The Trial Game of Life – Chapter 15

Table of Content | Character Guide

Chapter 15: On A Snowy Night, He Returns (9)

The body was eventually dug up, but it was an unfamiliar man buried upright in a deep pit. The man had been dead but his hair continued to grow upward and upward, until it pierced the ground and turned into a sapling.

This strange and creepy scene sent everyone into silence.

Tang Cuo didn’t participate in digging up the corpse and just stayed by one side in his military coat: “The corpse has begun to rot, it should have been buried for a while.”

Jin Cheng also didn’t lift a finger and just stood there hugging his arms: “He must be from a previous group of players in this mission. If Li Shuangshuang and Qu Li are also buried in this soil, they might not have sprouted yet.”

“We’ll know if we look around.”

Tang Cuo said firmly and called upon the next task for the four labourers. In the next three hours or so, they dug out all the small saplings within a radius of 1 kilometer from the location of the first corpse.

Although Jin Cheng didn’t lift a finger, he had a bear. It would be a pity if those gigantic paws weren’t put into good use.

In order to verify his guess, Jin Cheng had the black bear dig up a big tree and pull out a heap of white bones, all of which looked like they had been buried in the ground for many years.

“Why do you think Li Ying Jun’s firewood has that smooth texture and special scent?” He asked Tang Cuo.

Tang Cuo answered without hesitation: “Corpse oil, and corpse odour.”

Qian Wei, who was sitting down to rest not far from them, overheard it and almost threw up his breakfast. On the first day they arrived at this dungeon, they checked the kitchen with great care. It was beyond their expectation that the problem didn’t lie in the meat; it was in the firewood. Although they didn’t directly eat the firewood, they used it in their cooking, so wasn’t it like drinking formalin that had been soaked with dead bodies?

Qian Wei couldn’t help but look at the surrounding trees. At this time, don’t those black, twisted trunks look like ghostly shadows struggling to escape from here?

Such trees spread throughout the whole forest, in the east, west, south and north. How many people had been buried here?

A chill ran down his spine as he thought about it.

They dug for a long time but still couldn’t find Li Shuangshuang. Everyone was tired and numb from the exhaustion, sweating all over in this chilling weather. They had consumed all the food they had on them, so if they didn’t head back now, they would perish soon, either by the cold or by hunger.

Most players of Yong Ye City had a habit of bringing some food like jerky or compressed biscuits to fill their stomachs, for who knew what sort of situations they might get into.

Tang Cuo was broke and had nothing on him, but everyone gave him a bit of their portions and he ended up eating the most.

“Let’s head back?” Jin Cheng said as he threw Tang Cuo a palm-size hand warmer with self-heating, drinkable water in it. “Just another junk that Wen Xiaoming invented. There isn’t much use for it.”

Tang Cuo took the item, studied it a bit and said: “He’s engaged in scientific research?”

“He has a nickname of Walking Customer Service.”

“Why?”

Hearing that, Jin Cheng seemed to think of something interesting and the corner of his mouth tugged upwards: “Because his number is 10086.” (T/N: This coincides with the Customer Service Hotline of China Mobile – China’s largest mobile network operator).

Tang Cuo showed no expression.

Jin Cheng eyebrows furrowed: “Isn’t that funny?”

Tang Cuo: “Don’t you see that my face has frozen?”

I’m too lazy to care about you.

Tang Cuo put the warmer on his face as he stood up and looked around. He always had a feeling that ― Qu Li was not dead. She was here to replace Xiao Yuan. According to Xiao Yuan’s statement, the newcomer was still in training. Perhaps it was part of her training to aid Li Ying Jun in coming back from the dead one time after another. After passing the training, she had to serve her karma here, so it would be impossible for her to die.

But if she didn’t die, where would she be?

Tang Cuo wanted to search around some more, but Qian Wei and the others could no longer keep up and his own HP had also dropped by 20. After thinking for a moment, he agreed that they should head back.

Peng Mingfan asked what to do with the dug-out bodies. Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo glanced at each other to find out that they belonged to the same school of thought ― the ‘just dig up and leave them there’ school.

“Li Ying Jun will come to cut wood at night, and he will definitely bury them when he sees them.” Jin Cheng said.

The others nodded and accepted his statement, because they were also too tired to bury them again.

Jin Cheng then released the black bear and the six began to walk back. Just like before, no matter where they turned to, the compass remained unchanged. But with the experience from last time, everyone was much calmer and they just focused their energy into walking ahead without wasting any words.

As they walked, Tang Cuo suddenly saw a flash of red from the corner of his eye. He turned his head and thought a figure just flicked by in the forest on the left, but it ran away very quickly and disappeared in the blink of an eye.

