CH 125

Translator: Happy New Year! Enjoy the bonus chapter~

(Controller) 

Surprisingly, the game recognized this “I killed myself” solution.

Even the most quiet young nurse couldn’t help but swear when she heard this response.

The players worked hard to discover clues and risked their lives to find the perpetrator. As a result, they investigated every possibility and circled around to tell you that the victim committed suicide.

Was this playing a game? It was simply being played by the game! 

The players abused the game a hundred times in their hearts before a beam of light shone down and whisked the players away from the instance.

There were just three persons remaining in the villa in the blink of an eye.

The almighty game appeared to be hiding in the shadows, watching them from a high vantage point, curious to see what solution they could devise.

Shen Dongqing was still engrossed in the story when he asked himself, “But what is the meaning of the fairy tales I experienced when I came in?”

Zhou Wenyan: “Huh?”

Shen Dongqing narrated three short stories, all of which revolved on a child who murders his stepmother. It’d been turned into a mess by magic, making people question the game’s intelligence.

Zhou Wenyan: “It should be tricking you.”

Shen Dongqing thought so too. 

If you watch these three short stories, you could believe you’re a murderer. Wouldn’t you become the opponent of other players in order to avoid being discovered?

Shen Dongqing, fortunately, was a Buddhist Man. He was too indolent to do horrible things, whether he was a murderer or not.

He had another thought: “By the way… where is the controller?”

He merely put it away back then, and he had no idea where he’d put it, not to mention that he’d lost most of his memory and was pretty much clueless. 

“I have an impression,” the brat stated solemnly.

Shen Dongqing: “You?”

“You told me at the time that it was placed in an instance of a house, but I don’t know where it is exactly,” the brat fumed, seeing the contempt in Shen Dongqing’s eyes.

“Then it should be here,” Shen Dongqing answered, rubbing his chin. 

But the players had rummaged everywhere for the last two days and hadn’t seen any controllers.

Shen Dongqing had a headache: “What does the controller look like?”

The brat: “I haven’t seen it, only you have.”

“I forgot that, too,” Shen Dongqing lamented. 

The controller was almost certainly disguised as something else, and its shape couldn’t be seen from the outside.

So, here’s the question. This villa was enormous, and it contained hundreds of items. How might they find it?

Shen Dongqing and the brat exchanged stares.

“Why don’t we touch them one by one?” suggested Zhou Wenyan. 

The villa’s scope was limited, and at worst it would take a little longer, but the controller would always be discovered.

Shen Dongqing vigorously nodded: “Good idea, but…” He paused, glanced up at Zhou Wenyan, and grumbled, “I’m starving.”

Because the housekeeper died of poisoning, the players were concerned that there was poison in other foods, therefore they did not dare to move anything in the kitchen. The kitchen was now a wreck. Zhou Wenyan dug out two packs of instant noodles and cracked an egg for a meal.

Shen Dongqing took a deep whiff while holding the hot instant noodles: “It smells so good.” 

The brat beside him drooled: “Why aren’t I getting some? I’m hungry too.”

Shen Dongqing glanced at him and swiftly moved the bowl protectively: “You don’t need to eat. What are you playing at?”

But you can have a craving even if you don’t need to eat!

The brat looked at Shen Dongqing pitifully. 

However, Shen Dongqing’s hard-hearted heart remained unmoved. He took a slurp of the instant noodles, finding it delicious.

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“Tbe jgf jyerlcu mtlivgfc!” fzmijlwfv atf ygja. 

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Vtfc Gbcudlcu: “Gbc’a kjccj?”

“Wanna!” said the brat, stretching his neck.

The trio began their investigation on the first floor. They touched everything and didn’t let go of anything. 

Because the furnishings on the first floor were so scattered, they had completed touching just half of them until late at night. Finding the controller appeared to be far in the indefinite future.

Shen Dongqing was so tired that he yawned all the time, and when he closed his eyes, tears streamed from the corners of his eyelids.

“Go to sleep first,” Zhou Wenyan urged, reaching out to wipe away his tears.

Shen Dongqing: “Mn…” 

The brat’s voice sounded from the dining room just as the two were ready to go upstairs.

“Ah—”

Shen Dongqing awoke promptly in reaction to the yell, exclaiming, “What are you yelling for!?”

Given his strength, it was unthinkable for the brat to be in danger. Even if he couldn’t beat the opponent, he could certainly flee. 

Shen Dongqing was intrigued by what had happened to him and jumped down the steps to investigate.

