Chapter 69 The old campus is like a tortoise.
The canned cola piled up and piled up until it all fell out at the outlet and rolled all over the ground.
Because of the pile of cola earlier, the head fell down, landing at exactly the same height as Xue Chao's face. Xue Chao coldly examined it, his gaze circling twice around the clean cut of the head, before exhaling: "...Just as I expected."
Xue Chao didn't see Minmin's head directly; he only saw her ID photo on the head of the student ID. It was obviously unrealistic to check every facial feature based on the heavily edited picture he had seen a few times. He could only observe the reactions of the other organs in secret.
Organs are frozen in formaldehyde; even the slightest movement will cause ripples. The challenge is to broaden your field of vision and take in as many organs as possible.
However, although it is difficult to distinguish the organs individually, he remembers the overall appearance. If too many organs are replaced, the appearance will change too much and become too obvious.
He sewed while observing, thinking that if he made a mistake, he could just take it apart again. Fortunately, only one pair of eyes was not original.
He personally removed the head, but the body was standing right in front of him. He couldn't very well strip the girl naked to look at her; otherwise, he would fail in his mission and incur the ghost's wrath... Once he confirmed that the figure and characteristics were correct, that was that.
If he spelled it wrong, he would just say it was wrong. At the time, he thought that if he didn't, he could just turn around and run away.
He took this job out of the blue; from beginning to end, he kept thinking, "It's no big deal." You could call him an optimist.
He had considered the possibility of sewing the wrong organ, and that Minmin might mutate or take action because of it, but he never expected that the wrong organ would be the one belonging to the girl with the red rose head.
And it wasn't the eyes... When he saw the future "Deng Dayun's" severed head, he finally realized it was the neck.
The neck incision of "Deng Dayun" is consistent with the "head-body separation" technique used in organ factories, clean and efficient like a slaughterhouse, indicating that "Deng Dayun" may have later been involved in organ trafficking and died as a result.
However, the locations of the cuts are inconsistent. Although the cut on "Deng Dayun's" neck is neat, the inside is twisted and still has some adhesions. The cut is in the middle of his neck. He broke his neck on the 13th step first, and then the murderer stabbed him again.
However, in the organ production line, the heads are all cut off close to the base, while the necks remain intact.
If the corpse he sewn was "Deng Dayun", he would quickly be able to tell whether they were the same set when the upper and lower halves of the neck were put together.
But Minmin's was different; her head was pressed against her sloping neck, which was two different sizes, and her hair blocked the view, making it difficult to observe.
And surprisingly, the size fits quite well.
There are hardly any individual necks on the assembly line. Apart from the "works" he saw in Minmin's eyes, most of them are connected to the upper shoulders, trying to capture the original, beautiful curves. This made him subconsciously treat the neck and upper torso as a whole when observing Minmin's figure.
Minmin's neck is like that of a young girl with a red rose head.
Those brown eyes were hers too. No wonder he felt those eyes recognized him, but he couldn't remember what she looked like. She was the protagonist of a later episode, and he hadn't seen her face yet.
She kept staring at him, as if she were observing her prey. She must have been holding back her laughter. While he was busy doing nothing, she didn't even let out a laugh until he was engulfed in flames.
Xue Chao went through all the details of the girl with the red rose head again. The divine weapon exchanged its lifespan for the freedom to use its superpowers ahead of time, even if its popularity and contribution did not meet the standards.
This is yet another "cost".
But how does this "lifespan depletion" work, and how is it determined by causality? Does using lifespan once deduct ten years? Who knows how many years a person originally had? Is there an expiration date written on their lifespan from the moment they are born? If there is no full lifespan, how can it be deducted?
So it's not a simple program, but a change in the body's own functions. The superpower is born from the player's body and is integrated into the flesh and mind. It can also be considered an invisible "organ". Forcibly activating it will inevitably increase the burden on the body, accelerate cell aging... and may even destroy the mind. That girl's mental state is quite "beautiful".
Therefore, divine weapons are like fuel, and superpowers are like fires that are forcibly ignited.
In the future timeline, the girl with the red rose hair is a victim of an organ harvesting incident, and her "corpse" is scattered in various places along the organ production line.
