The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 143

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 143: There’s Someone Under The Bed (8)

As he took a rest in the shade, Tang Cuo spotted a big black umbrella in the grass. No one knew which careless ghost left it behind. Inside the umbrella, he even found a protective talisman.

It was a protective talisman taken from the palace of King Qin Guang1秦廣王 [Qin Guang Wang], refers to one of the ten Kings of Hell in Chinese belief. Considered the ruler of Hell, he resides in the First Court of Hell and owns the Book of Life and Death., with blood-coloured characters drawn on it.

Considering that he was also a ghost now, Tang Cuo didn’t remove the protective talisman. After resting for a while and waiting for his HP to recover a little, with a big black umbrella, sunglasses and rain boots, he walked as though the whole world was his territory. No one could see that he was a weakened player with less than 30% left in his HP.

This time, he approached the signage without facing any issue, but unfortunately, there was neither the switch to enter a dream nor the phylactery. He walked around the signage and carefully searched every corner, but no side plot happened.

Could it be that he had thought wrongly? That the signage was really just an ordinary signage?

Tang Cuo didn’t believe in such oddity. He believed in his own intuition. Perhaps there was some mystery in this signage. So he tapped the hilt of his sword on the still-lit signage and realised it seemed to be hollow inside.

“Clang, clang, clang.” Amidst the tapping sound, the ‘Meng’ character flashed and also turned broken. Now, ‘Meng Ghosts Academy” had become ‘Ghosts Academy’. Actually, there seemed to be nothing wrong with this, rather, it felt even more fitting.

This also confirmed that the signage was really an ordinary signage. It was just that it lay in the center of the academy and was tall, big and bright, so Tang Cuo could see it no matter where it was.

Tang Cuo also knew that according to conventional thinking, by this point, he should forget about the signage and walk out of this dead end to try to track down the murderer instead. 

But he didn’t.

The warrior with a black umbrella left the roof, walked downstairs from the dormitory, wandered around the school, and found his way to the logistics department. The logistics department was actually not far from the dormitory building, but it was hidden behind the tall trees and looked like a wooden cabin that no one cared about.

The doors and windows of the cabin were tightly shut, and looking in through the gap between the curtains, there was a sleepy old ghost inside.

Tang Cuo knocked on the door a few times but couldn’t wake him up. Searching around, he spotted a broken fan from the old items that had been thrown out. He removed a wire from the broken fan.

Going back to the door of the logistics department, he inserted the wire into the keyhole, and after a few seconds, with a “click”, the door opened.

“Bang!” As the door panel slammed on the wall and bounced back, the old man finally woke up. His cloudy eyes gazed at Tang Cuo, his two eye sockets seemingly about to dissolve and half of his eyeballs falling out.

“Stu… student.” The old man was completely dumbstruck.

“The school’s signage is broken, why don’t you repair it?” Tang Cuo said succinctly.

“Ah, that one. It suddenly broke a few days ago and had been reported, but this old man can’t repair it. So if it’s broken, leave it be.” The old man shook his head, waved his hand and said: “This old man can draw talismans, but if you ask him to fix electrics, his hands will be tied. He can’t do it for all his life’s worth. Student, I think you’re very young, do you want to give it a try?”

Tang Cuo: “Okay.” 

The old man: “Wait here. I remember there’s an electrical toolbox around here. I’ll find it for you.”

Saying so, the old man started searching around the small cabin. Every time he lowered his head, his eyes seemed to be seriously close to falling out. No one knew how long these things had been piled up here, and after lots of rummaging, dust started to fill up the room.

A long while later, the old man finally pulled out a toolbox from the corner. When he turned around, he saw Tang Cuo in the shadow behind the door, with long bangs covering his eyes and a blank expression on his pale face.

“Ouch!” The old man exclaimed with both hands covering his heart, and his eyeballs finally fell out of their sockets, bouncing on the ground and hitting Tang Cuo’s feet.

