The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 148

Table of Contents | Character Guide

Chapter 148: There’s Someone Under The Bed (11) 

Seventy-eight.

Seventy-nine.

Eighty.

By the time the 80th ghost died under Tang Cuo’s sword, the sun was already setting in the west. Tilting his head to glance at the curtains tinted by the setting sun, Tang Cuo felt his eyes growing a tad sour and fatigue creeping out of his whole body to directly assault his brain.

Come to think of it, Tang Cuo had consumed too much energy in the dream of ‘Ju Dog Paradise’. After returning to the Fierce Ghosts Academy, he turned into a ghost again, making it very inconvenient to move under daylight.

But during the day, when the ghosts all fell into slumber, it was the best time to make a move, and Tang Cuo couldn’t possibly miss this opportunity. Moreover, not all of the 80 ghosts were killed by him. The murderer had killed nearly 50 of them before the mission was triggered.

He became more and more certain that this was a dream cage built by the murderer, because every time he killed a ghost, a peach tree branch would grow on the ghost’s chest. The peach blossom should be the key to constructing the dream. Furthermore, he hadn’t seen the true face of the murderer until now.

Tang Cuo found the list of targets by checking in the Student Affairs office. There were many students with pure yin fate, about 70 or 80 of them, but they still didn’t reach the number required by the mission. Tang Cuo then went on to locate the list of teachers and staff and found that among these ghosts, besides the head of security, there were some teachers and dormitory housekeeping aunties who also carried pure yin fate.

With so many ghosts coming into the picture, the sheer scale of this event had expanded to the entire school. Apart from school bullying, Tang Cuo couldn’t think of any other stories. And this shouldn’t be a simple incident of violence between students. The school idol showed no obvious signs of being beaten, and the injuries she suffered in the security department had slowly recovered over time.

What would the head of security want to do to a beautiful female student? The answer was a no-brainer.

Given the incident, how the school handled it and how the truth was announced to the public were most critical. The first person who died was the head of the security department. Tang Cuo reasonably suspected that he was the cause of the whole incident, so he died the fastest.

The roommates should be the school idol’s closest buddies, and it was unlikely that she could hide her circumstance from them. What disgraceful role did they play in this, such that they became the second group to be killed?

Tang Cuo didn’t go to college or live on campus, but he knew how life would be like when a person was isolated. The school was indeed an ivory tower, especially for boarding students, for the walls cut off the campus from the outside world.

With that, a small jungle was born. People outside looked at it from a distance and thought that there were only flowers blooming there during spring, but a jungle had its own rules.

A weak rabbit wouldn’t survive in a wolf’s territory. This was the eternal truth.

When Tang Cuo was in school, he never lost during a fight. Although some teachers always mocked that he only had a future in jail, that he failed to behave like a human being, and that he was a scum of the society, Tang Cuo still received love letters and snacks on his desk from time to time, all because he was handsome.

There were also many teachers who cared about him and hoped that he would study hard to get back on the right track, because he had good grades. He was always that student who evoked both love and hate from others, the one who insisted on being himself and never repented.

In fact, Tang Cuo never liked fighting and found it troublesome, but he had didi and meimei1妹妹, the female counterpart of didi. This refers to how you address a girl who’s slightly younger than you, like your younger sister. in his orphanage whom he needed to protect. He worked part-time at a karaoke box and frequently encountered all sorts of things. Teenage boys were always willing to show off their abilities through fights. Even if Tang Cuo did nothing, he would still be blocked at the school gate.

As the words passed from one person to the next, eager girls all rushed over to have a look, and they thought Tang Cuo looked very handsome during a fight. But Tang Cuo was actually afraid of pain and also afraid of being injured. If he got injured, he would have to pay for medical expenses. He was unwilling to pay for others, and of course, he wouldn’t let others pay for him either.

The head of the orphanage often told him with such sincerity that he must learn to reconcile with others and with himself. Tang Cuo wanted to say that he didn’t have any unbreakable tie with this idiotic world, but seeing the head of orphanage’s hairline, he hesitated and nodded his head.

Just like that, those problematic adolescent years of his passed by.