Even more futuristic than the unit that follows her is "her" corpse.
She sewed her own corpse's neck onto Minmin's body.
Then, he "ignites" his future self's corpse to activate his superpowers.
...like wielding a weapon, it was done without hesitation.
She attacked Pu Fengchun intentionally. First, she pretended that Pu Fengchun was still the main target. Second, and most importantly, she wanted to injure someone in front of everyone—this would make it easier to trigger the fifth ghost story, "The Abandoned Hospital."
She already knew about her character's important storyline, and was also familiar with the storyline of this unit and the other players. She was already planning in the classroom—despite her enthusiastic demeanor, she acted with remarkable composure.
This includes being monitored by NPCs due to out-of-character behavior (OOC) – players are already in a role-playing situation, so if there are different versions of the same character at different times, they cannot appear at the same time. For example, Deng Dayun is the same; she cannot be in the same room as her own corpse, which further reduces the possibility of thinking about her.
Just like criminals deliberately arouse the suspicion of the police, they then use the police's comprehensive surveillance to create an alibi.
She herself couldn't sew it, she probably couldn't even see another version of herself... so it could only be that someone else did the "handicraft" for her, and their skills were excellent.
NPCs are out of the question, as they'd easily break character. So, it's the players. Pu Fengchun is also a target, and Deng Dayun has a spot, always under Xue Chao's watchful eye... Only Jiang Ming remains.
Tsk... Here we go again, that bastard.
Xue Chao looked at the cold-shrouded vending machine glass. His clothes were burned and torn to shreds. This kind of "avant-garde" style could only be seen on beggars under overpasses or on top luxury fashion shows.
His clothes were burned away, and then his skin and flesh were burned. When Xue Chao crawled into the film, there were burn marks on his back and limbs. The ashes stung and burned. He looked so disheveled that he felt like he would be carried into the ICU at any moment.
He smashed the vending machine with a fire hammer, and heads poured out along with the piles of canned cola. Xue Chao stepped on one of them, ignoring the annoying howling of the heads. He unscrewed a bottle of ice water, poured it on his arm, and quickly washed it while grimacing.
The pain he was only now realizing was excruciating; his heart and lungs felt as if they had been burned in a coal stove, causing him to cough repeatedly. His body was wracked with agony, yet for a moment he felt quite miraculous, that after experiencing the torment of a dungeon, his pain receptors had become wise enough to delay their onset… He didn’t care about any of that at the time. Even though he was burning with pain, his mind was on a clear path. It was as if all “distractions” like whether it hurt or whether he would fall to his death had been cut off. At that moment, his entire being was following only one command: “Get there.”
His physical abilities were indeed stronger than before. After all, he was more agile when he ran through the "fire ring" than when he was running around in Giant Port. Like gaining experience points in a game, his "physical ability" value had increased. But what was even more outrageous was his mental strength. His consciousness had been tempered by the previous dungeon where it had fallen apart into a mess, and it had reached an unknown and bizarre level.
How dare he say he's mentally sound in front of an NPC?
Xue Chao grabbed "Deng Dayun's" head and locked it in another prop he had bought earlier, a "cat cage," which could trap ghosts for a period of time. However, since it could only trap ghosts the size of the cage, the price was relatively cheap. Then he headed straight for the classroom where Deng Dayun was.
Roots could hang corpses in the first unit, and they could linger longer in the firelight of the cake than petals, but he was already nearing his limit as he swung through the sea of fire. So he decided to give his old friend one last easy job in his career: tie one end of the cage to the cage and throw the other end into the classroom window facing the corridor. He went in, grabbed Roots, and wedged the cage into the window so that the two Deng Dayuns wouldn't appear in the same frame.
The moment he stepped inside, he felt disgusted. He had seen the scene beforehand: concrete walls, wooden tables and chairs, a blackboard and a podium, and a bunch of people with membrane-like eyes and fleshy lips crammed together, their gazes filled with malice, darting around, their lips uttering vile words, calling out all sorts of nasty things like "freak," "idiot," "shit-cream coward," and more often, he was called by "meat worm," "bedbug," "centipede," and other such "exclusive nicknames," accompanied by a chorus of "Eliminate the five poisons! Eliminate the pests!" filled with indignation and fervor.
