Tragically betrayed
The firelight flickered, and a thin figure slowly moved out from the corner of the maze, with his limbs twisted into strange angles, and each step was accompanied by the "clicking" sound of bones rubbing against each other.
Qi Mingxiu blew out the fire button suddenly and pulled his teammates into the shadow of the wall. In the darkness, they could only hear each other's frantic heartbeats and suppressed breathing. The fat man covered his mouth tightly, and cold sweat dripped down his fat chin.
After a moment, there was no sound.
"Are you leaving?" The servant boy's voice was trembling.
Qi Mingxiu trembled as he relit the fire—
“Huh!”
A pale face suddenly appeared before my eyes! Black blood flowed from its hollow eye sockets, its mouth was torn all the way to its ears, and rotten flesh was embedded between its exposed teeth!
“Ahhhhhhhhh!”
The three men screamed in agony, the fat man's pants were soaked in an instant, the servant boy rolled and crawled backward, and Qi Mingxiu's fire starter flew out of his hand, drawing a sharp arc in the darkness.
The moment the firelight illuminated, more twisted figures rushed in from all directions, some crawling on the ground with their limbs bent backwards, some with broken necks and heads drooping behind their backs, and the pupils of all the "puppets" were glowing with the same dark green evil light!
"run!!!"
Qi Mingxiu roared and pulled up the limp fat man. The three of them ran wildly in the maze like headless flies. Behind them was the sound of dragging footsteps like a tide, and the stench almost sprayed on the back of their necks. The corner of the servant's clothes was pulled by a dry claw. He kicked it away with a mad cry, and the soles of his shoes were stained with sticky black blood.
The maze's corridors looped back and forth like a ghost wall. Every turn brought encounters with more twisted figures, and the stench of decay, almost condensed into a substance, filled their nostrils.
"Wait! Something's wrong with this place!" The servant boy suddenly stopped and pointed at the pile of rubble in the corner, his voice distorted with fear. "We're going in circles!"
The puppets behind them were chasing them relentlessly, and they had no choice but to choose another intersection to continue running. However, as expected, they went around in circles and ended up back at the starting point again.
Despair was like ice water pouring over his head. Qi Mingxiu looked back and saw dark green pupils surging like a tide in the darkness, completely surrounding them.
"Don't come over here!" The fat man screamed and waved the fire stick, trying to scare them. However, the faint firelight made the puppets even more excited, and they rushed towards them with roars.
“Bang!”
A withered claw suddenly slapped the fire away, and darkness fell completely.
Just when the three thought they were doomed, a miracle happened -
All the puppets' movements suddenly stopped, like puppets with their strings pulled, spinning stiffly in place, their empty eye sockets looking around blankly, as if they had lost their target.
At this moment, the panicked Fatty only wanted to retrieve the flying fire stick to give himself some hope. After struggling to get it, he subconsciously re-lit it -
"Ho!" The puppets came back to life instantly and rushed forward with roars!
"Throw it away quickly!" Qi Mingxiu finally realized something, shouted loudly, and quickly knocked it away again.
The moment the fire went out, the puppet fell into confusion again.
At this point, even a fool would understand why. In the darkness, the three of them slumped on the cold ground, gasping for breath.
"I see……"
Qi Mingxiu picked up a piece of gravel and threw it hard into the distant darkness. The crisp sound of the stone hitting the wall echoed in the maze. In an instant, all the puppets rushed towards the source of the sound stiffly and swiftly as if pulled by invisible strings.
"Let's go!" The three took the opportunity to escape, leaning against the cold stone wall and gasping for breath.
"But without the tinder, how can we find the way?" The servant boy cried, his voice trembling in the darkness.
Qi Mingxiu gritted his teeth. He understood the difficulty, but he didn't have the courage to light another fire. "I can't get out anyway, so it doesn't make any difference if I don't have the fire."
The three of them supported each other and struggled forward in the darkness like blind people, their fingertips sliding across the rough stone surface, and every step was filled with unknown fear.
