Chapter 111 Old Campus: "Is he inside the boss's body?"...
"The bold get rich, the timid starve. Even a ghost would crawl out." Fang Tailai's eyes were bloodshot as he rubbed his throbbing head, his voice filled with a chilling resentment.
She was halfway through her sentence when her eyes suddenly shifted, landing intently on Deng Dayun's knife: "You want to commit suicide?...I have experience, I'll help you?"
She rolled up her sleeves, revealing self-inflicted knife marks on her forearms. These injuries were easily healed with healing potions, and were most likely scars left in the real world before she got involved in the game.
Just now you were trying to persuade him not to commit suicide? Deng Dayun hesitated, her mental state was not good, she was still talking nonsense.
Fang Tailai seemed to have drifted off for a moment, but quickly pulled himself back to the point: "Their plan was to trigger the boss battle. Now that the boss has successfully emerged from its cocoon, isn't this a steady progress?"
"...But who can defeat Him?" Deng Dayun swallowed hard in fear just mentioning the monster.
"Like a mantis trying to stop a chariot, unless Red Rose rises from the dead to become a cannon, and we have a defensive superpowered protector, we might have a chance. Otherwise, it could crush us with a single wing." Fang Tailai looked at Deng Dayun's blank face, his thumb and forefinger touching and then separating. "...Open your mind. Have you ever watched a science fiction movie? No matter how ferocious a mechanical giant is, if you destroy its power core, it will be rendered useless on the spot—the boss has emerged from his cocoon, but did you see him emerge from the cocoon?"
Xue Chao didn't emerge from the cocoon? Then he… Deng Dayun felt his idea was too crazy: "He's inside the boss's body?"
Fang Tailai, who was lying on the ground, weakly raised his thumb, then seemed to freeze up and lay there in a daze, muttering to himself softly.
"[Deng Dayun] is inside the boss's body?? Alive or dead? Sheng Hong is also inside the boss's body!"
"【Deng Dayun】What a brilliant form of psychological victory...I'll study it like crazy, hoping to use it when I'm about to die..."
"【Fang Tailai】She wasn't telling the truth, was she? If Xue Chao's survival was just her guess, how do you explain her amnesia?"
"【Fang Tailai】Which part of the butterfly is my brother? I'm saying goodbye to him :("
"What if Fang Tailai's organ that fell off was actually his?"
"【Fang Tailai】maybe it's in the film."
How does Fang Tailai hide people on film?
"【Deng Dayun】The boss was always in the film before, with butterfly patterns and eye spots. Everyone guessed wrong at first, but it became clear later. Besides, the film is what the camera spews out. Isn't the three units just the camera switching back and forth between the inside and outside worlds?"
"【Fang Tailai】Yes, he even climbed over the film reel pipe and inside the corpses in the morgue."
"【Deng Dayun】Aren't these film rolls currently passing right through the inside of the corpse...?"
"【Fang Tailai】Holy crap, inside that boss's torso... Xue Chao is inside the film tube?"
"【Deng Dayun】But he's dead. Even if he was inside, he was assimilated into the boss, wasn't he?"
"【Fang Tailai】...Does anyone remember what Fang Tailai's special ability is?"
"【Fang Tailai】Substitute Doll? In Xue Chao's dream, he jumped off the building for her again, but the perspective was quite strange, different from before, it felt like looking up."
The person who died was not Xue Chao, but a stand-in for Fang Tailai.
Her special ability, "Substitute Doll," allows her to transform into anyone and become that person's substitute until the time limit expires, she is killed, or she actively retracts it.
As the original body, she can temporarily transfer her consciousness to the doll, which will reduce her stamina and sanity. When her consciousness is transferred, the camera can also follow, but it will reduce her sanity even more.
The doll can travel through places that are difficult for ordinary people to reach on their own, and it also reduces the sanity value.
Once she activates her superpowers, she rarely has full stamina or sanity.
