CH 85

Chapter 85: Castle Cry (XII)

As if he had suddenly lost his soul, Qi Leren didn’t move for a long time. This unspeakable fear that was more terrible than any mortal danger came not from a threat, but from the fear of the unknown.

Countless messy pictures flashed in his mind: he downloaded Nightmare Game, he tried it out absentmindedly, he was depressed after the computer went black, he took the computer and sat on the bus to get it fixed… He woke up in the hospital.

From that day on, his life took a wrong path. He was injured, died and then came back to life. This “gift” of resurrection did not make him feel lucky, but only formed in him deeper and deeper pain.

Every night, he would wake up from nightmares of countless deaths, sweating and panicking. Those painful deaths engraved in the soul were like wine. The longer time went on, the stronger they became. When his human reason rested in his sleep, it made a comeback with a grimace of a grin. He didn’t even know when this life would come to an end. Maybe he would have a nervous breakdown before he found a way to leave the game.

But for now, he could hold on a little longer… Hold on a little longer.

Qi Leren’s fingers gently touched the laptop in the drawer. It looked so familiar that even the scratches from him accidentally bumping it were still there. He took it out as calmly as possible, together with the balled up power cord.

At the bottom of the drawer, there was a red-brown blood line of text - keep the secret.

Qi Leren stared at this line of words, which faded slowly and disappeared into the wooden drawer, leaving a colorful egg.

[Easter Egg: Players who hold colored eggs will be resurrected and have all skills and items returned after seven days if they die with their bodies intact. If the player holds other resurrection props or skills, the order of using an Easter Egg is last. 1/1 remaining usage times.]

This item… Qi Leren was shocked to hold the Easter Egg. How could this resurrection prop be so simple? This was absolutely… Absolutely not normal!

He should seriously think about it again, at least think about why he suddenly got this resurrection prop, but at this time his head was filled with this inexplicable laptop, and he could only cram things into the item bar hastily, without thinking again.

The laptop was in my hand, cold and heavy. Qi Leren turned it over with trembling hands and pressed the power-on button. This time it turned on normally as if it had never been broken. When the Nightmare Game icon appeared on the desktop, Qi Leren couldn’t help shivering. He didn’t even know if he should click on the game icon again.

What would happen? Would all of this be a dream?

Just when he was at war between instinct and reason, the prompt of “battery depleted, shutting down” appeared on the screen, and the laptop just turned off and shut down again.

The screen was completely dark, and Qi Leren just stood on the ground without moving for a long time.

Who on earth was it? Or something, guiding him? He clearly had lost the laptop in the outside world, then it unexpectedly appeared in this ordinary copy, and the line of a blood prompt in the drawer disappeared, after wanting to tell him what?

He felt that he knew nothing and didn’t want to know. Can you run away from everything without knowing anything?

Even knowing that this was a dangerous road, he still had to keep moving forward…

Determined, Qi Leren put the laptop back in his inventory, and he would ask Chen Baiqi to find out how to solve the power supply problem after returning to the Village of Dusk. He vaguely remembered that someone in the Village of Dusk had made a transformer to solve the problem that the standard voltage of the Village of Dusk was different from the real world, with the purpose of charging his mobile phone that was brought into the Nightmare World from the real world with the power of the Village of Dusk. But only objects in the real world could be brought into the Nightmare World. After that, no matter which copy world, those objects originating from the copy world couldn’t be brought into the Nightmare World, so even if there was a copy with a future high-tech world, those coveted weapons and items couldn’t be brought back to the Nightmare World. He didn’t know whether this computer in his hand would be considered as brought in from the real world or from the copy world; if it was the latter…

Qi Leren had a faint hope that it was the latter, but he felt that he couldn’t find computers and Easter Eggs from the “people” in front of him in this world, as they didn’t fit with this setting. This laptop should be able to follow him back to the Nightmare World.

After calming down, Qi Leren checked the basement again. After confirming that there were no more clues, he picked up the mobile phone that had fallen to the ground at the beginning. It had no power, but when he returned to the Village of Dusk, he would consider buying a charger made by players.

Before he left, Qi Leren looked back at the crazy lady again. The boss itself didn’t bring him any reward, which made him a little disappointed. However, he shouldn’t have much expectation for a copy of a D-level difficulty task - although he felt that his D-level difficulty was a little different from the normal concept of a D-level difficulty… Instead, there was a resurrection prop in the dark! The origin of this prop was strange, and the laptop… It was chilling.

Climbing up the iron ladder, Qi Leren pushed up the iron grate of the cellar, but the iron grate didn’t move. He tried again, and the cellar door moved slightly, but it seemed to be pinned down by something and couldn’t be pushed up at all.

“Hello, is anyone there? Open the door!” Qi Leren knocked on the iron grate and shouted.

Through the iron grate, he heard Dr. Lu’s voice, vague but full of life: “What? Are you still alive?!”

"Lu Cangshu, whom I rely on, have you locked the iron grate!”

“Of course, what if you die below and the boss rushes out?”

