The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 139

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 139: There’s Someone Under The Bed (4)

The academy wasn’t big and was said to be a junior college of the underworld. There were only two dormitory buildings, one for males and one for females, with a barn behind them that was used to raise some ghost animals. This arrangement was very reasonable.

As things would logically roll out, Tang Cuo joined a patrol team, was made a group leader, and smoothly entered the dormitory to search.

Under the order issued by the security office, most of the ghost students voluntarily opened their wardrobes for the patrol team to check.

Tang Cuo’s main purpose for fooling them into opening their wardrobes was to find the phylactery. It was Jiang He who hid the phylactery away, and he was a clever man. Since Tang Cuo had no way to deduce where he would hide the phylactery, he could only search for it slowly.

He actually should have asked Jiang He before coming in, but unfortunately, time didn’t allow it.

They searched the male dormitory first, from the first floor moving up to the fourth floor. The suicide ghost Li Haoshuai’s room was on the fourth floor. When Tang Cuo entered, his ghost friends were carrying out an exorcism ritual.

It was a pretty strange scene.

Hairbrush Ghost was sitting cross-legged on the ground, with his hair pulled down at the front to cover his face and a ghostly light orb above his head, in the middle of a circle of white candles that were illuminating him with a chilly, ghostly aura. With his eyes closed, he mumbled something under his breath while clutching a prayer bead bracelet made of a string of bones in his hand. The two ghosts who died of sickness were kneeling in front of him with their foreheads touching the ground. Even more interesting were Hanged Ghost and Drowned Ghost. They seemed to be humming in the back, waving two white flags with four blood-coloured words on them – ‘996 humans1A word used to describe corporate employees who pretty much dedicate their whole life to work. They have to work 9am-9pm every day, for 6 days a week, hence the term ‘996’., please go away.’

For a moment, Tang Cuo was at a loss for words.

The other members of the patrol team were full of admiration, complimenting them on how well the ceremony was done. Hairbrush Ghost couldn’t help but become a little smug. He lifted his hair and said: “You can search, but don’t get in the way of our ritual.”

Being a member of this room, Tang Cuo decided to ignore him and opened the wardrobes to check. Unfortunately, there was nothing to gain here. They found only some smelly socks hidden under the bed by the two sick ghosts, as well as Hanged Ghost’s new bunch of hairbands, the funky kind with spikes around them. 

After searching again, Tang Cuo found a portrait of a female ghost that his ghost ‘self’ had hidden inside the crevice of the bed.

“Hey, Li Haoshuai, you like our school’s hottest girl?”

“She’s s so pretty. Brother, we totally understand.” 

“Isn’t this the out-of-print portrait, let me take a look too!”

Disregarding all the noisy chattering around him, Tang Cuo maintained a blank expression. He also didn’t look at the ghost in the photo any further. It wasn’t that he was raised very strictly, but that this portrait really didn’t suit his aesthetics.

Tang Cuo was about to leave when a scream suddenly came from the female dormitory on the opposite side. The scream was very sharp, like a needle that poked straight into Tang Cuo’s mind, with a rhyme that sounded as though a fingernail was slicing through glass, causing goosebumps to rise on everyone’s arms.

All the ghosts were taken aback. Tang Cuo strode to the window and, under the illumination of the ghostly light orbs, he saw many ghosts running amok in the opposite dormitory. Two of the ghosts were so frightened that they climbed out of the window and hung on the wall like geckos.

“Let’s go.” Tang Cuo turned around and rushed to the opposite side. When he got downstairs, he happened to bump into another patrol group.

The two sides needn’t waste too many words as they met. Together, they rushed to the third floor and found that all the ghosts had gathered in front of a particular room. The door of the room had slammed open, and the seven female ghosts inside had slumped to the ground, all dead in the exact same manner as the head of the security office. Their limbs were twisted, their face a peaceful expression, with a peach tree branch stuck in their chest.

There bloomed only one pink flower on each slender branch, looking oddly lovely and alluring.

“There are also traces under the bed!” After hearing the news that the murderer was hiding under the bed, some daring ghosts had stepped forward to check out the beds, and as soon as they saw the patrol team come, they quickly spoke up.

The other ghosts also started to run their mouths off: “All of a sudden, there was a loud scream!  We heard the ghosts in the room calling for help, but the door couldn’t be opened!”

“We could only listen but couldn’t see anyone! And by the time we finally pushed the door open, everyone was dead!”

“I’ll have a nightmare today!”

Tang Cuo’s eyebrows furrowed.

Everyone here was a ghost, and this was a dormitory where only ghosts gathered. It would be too difficult for a human to hide here, not to mention that they had to escape without leaving a single trace behind after committing the crime.

But Yong Ye City’s dungeons had always been full of strange things. For a moment, Tang Cuo couldn’t figure out whether it was that this dungeon had an odd setting, or this was the detail that needed logical reasoning.

If it was the setting, there was no need to take into account how the murderer kept themselves hidden and disappeared; but if it wasn’t the setting, was there some mystery under the bed?

Tang Cuo had no idea if it was because he was on the Blacklist and entered the city with a negative score, but the dungeons of Yong Ye City had never been very friendly to him. He had once asked Chi Yan if the dungeons the boy encountered so far had been so tricky. They never even told Tang Cuo how to clear the game. This really angered him to no end.

“You are ghosts but can’t pass through walls?” Suddenly, he asked.

“What nonsense are you talking about?” The captain of the patrol team gave him a strange look and said: “This is the underworld, and the walls of the underworld couldn’t be penetrated. They’re not walls made of garbage cement like those in the human world. Those walls are worse than tofu.”

“Oh.” Tang Cuo nodded calmly, then asked again: “Eight beds, seven dead. Where’s the last one?”

