The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 140

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 140: There’s Someone Under The Bed (5)

As dawn was about to break, Tang Cuo followed the patrol team back to the dormitory. He didn’t focus on challenging the dungeon’s settings, because he felt that there were too few clues given, not to mention the whole thing had been absurd from the beginning, with too many factors that were unrelated to each other.

For example, there was the peach tree branch and the school signage that made him feel strange, then there was the portrait of the school’s hottest girl and the ritual to shoo away the 996 humans. Everything was all over the place.

After returning to the dormitory, he stuffed the peach tree branches into a vase and placed it on the table by the window. His bed was by the window, so as long as he lay in bed, the vase and the signage of ‘Meng Ghosts Academy’ outside would be in sight.

The patrol team captain didn’t disappoint him. Very soon, he sent over the information regarding the ‘dead ghosts’. ‘Dead ghosts’, like ‘genius ghost’, was such a fitting word to describe them1In an earlier chapter we talked about how 鬼才 [gui cai], or ‘genius ghost’, was a wordplay. Here, ‘dead ghost’ isn’t a wordplay, rather, it sounds ironic because a ghost is technically always dead..

This dungeon somehow awakened a sense of humour that had never existed inside Tang Cuo.

According to the information, these dead ghosts’ eight characters of birth were pure yin, for they were born in the yin year and yin month2According to Chinese astrology, a year and month that end in an even number are considered a ‘yang year’ and ‘yang month’ respectively, while those that end in an odd number are considered a ‘yin year’ and ‘yin month’ respectively.. After staring at them for a while, Tang Cuo was suddenly enlightened. 

Li Haoshuai’s eight characters of birth happened to be pure yin too.

Would there really be such a coincidence?

Tang Cuo narrowed his eyes. The sky had turned bright, and the ghost friends who were still screaming in fear just a second ago were already dozing off, while the ghostly light orbs that were floating around the campus were slowly disappearing. Only the signage of ‘Meng Ghosts Academy’ was still turned on.

Hairbrush Ghost came out of the bathroom after applying a face mask and closed the curtain with a “swoosh”. Total darkness once again engulfed the whole room.

“Sleep, we’ve already carried out the ritual. That human will definitely not come for us. Sleep is very important; if we’re asleep, we won’t be scared of anything. My skin also wants to rest.” Hairbrush Ghost mumbled and climbed onto his own bed.

Tang Cuo didn’t say a word. He just followed the crowd and lay down in bed, but his eyes kept gazing thoughtfully at the peach blossoms on the table.

The whole room was silent. Soon, he could only hear the breathing of his ghost friends and the sound of water dripping from the faucet in the bathroom.

“Patter.”

“Patter.”

The faucet seemed like it had broken.

There was the vague sound of footsteps, the resonation of some ghost’s dreamy talk and even the cry of a baby, all rebounding infinitely in the empty hallway. Tang Cuo waited and waited for someone to appear under the bed. At first, his consciousness was still clear, but then it slowly blurred, until he fell asleep entirely.

His sleep felt as though it happened within the blink of an eye. By the time he opened his eyes again, Tang Cuo found that it was already dark outside. He quickly opened the curtain and cast a glance at the academy signage that was still lit up outside the window. Raising a hand to rub his glabella, Tang Cuo began to wonder if he had really fallen asleep, and if everything in front of him was just an illusion.

But the peach tree branches on the table were still there. This seemed to be the reality.

One after another, Hairbrush Ghost, Drowned Ghost and the others also woke up. The moment they stepped into the corridor, the familiar sound of screaming came.

Neither the male nor female dormitory was excused from this. 

The nearest scream came from the room next door. Tang Cuo rushed over and found one dead ghost inside, in the same state of death and the same peach tree branch in his chest.

The other roommates said they all fell asleep and felt nothing.

Something seemed wrong here.

Very wrong, in fact.

Up until this point, no ghost had seen the murderer. They came and went without anyone knowing. Except for that half of a footprint, there were hardly any traces left.

Through the window, Tang Cuo looked at the female ghost dormitory on the opposite side. Seeing the figures of the ghosts running amok, he turned around and ran downstairs.

Reaching downstairs, he bumped into the patrol team captain from yesterday.

The two looked at each other and said nothing. As the patrol team captain was about to head upstairs, Tang Cuo suddenly grabbed him and asked an irrelevant question: “The school’s signage is broken, why don’t you repair it?” 

Patrol team captain: “Huh?”

He scratched his head, wondering why Tang Cuo was asking this. But he couldn’t answer it himself, as though this was a question that wasn’t easy to solve at all.

Tang Cuo stopped pressing the question on him and turned to run towards the classroom building, where the signage stood.

The classroom building apparently seemed very close, but it was so far away. After running for a few minutes, Tang Cuo thought he should’ve arrived, but when he looked up, the signage seemed to be still in its original position and he hadn’t even moved an inch nearer.

This was probably what they called ‘easier said than done’. 

If it went on like this, no matter how long he ran, he would never get to where the signage was.

This was really bizarre.

