Chapter 70 The Old Campus: He's now a human-shaped camera...
"【Deng Dayun】Oh, I remember now, isn't this 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'!"
"【Deng Dayun】You have a story to tell! Tell us the funny tale! Did he climb up like this back then? Who came up with that fancy trick?"
"【Deng Dayun】There's no need to use 'which one,' he's not a master, just an average host. He ran into a wall with the master and took his anger out on the newbies... I remember it was a fairy tale-themed story, something about a sports meet race, but the tortoise NPC was killed by the master, so they couldn't gather enough people for the race. The host, who was the organizer of the sports meet, was held accountable. In order to avoid being skinned alive to make new clothes for the Duchess, he coaxed the naive newbies to make up the numbers, and ended up in the ICU (doge)."
"【Deng Dayun】Ah, this coward, lying on the ground getting his turtle shell carved by another coward, he doesn't even dare to make a sound, hahahaha."
"【Deng Dayun】I think I've seen this script before... He actually did it back then, hahaha, I must say, he imitated it so well, you'd think it was a role-playing script!"
It's common knowledge that the air is thin at high altitudes, but Deng Dayun knew a little-known "truth": the air is even thinner at lower altitudes. It's not that there's actually less air, but rather that other substances are falling to the ground. From that angle, you can only see people's trouser legs. It's as if sight and sound are falling from the sky. As the saying goes, a year in the sky is a day on earth. A leaf falling from the sky becomes a forest on earth. It lightly pressed down on his back, becoming a thousand pounds, making it impossible for him to lift his head.
So the only option was to climb.
"You know what? There's a shot here." The host pointed into the air, making an equilateral triangle shape, then circled one of his eyes, looking rather neurotic. "You've seen it before, it's the All-Seeing Eye, our show's logo—lots of people are watching you, they really like you, you idiot, so why don't you say hello?"
Actually, he didn't see many people at the time. The audience inside the instance sat high in colorful mushroom-shaped seats, while the audience outside the instance only needed to see his ugly behavior through an invisible eye. All he could see was a pair of shiny black leather shoes, probably stolen, and they didn't fit. But the other person didn't seem to care, walking around and making the shoes clatter, as if they were about to do a tap dance on a track. It was a ridiculous and incongruous sight... but they looked more human than him.
The host's craftsmanship was good; the "turtle shell" was lively and well-shaped, with each piece having its own unique features, as if it were naturally grown on his back. However, because it was carved on the spot, it was covered in blood, and the patterns were no longer clear. So, a basin of cold water was poured over it to "wash" him... He wasn't cold at all; his entire back felt like it was on fire.
Excitement and shouts came from all directions, but his buzzing ears could only vaguely make out two words, something like "turtle" and "crawl." His limbs moved stiffly, aggravating one wound and causing pain all over. He crawled a few times before falling to the ground. Small stones from the track, mixed with water, churned into red mud and seeped into the cuts on his limbs and stomach.
The host was very dissatisfied and hit him with the finish line flag, deliberately targeting the injured spots. The flag hurt a lot when it hit him, and you could hear the whistling sound when it was swung. He had just gotten up when he was hit down again. The host laughed, the kind of laugh that wasn't just self-indulgence but wanted to invite everyone to join in. So everyone laughed along with him, and everyone was very happy.
"Wasn't the tortoise the ultimate winner of the tortoise and the hare race? How can you be so spineless? You can't even crawl without your dad riding on you! You little tortoise, hurry up and crawl!"
All the runners who could reach the finish line had already arrived. He had only crawled two meters from the starting point when the man rode up and sat on his back, which was covered in cuts and blood. It felt as if all the nerves in his body had been snapped, and he immediately passed out. In his last moments of consciousness, he heard boos and jeers from the crowd, along with shouts of "son of a bitch."
The man didn't let him go, and continued to ride and drag him all the way to the final stop.
The last-place finisher in the race was to be punished, but one player had fallen into a trap and unknowingly drank the NPC's poison. He died near the finish line. Deng Dayun "luckily" did not end up in last place. When he woke up, the host spat at him, laughed so hard he almost fell over, and said, "I'm your benefactor, remember me well," before walking away.