When he got to the dining room, he noticed the brat was alright; he was just dumbfounded.

“What’s wrong?” said Shen Dongqing, patting him on the shoulder from behind.

“It’s, it’s gone,” the brat said, pointing to the dining table. 

“What’s gone?” Shen Dongqing inquired, glancing up to see.

The housekeeper made breakfast for everyone this morning. The poisoning incident occurred halfway through the meal, so the players did not finish eating and did not clean up, instead throwing everything on the table.

But the dining table was suddenly spotless and devoid of trash.

Shen Dongqing: “Who did the cleaning? This ghost is quite moral.” 

The brat: “Uh…the corpse is gone too.”

No one moved the housekeeper’s body after he died unexpectedly, so he was merely laying flat in the dining room. He had now also vanished.

When the trio dispersed in the first-floor hall to find the controller, the brat was assigned to the dining room. He looked back after a long, earnest search and discovered that everything on the dining table had disappeared, which startled him.

Shen Dongqing: “Even the corpse has been cleaned up. It’s pretty good. We should praise it.” 

The brat had long become accustomed to Shen Dongqing’s temperament and said with a wooden face: “This was not done by a ghost. It all disappeared for no reason.”

Shen Dongqing was stunned: “Huh? How is that possible?”

If it wasn’t a ghost, did the housekeeper resurrect and tidy up the dining table, conveniently tossing himself into the garbage can?

“The game has been restarted,” Zhou Wenyan said after hearing the two’s conversation. 

“Restart?” murmured the brat and Shen Dongqing in tandem.

“When a batch of players completes an instance, the game will be restarted and everything will be returned to its original state,” Zhou Wenyan explained.

However, this type of instance restart was only available for the environment and buildings. An NPC couldn’t be saved if they died.

Shen Dongqing opened the window and looked out. 

Sure enough. The garden, which had been thoroughly messed up by the players, was restored to order, and the skeletons were reburied.

“Recycling is really environmentally friendly,” commented Shen Dongqing.

“OK, you go to sleep first, and I’ll keep looking for it,” Zhou Wenyan said, touching the top of his head.

“Aren’t you going with me?” Shen Dongqing asked, raising his head. 

Zhou Wenyan: “We’ll become NPCs once the game instance has finished rebooting, and we won’t be able to leave. We must locate the controller before the restart is completed.”

It appeared like the restart would end at dawn.

“Then I won’t sleep either, let’s look for it together!” Shen Dongqing cheered up.

He began by touching everything in the dining room. He was halfway through when he had an epiphany: “Tell me, where would I place the controller if it were me?” 

Zhou Wenyan paused and considered it carefully: “The safe.”

Shen Dongqing: “Why?”

Zhou Wenyan: “Well… this thing is very important.”

“Exactly! Let’s go check the safe first!” Shen Dongqing did what he said and ran upstairs with Zhou Wenyan. 

The safe was on the third floor in the study.

The playground was gradually being repaired. The first floor had been almost completely restored, and now it was the turn of the second floor. The third level was still a shambles, with a large hole in the door of the study.

Shen Dongqing kicked the door open, strode in, and found the safe.

The Shen family deserved to be labeled as wealthy. The safe was extremely high-end, with combination locks and keys. There could not be a single one missed. 

Shen Dongqing ran into a technical snag: “How do I open this?”

“You need the password and the key,” the brat said, raising his hand.

Shen Dongqing: “Do I need you to tell me that!”

The two people who had known the password were no longer alive, and there was no key. What now? 

Zhou Wenyan: “The will. Perhaps it will be written in the will.”

The two men exchanged glances.

The lawyer had left, but his belongings remained on the second floor!

The two raced against the clock, eventually finding the lawyer’s briefcase before the second level was restored and discovering the will inside. 

Zhou Wenyan flipped through it and discovered the password as expected.

Shen Dongqing entered the password.

Beep—

The safe made a crisp sound. 

Shen Dongqing: “There’s still the key.”

But because the lawyer didn’t have the key, he found himself in a bind.

“Why don’t you try your style of opening doors to open it,” Zhou Wenyan advised.

Shen Dongqing suddenly saw the light and punched it. 

A dent emerged on the safe after merely a click. The door directly crumbled with another powerful punch, revealing the contents.

The safe was filled with beautiful jewels that dazzled the sight.

Shen Dongqing brushed aside the gems and gold and reached for one of the simple silver bracelets.

“This is it!” 

His voice faded, and there was a peculiar sound at the study door.