Tang Cuo neatly summoned the system panel and glanced at it. Whether or not he had really slept for a whole day, some time certainly had passed, so the cooldown time of all his best skills must’ve been over.

This made things a lot easier.

Without hesitation, Tang Cuo took out the Greenvines Alliance badge.

‘Teleportation’ was the skill engraved on the Greenviens Alliance badge, which allowed the player to instantly move to any place within 100 meters from him, without any restriction. The cooldown time was 24 hours.

As it turned out, ‘without any restriction’ really meant that it wasn’t restricted even by the dungeon. After a wave of dizziness assaulted him, Tang Cuo realised that he had arrived at the lower floor of the building.

He looked up; the signage was standing at the edge of the roof.

Three minutes later, Tang Cuo finally arrived at the signage. They were made of LED light tubes welded to a steel base, and the switch for each character was just below the base. The radical 犭that stood next to the word ‘meng’ wasn’t lit up, not because it was not broken, but because the first switch in that row had been flipped down.

In a campus full of metaphysics like this, when the only thing that followed scientific principles made an appearance, it must be the key.

Tang Cuo turned on the switch at once. As the radical 犭was lit up, its dazzling white light immediately attacked Tang Cuo’s eyes, causing him to subconsciously close them.

When he opened his eyes again, he was lying in bed.

Where is this?

There was no lightbulb in the room, but a faint blue luminescence was coming from the front, which was the light of the TV. The female anchor was speaking very fluently with a heavy tone, announcing an overview of the next piece of news: “Recently, the serial murder case in our city has seen a new victim.”

Tang Cuo sat up right away and stared intently at the TV screen in front of him. All the faces were familiar. Although the programme had put mosaics on the victims’ face, it could be deduced from the facial outline and body shape that the head of the security department and the seven dead female ghosts were among them.

What’s happening?

Tang Cuo immediately turned on the light. From the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a photo frame on the bedside table. He took a look and saw a few familiar figures. He and the ghost friends from the dormitory, such as Hairbrush Ghost and Drowned Ghost, were hooking their arms over each other’s shoulders, looking all very close.

In this room, there were smelly socks that hadn’t been washed and posters of actresses hanging on the wall, which seemed to correspond to the items in his room at Meng Ghosts Academy. On the coffee table in front of the TV, there were even white candles and a prayer bead bracelet, similar to those that were used in the ritual to ‘shoo away 996 humans’.

Creasing his eyebrows, Tang Cuo got off the bed in bare feet, then he walked straight to the only window in the room, opened the curtain with a “swoosh” and saw the neon signage on the roof of a building not far away.

‘Ju Dog Paradise’.

If he guessed correctly, it should be ‘All Dogs’ Paradise’, for the radical 犭 in the first word wasn’t lit up.

Could it be that everything back in Meng Ghost Academy was a dream?

Was this dungeon mocking the cliches of domestic horror movies, where, when everything couldn’t be explained, the protagonist must be either dreaming or suffering from some sort of illness?

Tang Cuo turned around and rummaged through the boxes to find Li Haoshuai’s ID card. The birthday was the same. As he looked down, he spotted a shadow under his feet. He wasn’t dead yet.

If dreams were a reflection of reality, then Tang Cuo, like the other victims of the serial killings, was a potential target for the murderer. There were items like candles and prayer beads in the room, which meant this was a simple exorcism ritual he had performed out of fear.

Is there really a ghost in this dungeon?

For a moment, Tang Cuo fell into deep thoughts. The more he thought about it, the more he felt that this dungeon was a little strange, but after removing this layer of strangeness, he was looking right at the title of the mission —

There’s someone under the bed!

The moment the alarm rang in his mind, a cold hand suddenly grabbed Tang Cuo’s ankle from behind. The chill surged from the ankle up to his skin, instantly making his whole scalp go numb.

Tang Cuo’s reaction wasn’t slow either. He pulled out the [Sword of Judgment] and stabbed at the back, but his ankle couldn’t break free. With that hand pulling hard, Tang Cuo fell to the ground, and only then did he see the face of that ‘someone’.

It was a ghost!

And not only one of them!

There was a drowned ghost dripping with water, a hanged ghost with a rope around his neck, a ghost with a huge hole at his stomach and his intestines flowing out, and a yellow-faced, hungry ghost that was squinting at Tang Cuo with his mouth agape. Countless ghosts crawled out from under the bed, rushing towards Tang Cuo with their teeth and claws wide open.

“Crack!” The light above his head flickered a few times and decided to stop working.

On the TV, the serious news had now turned into gossip: “Because the murderer hasn’t been arrested and the victims all died in a strange state, many netizens have formed theories and are suspecting that this serial murder case has something to do with the supernatural forces. We’d like to remind everyone, please don’t dwell on superstition.”

Don’t dwell on superstition my a**.

Tang Cuo hurriedly summoned ‘Holy Light Shield’ and barely managed to block the dropping saliva of the hungry ghost, but his ankle was still scratched by their claws and bruised with bloodstains.

But since ghosts could effortlessly penetrate the walls and enter the ground, ‘Holy Light Shield’ could only protect him in one direction, leaving him open to the rest. The pitch black figures of the ghosts soon filled up the entire room like a tide, relentlessly squeezing in and rushing towards Tang Cuo, baring their his teeth and claws at him.

