Chapter 11 Welcome Party (XI)
Mu Yu's breathing suddenly froze.
...In one night, he witnessed with his own eyes a boy in the audience being bitten to death by an NPC, and saw with his own eyes a friend he had not yet gotten to know rolling down from the audience with his head and feet separated.
He thought those ways of dying were cruel and bloody enough.
...until now.
It was not until the body of the crew-headed boy was squeezed and unfolded like an object, and displayed in front of them in an absurd and grotesque way, that he suddenly realized——
They have yet to see the cruel and arrogant side of this copy.
The water flow continued to rush downwards, and soon the water tank was almost full. Finally, there was another splash, and a mobile phone was spit out from the void and slowly sank to the bottom of the tank.
After that, the water flow slowed down, dripped twice, and stopped completely.
The water level in the tank is just a little bit away from the top.
Dead silence.
Mu Yu and Lu Chongnian froze in place, motionless.
The air seemed to be sucked out, and for a moment they couldn't even hear each other breathing.
...Lu Chongnian was the first to speak.
"Mu Yu." He whispered his name.
Mu Yu's fingertips trembled.
He clenched his hands tightly and took a deep breath.
Move and think.
"...There is only one body." He turned his eyes, looked left and right, and said in a hoarse voice.
Lu Zhongnian nodded and carefully observed the entire room: "Maybe the other person just finished the graded copy and has returned to the big copy, but it is also possible-"
The body of another person is currently hidden somewhere in this prop area.
The two walked forward together in tacit understanding.
They carefully walked around the debris on the ground and walked deeper into the room with caution.
Apart from the debris on the ground and the water tanks, everything else seemed to be the same as when they searched before.
The room was in the shape of a Chinese character "凸", and the water tank was blocking the entrance to the even narrower space in front of the Chinese character "凸". It was about ten meters long and three or four meters wide, leaving only a gap of a finger's width between it and the walls on both sides, making it impossible for people to pass through.
When they came here before, Mu Yu and Lu Chongnian could only take a peek at the deepest part through the water tank, and it was the same now.
Mu Yu tried his best to avoid the body of the flat-headed man in the water tank.
In the dark corner of the narrow space behind the water tank, there were several desks. The things piled on the desks were even messier than the floor of the room. There was nothing visible to the naked eye that could be suspected of being a monster generator.
but--
Lu Zhongnian pointed out sharply: "There seem to be more sticky notes on that wall than before."
"Really?" Mu Yu immediately narrowed his eyes and looked in the direction Lu Chongnian pointed.
Lu Chongnian was pointing at the wall at the end of the room.
There were already a lot of papers and sticky notes pinned on that wall, and now the number of sticky notes seemed to have increased a little.
There were some writing and drawing on the sticky notes, which looked a bit like prop design drawings, but at this distance, they couldn't really see clearly what was written on them.
Mu Yu pondered and said, "It seems that the clues to each graded copy are all at the back of the room. I wonder if this water tank can be broken?"
He touched the wall of the water tank and felt it was very thick.
There are a lot of handy props on the ground, but before touching these things, they must first find another very important thing - rules.
Rules for the prop area.
They had already walked around for a long time, but not only did they not find the body of the boy in the other roommate group, they didn't encounter any monsters, and they didn't even find the rules of this graded copy!
Are there no rules in the prop area?
*
Rehearsal area.
The black wall descended in an instant, and Jiang Shuyue experienced what teleportation meant.
He and Jing Qiao were originally standing very close to the starting point, but at that moment, he still felt dizzy. When he came to his senses, he had retreated about half a meter.
His heart began to beat rapidly.
Here it comes, the graded copy is here!
At this moment, their retreat was blocked and the sounds from the outside world were isolated. They pricked up their ears to listen, but for the time being, there was no strange singing coming from the dark place in the distance.
In front, under the stairs, there was a creaking sound, and a crack appeared on the left wall.
A door appeared out of nowhere, and an orange-yellow light shone through the gap in the door.
Jiang Shuyue waved nervously, motioning Jing Qiao to follow. The two of them cautiously jogged forward a few steps and first arrived in front of the KT board.
——That’s right, the landscape oil painting hanging on the wall has turned into a KT board with black text on a white background.
At the top of the KT board are the words "Precautions in the Rehearsal Area", and the three rules below are exactly the same as what Jing Qiao just said.
1. If you encounter performers rehearsing, please do not disturb them.
2. If a performer comes up to you and asks you what you thought of the performance, please answer, "Your performance was great."
3. If a performer approaches you and invites you to rehearse together, be sure to accept.
Jiang Shuyue secretly breathed a sigh of relief and glanced at the girl next to him guiltily.
I didn't lie.
Why did Mu Yu give him that look just now?
Could it be because of what Jing Qiao said about the third rule?
According to Jing Qiao, the third rule is false, and her personal experience is proof of it. However, there is no clue to prove that this rule is false. Mu Yu finds this very strange, so she suspects Jing Qiao is lying?
But it is also possible that relevant evidence exists, but the person who was in the copy at the time just happened not to discover it?
And Mu Yu and the others’ judgment on true and false rules may not be correct, right?