The staff were cleaning the track, but there wasn't much to clean on the track except for his blood and dirt. So, two cats, cursing and disgusted, threw him into the bushes.
The wild grass is soft, easily flattened by a single press, yet each blade is sharp and astringent, piercing his wound and drawing blood again.
He stared blankly at the sky, like a broken toy with not a single part intact. His breathing became light, and he was almost bleeding to death when his strange will to survive finally pulled him off the bustling track, forcing himself to take out the healing potion from his player backpack, which he had bought from the store earlier.
Healing potions only treat injuries sustained in the current instance of the dungeon; a large enough dose can keep you alive, but they are ineffective against old injuries.
He was timid and inexperienced, and finding a shop was a stroke of luck. He used all his points to exchange for medicine, pouring it all over his body like a madman, as if he wanted to get rid of this nightmare forever. The colorless and odorless medicine washed over his back and flowed through his limbs.
The wounds on my limbs have healed, and the abrasions on my chest and abdomen have also returned to normal, but my back still hurts.
The marks couldn't be washed off, except for the wound on my back, which hadn't healed; the bleeding had stopped, but a scar had formed.
He suddenly remembered the host's crooked smile, a smug, self-righteous, and undisguisedly malicious smile... a smile that seemed to want to see him go to hell.
"Remember me well"... This was a humiliation deliberately left for him through some means.
Those malicious eyes and noisy mouths, whether from the sports meet stands or the school classrooms, once again filled his soul, causing him to suddenly feel a kind of emotion called "anger" amidst fear and despair, like a thin firework shooting into the night and suddenly exploding.
He suddenly opened his eyes, jerked twice like a fish out of water, and scrambled to his feet in self-defense.
There were no eyes or lips around him, only a group of white sculptures, curiously surrounding him.
Deng Dayun stepped back instantly, startling the sculptures. As he moved, his neck sank, almost breaking off, momentarily making him forget the hallucinatory burning pain in his back. He looked down and saw a familiar camera hanging around his neck.
On the screen was Xue Chao, who was carrying something out of thin air as he walked through a corridor covered with facial features. The already messy floor was covered with a new string of red shoe prints, making it impossible to tell where he was going.
He immediately looked away, cold sweat beading on his forehead. He kept imagining Xue Chao himself, thus ignoring the disgusting, throbbing organs beside him. Then he realized what Xue Chao was holding—he couldn't see it, but wasn't it his head?
In the scene, Xue Chao felt the head in his arms struggling. Looking down, he saw the thing skillfully making a hideous face. He knew that Deng Dayun had woken up. He waved his hand perfunctorily, as if greeting someone from afar, and immediately threw himself back into the tunnel warfare, not knowing who he was wary of.
Deng Dayun then vaguely remembered something—he had a PTSD attack and was knocked unconscious by Xue Chao with a single palm strike!
He shuddered, the fear of being controlled by the host washing over him again. He looked around nervously, as if searching for his camera position, or perhaps wondering what kind of hell the devil would sell him off to this time. He kept repeating to himself, "Don't look at me... don't look at me!", only to find himself in a flat stairwell, with an open door on the second floor leading to a series of steps in a corridor... the 13th step of an alternate dimension!
"Don't flatter yourself." A lazy man's voice came from the camera, as if he couldn't see or guess his state. "The audience is watching me. Don't be so jumpy. Save your energy for escaping."
"【Deng Dayun】Hahaha, yes, yes, this face is just so satisfying!"
"【Deng Dayun】It's finally not just about Deng Chanding anymore. I was afraid I'd have an epiphany and become a monk halfway through watching it, sob sob!"
"【Deng Dayun】The screen is a bit small, but luckily it can be adjusted intelligently. I turned it to the maximum and locked it all to the camera area..."
"【Deng Dayun】I'm laughing too. The campus was already in ruins, and the surroundings were like a videotape with several resolutions reduced. Now it's really like a videotape... It's so atmospheric, I feel like ghosts might jump out at any moment. This eerie atmosphere is so cool!"
Before Deng Dayun could figure out what was going on, the sculptures suddenly moved, and he jumped up again. He didn't know where the bull-like strength came from, but it was probably his pitiful instinct as a player. He instantly rushed out of the second floor and started a chase in the quiet campus.