“Red skirt.” Jin Cheng said affirmatively.

In this pure black forest, a red skirt would catch any eyes.

“It’s Qu Li!” Tang Cuo ran after the figure with the speed of lightning.

Jin Cheng was faster than him, and he flew to the big tree above his head in a split second, his movement so light that the snow on the tree didn’t even budge. The rest reacted and followed right behind as they saw those two running.

Tang Cuo, unsurprisingly, fell to the end, but he made a turn after they had run a short distance. After several more turns, he actually ended up ahead of Qian Wei and the others.

He ran and ran, until he ran head-on into Qu Li.

As the four eyes met, Qu Li was stunned: “Why are you here?!”

At this time, Jin Cheng was also coming from behind her. She bit her lips and finally decided to run away. Her movement was extremely strange, her figure appearing one moment and disappearing the next. Whenever they almost caught up with her, the figure just vanished into thin air.

This also confirmed Tang Cuo’s guess that Qu Li wasn’t dead. She was only cooperating with Li Ying Jun as an NPC.

Five minutes later.

Qu Li completely vanished in the middle of the forest, as if she never appeared.

Tang Cuo asked Jin Cheng if he could find a way to find her, but Jin Cheng shook his head as he didn’t have the patience to follow her anymore. Qian Wei and the others were a bit upset, but he remained calm and just continued walking like before.

Half an hour later, the group of six came back to the main entrance of the hostel. By this time, it was already 3 PM.

There was only Xiao Yuan sitting alone in the hall, looking as though she’d been scared out of her wits. Some of them went to check out the kitchen to find Li Ying Jun’s body still there.

Zhang Zhiqiu was, however, nowhere in sight, so An Ning asked Xiao Yuan to learn that he had been resting upstairs. Peng Mingfan gave Qian Wei a meaningful glance, and the two went upstairs together to knock at Zhang Zhiqiu’s door.

Zhang Zhiqiu faced them with an ugly expression, as if he was unwilling to even put up a facade: “What’s the matter?”

“We found human bodies in the forest.” Peng Mingfan put on a cold expression but still told him about their findings in the forest. After finishing what he had to say, he didn’t wait for Zhang Zhiqiu to reply and took Qian Wei away.

A few seconds later, they heard a slam of a door closing.

Qian Wei rolled his eyes angrily: “Peng Peng, why do you bother telling that to this kind of person? Just let him die, we owe him nothing.”

Peng Mingfan: “Whether I tell him is my business, whether he dies is his business.”

“Peng Peng, you’re so cool.”

“…”

Downstairs, An Ning was debating with herself whether to take a shower. She sweated a lot and needed a hot shower, but the bathroom was also heated by the boiler, and the boiler was burned with firewood, not coal.

Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng didn’t have this concern and just went in for a shower. The hostel also nicely provided them with a change of clothes and placed it in the locker, which came in different sizes and styles to suit both men and women.

Seeing Tang Cuo coming out refreshed, Qian Wei somehow panicked and subconsciously whispered: “Are those clothes taken from the dead?”

Tang Cuo turned to look at him and smiled: “Do you have a problem?”

“My bad, big brother.”

Nevertheless, Qian Wei made up his mind to not take a shower.

By the time Jin Cheng came out of the shower, Qian Wei was so tired he took a nap on the table. Peng Mingfan was still the one most enthusiastic about reasoning and debunking the puzzle. He grabbed the small blackboard at the front desk that was used to show today’s menu and scribbled all over it in an attempt to sort out all the clues they found so far.

As for An Ning and Zhao Ping, they went to the kitchen to prepare dinner, because Xiao Yuan had gone to rest again.

Tang Cuo was sitting in the armchair and reading a magazine in the rest area by himself. Jin Cheng walked over and knocked on the table, then looked at the stack of books and said:

“Are you reading again?” 

Tang Cuo raised his eyes: “Are you not playing your jigsaw puzzle?”

More than half of the puzzle had been completed and the remaining pieces were scattered all over the table.

Jin Cheng picked up a piece and played with it for a while, then said: “This painting is Egon Schiele’s ‘Four Trees’, The meaning of the painting itself should have nothing to do with this dungeon, but then, it’s also about trees.”

“Is this also a kind of hint?”

“Maybe.”

Tang Cuo never studied much into this kind of art, but he somehow felt that he was missing something. There must be some hidden clues in this hostel, so he flipped over the books on the shelf again.

After a bit of flipping, he really found something ― the last time he looked, the content wasn’t there.

