Chapter 25 A Horrifying Experience: The Isolated Island Prison
Ghosts can blend into the crowd, and people can be more like ghosts than ghosts. There is no reason for a city without guilt to exist in a prison full of criminals.
The police officer was taken aback by Wu Wangwang's answer, then laughed and said, "If you use that scale, then everyone could have a weight. After all, not breaking the law doesn't mean you haven't done anything wrong. Abusing cats and dogs isn't illegal, but on that scale, it's a sin. Such a crime can't lessen your sins at all."
In other words, this city of innocence is defined according to legal standards; as long as one does not cross the line to imprisonment, one is considered innocent.
Wu Wangwang was immediately disappointed. She thought she could get a great deal, but she didn't expect that the instance had already thought of this problem in advance and prevented players from taking advantage of this loophole.
The police station canteen provides prisoners with three meals a day, and they eat with the police officers, but players will have to figure out most of the rest on their own. The police won't provide any further assistance, such as money.
Before leaving, Wu Wangwang tentatively asked the people in the city why they were constantly tearing apart those monsters.
The police officer was silent for a moment, then said, "Those monsters are the reason this city exists. As for the rest, you'll have to figure it out yourself. Actually, we don't know much about it either."
It seems that the city has been established for quite some time, and the new police officers are unaware of the specifics, but have long been accustomed to this pattern of behavior.
As Wu Wangwang left the police station, she saw a child carrying a knife, slicing a monster to pieces without blinking. Staples from the monster flew to Wu Wangwang's feet, still covered in dark red flesh and blood.
After the child finished cutting, he continued walking, seemingly in a hurry to get to school.
The cleaner drove over in a rocking horse and collected the monster's corpse, not even letting go of the tiny bits that fell at Wu Wangwang's feet.
The rocking horse had a huge carriage with a glass panel at the back, covered in congealed blood, but you could still see the flesh and blood struggling and writhing inside. It seemed that after collecting the flesh and blood, the rocking horse would also dump it in the old town.
Watching the rocking horse disappear into the distance, Wu Wangwang suddenly realized that the malice and crimes of the people in the city had never actually disappeared, but had simply become legal—killing monsters was no longer illegal, and no matter how angry or how much evil people wanted to do, they could force themselves not to confront people, but instead vent their anger on the unkillable monsters.
It's interesting that the definition of a criminal can be perfectly circumvented by relying on the scope of the law.
In order to obtain new criminals under such circumstances, in addition to capturing prisoners who may commit crimes in the city, there is another way—to prove that the monster is human and make the person who killed the monster guilty.
Simply put, it means finding the origin of the monsters, how they came to be, where they came from, and whether they are intelligent beings. We need to redefine the monsters.
The other prisoners left the police station one after another, not knowing where they were going. They all recognized Wu Wangwang, the most conspicuous person among this group of prisoners, and couldn't help but take a second look at her as they passed by.
After they all left, Wu Wangwang prepared to continue walking towards the city center, where the tallest building in the entire City of Innocence was located, and she wanted to see the details.
It looked close, but the road was quite long. Wu Wangwang walked until the afternoon before getting close to the building. There were almost no monsters to be seen here, and people moved around freely. It looked no different from the normal world outside.
After wandering around and not finding anything unusual, Wu Wangwang continued walking. She remembered that the city had eight gates, and since there was nothing special about the city, she decided to locate the eight gates.
As darkness fell and the streetlights came on, the monsters crawled around, but unlike during the day, no one casually chopped them up and threw them away.
Monsters would rush towards Wu Wangwang, but they didn't choose to attack. Instead, they would carefully examine Wu Wangwang, look at her for a while, and then leave.
The City of Innocence was unusually quiet at night. Even the lit-up apartment buildings were devoid of any signs of life, as if people had tacitly agreed not to make any noise at night to disturb the monster's movements.
Wu Wangwang didn't encounter any other prisoners along the way, wondering how they managed to get through it. She kept moving around, and taking advantage of the warden's absence, she quickly ran through several gates and discovered a few unusual places before dawn.
I returned to Gate 4 right on time and waited for it to open at 8:30.