Jiang Shuyue felt that their solution ideas made some sense, but if the rules of this copy were so unethical, then they must be fake for no reason.
Thinking of this, he suddenly froze.
...Well, if they think about it carefully, all their experiences so far seem to indicate that "there is nothing inexplicable in the copy."
But he didn't understand why Jing Qiao lied?
Doesn't she want to live?
...I couldn't possibly tell him that the Jing Qiao next to him was not Jing Qiao, but a monster from the first rehearsal area copy.
Jiang Shuyue was so frightened by his own guess that the hairs on his arms stood up.
The girl next to him didn't notice what he was thinking at all. She kept staring into the depths and was in a very alert state.
At this moment, she whispered to Jiang Shuyue: "The singing will soon--"
The singing began.
Jing Qiao stopped talking.
...What kind of song is that?
Jiang Shuyue felt that this was simply a scene from a classic horror movie.
The singing was not as ethereal or loud as that of the singers on the stage backstage, but lingering like smoke, faint and resentful, like a woman using her carefully made fingernails to gently scratch your skin, all the way down, and wherever the fingernails moved, you would get goose bumps.
I couldn't tell what the tune was, nor were there any lyrics.
The eerie and ethereal singing voice gradually approached, like a ghost about to walk out of the darkness, and everything was almost the same as Jing Qiao had just described.
Jiang Shuyue has never been so nervous in his life.
He swallowed hard, trying to calm down, and lowered his voice to Jing Qiao: "...Don't be nervous, our target is the room below. Let's wait and see if the song stops. If it stops, we will move forward. As long as we don't break the rules, the monsters won't be able to locate us."
Jing Qiao asked hesitantly, "Can this singing stop?"
It seems that there was no such setting in the last round.
As soon as she said this, the singing in the distance suddenly stopped.
Jing Qiao: “…”
Jiang Shuyue himself: "..."
…………He just said it casually, wanting to give himself some time to think about how to answer the monster’s question later, but why did he actually stop?
The copy settings have changed? ?
Then, don't they need to worry about whether the second rule is true or false, and just rely on this method to get to the mysterious room? ?
The two did not dare to waste the opportunity and ran forward quickly.
After running three or four meters, the strange singing sounded again.
They had to brake suddenly, stop where they were, and continue to wait cautiously.
The singing lasted for half a minute, then stopped again, and they moved forward with joy!
In the darkness, the two of them ran and stopped, ran and stopped.
*
Aisle area.
At the moment the black wall descended, two bloody broken legs suddenly appeared in the middle of the aisle.
——That’s Hong Huanyu’s broken leg!
Chang Sen and Su Mingyun turned pale and suddenly became nervous, but they did not forget Mu Yu and the others' reminder - find the rules first!
The walls on both sides of the entrance to the corridor were originally pure white with nothing on them. But now, an A4 paper appeared on the right wall with the following words written on it:
“! There are no performers in the aisle area. If you see anyone performing, please turn around and leave immediately, or hide.”
The rules have not changed.
Chang Sen grabbed Su Mingyun's arm and looked around cautiously: "The host's speech outside is almost over. We have to find a place to hide first."
Su Mingyun quickly glanced around and found a problem: "Senior, I don't seem to see any extra doors or anything like that!"
The clues were most likely hidden deep in the dungeon map. There was just an extra door and a room in the rehearsal area, but when they looked around the corridor, they didn't find anything unusual.
"Maybe we should go over there and look carefully," Chang Sen listened to the interlude outside, anxiously pushing Su Mingyun aside, "Let's go, we don't have time to run over, let's hide first! The monster is about to come out, it will be too late if we don't hide now!"
The host's excited voice came from outside: "Next, let's invite the Xinlian Polytechnic Cosplay Club to bring us a stage play performance!"
Chang Sen and Su Mingyun trotted and hid behind several piled-up cardboard boxes on the right side of the aisle.
Six or seven cardboard boxes were stacked more than two meters high, more than one meter wide, and more than two meters long.
They squatted carefully beside the cardboard box.
The aisle was just behind them, and the background music of the stage play in the inner field started to sound, rumbling and making a huge noise.
The two of them breathed rapidly, huddled their bodies together, and hid in the shadow of the cardboard box, extremely nervous.
Soon, amid the clanging sounds of swords colliding in the stage play, they heard a... clicking sound.
Very weird.
Not footsteps.
Because there was another leisurely sound of footsteps accompanying it.
The patting sound was more like something wet hitting the ground at a constant speed.
Chang Sen felt something was wrong.
Did this sound appear in the last round?
But he didn't dare to look, he and Su Mingyun even held their breath.
Click.
Click.
Click.
A lazy male voice suddenly sounded in the middle of the aisle behind them, and the voice was amplified by a microphone.
"Huh? Didn't someone come in just now?"
"Hey, hey, hey—where are they hiding?"
…
Chang Sen and Su Mingyun straightened their backs and turned to look at each other.
Su Mingyun asked silently with lip language: Senior? Is this the voice of a monster?!
Chang Sen shook his head in shock.
In the last round of graded copies, he didn't hear any sound from the monsters from beginning to end.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