Shrill cries, feather-light whispers and spooky laughter hit his eardrums like tidal waves hitting the shore, snatching away the air that he needed in order to survive.

The ghosts even pressed on each other, and gradually, their faces and limbs began to twist into peculiar shapes. The only thing that remained unchanged was their motion, which was charging at Tang Cuo.

Putting up ‘Holy Light Shield’ as a barrier, Tang Cuo summoned ‘Fireball’ and ‘Illumination’ in conjunction with the [Sword of Judgment]. The space he had left was continuously being compressed. Even worse, the ghosts were constantly crawling out from under the bed, and the room floor was scattered with mixtures of blood and water, sometimes even jumbled with unidentifiable objects, which made him feel sick to his stomach.

The massive gathering of ghosts also caused the temperature in the room to drop sharply. In just a short while, snowflakes had formed on the glass, and Tang Cuo could even see the steam puffed out from his mouth.

He couldn’t stay here any longer.

Paying absolutely no mind to the door, Tang Cuo decisively broke through the wall. As soon as he left, all the ghosts swarmed up, chasing after him along the pitch-black corridor.

As the hallway became wider, the voices of countless ghosts converged into an endless echo. It was a spine-chilling attack of the sound.

Tang Cuo only felt that the crown at the top of his head was split open and countless ghosts were blowing cold wind onto his brain. Those whispers that were said without any vocal cords moving felt like cold fingertips sliding on his skin, forcing him to run faster and faster.

This apartment building had no elevator and was about the same height as the dormitory building at Meng Ghosts Academy. Tang Cuo turned a corner and went down the stairs. After that, he didn’t stop at the next floor and kept heading further down.

After passing two floors, he abruptly came to a stop and looked towards the corridor beside the stairs.

The hallway was empty, except for a voice-activated lamp that was flickering. The bodies of several moths were lying in the lampshade, and the incoming insects were slamming into the lampshade like mad. Amid the popping sound, the voice-activated lamp intermittently went on and off.

With the ghosts chasing after him, Tang Cuo continued to run down, but — he faced a ‘ghost knocking the wall’ trap3鬼打墙 [gui da qiang], lit. translated as ‘ghost knocking the wall’, refers to a supernatural phenomenon where one keeps walking in loops..

The building was empty, with no occupants at all.

When he was coming down from the fourth floor, he ran past the door of that room and clearly saw ‘419’, the same number as his dormitory room. But no matter how he went, he couldn’t get to the first floor.

Then let’s jump out of the window.

Tang Cuo turned around and kicked down a door to charge in. He then went straight to the window sill, opened the window and jumped down, all within the drop of a hat.

The second floor had turned into the fourth floor.

“Thud!” Tang Cuo crashed heavily onto the top of a car that was parked downstairs, smashing a big hole into the vehicle. But by now, the height of the fourth floor was nothing to him. He pulled back his strength and stabilised, but suddenly, he could only see darkness flood over.

As he opened his eyes, once again, he woke up in his bed.

He quickly got out of bed, went to the window and opened the curtain — ‘Ju Dog Paradise’.

Was he still dreaming?

Thinking of this, he immediately turned around, his eyes fixated on the space under the bed.

At the very same time, Scarlet was being tortured by Rong Yi’s ‘three minutes’ and had completely lost her ability to resist. Jin Cheng asked Wen Xiaoming to tie her up with a rope and kept her caged for the time being.

Observing the real powers of the big bosses on the Red List, the surrounding players didn’t dare to spew any nonsense and took turns to retreat.

The big bosses finally had time to sit down and have a good chat. 

But before they could even turn around, Jin Cheng stared at Jiang He: “You hid the phylactery, didn’t you? Really, what is that dungeon about?” 

Because he was severely wounded and had barely arrived, not to mention all the deals he had to go through with Scarlet, Jiang He’s mood was at its lowest. Hearing Jin Cheng’s question, he couldn’t stop himself from asking: “Are you talking about the phylactery or Tang Cuo?”

Jin Cheng raised his eyebrows: “What do you think?”

Jiang He’s lips couldn’t help but arch into a bitter smile, but it was taken back very quickly: “You don’t have to worry. If it’s him, the dungeon won’t be able to hold him back. As for the specific content, it’ll take a while to explain. And even if you know it, it won’t be of much help, so there’s no point feeling anxious. The phylactery is actually hidden in a conspicuous place. Once he clears the game, he’ll be able to see it.”

At this point, Chi Yan finally made his late entrance. Just now, when Jin Cheng saw the flare, he got worried about Tang Cuo and sped up, leaving Chi Yan to fall behind. Luckily, everyone’s attention was pulled by the battle in the central area and no one batted an eye on him.

When Leng Miao spotted Chi Yan, he remembered what he heard from Yan Ye when he was passing by Zone B. He frowned and looked at Jin Cheng: “Have you two found the 2nd Movement?”

Jin Cheng cast a glance at his surroundings: “This isn’t the place to talk.”