Not many prisoners chose Gate 4 today. Ling Yuanshan arrived on time, and he seemed to be in good spirits. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Wu Wangwang waiting for him.
The other prisoners continued to disperse, having found a new hiding place today.
“I’ve discovered something,” Wu Wangwang hurriedly told Ling Yuanshan, “The monsters are different kinds. Last night I ran through four gates and noticed that the monsters behind each gate were different. I guess there are a total of eight kinds of monsters on the island.”
However, Wu Wangwang had not yet examined the other four gates, so he could not deduce what the other four types of monsters looked like.
Ling Yuanshan frowned: "So many? What are the specific differences?"
Wu Wangwang thought for a moment and said, "Let me explain based on the location of the doors. Last night, I walked diagonally. Door number four is a kind of hard monster. You can think of it as... a corpse that has rigor mortis and is close to a mummified state."
"A mummified corpse?" Ling Yuanshan glanced at the nearby remains. "They don't look very dry; there's still blood."
"So I say it's close to, but not completely mummified. To create this state of a corpse, you need to be close to low temperature and high pressure. Humidity and temperature are also very important. Unless it's a specific situation, the corpse will be completely dehydrated or gigantic." Wu Wangwang continued to talk.
After she finished speaking, Ling Yuanshan asked quietly, "How do you know so much?"
Even though Ling Yuanshan had seen many dead people in the dungeon, it was still difficult for him to fully understand this kind of knowledge that belonged to the forensic profession. But wasn't Wu Wangwang a high school student?
Why does she understand this?
What kind of person did they bring back to their family?
Wu Wangwang was startled at first, then remembered the novel she had seen at Hua Jiao's house. Hua Jiao had many pen names, each writing different articles. She hid the truth in an account that specialized in writing suspense and supernatural stories. The results weren't very good, but the writing was quite sophisticated.
So Wu Wangwang said, "Because I often read novels, I am based on the descriptions in the novels I have read."
Ling Yuanshan thought of the various novels that circulated in his class during high school: "Oh, those? I didn't like reading them. I often lived in fear of death and didn't want my free time to be immersed in terror."
Wu Wangwang didn't want to continue this topic, so she went on to talk about the situation of the other three doors.
The City of Innocence has eight gates located in eight directions, arranged counter-clockwise. Gate number eight is directly opposite gate number four. Wu Wangwang tried to walk in a straight line to see it. The corpses on that side were relatively damp.
"The body at Gate 8 looks like it died in a damp place. What's accumulated on the ground isn't blood, but bodily fluid. The body needs to swell up and blister, and when you break those blister fluids, that's bodily fluid. You can think of it as the fluid that comes out when someone is scalded or burned. The two situations are similar." Wu Wangwang tried to describe it in language that Ling Yuanshan could understand.
Fortunately, Ling Yuanshan was smart enough to understand: "So, the ground at Gate 8 is just like the flesh and blood at Gate 2, covered in corpse fluid?"
Wu Wangwang nodded: "Yes, at first I thought it was a burst water pipe, but when I got closer I realized it wasn't. Later I went to Gate 1 and Gate 5. The monsters at Gate 1 were very strange. I felt that their heads, limbs and bodies didn't match up, and their numbers had increased. Gate 5 had a lot of metal, and I picked up these things."
When she arrived, Wu Wangwang was holding something in her hand. Now she opened her palm, and inside were some strange, bloodstained metals, the purpose of which was unclear.
Ling Yuanshan flipped something in Wu Wangwang's palm, picked up something that looked like a nail, and said, "This is a bone nail."
"How do you know?" Wu Wangwang recognized the nail; that one didn't look like it.
“I once missed a step on the stairs and fell into the game, fracturing my leg and ribs. I had these bone screws put in. Later, because of the game, I didn’t have any aftereffects, and all the screws were removed.” Ling Yuanshan said as he swept all the metal parts onto the ground.
Wu Wangwang didn't stop them. She understood what Ling Yuanshan meant. If these things were applied to bones, then the body must have been pieced together and it would be very dirty.
Ling Yuanshan looked down at the metal on the ground for a while, then suddenly asked, "Do you think... the metallic clanging sound I heard last night could have come from this thing?"
