaster, Black Impermanence2黑无常 [hei wu chang], lit. translated as ‘Black Impermanence’, is one of the two deities in ‘黑白无常’ [hei bai wu chang], or ‘Black and White Impermanence’. In Chinese folk religion, these two deities are in charge of escorting the spirits of the dead to the underworld.!”

“I’ve been told that the school security department has detected humans in the school. How many there are and their whereabouts remain unknown. The school gate has been closed, and the whole school is in a state of emergency!”

“All students please be careful. Be sure to protect yourself!”

Before the headmaster could finish speaking, one after another, screeching screams almost blew away the rooftop. Tang Cuo, one who was never scared by any sorts of ghosts, had gone as white as a sheet because of these screams, to the point that he felt almost deaf.

“Blech —” Xiao Tao, whom one of the sick ghosts had mentioned earlier, began to retch again. Her intestines scattered all over the floor, and three classmates even tripped on them.

Tang Cuo had to chant to himself eight hundred times, I’m a ghost. 

He strutted one big step to avoid Sadako’s distant cousin, and as soon as he turned around, his eyes met with a female ghost with big fangs and a blue face filled with bloody spider veins. Before she could let out a shout, he simply knocked her unconscious.

Because of this, Tang Cuo’s irritability index skyrocketed.

If Jin Cheng appeared in front of him at this time, Tang Cuo would call him an ‘angel’. My angel, you are way too beautiful.

With everyone in a panic, the teacher directly lay down in the coffin. As soon as the coffin lid closed with a loud ‘bang’, he was completely isolated from the world. Thus, Tang Cuo’s act of knocking out his classmate didn’t catch anyone’s attention.

The whole school had entered a state of emergency, so of course, classes wouldn’t continue. The school announcement began to guide the students to head back to the dormitory and to avoid going outside at all costs to prevent any possible mishaps.

The ghost friends in the same dormitory room found Tang Cuo and wanted to go back with him. Tang Cuo was about to agree, but the school announcement mentioned something about forming a patrol team. Casting one full glance at the surroundings, he made a decision.

“I’m going to join the patrol team.”

Based on Tang Cuo’s deduction, his current identity was a ghost who committed suicide by taking medicine. The ghost was taciturn, cold and sad, so he didn’t need to put up much pretense. And since this wasn’t a role-playing dungeon, he needn’t worry about being OOC.

The mission this time required him to find clues to pass through the game, yet he hadn’t even received any specific clearance requirements. At present, the game clearance should be related to the humans who had infiltrated the school. Perhaps Tang Cuo had to locate them or kill them.

Moreover, the biggest purpose of Tang Cuo’s dungeon was to find Scarlet’s phylactery. Joining the patrol team would undoubtedly allow him to go to more places and obtain more information.

The place to register for the patrol team was the school’s security office. Tang Cuo parted with his ghost friends and went straight over. As soon as he arrived, he saw that the security office’s gate was surrounded by many, many ghosts.

Under the faint illumination of the ghostly light orbs, the odd-shaped ghosts whispered among themselves, and a wind was gusting through, sending a chill straight to his head.

Ten minutes ago, the head of the security department was found dead in the room. He fell to the ground, his body curled up and a peach tree branch3In Chinese cultural belief, a peach tree branch has the ability to ward off evil/unliving creatures such as ghosts. inserted into his chest. A pink peach blossom was quietly blooming at the top of the tree branch.

He died a peaceful death. Though it was conspicuous that his limbs had been horribly twisted, and there were clear signs of struggle, the expression on his face was terribly calm and at ease. This made the ghosts feel a real sense of fear, and no one dared to come close to his corpse or pull out the peach tree branch.

Suddenly, a calm and pleasant male voice rang in the room: “The murderer was hiding under the bed when the killing happened.”

“Huh?” All the ghosts looked at each other to see that a male ghost had entered without anyone knowing. He had a fair face, red lips, messy hair, and was very handsome; even in the underworld, his looks were on par with a school idol.

He walked around the corpse then to the side of the bed, lifted the hanging sheet and glanced quickly at it. Then he reached out one hand to wipe the dust, saying: “There are traces of someone hiding under the bed, and the murderer left half a footprint. Based on the size of the footprint, the murderer is male, about 175 centimeters in height.”

The ghosts were stunned by what he said. Eventually, a middle-aged male ghost stepped forward and asked: “Who are you?”

This had Tang Cuo pause for a moment. After three seconds of silence, he calmly said: “Class 3, Li Haoshuai4His first name, 好帅 [hao shuai], literally means ‘very handsome’. LOL., I’m here to sign up for the patrol team.”

Middle-aged man: “Classmate Haoshuai, hello hello, the patrol team really needs a genius ghost like you!”

Everyone here was a ghost, so it made total sense to call him a genius ghost5There’s a wordplay here. The compound word used here is 鬼才 [gui cai], which refers to a person with a unique ability, or a genius of sorts. However, the compound word also carries the word 鬼 [gui], which means ‘ghost’, so it nicely fits into the context that Tang Cuo is actually a ghost here..

Tang Cuo accepted this setting for the time being and quickly got into the role: “Since you’ve decided to recruit me, let me give you a suggestion first — the murderer was hiding under the bed, and there’s a possibility of him repeating the crime. Let’s search all the rooms first. Check the students’ wardrobes to make sure that no one is hiding inside.”

[SThere’s Someone Under the Bed]. He never expected it to mean that there was literally someone under the bed. The title was the biggest hint of this mission.

“Yes, yes, what you said makes sense. Let’s quickly search everywhere!” The middle-aged man was the deputy director of the security department, with a huge beer belly. He was likely a rich man when he was still alive.

When he turned around, Tang Cuo spotted a yellow talisman on the back of his head. How long had he been a zombie6僵尸 [jiangshi], refers to Chinese zombies, which are often dressed in the Qing Dynasty official’s uniform. When they go berserk, the exorcist master will put a yellow talisman at their face or the back of their head to seal them.? How did he come here and become a security guard?

The moment the zombie man went to command the search, Tang Cuo’s eyes turned back to the corpse. He slowly crouched down, held a piece of tissue, and pulled out the peach tree branch.

He could feel a burning pain where he held it. A peach tree branch could ward off evil spirits. It was normal for the murderer to use an item like this peach tree sword to kill off ghosts.

In any case, let’s take it first. It may come in handy.

So the ghosts at the scene watched Tang Cuo carefully wrap a few layers of tissues around the peach tree branch before putting it in his pocket. He did it all so calmly that everyone couldn’t help but stare at his feet —

No shadow, confirmed dead. No need to worry.