Then by the time he missed the college entrance examination and enlisted in the army, it was another tale altogether.

Clearly, people like Tang Cuo couldn’t be isolated. The reason why he knew the feeling of isolation was because his last job as a private detective taught him about it.

A schoolgirl hired him to tail her roommate, peep into her dating history and take some scandalous photos. By that time, Tang Cuo’s own affairs were coming to an end. After two years of lurking in the shadows, his efforts had finally come to fruition.

He was planning to close down his business after the matter was over and had absolutely no intention of continuing for any reason. Thinking about it now, he probably had a premonition of his own death and felt no need to take care of what might happen following the closure.

The female student’s assignment became the last one he handled as a private detective. Since the matter involved other students, it would be too troublesome and Tang Cuo planned to refuse. However, seeing the photo of the roommate that the female student gave him, he agreed to do the job.

The roommate’s eyes were very innocent, carrying with them a bit of naivety and timidity. If Tang Cuo didn’t take up this assignment, he would never get to know how those eyes would change.

At the end of the story, in Yong Ye City, Tang Cuo received a courier from this roommate. She gave Tang Cuo a white daisy and a letter with the words ‘Thank you’ and two drops of tears on it.

But what about Li Haoshuai?

Li Haoshuai wasn’t Tang Cuo, so what role did he play in this matter? He wasn’t the first group of ghosts to die, and he wasn’t among the people most involved in the school idol’s affair, but he was chosen to be the dungeon’s protagonist. Was he randomly selected by the system?

Tang Cuo continued to look for his target while thinking.

Eighty-three.

It was getting dark.

Eighty-seven.

The moon was reaching the highest point in the sky.

The ghost students gradually woke up. Tang Cuo came to a stop at the right time and took the opportunity to rest. He didn’t dare to use more healing potions, lest he ran out of emergency medicine, so he kept throwing basic healing skills on his body to slowly recover.

When only the last three targets remained, Tang Cuo lined up all the objects he had collected about the school idol on the ground and carefully picked out things that looked like ‘photos’.

He found that these photos seemed to be taken by the same person, for the compositions, shooting angles and the editing styles were similar.

The school idol was still a student, so naturally, it was impossible for her to have exquisite photos like celebrities. These photos were taken secretly by people in the school and later distributed or sold privately. Some were taken close-up and some from far away, but it could be seen that they had all been carefully selected. In each of them, the school idol’s face could clearly be seen.

The reason that made Tang Cuo care about these photos was Li Haoshuai, because his connection with the school idol was only a photo. Tang Cuo had tried burning it, soaking it in water, placing it in the sun and even looking for the original film, and eventually, he found a clue on the school idol’s hairpin.

It turned out that the hairpin had been photoshopped onto her, and the pattern on it was the Latin letter ‘L’.

‘L’ in ‘Li Haoshuai’.

This boy had been quiet for the most part, yet was also the witness of the whole thing from the beginning to the end. Because the school idol’s hair had changed to different lengths, while her clothes also changed along with the four seasons, those photos apparently were taken at different periods.

Putting away the photos, Tang Cuo came under the peach blossom tree again, waiting for the last moment.

The mission had 99 targets. This number had been defined since the very beginning because there were 99 peach blossoms. Li Haoshuai was one of them. After the main mission was triggered, he switched sides and became an accomplice. So was he dead or was he not?

Was this dungeon constructed from a dream or reality? If he died in the Fierce Ghosts Academy, would it mean the death of the player’s body, or would Li Haoshuai wake up from the dream and return to the ‘actual’ reality?

While thinking about it, Tang Cuo simply sat down. No matter what, there was a real murderer behind the massacre of these ghosts, who probably killed as much as Tang Cuo did. A long time later, as though sensing something, he looked up at the peach blossom above his head.

The 98th bud had bloomed.

The talisman tied to the branch fluttered in the wind, whirling as it brushed past the falling petals.

Tang Cuo thought of [Mr. Crow’s Feather] buried at the bottom of his Inventory again. In any case, he had one chance of resurrection. Even if Jin Cheng learnt about it, he wouldn’t blame Tang Cuo.

If he won the bet, Jin Cheng would never know.