The two fell silent. There were also many monsters running around in the prison at night. They were constantly killing these monsters in the City of Innocence, so why were they allowed to wander around in the prison?
"Maybe so. And I noticed that I ran around the city all night, and these monsters didn't attack me. So I think I must find the source of the monsters." Wu Wangwang also briefly explained the rules for catching criminals to Ling Yuanshan.
After hearing the news Wu Wangwang had received, Ling Yuanshan's expression became even more somber. The conditions for clearing this dungeon were too demanding. As a seasoned player, it was rare for him to still be unsure of how to clear it, and he felt completely uncertain.
Ling Yuanshan sighed: "Let's take it one step at a time. Let me tell you about what happened yesterday. The task I was assigned yesterday afternoon was to make leather. Do you know what kind of leather we used?"
Wu Wangwang picked the species with the largest number on the island: "Monster?"
“Yes,” Ling Yuanshan said, his face showing barely concealed disgust, “They were monsters. Besides the four you just mentioned, I saw two more. One was the one you saw in District 21 at night; its limbs were elongated, as if it had no bones, and its fingernails looked like they had been pulled out. And there was another one…”
After waiting for Ling Yuanshan's reply for a long time, Wu Wangwang looked up curiously and asked, "What about the other one?"
Ling Yuanshan raised his hand and gestured, unsure of what to say: "Let me draw it."
After saying that, Ling Yuanshan found a stone nearby, squatted down and drew. Soon, a human-shaped object appeared on the ground, but with three heads. Assuming that the top head was the "head", the other two heads were located at the right hand and left leg respectively.
The right foot is placed where the left hand should be, and the left hand is placed where the right leg should be. The whole body looks like it was pieced together haphazardly; even a deformed fetus wouldn't grow up like this.
Wu Wangwang stared in silence for a moment; this thing was even more abstract than the Japanese devils she had sculpted.
Ling Yuanshan stopped drawing after finishing one and stood up, saying, "This is just one of the more representative ones. There are other ways of piecing things together. It feels like people just randomly pieced things together when they were being made."
"I feel like I'm not very knowledgeable. Would such a thing appear in a human prison?" Wu Wangwang wondered. She considered herself to know humans quite well, but she couldn't seem to find any such things in her memories.
“What are you thinking? Of course, such a thing wouldn’t appear in a human prison, and it would be openly allowed to be handled by prisoners. So I suspect that this copy cannot get out through normal means at all,” Ling Yuanshan said with certainty.
Wu Wangwang was stunned: "Huh? Why?"
Seeing Wu Wangwang's bewildered expression, Ling Yuanshan had no choice but to explain: "Think about it, such things are not allowed to exist in the normal human world. So the monsters that appear on the island are secrets that absolutely cannot be discovered. How could a prisoner who knows the secret have any chance of getting out alive? If the prisoner gets out, wouldn't that be the same as leaking the secret?"
Wu Wangwang understood: "Oh! No wonder they sent us to an innocent city to find criminals. They didn't want the prisoners to have a chance to get out, but letting the prisoners in could help kill monsters to some extent. It's a win-win situation."
Ling Yuanshan nodded slightly: "That's right, since that's the case, the conventional method won't work anymore, we need to find another way..."
Wu Wangwang thought for a moment and said, "But our standard for passing through is release without charge. The determination of whether a crime is added or reduced is entirely in the hands of the warden, isn't it?"
The warden is the judge of this instance; she wields absolute power, and her words represent the rules of the instance.
Ling Yuanshan pondered for a long time: "Let's not think about things that far ahead for now. The most important thing for each instance is the death rules and the conditions for passing the instance. Now we know that the condition for passing the instance is release from prison after serving time, so we should look for the death rules now. Will prisoners who have been sentenced to death die in prison? If so, what are the standards for death?"
Considering that Wu Wangwang didn't understand many things, Ling Yuanshan said that he was trying to sneak into the area where the warden was tonight. At the same time, he asked Wu Wangwang to look for clues in the official units of the City of Innocence. If he couldn't find them, it didn't matter. His safety was the priority.
“I have no problem with that, but how did you get to the warden’s side?” Wu Wangwang asked, puzzled.