Originally, it was just empty talk, but when Xue Chao entered this floor, those words had turned into real black water, splashing onto Deng Dayun's school uniform and body. When they landed on the fabric and skin, they automatically formed corresponding words, like stamping a black seal. When Xue Chao took a few steps over, his mouth, which was shouting things like "flesh worms," actually spat out palm-sized centipedes, which writhed terribly with their hundred legs, and sprinkled them on Deng Dayun as if they were free.
Xue Chao grabbed Deng Dayun by the back of the neck, yanked him away, and yelled in his ear, "Are you fucking dead? Don't you know how to hide?"
Deng Dayun was dragged away like a puppet, his overly long bangs swept to one side, revealing a hideous scar on the side of his face... like a fleshy centipede.
The wound was inflicted by a piece of metal from a corpse's hand while he was in the mortuary.
Xue Chao instantly understood that was the turning point in Deng Dayun's emotions, after which the campus began to degenerate, and they were able to climb into the victim's "organ world" in a logical way.
A piece of iron... a dark blue piece of iron, the same color as a can of cola.
He remembered that frame by frame of the film tube showed "Deng Dayun" being cornered and bullied, and the delinquent students demanding money to buy cigarettes and water. So there was no money in the wallet in front of the vending machine, and the few coins left were only used by the bullies to buy soda. Therefore, no matter what Xue Chao ordered, only Coke would fall out in the end.
The cola probably wasn't used for drinking in the end, but rather became a scar on the face of a living person, which wouldn't congeal even after death, and would continue to drip blood, like a brand on the soul.
Xue Chao tightened the rope around his wrist again, preparing to pull the cage in and take Deng Dayun out, but found that Deng Dayun was trembling, his eyes, which were always lowered and seemed closed, were widened in fear and numbness.
...He was really scared.
Xue Chao suddenly realized something was wrong; Deng Dayun's situation was more serious than he had imagined!
Jiang Ming can control his emotions and waver whenever he wants, so he is not a reference point. He thought that Deng Dayun and Pu Fengchun were similar, touched by similar painful experiences. That moment of wavering gave "truth" a chance to take advantage of the situation, and the memories began to collapse.
Once they realized what was happening, their top priority was to avoid danger and complete the mission as quickly as possible.
But Deng Dayun wasn't just momentarily distracted; he was completely caught up in it. Xue Chao thought he didn't know what to do and could only try to maintain his persona while waiting for an opportunity!
Pu Fengchun was shaken because she saw the corpses of "Jiang Ming's" parents and was reminded of her teacher's tragic death. This was not very relevant to the storyline of the character "Pu Fengchun," so she quickly detached herself from it.
Deng Dayun's experience is likely to closely match the character's; he doesn't need any resonators now, he *is* "Deng Dayun".
Black water and centipedes were constantly being spat out. Xue Chao was having a hard time dodging them, and it was even more difficult to hold onto a wooden stake. In the end, he used too much force, and Deng Dayun's trouser leg was maliciously bitten by the ground's lips, causing him to fall straight down.
Just as the centipede was about to be thrown into Xue Chao's hand, Xue Chao did not dodge but instead grabbed it.
They had already caught him, but as Deng Dayun leaned back, his gaze fell on the wall behind Xue Chao. Six lips formed an irregular triangle, with an eye crookedly circled inside, scrutinizing him from above.
Deng Dayun suddenly "came back to life," excitedly pushed Xue Chao's hand away, and fell face down onto the ground with his lips on the ground.
The back of the shirt was lifted up, revealing a back covered in old scars, irregular hexagonal pieces, carved out one by one.
Their eyes darted around excitedly, their lips chuckled, and the insults grew louder, urging him, this worm, to "crawl away," but Deng Dayun lay motionless like a coffin lid.
Xue Chao impatiently bent down, ready to grab the man and leave, when someone suddenly uttered a witty "turtle son." Deng Dayun seemed to be activated by the keyword, jerking violently, his head and neck tilting back high, veins bulging, his features congested and red, his expression blank, his limbs flailing and sliding, leaving only his torso on the ground, inching forward little by little.
Like a turtle.
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