He grumbled: “You scared me to death.”

Tang Cuo: “……”

Tang Cuo’s feet contemplated whether to step on his eyeballs or not, but his eyes were fixed on the toolbox in the old man’s hand, and he came to a halt suddenly. It was a long wooden box, a little smaller than the kind of wooden box used to keep red wine, with the colour of black walnut. The box’s body was painted with intricate red patterns, as though it was…

Scarlet’s phylactery.

He immediately stepped forward and took the toolbox, carefully examining the patterns on it.

The old man hurriedly went to pick up the eyeballs on the ground, and finally turned his head to stare at him: “What’s wrong with you, student? You don’t have the heart to respect the old or love the young at all. I lost my eyeballs and you couldn’t bother helping me pick them up, and you even kicked them.”

Tang Cuo a deaf ear to him as he half-knelt on the ground and poured out all the contents of the wooden box. Eventually, at the bottom of the box, he spotted a red seal. It was engraved with Scarlet’s name.

For a long time, he was silent. No matter how the old man called after him, he didn’t answer. He was caught with the thought that Jiang He was a real genius for hiding things.

Tang Cuo originally wanted to directly destroy the wooden box to prevent any possible mishaps, but thinking that there might be some useful information hidden with Scarlet, he put the box away for now.

Then he said goodbye to the old man and returned to the roof to repair the signage with the tools.

If one wanted to ask him why he insisted on fixing the signage, he would reply that it was his intuition as a detective. Although Tang Cuo never graduated from high school, he was a jack of many trades. Fortune telling, lockpicking, electronics fixing… he could handle them all.

Half an hour later, the signage was finally repaired, and the four characters of ‘Fierce Ghosts Academy’ now could all be turned on. The light was even stronger than before. As he looked up, he coincidentally caught the rise of the blood-coloured moon.

Tang Cuo put away his umbrella and looked down from the roof, catching sight of everything in the academy.

Slowly, the students in the two dormitory buildings awakened. At first, not many of them got up, and there were only three or two kittens in sight. Obviously, it was still too early and not yet the usual time for everyone to wake up.

But the screams that followed broke the calm, and another ghost was found dead in the dormitory.

Tang Cuo wasn’t the only one targeted during the day.

But the atmosphere in the school was slightly different from yesterday. Yesterday’s screams were full of panic and tension, but today’s screams were extremely violent and cold.

The whole school was engulfed in an eerie air, and even the night was getting awfully heavy.

Tang Cuo felt this change within his heart, and his eyes couldn’t help looking at the repaired signage. The only difference between yesterday and today was that the signage had changed from ‘Meng Ghosts’ to ‘Fierce Ghosts’. Could it be that the difference literally lay in the meaning of the words?

Just like the title [There’s Someone Under The Bed]. There was really someone under the bed, and the Fierce Ghosts Academy was really full of fierce ghosts.

Thinking of this, Tang Cuo came to a realisation and he opened the system panel again.

Character

No. K27216: Tang Cuo

Character points: 0

Strength: 187

Intelligence: 146

Charm: 88

Rating: A 

HP: 99

Soul Instability Index: 9

The mighty sir had obtained the ‘Fierce Ghosts’ buff, boosting the overall stats by 30 points.

[Survival is not easy, please never stop trying.]

Tang Cuo’s eyebrow lifted slightly.

So the dungeon even came up with this way of playing. Under the ‘Fierce Ghosts’ buff, he not only had gotten a bonus of 30 points, but his Soul Instability Index had also plummeted, and even his HP had returned to 99. At the same time, the ghosts of the whole school had grown stronger, which meant that the group of timid and cute ghost classmates he used to have might not be afraid of humans now.

How interesting.

Mr. Crow, who was peeping in the dark, pursed his beak in anger. He cursed Tang Cuo in a low voice, then cursed Jiang He in a low voice. These self-proclaimed smart players always took shortcuts and didn’t respect the dungeon at all.