Ling Yuanshan replied, "Yesterday, the reward I asked for was to see where the warden works. He'll take me there during evening class tonight. If I discover any secrets that lead to my death, I'll have to come find you."
The red threads on their hands were life-saving devices, which allowed them to take risks without fear.
Wu Wangwang told him to be careful, and then they parted ways. She planned to check out the other entrances first, to figure out the types of monsters and find their birthplaces.
Strangely enough, monsters keep appearing in the City of Innocence, but to this day, Wu Wangwang still doesn't know where these monsters come from. It's as if they appear out of thin air, are killed, and pile up in the old city.
There were few people in the old town, just dilapidated houses and corpses. Wu Wangwang saw that some houses had their doors wide open, so she went in to take a look. She even found some paper and pens, which she used to record information that could be used.
After walking around the entire city wall of the City of Innocence, it was already the second day. However, Wu Wangwang had identified all the types of monsters and recorded them. Finally, she walked from Gate 5 to Gate 4. The city was too big, and it took her a lot of time. It was already 10 a.m., and she hoped she could make it in time.
Before she could leave the area of Gate 5, she suddenly felt the red thread on her hand tighten. The next second, Ling Yuanshan suddenly appeared beside her and fell to the ground with a thud.
Wu Wangwang was stunned for a moment, then quickly went over to check on Ling Yuanshan's condition.
Ling Yuanshan's eyes were closed, and he was still breathing, but he had fallen into a deep sleep and was in great pain.
There was no one around. Wu Wangwang looked around and simply found an empty house nearby, carried Ling Yuanshan over, and placed him on the somewhat dirty bed.
I can't worry about that now; the most important thing is to stay alive.
The house had long since lost all signs of human activity; it was either rusty or moldy, and even the bed was on the verge of collapse. Wu Wangwang even tried the faucets in the kitchen and bathroom, but neither of them could produce water. Clearly, the old town had been abandoned for a long time.
With Ling Yuanshan here, Wu Wangwang couldn't go anywhere else to continue searching for clues, so she simply pulled up a stool that she could still stand on and sat down, waiting for Ling Yuanshan to wake up so she could ask him what had happened.
Time passed slowly, and in the afternoon, Ling Yuanshan gradually woke up. He saw Wu Wangwang sitting blankly beside him and immediately breathed a sigh of relief: "She's not dead yet..."
Wu Wangwang moved her eyes, walked to the bedside and squatted down: "Are you alright? How did you suddenly die?"
Ling Yuanshan clutched his chest and coughed twice: "I was attacked by players. Ordinary NPCs can't hurt me at all. They have items and are planning to capture me to reduce my sentence."
Upon hearing this, Wu Wangwang was stunned: "It seems they are planning to take a shortcut."
Once you arrive in the City of Innocence, you can learn from the police about two ways to reduce the sentences of criminals. If you can't find any criminals in the City of Innocence, you can arrest prisoners to reduce their sentences.
If we're talking about the most serious crime, it has to be Ling Yuanshan. No wonder he was attacked while waiting for Wu Wangwang to come over.
"Didn't you try to explain the situation to them? Even if prisoners keep arresting each other, they won't be released after serving their full sentences. The crimes of the arrested criminals can only be reduced proportionally, not offset," Wu Wangwang asked.
Ling Yuanshan slowly sat up: "I told them, but it was no use. They seem to have found some clues in the City of Innocence. They are very determined and it doesn't make any sense. I asked them why, but they didn't answer me."
Since things had come to this, they decided not to go out and planned to find clues obtained by other players first.
Wu Wangwang helped Ling Yuanshan up: "By the way, did you make any new discoveries yesterday?"
Ling Yuanshan nodded: "Yes, the job I was assigned yesterday afternoon was animal feeding, but it's strange, what those animals eat is... monsters. Regardless of the size of the animals or whether they eat meat, they all consume a certain amount of monster flesh and blood."
After listening to Ling Yuanshan's explanation, Wu Wangwang took out a small notebook she had brought and showed it to him: "The feeding you mentioned should be this."