“…Your ancestors! Open the door! ” Qi Leren instantly forgot the heavy mood just now, and scolded while banging the grate.

“In order to prevent any monsters who have possessed you from deceiving me with your voice, I want to ask you three questions before opening the door. Please answer them carefully. I will not open the door if you answer them wrong.” Dr. Lu said at the door.

“……Your sister!”

“First, what’s your name?”

“Qi Leren.”

“What’s the name of your goddess?”

“…I refuse to answer.”

“Don’t evade questions and answer them seriously, or I won’t open the door.”

“Well, he’s called Ning Zhou, and he’s a man.”

“I once summed up your story in one sentence, please repeat it again.”

“…Two straight men who will eventually become gay have a lily* love to free themselves.”

*{E/N: slang for lesbian}

“The answer is correct!”

Dr. Lu outside the door opened the lock for him happily. At the moment when the iron grate opened, Qi Leren popped out like a rabbit. He pressed Dr. Lu to the ground with his dagger on his forehead and looked down at him: “Lu, Cang, Shu, are you ready to die?”

Dr. Lu was shocked and said, “ I have something to say! Can you not do it?”

Qi Leren patted his cheek with the side of the dagger and asked combatively, “What do you think?”

“You see Nan Lu has been scared away, and I risked my life waiting for you here. What a noble sentiment and comrade* friendship! Although it’s not very kind to lock the door, it’s also for safety reasons. I ask you not to kill!” Dr. Lu said unintelligently.

*{E/N: slang for gay}

Qi Leren frowned: “Nan Lu ran away? When?”

“Well, after you fell down and closed the cellar door, she let out a scream and ran away,” Dr. Lu said.

Qi Leren put away his dagger and was not in the mood to continue to scare Dr. Lu. He got up and said, “The boss has been solved. It was indeed the crazy lady. I also found a demon sacrifice. Take it with you…”

Dr. Lu took over the third devil’s sacrifice, opened it, and was suddenly disgusted by the blood gas coming from his face: “Mom, eyeball!”

“It should be the crazy lady’s eyeball, her right eye had only a bloody hole, which could manipulate the shadows. When I first went down…” Qi Leren simply said what happened in the basement again. Of course, he skipped over the seed, only saying that he killed the crazy lady, and he didn’t mention a word of the laptop and the Easter Egg, but told of the moving doll.

“It seems that Mrs. Sarah really was crazy, and that Nina, she was quite loyal to Mrs. Sarah…” Dr. Lu said with emotion. “Oh, the injury on your head looks a bit miserable. Do you want me to treat it for you?”

Qi Leren touched his head that had stopped bleeding: “Forget it, no dizziness or nausea, it’s nothing serious.”

“There shouldn’t be a concussion, then,” Dr. Lu said.

“Let’s go and see where Nan Lu went,” Qi Leren said. He walked out of the kitchen with Dr. Lu and headed for the direction of the hall.

“Bong-bong-bong-bong-” The four bells rang, and the castle quickly changed decades with the bells, becoming old and dilapidated, and the wooden board under his feet became crisp, making a creaking sound when walking on it, and the beautiful sculptures and ornaments around them were covered with a thick layer of ash, with traces of burning.

“The boss has been solved now, can we go back? But why is there no system prompt?” Dr. Lu asked.

“The task prompt is for us to leave the castle. We haven’t left yet, so we haven’t completed the task,” Qi Leren guessed.

“Oh, that makes sense… look Qi Leren!” Just then, Dr. Lu’s flashlight shone on the position of the door, and the thick door that had disappeared unexpectedly appeared again!

“Can we go out?” Qi Leren also was surprised.

“It really is a simple task.” Dr. Lu said excitedly, and the two people walked quickly to the wooden door.

Rhythmic footsteps came from far behind, like the sound of shoes stepping on the floor and the crisp sound of a walking stick beating rhythmically on the ground.

The two people looked back at the same time: on the curved stairs, someone holding a delicate candlestick in one hand and a cane in the other hand came down from the stairs.

In the dim candlelight, dressed in an English-style three-piece suit, the gentlemen smiled at them: “Good evening. We meet again.”

In the ruined castle, he suddenly appeared like a light, illuminating this dead danger zone.

“Su He?!” Qi Leren and Dr. Lu called out the name of the person with a single voice.

Su He smiled and nodded to them, and said gently: "Seeing that the name of the investigation task is ‘Castle Cry’, I also specially changed to a costume that matches the name of the task. I didn’t expect it to be superfluous.”

“Is there a bug in this task?” Dr. Lu immediately realized why Su He was here. It must be because this task, like the Novice Village, was abnormal.

A bug? Qi Leren’s heart suddenly beat faster. What could be called a bug here…

It was in his inventory.

Su He nodded with a smile and walked down the stairs with the cane. Under the light of the candles, the perfectly handsome him appeared like a vampire who had just woken up in the dark night, elegant and calm, and powerful. He stood in front of the two men and looked at Qi Leren without a trace. The cool and gentle voice sounded in the dark, just like a violin playing on a moonlit night: “If it is convenient, I want to talk with the two of you, alone.”