“I — I’m here.” A petite female ghost emerged from the group with her head clutched in both hands. Tremblingly, she looked up at Tang Cuo and said: “I went to the laundry room just now. I didn’t see anything.” 

Fair enough.

Tang Cuo had now come to terms with the daily routine of ghosts in this new era. He directly went to check the room and take away the peach tree branches.

There were seven peach tree branches here, plus the original one that Tang Cuo was holding onto, making eight in total. The force of eight branches together was a bit too much for Tang Cuo. Even if they were wrapped behind layers of tissues, they could still burn Tang Cuo’s palm.

But Tang Cuo was reluctant to let go because his intuition told him that there must be something strange about these peach tree branches.

Thinking of this, he turned around to look out of the window, and the big characters ‘Meng Ghosts Academy’ were clearly visible.

Downstairs, a patrol group suddenly raced across, piquing Tang Cuo’s attention. They seemed very hurried and anxious, and looking at the direction, they were likely heading for the office building.

“Why are they in such a hurry?” Faking puzzlement, Tang Cuo asked.

The patrol team captain came over, glanced at them, and quickly yelled: “Hey! What happened?! Are there dead ghosts on your side too?”

One of the ghosts stopped and replied loudly: “No, the flowers are blooming! In the garden, the flowers are blooming!”

Saying so, the ghost left with haste.

The patrol team captain scratched his head. For a moment, he had no clue what that ghost was talking about. When he turned around, he saw that Tang Cuo‘s expression had suddenly turned stern: “Where’s the garden?”

The moment the captain pointed out the direction, Tang Cuo chased after the other team at once — by jumping off from the third floor.

“Haoshuai!!!” Leaning on the window sill, the patrol team captain screamed, but for a split second, he couldn’t quite tell whether he was calling out Haoshuai’s name or praising him. Because the path downstairs happened to be in the middle of the male and female dormitories, such a big move made all the ghosts of both genders stick their heads out.

They only saw the howling wind blowing away the ghostly light orbs that were gently floating on both sides of the path. Like a leopard, Tang Cuo’s fierce figure leapt from the third floor, his clothes flapping in the wind as he made an effortless landing.

Both the male and female ghosts roared in excitement, but the sounds they made only managed to stir the ghostly light orbs. Tang Cuo remained as cold as usual, his unwavering heart as hard as iron.

He ran very fast, not because the scene of the ghosts shouting around him was too terrifying, but because the peach tree branches couldn’t stay with him for too long. Following the direction that the patrol team captain pointed, he quickly found a small garden in the corner of the campus.

The garden was easy to find because it had been converted from a cemetery. The place was gloomier than anywhere else in this school. Right in the center of the garden lay a peach blossom tree.

The peach blossom tree wasn’t big, only about three meters in height. Its branches were coated with flower buds, a few of which were blooming. In the dark night, the pink petals were emitting a faint light, making the whole tree look as though it was engulfed in a layer of finely woven cotton.

Looking up, Tang Cuo found that the moon here carried the shade of blood.

One, two, three… six, seven, eight. There were exactly eight peach blossoms on the tree.

Tang Cuo looked at the eight peach tree branches in his hand and couldn’t help but wonder if there was any connection between them. The person from the patrol team mentioned “The flowers are blooming”, which implied that the flowers had never bloomed before now.

After pondering for a moment, Tang Cuo summoned the [Sword of Judgment] and tried to cut off the branches of the tree. But the light emitted from the peach tree was like a protective film, and as soon as the [Sword of Judgment] slashed down, only a crisp ‘ding’ sound was heard, as if the sword had clanged on some metal.

The root of this tree totally couldn’t be cut.

At that juncture, another flower bloomed.

Tang Cuo instantly became alert. Creasing his eyebrows as he stared at the flower, he heard another familiar scream from behind. The voice probably came from the dormitory building, but Tang Cuo didn’t look back.

There were 99 buds on the tree, and nine of them had bloomed.

Did this game want him to catch the murderer before all 99 buds bloom? Like a countdown? Tang Cuo walked around the tree again but found no other clues.

The other ghosts in the patrol team arrived later and were flabbergasted as they lay eyes on this peach blossom tree. Apparently, they had never seen such a phenomenon.

The patrol team captain looked at the sky, a hint of embarrassment flashing across his face: “It’s almost time when yin and yang meet. On any normal day, classes should be over now, and we should also go back to the dormitory to rest.”

Tang Cuo: “Must we go back to rest?” 

The patrol team captain: “That’s a given. Don’t the living also have to rest? Although there’s no sun in the underworld, the yang energy is still too strong during the day. It’ll burn us.”

This should be the setting decided by the system.

But if everyone went back to rest and another day went by, how many flowers would continue to bloom on this peach blossom tree? Tang Cuo thought to himself but didn’t raise any questions. Rather, he said: “Did another ghost die just now? Is there anything special about these dead ghosts?”

Patrol team captain: “Something special?”

Tang Cuo: “For example, their eight characters of birth.”

In a dungeon, even if the most basic game clearance requirements weren’t given, they still had to follow some fundamental rules of clearance. If this was indiscriminate killing of ghosts and the murderer could come and go without leaving a trace, killing 99 ghosts would merely be a matter of time. There would be no way to resolve this.

The more metaphysics were involved, the more superstitious this would become, and the more Tang Cuo would have to pay attention to the sense of ritual. Here, the sense of ritual represented the rules.

As long as he figured out the rules and replaced himself with one of them, Tang Cuo could directly confront the murderer and seek an opportunity to directly clear the game.

Of course, before that, he had to locate the phylactery.

Once again, Tang Cuo turned to look at the signage of ‘Meng Ghosts Academy’. It felt very strange, as though he could see the signage from the same angle no matter where he stood.

Always so big, always so bright.