If the doll were to become someone else, her control would weaken, and the person being replaced would definitely sense it, while also consuming her physical strength and sanity—it would be entirely detrimental. She had never used it this way before, and she kept it tightly hidden, afraid of being exploited.
When she first gained her superpowers, she disliked them, never expecting that one day she would actually use them.
Xue Chao used a camera to film the scene of the doll dying in her place. At that moment, she activated her supernatural power a second time, allowing the doll to be collected into the film.
At the time, she didn't expect what would happen next; she just didn't want to miss any information and was afraid that their methods would ultimately fail.
The doll awakens from her dream within the cocoon and feels expelled. She gathers intelligence on campus and sees Xue Chao in the distance, who is filming corpses everywhere with a camera.
She carefully avoided him and approached the rooftop where the sense of alienation was strongest, but saw nothing. She remembered Xue Chao mentioning that players could not coexist with their characters.
Where she couldn't see, stood the character "Fang Tailai".
With Minmin nowhere around and people dying everywhere, "Fang Tailai" is on the rooftop; he can only possibly jump.
She immediately took the elevator downstairs. She knew the landing point all too well. When the dissipated sense of repulsion reappeared, she immediately "covered" it, striking the exact same contorted pose—the doll had already jumped over it once, it practically had muscle memory.
The camera position was also moved to the doll's side, so the events that happened in the dream within the cocoon would definitely increase the contribution points even more.
She didn't know if Xue Chao had seen her. Although she was far away, he could see both the player and the character at the same time, so he should have been able to spot her.
Soon the doll was caught in the film again—Xue Chao took the picture from the rooftop.
My sanity dropped too quickly, and my consciousness returned to my body to rest. When I went back, I saw a girl with a Polaroid head walking into the classroom in a pile of film. As she was talking, tears almost soaked the frame in which she was.
What followed was a series of tumultuous events. She hid behind the film, afraid to move or look, yet forced to open her ears and pay attention to the terrifying developments.
She wanted to hide away forever, even until the end of time, but Xue Chao was going to die.
The film rewinds, and she rushes towards Xue Chao in terror, but Xue Chao's eyes are burning with cold fire, as if he wants to cause a great upheaval even in death, venting his last breath of frustration on the boss.
But that look only lasted a moment; he locked onto her instantly, as if he had a cheat code.
His gaze remained cold, but the flame of revenge had been extinguished, replaced by a cold calm, as if he had made a decision in an instant. Suddenly, he drew a gleaming scalpel and brought it to his own neck—Fang Tailai had caught up with Xue Chao's chilling line of thought in a flash. He felt he was about to die, so he simply cut off Shan Die's head and gave it to her, hoping to save as many people as possible!
In an instant, she made a decision. The doll reached out from the film, grabbed his knife-wielding hand, and forcefully pulled him into the film. She then stepped out and became him, taking the fatal wound for him.
Fang Tailai lay down on the ground for a while, finally recovering a little bit of her "stamina bar," a "great" leap from a trace to a small segment. Half-dead, she gestured to Deng Dayun to lead the way: "He has almost emptied the surrounding area. We can't stay in this building anymore. Let's get out of here."
She didn't take the doll back because she had given Xue Chao her last chance to stand in for her. So she mustered her last bit of energy and turned the camera to the doll's corpse, making it a mobile camera. Maybe she could catch a glimpse of Xue Chao?
Xue Chao stood inside the film tube, surrounded by a tangled web of film tubes. In the vast, empty world of flesh and blood, he looked like a bunch of raffia tangled together.
The pipes were not stationary; they flowed slowly forward like a conveyor belt. From the depths of the distance came a muffled drumbeat, which vibrated the pipes in response.
He looked and saw several streaks of red peeking through the layers of film, like red wine that had been illuminated—this was the boss's heart!
The head and heart have always been considered fatal locations, but the head doesn't seem to be a boss's weakness. So far, the two bosses he's seen whose necks were snapped by the ghostly thing only stopped them in their tracks; they didn't actually die.