It was an article in a magazine with the title ‘The best forest ranger in history has cut a hundred tons of firewood in a year and won the ‘Heart of Nature’ award!’

The picture showed Li Ying Jun smiling honestly while holding the trophy, which was exactly the bronze trophy that resembled the Oscars statue.

If he was an outstanding forest ranger, why would he take on the job of cutting firewood?

Tang Cuo frowned slightly.

No, it wasn’t firewood that he cut down ― it was human bodies. The award Li Ying Jun received was called ‘Heart of Nature’. Humans had always been cutting down trees and now they ended up as trees. Wasn’t this an eye for an eye?

Thinking about this, Tang Cuo flipped through several other books and magazines but didn’t see any more relevant content. He put down the book, stood up and walked upstairs.

“Where are you going?” Jin Cheng asked from behind.

“To find the staff.” Tang Cuo kept walking.

 As the only staff in the hostel, Xiao Yuan lived alone on the second floor. Tang Cuo knocked on her door and went straight to the point: “What happened in the forest outside, or basically, on this mountain?”

“What do you mean?” Xiaoyuan tilted her head in confusion.

“Any accidents.”

“Do you mean the fire ten years ago? A few campers came to the mountain and accidentally set off a fire and burnt the entire forest. I wasn’t here by then, but I heard that it took a long time for the trees to be planted and grow back.”

“How many people were there?”

“Uhm… There should be nine people? Or eight? It seems about eight.”

“Oh.” Tang Cuo finally understood, then he asked again: “Do you know what is the type of tree that Li Ying Jun cuts down?”

Xiaoyuan smiled: “Yes, it is the highest-grade wood, rice cooked with that wood will have a very nice fragrance.”

The conversation made her think of Li Ying Jun’s death and she became melancholic again. Tang Cuo asked her something else but instead of answering, she just kept lamenting over “How can Ying Jun ge die?” and “When will I be able to go down the mountain?”. There was no use asking more of her.

Closing the door, Tang Cuo turned back to see Jin Cheng leaning against the wall with his arms hugged tightly. He asked: “Have you figured it out?”

Tang Cuo certainly had.

The clues provided in the dungeon must be based on triggers. The bronze trophy was indeed a type of hint, but yesterday there was no such article on Li Ying Jun winning the award when he flipped through the magazine, and Xiao Yuan also didn’t give a clear answer on how the bronze trophy came about.

But when they discovered the secret about the firewood in the forest, the clue popped up.

Jin Cheng had watched the whole process, and he bluntly concluded from his experience as a veteran player: “So I guessed correctly. This isn’t a low-level game of Zone F. Judging from the number of corpses in the forest, previous groups of players were almost entirely killed, perhaps they also never knew the truth even when they died. Looking at the trigger mode of these clues, the level is at least Hard.”

Tang Cuo: “An effect of the Blacklist?”

Jin Cheng spread his hand, apparently accepting this statement.

Without another word, the two went back to the main hall to briefly explain the latest findings to the others. Looking at them expressing their shock in complete silence, Tang Cuo also didn’t speak.

How much bad luck must these four have to end up in the same dungeon with two Blacklisters?

It was already 5:15 in the evening.

Tang Cuo looked at the clock on the wall and said: “I plan to spend the night in the forest.”

He said this to Jin Cheng, and Jin Cheng also understood him immediately: “You want to avoid the condition of falling into a deep sleep at night?”

Tang Cuo nodded: “Li Ying Jun might bury Zhang Zhiqiu next to Li Shuangshuang.”

Peng Mingfan overheard a bit of their conversation and asked quickly: “Why must you find Li Shuangshuang, did you discover anything?”

Tang Cuo: “We still need physical evidence.”

Peng Mingfan: “Then I will go with you.”

Qian Wei and An Ning looked at each other and were reminded of being made a labourer by these two bosses during the day, so they debated internally for some time before finally gritting their teeth: “I will go too.”

“You might fall asleep when you go out.” Tang Cuo said.

“And you might fall asleep in the ice and snow, then turn into a frozen ghost before dawn.” Jin Cheng continued to threaten.

The double intimidation from the big brothers wasn’t useless. They thought about the weather outside and became aware that if they slept in the snow for a night, they would actually die.

Unexpectedly, Zhao Ping opened his mouth: “Then we can hide in that cave first and wait past the time that we’re supposed to fall asleep, then come out and do what we need to.”

Qian Wei and the other two looked at him in amazement. Zhao Ping smiled helplessly: “We are all in this together for better or worse. Looking at the content of this dungeon, it is clearly trying to kill us all. It is better to fight together than to wait for death here.”