Although the dungeon wasn’t set up by him, Mr. Crow was still angry.

He felt his Blacklist was not being given the respect it deserved.

But Mr. Crow couldn’t question Yong Ye City. To question Yong Ye City was to question his own respect for it. He had no choice but to pour out his complaints to his colleague.

“Tell me, why do you, the dignified Warden, always hide in the small monitoring room and watch in secret? Your idea of fun isn’t honest at all.” 

They were still in the same monitoring room as last time. On the screens, the dungeon [Realm of Mortals] had been replaced by [Descent of Gods and Demons]. It was the fifth lotus sun, and Lin Yandong was still sitting cross-legged in the sand sea under the dark night, his hands clasped together with a bead bracelet hanging at the base of his thumb. With his eyes closed, he was praying.

The huge statues of demons covered the sky and surrounded him like a cage. The Six-Character Mantra that was as thunderous as a lion’s roar kept pinning down, each word seemingly weighing a thousand jins21 Chinese jin = 0.6 kilograms., thrusting the top of his head and shoulders until it pressed him into the dark ground and crushed every inch of his bones.

Blood dripped from the corners of his mouth. After merely five lotus suns, he was already this withered, and white hair was starting to grow from his temples. The oversized clothes he wore now looked like they were wrapping around a skeleton, and as the wind lifted the hem of his shirt, every single rib could be seen protruding out.

But his expression remained at peace, as if no amount of suffering could overwhelm him.

Xiao Tong didn’t respond to Mr. Crow’s words as his eyes fell on the white hair on Lin Yan’s temples. The coffee in his hand had already gone cold.

Stubbornly, Mr. Crow continued to make random noises next to him. Unable to bear it any longer, Xiao Tong eventually threw the coffee cup cross, almost splashing it all over him.

“You grumpy warden!” Mr. Crow exclaimed angrily.

“Why aren’t you watching your Scarlet, what are you here for.” The Warden was so irritated that his questions turned directly into affirmative sentences, sounding cold enough to send chills down Mr. Crow’s spine.

“01724 is about to be killed by them. Do you want Mr. Crow to see how happy they are? That’s ridiculous!” Mr. Crow placed both wings on his hips and lampooned with fury: “You shouldn’t have released 01724!”

Xiao Tong sent a cold glance his way: “I haven’t asked you yet, why did you let Black Hat get the 12th Movement? If there were no movement, he wouldn’t have been able to open the Infinite Market of Dreams, and Chong Yanzhang wouldn’t have obtained a pardon from that market.”

Mr. Crow was at a loss for words.

Xiao Tong sat up straight, his formidable aura pressing down on Mr. Crow: “The Infinite Market of Dreams sells not only his pardon but also the [Nameless Dagger]. I don’t believe you were clueless about the dungeon that Black Hat went through. You’ve been secretly fueling the flames because you want to find God, am I right?”

“What do you know?”

“You’re so embarrassed that you’ve turned angry. It seems that I’m right.”

Mr. Crow wasn’t willing to talk to him anymore. He was so exasperated that we wanted to run away. But before that, he still left behind a sentence: “They’ll come to Zone G to look for Lin Yandong right now. Since you opened the back door for Lin Yandong, hmph, I’ll see how you deal with them.”

Saying so, Mr. Crow disappeared from the monitoring room.

Xiao Tong didn’t care about what he said. He turned back to look at Lin Yandong on the screen and his eyes fell on Lin Yangdong’s temples again. For a long time, he stayed silent.

The moment he saw the white hair at his temples, after such a long time, Xiao Tong suddenly felt that time was passing by very quickly. Those memories that had been locked in his mind were pulled out again, just like yesterday. But they happened too many years ago and were fading away.

It had been a really long time since they came to Yong Ye City.

Decades had passed in the blink of an eye. Their face might remain young, but their soul was growing old.