The notebook records all the monster types in the dungeon. After removing the six types they had already discovered, there are two more: a monster with plants growing on its body and a humanoid monster with animal features.
After reviewing all the monster types, Ling Yuanshan was utterly astonished: "Could it be... that everything fed in the prison eventually turns into a monster? And then these monsters are sent to the City of Innocence? Why?"
Wu Wangwang shrugged: "I don't know. To be honest, we still don't know where the monsters came from or where the corpse oil came from. I think it's unlikely that these monsters could produce so much corpse oil in their current state."
"Why?" Ling Yuanshan didn't understand.
"Because living people grow fat, and monsters get extremely thin and emaciated from dying repeatedly, dehydrated and stripped of their oil, so it's hard to render lard from them," Wu Wangwang analyzed, based on the original owner's family's experience in rendering lard.
Ling Yuanshan had no concept of oil refining at all, and he believed whatever Wu Wangwang said, since Wu Wangwang spoke with great confidence.
They had found relatively little information in the past two days. Other players, perhaps more experienced, had gathered more information than Wu Wangwang. After much hesitation, Ling Yuanshan decided not to go out either, but instead take Wu Wangwang with him to find clues, teaching her step by step.
Anyway, learning more won't hurt. Once you've been through the Night of Return of the Soul, you'll be constantly dying, like you're being chased by the Grim Reaper, running around desperately just to survive the next time.
Ling Yuanshan told Wu Wangwang about his decision and asked her for directions.
Wu Wangwang had no objection. She didn't understand many human habits, so it would be more convenient to bring her along. Besides, Ling Yuanshan had a lot of props, so she didn't need to expose her own abilities.
It was still early, so Ling Yuanshan went out for a while and decided to go to the police station in the City of Innocence first.
"Police station? What would you do there?" Wu Wangwang asked, puzzled. "The police station closes down later. I've observed that no one is allowed in at night; they lock all the doors and windows."
“Retaining talent is troublesome. Remember, in the dungeon, all the doors exist only to allow players to enter.” Ling Yuanshan’s words were startling.
Wu Wangwang's expression suddenly dawned on her: "Oh! I've learned something!"
There were hardly any people in the old town of the City of Innocence. It was afternoon, and the prisoners who wanted to go back had already left. They didn't encounter anyone at all and made their way into the city before dark.
Next, Wu Wangwang will need to lead the way, as Ling Yuanshan has never been here before.
Near each gate there is a police station, which is specifically for receiving prisoners. Wu Wangwang took the small path directly there. When she arrived at the back gate of the police station, it was completely dark. There wasn't even a street lamp here, and it was pitch black.
"This is it. Just walk straight from each gate. Once you enter the city, you'll encounter a police station that will explain the rules to us," Wu Wangwang explained softly.
Ling Yuanshan nodded, went to the door, checked the doorknob, and said, "This one is locked from the inside, so it's not easy to get in. Let's go to the front door. By the way, are there security cameras?"
Wu Wangwang nodded: "Yes, otherwise why would I have brought you to the back door? The surveillance cameras at the back door were taken down by the monster last night and haven't been replaced yet."
After listening, Ling Yuanshan fell silent for a moment: "...If we destroy the surveillance cameras, won't our crimes be added to the list?"
"You're worried about that? That's easy." Wu Wangwang took out a pair of red scissors, aimed them at the lock, and smashed them hard. The sharp scissors directly pierced the lock tongue, and the door creaked open.
"..." Ling Yuanshan stared in disbelief. "No, if you smash it open like this, how are we going to put it back together when we leave? We'll still get caught."
Wu Wangwang waved her hand and said directly, "It's okay. You can just blame it on me and say that I did it. After all, I'm a prisoner who wants to accumulate more crimes on myself, the more the merrier."
So what if she's been blamed for a few things? She could take the blame for a hundred or more.
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Author's Note: [End of Chapter]
Wu Wangwang: What are you afraid of? We're prisoners, so let's be open and honest!
Ling Yuanshan: ?
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Under Ling Yuanshan's tutelage, the Ghost Mother's human code of conduct clearly had a slight flaw [starry-eyed emoji].
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Thank you for watching, and I hope you enjoyed the article.
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