Perfect.

With an unflinching expression, Tang Cuo fiddled with the little abacus in his mind. Obviously, he wasn’t a rascal, but his mind could play exactly like that of a rascal. Without even a hint of hesitation, he drew his sword and killed himself.

It would’ve been faster if he had used a gun, but his gun had broken after the fight with Xiao Tong, so he could only turn to his sword.

Of course, Jin Cheng mustn’t know about this.

Else, he would make a real fuss.

After the severe pain passed, the sky spun in his eyes and Tang Cuo slumped to the ground, everything around him shrouded in total darkness. He clutched his wound, his whole body shaking violently as it broke out in a cold sweat. He didn’t even have the strength to summon the System Panel to confirm his state. Before his consciousness entirely faded away, he caught a glance of the last bud of peach blossom slowly blooming.

The blood-coloured moon rose high in the sky as the evening breeze shook the peach blossoms on the tree. It was a mesmerising scene that made both the land and the sky fall into complete silence.

When he woke up again, the sun descending on the horizon was like a magnificent fire, but the sunlight that reached him still made him feel a sense of burning. Tang Cuo couldn’t tell whether it was today or the next day, but by the time his brain finally awakened, he began to have doubts.

Was he still a ghost? Was he at the Fierce Ghosts Academy?

Tang Cuo sat up at once to find himself extremely light and fluttering. He looked down — he was floating outside of his own body.

Oh, I’m really a ghost.

Tang Cuo: “.”

Only a full stop could express Tang Cuo’s mood at the moment. He looked at the corpse that carried a very fearful expression and made such an eerie sight of death. Spotting the shadow of the corpse, he confirmed that he really had returned to reality.

“Ding!”

“99 targets have been killed. Congratulations to the player for successfully completing Plot C, thereby clearing the mission [There’s Someone Under The Bed]!”

“We will now start calculating the rewards.”

Knowing that he had won the bet, Tang Cuo couldn’t help but heave a sigh of relief. Only then did he have the mind to evaluate the surroundings.

This was a school with exactly the same layout as the Fierce Ghosts Academy. Not far away, the signage with huge characters on it read ‘Meng Scholar Tree Academy’, and right behind him was a peach blossom tree.

The peach blossoms were blooming. A remarkably beautiful sight.

Not far away, a young couple whispered as they hid behind the bushes.

“I heard that after several persons have died like that. They lay down and never woke up again, as though they had been killed in their dreams. They died in such a horrifying way.”

“What are you afraid of? It has nothing to do with you, and it’s not like you forced her to die. Besides, who hasn’t spewed some gossip behind her back? It isn’t all intentional. In any case, she didn’t suffer much. Would she need the whole school to be buried with her? It’s her own fault that she can’t think of a way out on her own. She can’t blame everyone else for her weak mind! She should’ve gone to the police, yet she jumps off a building, for what?!”

Seeing the boy’s words growing more and more impudent and that he even seemed a tad pissed off, the girl quickly stopped him: “Quit it! She’s dead! Aren’t you scared that you’ll have nightmares at night?” 

Snapping out of it, the boy couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed: “There are no ghosts in this world. Don’t scare yourself senseless.”

At this moment, Tang Cuo strode over with his long legs. Placing one hand on his own head, very gently, he split it open.

“Ah ah ah ah! It’s a ghost!” The boy’s eye rolled up and he fainted at once. The girl wasn’t much better either. She ran away screaming, absolutely forgetting about her boyfriend behind

Instead of waiting for the rewards to be announced, Tang Cuo simply drifted to the school to take a look.

Under the setting sun, a depressing atmosphere lingered in the school. Ambulances and police cars came and went, the students were caught in a panic, while the parents were arguing at the school gate.

Blown by the evening wind, a photo flew out of the dormitory building and fell in front of Tang Cuo.

He looked down to see the words ‘School idol’ written in red on the face of the school idol, but the words were put between two double quotation marks. This school idol wasn’t the one he encountered earlier. Everyone might love the school idol, yet everyone also loved to laugh at mockery.

The words ‘What a laughing stock’ was written below the words ‘School idol’.

This dungeon was really full of wordplay.