Suddenly, Qi Mingxiu felt a strange bump on his palm, and he subconsciously pressed it down.
“Boom!”
The stone wall slid open, revealing a staircase extending downwards. The air was filled with the aroma of aged medicine.
"It turns out the real road is hidden in the wall!" Qi Xiuming cried with joy.
"No wonder we couldn't get through before." The servant boy finally showed a long-lost smile, like a person walking in the desert welcoming sweet dew.
The two people who were immersed in joy did not notice the sneaky behavior of the fat man who fell behind the team.
At this time, Gu Nanzhi and the other two on the ground also discovered something was wrong, and followed the traces left by someone and came here.
At the end of the long corridor, a white jade counter stood quietly. A pill as big as a longan was suspended in a glass cup, with golden light flowing around it, making the surrounding candlelight pale in comparison.
"A magic pill! It's definitely a magic pill!" The servant boy's voice trembled with excitement, and he raised his foot to rush forward.
"Stop!" Qi Mingxiu suddenly grabbed him by the back of his collar, "Look carefully at the ground."
The servant boy then discovered that the entire corridor was paved with black and white jade bricks. It was clean and tidy, with an inexplicable sense of weirdness.
"The maze just now trapped us for a long time, how could we get out so easily this time?" Qi Mingxiu threw the stone he had picked up before into the white jade passage.
“Swish, swish, swish—”
The moment the rubble fell to the ground, countless silver needles suddenly shot out from the walls on both sides, densely nailing the ground!
The fat man was so scared that he sat down on the ground: "This haunted house is not really going to kill us, is it?"
Qi Mingxiu stared at the arrangement of black and white jade bricks and suddenly noticed that one out of every nine bricks was engraved with a lotus pattern. "Follow my footsteps and don't make a single mistake."
"Can you do it?"
The fat man hesitated. Ever since he saw the power of the silver needle, he didn't dare to take a step forward, for fear that he would be shot into a sieve if he took a wrong step.
Qi Xiuming ignored him and took the first step forward, his toes tapping precisely on the lotus brick. The mechanism didn't move at all. Seeing this, he took another step forward and jumped onto another lotus brick, but the mechanism still didn't move.
Seeing this, the other two dared to step forward and followed Qi Xiuming's example, stepping onto the corridor. The three of them moved forward as if walking on thin ice, approaching the elixir step by step.
Just as his fingertips were about to touch the pill—
"Bang!"
Gu Nanzhi flashed out of the secret door like a ghost, and several people stumbled in fear. Qi Mingxiu almost stepped on the wrong jade tile. He managed to steady himself and asked in surprise, "Why are you here?"
"Why are officials allowed to set fires but ordinary people are not allowed to light lamps?" Gu Nanzhi sneered and leaped into the air with a tap of his toes.
"Don't move! There's a trap!" Qi Mingxiu shouted anxiously, but it was too late -
Gu Nanzhi landed lightly on a black brick, and the brick surface sank!
“Swish, swish, swish—”
Countless silver needles shot out from the wall. The needle tips, as thin as cow hair, glowed faint blue under the candlelight. Qi Mingxiu couldn't dodge in time and was instantly pierced into a hedgehog. The tail of the needle was still trembling slightly.
Fortunately, this was just a game, and Ruan Yunsheng did not kill him. The silver needle only caused a slight stinging when it entered the body, which looked scary.
Qi Xiuming gritted his teeth and pulled out a needle, only to find the tip was covered in a strange pink powder. "What is this?"
Before he could finish his words, a piercing itch washed over his body like a tide. He scratched his arms with a distorted expression, but the more he scratched, the more itchy it became. Finally, he collapsed to the ground and rolled over laughing wildly: "Hahahaha... Help... I'm dying of it, hahaha!"
On the other hand, Gu Nanzhi had already used her experience in martial arts to dodge and avoid the needle, and she didn't get hit by a single needle while her clothes fluttered. At this moment, she was leaning against the wall with her arms folded, raising her eyebrows as if watching a play: "It's all her own fault."