Jiang Ming reached for her heart. If it wasn't due to a psychopath's perverse hobby, then her heart was her weakness. Moreover, all the film rolls avoided the heart area, creating a vacuum around it, making it even more suspicious.
Even the closest roll of film to his heart was a long way off; without sunflower roots, he couldn't piece it together, and even if he went over, he couldn't reach it.
Ranged attack-type abilities are indeed appealing.
...Forget it, there's no point in thinking about it. He doesn't even have any superpowers; it's just embarrassing for him. (Host :))
The light grew closer and brighter. After a moment of contemplation, Xue Chao ran inside and, after a brief exposure, found himself in his dormitory on campus.
It's the sixth floor where the girls live.
He was at the entrance of room 624, the door was closed, and several girls were checking their phones while making the paper needed to summon the spirit.
He swapped places with Fang Tailai's stand-in doll, and this roll of film contains the story of "Fang Tailai".
"Is it going to be haunted again...?" Xue Chao listened to them chanting "Ouija board" in unison through the door, and his head throbbed with pain.
This time, however, he didn't open the door, but it creaked open by itself, as if it hadn't been locked properly. He took a step back, and all the girls' heads turned to him.
What followed was a familiar pattern. Xue Chao discovered that as long as he reached the next plot point first, the plot would jump directly. He ran through several dormitories and then quickly ran down the stairs. In less than a few minutes, the plot of this film reel was completed.
Then, he was exposed back in the film tube of the flesh-and-blood world, the same distance from the bright exit ahead and the heart in the distance as when he first woke up.
He ran into the light again, and the same thing happened again. He tried to make changes and deviate from the plot, but the plot would get stuck. For example, he had to scare them at the door. Otherwise, even if he explored the whole building and returned to 624, they would still be waiting for the answer from the Ouija board.
Back in the film tube, he made a cut and observed the images flowing from other film rolls, locking onto a familiar face. One of the film rolls most deeply entangled with Fang Tailai's was Minmin's.
He moved forward to a place where many rolls of film were tangled together. He waited for the right moment, cut the film, and crawled into the sensitive roll. All the rolls of film converged towards the light. He ran in, but this time it was different. He sat in the corner of the rooftop.
On the other side of the rooftop corner, "Fang Tailai" and Minmin were eating takeout and chatting. They talked about the recent disappearances of people and a lot of other gossip.
They had a lot to talk about, but Xue Chao was pressed for time and had a heavy workload, so he got up and left the rooftop. The two girls acted as if they didn't see him—he had no role in this story, so they didn't need him; the story would unfold automatically.
Once she stepped off the rooftop, Minmin went to class and rested. After quickly skipping over that, she went to the story club to discuss a new supernatural theme, "The Seven Ghost Stories of the Campus," with the president and members.
Because it was a nighttime visit, all the doors were locked. Some places required getting keys from the person in charge, such as the art club, video club, and broadcasting room. Minmin saw Bai Bai in the video club and asked her for a key.
Xue Chao frowned. Why did he feel that the timeline and location were all messed up?
A compilation of all dreams? But it seems so abrupt to see it here.
He originally thought that the person hiding behind the story was "Xue Chao", but behind the story of "Xue Chao" there was also a "Bai Bai".
How could he be as good at hiding as she was? Where else has she appeared?
Xue Chao took the camera down, and people ignored him, but he could still touch the objects.
The battery was a normal battery, but when I turned on the camera, I was stunned. The scene was a distorted campus, almost a ruin. Other rolls of film kept passing by in front of the lens, and there was a corner of a morpho butterfly flapping its wings.
The perspective shifts rapidly, rising and falling – the perspective of a butterfly in flight.
He realized that the flesh and blood world was the part where the film entered the boss's body, the exposure was the exit from the boss's body, and entering the story meant that as the film rotated, his location moved to the outside of the boss's body—the boss had broken free of his cocoon, and the outside of his body was the current instance world!
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