He wanted to throw away the cumbersome camera, but the pink butterfly plastic lock that had been hanging on the first floor was tightly connecting him to the camera. The lock was of very good quality; he ran and jumped around, but the camera remained motionless and very stable. When he pulled it, it immediately flashed with colorful holy light, and the exciting music of a magical girl transformation rang out, accompanied by the melodious and powerful words of "annihilate all evil forces," cutting through the night of the haunted school.
The white "evil forces" behind her seemed to have been provoked. The clanging of the plaster hitting each other grew faster and faster. The two stone legs swung like wheels of fire, chasing relentlessly and smashing several of them. Deng Dayun was struggling to escape, her face contorted with fear and the shame of being forced into a magical girl transformation overshadowing all her memories.
He finally understood.
The camera contains the vengeful spirit of his future head. If someone from another dimension possesses a camera, the screen will show the real Ninth Middle School, and the head can be precisely positioned in front of the lens... That thing is always ready to give someone a fright.
Now that the head is being held hostage in Xue Chao's arms, it's like a broadcasting bridge, allowing viewers to see what's happening on Xue Chao's side through the camera.
He's now a human-shaped camera stand.
The camera position is inherently tied to the player, showing the player's game status. If other players were used as tools for the camera, they would definitely be unhappy. But Deng Dayun was actually happy about it. Whenever he thought about a group of unseen people commenting on his thrilling experience as if it were a drama, he couldn't help but feel disgusted and terrified.
He had once genuinely resented why he was always the one marginalized, why the world could never see him. But when he got involved in the game, and in the dead of night, unable to sleep and constantly rubbing the scars on his back, he was filled with dread that this never-ending nightmare was fate's punishment for his lack of appreciation for his good fortune, as if coldly mocking him, "Okay, now everyone is watching you."
Now all he wants to do is escape, just like now. Even though the camera is on him, it's still watching someone else... He hated Xue Chao's naturally flamboyant demeanor from the first moment he saw him, but now he's gratefully thinking, "Be even more flamboyant, and steal all the attention!"
He slammed the stairwell door shut, smashed open the sculpture that had been chasing him, and a letter casually folded from a notebook fell out of the lining of his school uniform. The handwriting was as lazy and flamboyant as he was, and the cover read, "Open when you're sober."
He hesitated for a moment, but then opened it. The first three words, "Go to the studio," came into view.
*
Following the map of No. 9 Middle School in his memory, Xue Chao found the abandoned art studio.
In the early days, students had classes in the art studio, but the studio was in a bad location, squeezed into a dark corner at the far end of the first floor with poor lighting. So later they moved to the art club's activity room, which was then abandoned. It was filled with discarded drafts, old drafts and tools that teachers and students didn't want, and broken tables and chairs were also thrown there, turning it into a dark little warehouse that couples didn't even come here for dates.
The moment you open the door, you're greeted by a damp, chilly smell. The walls are a bluish-black, like an underground prison in a movie where you can only see a sliver of cold moonlight.
The tables and chairs were piled up haphazardly, blocking the doorway. The chairs upside down on the table stood up with their rust-stained legs, forming an impenetrable iron fence. Xue Chao had no choice but to part the gaps and crawl under the table.
The other half of the space, separated by tables and chairs, was covered with traces of various paints. It wasn't very tidy, with more than twenty wooden easels, but none of them held any paintings; they just sat there empty.
He found two paintings behind an easel. One was a dark, round ball, probably a butterfly, but it wasn't painted very well. The shape was strange, like it was a copy of someone's work but failed. There was a "7" written right next to the bottom right corner.
The other one is also completely black, depicting a terrifying demon burning four faceless little people to death, grinning widely.
This style of painting, with everything in black, is clearly the work of "Deng Dayun"... His studio might be a secret base where he hides from the world.
The easels are numbered; the painting on easel number 7 is probably the original work being copied.
But here's the problem: the sixth ghost story is that the old paintings in the abandoned studio would touch up their colors with paint. Some people saw that half a box of dried paint was missing, and the black hair of the person in the painting had been repainted, so black it was shiny.
The paint is still there, but the paintings are gone.
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