There was indeed no need to talk so much. They were all on the same boat.

The six of them quickly had dinner and prepared themselves, then set off immediately. This time they could move a lot faster because the glowing dust hadn’t disappeared, and they only needed to follow this path straight to the cave.

There was no other type of firewood in the forest, but everyone put away their trauma because they needed to make a fire to warm themselves up. They collected a lot of dry branches and lit up a bonfire to wait for time to pass.

At 7, everyone hadn’t fallen asleep.

At 7:30, someone felt a little sleepy, but it was still within control.

At 8, they still hadn’t seen Zhang Zhiqiu carry the body out here, but they saw a flash of dark red suddenly appear on the white snow, against the dark sky.

Qian Wei stood up in shock: “Qu Li! Is that Qu Li?”

An Ning: “It looks like her, there is no other red in this forest except for her.” 

Right then, the red figure swayed and appeared once more, this time a little further away from them.

An Ning clenched her fists and turned back to ask Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng: “Do you want to chase after her?”

Peng Mingfan said: “It may also be a trap. She saw us during the day and ran away. Why does she appear again now?”

“I’ll go.” At this point, Jin Cheng stretched his back to stand up, rubbed his neck and leisurely walked to the cave entrance. The moment he set his eyes on Qu Li’s figure, it became further away.

Tang Cuo approached him: “Alone?” 

Jin Cheng: “Are you worried about me?”

“No.” Tang Cuo: “I just want to remind you that she is getting further away.”

Jin Cheng was amused. He smiled and grabbed Tang Cuo’s wrist, then, with a “Click”, put a handcuff on him. Tang Cuo wanted to ask if something was wrong with his head, then he saw that Jin Cheng also had the same thing on his wrist.

“It’s a paired tracker, you’re not allowed to take it down. If I can’t find the way back later, I won’t let you go even if I become a ghost.”

With that, he waved his hand and left everyone, his shadow nonchalantly disappearing into the snow.

Tang Cuo glanced down at his wrist, Okay, whoever bothers to prepare so much equipment is the boss then.

At 8:05, Jin Cheng and Qu Li disappeared before everyone’s eyes. No one had fallen asleep and they just stared at the entrance with different expressions, but their eyes all showed one thing in common: worries.

Except for Tang Cuo.

Tang Cuo didn’t worry about Jin Cheng at all. Even if this dungeon was at Hard level, it was just a dungeon of Zone F, so how could it be challenging for an elite of Zone A? Jin Cheng probably still had on his hands a lot of aces that they weren’t aware of. Even if they all died, he wouldn’t.

At 8:30, Jin Cheng hadn’t yet returned, and everyone hadn’t yet fallen asleep.

The worries inside the cave became heavier, and Qian Wei couldn’t help but suggest going out to find him. At this moment, Tang Cuo felt the handcuff being pulled, and he stood up and walked to the entrance.

“I’m back.” 

In the heavy snow, Jin Cheng was carrying a person. He didn’t walk fast, but his movement wasn’t sluggish either. As he reached to the entrance, he still asked casually ―

“Are you waiting for me?”

Tang Cuo didn’t really want to answer him.

At this point, Zhao Ping recognised the person Jin Cheng was carrying and exclaimed: “Li Shuangshuang!”

“Tsk.” Jin Cheng was a little agitated that he was interrupted, but he had no ill feelings about the other players after all, so he still put down the person without saying anything.

To be precise, he put down the body.

Tang Cuo first looked at Li Shuangshuang’s soles to find nothing but a bit of mud on it. He looked up and asked Jin Cheng: “Did you dig her out from the ground?”

Jin Cheng hugged his arms: “Yes, Qu Li seems to lead me there. I’ve also looked through the pit, there are absolutely no traces of dust in it.”

“What do you mean?” Qian Wei blinked and looked at An Ning and Zhao Ping. What was it about the glowing dust again? Peng Mingfan seemed to think of something, but he couldn’t figure out the connection and frowned slightly.

Tang Cuo didn’t have the time to explain and he just looked at Jin Cheng.

Jin Cheng’s gaze slightly moved: “You mean…”

Tang Cuo: “Go back to find Zhang Zhiqiu! Quickly!” 

Finishing the sentence, the two ran out of the cave at the same time. The rest hadn’t figured out heads or tails yet, but after a few days together, they had grown an indescribable trust in those two. They ran after Tang Cuo and Jin Cheng without another word.

But just when Tang Cuo stepped on the entrance, a heavy drowsiness hit his brain.

“Thud!”

“Thud!”

“Thud!”

All six of them fell down.