"Ha, hahahaha... Gu Nanzhi you... hahahaha... plotted against me!" Qi Mingxiu rolled over while laughing, tears streaming down his face, his fingers leaving red marks on his chest.
Gu Nanzhi brushed off the corner of his clothes slowly and calmly: "It's obviously you who are stupid. The way you stepped on the mechanism looked like a turtle that couldn't turn over."
"You...hahahaha...you tomboy...ah! It's so itchy!" He suddenly curled up like a shrimp, pounding the ground with tears and laughter. "Wait until this little master detoxifies...hahahaha...I'll be the first to deal with you!"
"With your appearance?" Gu Nanzhi sneered, deliberately poking him in the waist with the scabbard of her sword. "Now kowtow to me three times, and I might consider giving you the antidote."
Qi Mingxiu burst into earth-shattering laughter, dodging and cursing, "Don't even think about it! Hahahaha... I'd rather die of itching... than beg you!"
Gu Nanzhi ignored Qi Mingxiu, who was twisted into a pretzel on the ground. Her slender fingers gently picked up the magic pill in the glass cup and spun it slowly between her fingertips: "It seems that this life-saving pill belongs to me."
"Don't even think about it!"
Qi Mingxiu suddenly pounced forward, tightly clamping his arms around her ankles. The itchiness made his voice change, "Hahahaha... If you don't give me medicine... We'll itch to death here together!"
As the two were pulling each other, the pill suddenly slipped from Gu Nanzhi's fingers, rolled to the ground with a "plop", and happened to stop at the fat man's feet.
"My medicine!" Qi Mingxiu's eyes were bloodshot.
The fat man was stomping his feet frantically to relieve the itch, and when he saw the pill rolling towards him, he subconsciously stepped back, but stepped on it.
“Crack!”
There was a crisp cracking sound, and the pill turned into a pool of powder under his feet.
The air froze instantly.
Gu Nanzhi raised her eyebrows innocently and shrugged: "It's none of my business."
Qi Mingxiu froze in place, his smile frozen on his face, his pupils trembling: "My, my magic pill... my hope of passing..."
He reached out his trembling hand to scoop up the powder, but only picked up a handful of gleaming crumbs.
The fat man was so scared that he fell to his knees, his face covered with snot and tears: "Master, I really didn't mean it. I was so itchy that I couldn't bear it anymore..."
As she spoke, she couldn't help twisting her body again, "This itching powder is so weird, hahaha..."
Suddenly a bell rang, an hour had passed, the protection time ended, and the hunting began.
The moment the bell rang, Qi Mingxiu suddenly slapped the "Golden Bell Cover" prop on his body and bounced three feet away in an instant. His movements were so smooth that there was no trace of his previous embarrassment at all.
He hurriedly reached out to the fat man and said, "Quick! Give me all the props you found!"
The fat man retreated shyly, his eyes evasive.
Gu Nanzhi folded his arms and sneered: "Don't shout, he is a 'ghost' and will not help you."
"ghost?"
Qi Mingxiu was stunned. Where did the ghost come from? Isn’t he a human?
Suddenly, he recalled Ruan Yunsheng's meaningful words before the game, and his scalp tingled, "So you... you have been theirs from the beginning!"
The fat man smiled awkwardly and moved up behind Gu Nanzhi: "Master, these are the rules of the game... Please bear with me."
"F**k you!"
Qi Mingxiu was so angry that he wanted to kick him. "No wonder you always 'accidentally' step on the trap! And 'slipped' and dropped the detoxification pill into the well!"
Gu Nanzhi added, "How else do you think we could have found the entrance to the secret room so accurately?" She shook the credence that the fat man had slipped to her. "He even tipped off where the key was hidden."
Qi Mingxiu watched in despair as the fat man took out the "detoxification pill" and "heart-protecting mirror" that should have belonged to him from his arms, and handed them to Gu Nanzhi like treasures.
You can’t play it like this. Boss Ruan, can you please remind me clearly next time?
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