Shen Dongqing turned his head to find that the door panel, which had been smashed beyond repair, had been dragged up by an invisible force and reattached to the door. It was back to normal in the blink of an eye.

The playground was about to be restored!

Thinking of this, Shen Dongqing hurriedly drew a circle in midair with the silver bracelet. 

For a brief moment, the dull silver bracelet’s surface flickered, and the drawn circle appeared to be slashed by a sharp knife, forming a path.

Shen Dongqing: “Let’s go!”

Zhou Wenyan was dragged into the tunnel, leaving only the brat alone.

Shen Dongqing’s circle was a touch too high for the brat. He climbed with all his strength, shouting, “You just forgot about me, didn’t you?” 

That’s correct.

Shen Dongqing had forgotten about the brat, and both had vanished without a trace.

What else could the brat possibly do? He could only run over with his short legs.

A little light appeared in front of them after passing through a closed space, followed by a great expanse of whiteness. 

Following a brief period of blindness, the three returned to the players’ resting area. The silver bracelet-like controller was already on Shen Dongqing’s wrist, and it had transformed into a thin red rope with only a small jade gourd strung in the middle, making his skin appear fairer.

“We can use this to leave the game first,” Shen Dongqing stated, touching the cold and translucent jade gourd.

Originally, players could exit the game, but since it got out of control, it hoped that all players died in it. The clearing conditions were so tough that no one could leave.

The brat’s eyes lit up: “Can we go out to play? I’m going too, I’m going too!” 

Shen Dongqing: “Go away, brat.”

Zhou Wenyan thought of another point: “What about the other players in the game?”

“This controller is not omnipotent,” Shen Dongqing stated. “It cannot take out so many players at once. It can only take a few of us. If there are any more, the whole game will crash.”

If the game crashed, all of the players in it would perish. 

“We’ll figure something out later. The main body of the game should be outside.”

“Our memories would be obliterated after we leave,” Zhou Wenyan warned him.

Shen Dongqing pinched the jade gourd and declared: “It’s not a big problem. I can simply modify the rules with the controller.” Then, a few lines flashed across the jade gourd. “It’s done.”

Everything was in order. The out-of-control game might be fixed if they utilized the controller to exit the game and found the game’s main processor outside. 

“Mn.” Zhou Wenyan said, “Let’s go.”

They had no idea how Shen Dongqing operated it, but a little light appeared on the jade gourd and fell on the three of them. The light became larger and larger until it engulfed the entire individual.

When the light dimmed, the people standing there disappeared into thin air.

“…Pay attention to safety when driving…” 

A sweet female voice came out of the speaker, but before it could finish the warm reminder, it was cut off by a “boom,” leaving just the sound of electric buzzing.

A red automobile on the road lost control and made a sharp turn. Fortunately, there were no pedestrians at the time, and it only collided with a flower bed on the street’s edge.

The car was hit badly. The front cover of the car was lifted up, and the windshield smashed into spider webs. The driver’s condition was not yet known.

Throngs of people flocked around, and someone phoned 120. 

“Tsk tsk, it’s almost wrecked. This car is not cheap, is it?”

“It looks like it costs five or six hundred thousand. What a pity to drive such an expensive car recklessly.”

“There has been no movement for so long, I hope everyone inside is safe.”

Just then, the driver’s side door of the sedan moved, then slowly opened, and a hand was stretched out. A jade gourd glistened in the sun on the driver’s wrist. 

Shen Dongqing stepped out of the wrecked car and placed his palm in front of his eyes to shield his eyes from the glaring sunlight. “We’re out?” he asked with a little uncertainty.

“Make way—”

The ambulance arrived just in time. When they got to the accident site, they dispersed the onlookers, and a man in a white coat approached Shen Dongqing.

White Coat: “Are you hurt anywhere?” 

Shen Dongqing replied truthfully, “No.”

White Coat: “Really?”

He returned his gaze to the mangled automobile. It was impossible. The car crashed in such a way that it was impossible for the passengers to escape unharmed.

Shen Dongqing was acutely aware of the White Coat’s mistrust and followed his eyes to the sedan. 

The incident occurred unexpectedly. When Shen Dongqing was alive, he did not own a car. When he later entered the game, it became even more difficult to have anything to do with a car. It was good enough that he didn’t kill himself.

But…should he pass out now?

Shen Dongqing thought about it and decided to act normally. So he stumbled and said, “I disregarded it at first, but now that you mention it, I do hurt.”

White Coat: Is this also possible?