Zhuang Li noticed that the woman sitting on the stairwell was eager to talk, so he asked, "Why didn't the resurrection boy work?"
The woman smoked one cigarette after another, and her already cloudy eyes looked even more blurry in the smoke.
She didn't speak for a long time.
Zhuang Li waited patiently.
Xuanming, Ziwei, Xiaodao and Huangmao did not urge them either, but just stood silently in the darkness.
The only sound in the stairwell was the woman's puffs of smoke, hissing and trembling. She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out on the steps, and sneered, "Because we've tried every way to break the despair."
She pointed upwards, then around, her voice dripping with mockery. "This community has as many taskers as there are who have tried to break the despair. You're not the first to resurrect the boy, and you won't be the last. It's useless, don't waste your energy."
She lit another cigarette, took a deep drag, and said slowly, "I can tell you directly that the boy's internal organs are in Wang Xiaodan's hands. Lin Shiyu is right. The child was indeed killed by Wang Xiaodan, but the mastermind was not her, but her lover Liu Jizu, who is also Liu Yuanyuan's biological father. They want to hold a black mass to summon the devil in exchange for the devil's power. The person who inherits this power is Liu Jizu, so he needs to use the internal organs of his blood relatives as a sacrifice.
"He couldn't bear to kill his own mother, but he hated his wife, Lin Shiyu, and the son she bore him, so Liu Yuanyuan was chosen. Liu Jizu is the leader of a cult called 'Apocalypse Day.' If you knock on the door of room 2802 now and kill the woman who answers, you can find the organs in her refrigerator. Then, you can go to the police station and steal Liu Yuanyuan's body while Liu Jizu is still at get off work and too late to claim it. Then, perform a resurrection spell and bring him back to life."
The woman held a cigarette between her lips and looked at her hands. "Do you know why I'm so familiar with this procedure? Because I've done it before. There are countless others in this community who have done the same thing."
She looked at Zhuang Li, shook her head and smiled slyly: "Do you think we succeeded in the end?"
This question obviously did not require thinking or answering. If she had succeeded, she would not be trapped here, and those zombie-like taskers would have been liberated long ago.
So no one succeeded.
Not a single one...
Zhuang Li had nothing to say and could only remain silent.
The woman leaned against the railing behind her, looking at the stairs extending above her head, her eyes gradually losing focus.
She was reminiscing, and then she muttered as if in a dream: "That day, when I knocked on the door and pushed the living Liu Yuanyuan into Lin Shiyu's arms, I thought I could leave this damn place forever, hahahaha..."
The woman was smiling, but her expression was tragic. She took out her cigarette and pounded it hard on the ground, spinning the butt around as if crushing something.
The despair I felt at that moment now surged into my heart like a tide.
"Guess what Lin Shiyu said to me?" When she spoke again, her voice was hoarse.
This time, even Zhuang Li couldn't answer the question. The child had been resurrected and returned, so what else could Lin Shiyu say? If she were truly satisfied, this woman wouldn't be sitting here, smoking ferociously in a suicidal manner.
"Thank you?" Huangmao gave his answer.
Xiaodao looked up at the sky, the word "stupid" already in his mouth.
woman:"……"
"Little brother, you are very cute, but I bet that after a few reincarnations, you will lose this cuteness forever." The woman had a smile on her face, but her eyes were filled with a thick gloom.
"She told me, 'This isn't my child, it's a monster.'" The woman gritted her teeth and chuckled, "Don't underestimate a mother's intuition. Even if the skins are identical, she'll be able to tell with just a fleeting glance whether it's her child or not. She was right, it's indeed a monster, because I only resurrected Liu Yuanyuan's skin, but couldn't find his soul."
She looked up at the sky, her voice savage: "Fuck Liu Jizu, he's so vicious! He made Wang Xiaodan sacrifice Liu Yuanyuan's soul to the devil the moment she killed him. So Liu Yuanyuan's soul was devoured by the devil before the copy even started. It's gone forever, it doesn't exist anymore!"
The woman's tone grew more agitated as she spoke, her cloudy eyes radiating a blazing light, yet eerie like two will-o'-the-wisp flames: "So do you understand? This is the deadlock! If we can't find Liu Yuanyuan's soul and then stuff it into that resurrected body, Lin Shiyu won't acknowledge it as her child.
"She only wants her own child, not an empty shell. If she can't find her child, her despair will never be broken. And the child will never be found. He disappeared completely before the copy even began."
The woman gasped with laughter and said self-deprecatingly, "We've all been fooled by the Lord God! This copy can never be broken! It's been unsolvable from the beginning! Whether it's resurrecting the child, or helping Lin Shiyu kill Wang Xiaodan, Liu Jizu and her mother-in-law to avenge her, it's useless!"
"She lives forever in despair, endless despair, a despair without any hope! Even if you bring her to the outside world, give her more money than she can spend in a lifetime, help her find a new job, a new lover, a new family, she will always be trapped in the moment when Liu Yuanyuan died. Her despair -"
The woman spread her hands and said word by word, "There is no solution."
"So give up. We have thought of every method you can think of, and have even tried it over and over again. This place is a fucking tomb! It won't let us out! Fuck the Lord God! Fuck the world of despair! Fuck Liu Jizu and Wang Xiaodan! Fuck Lin Shiyu!" The woman became more and more manic as she spoke, and she began to kick the iron railings in the stairwell fiercely.
Trapped in despair and gradually drowning, she could only vent in this way.
After listening to this story, Zi Wei, Xiao Dao and Huang Mao felt as if they could not breathe.
Trying again and again, and failing again and again, they could fully imagine how these people's hopes were gradually eroded and then swallowed up by despair.
They are forever trapped in this hopeless world and become part of the despair...
"Then do we really have no other options?" Zi Wei collapsed on the steps, feeling weak all over.
Huangmao and Xiaodao couldn't help but look at Zhuang Li.
Xuan Ming also looked at Zhuang Li, silently waiting for his decision.
As the brain of the team, at this time, everyone really needs him to give a clear direction.
Zhuang Li didn't listen to anyone but pulled out a piece of talisman from his backpack and handed it to Zi Wei: "Light it and call Liu Yuanyuan's name."
This is the soul-summoning talisman that True Man Huoyun had given him before.
"Ninth-grade soul-summoning talisman?" The woman was surprised at first, then sneered: "It seems that you are very powerful. However, the stronger you are, the faster you will die here."
"What do you mean?" Zhuang Li felt that this sentence contained some danger.
The woman had lost all desire to talk. She stood up unsteadily and walked upstairs, saying something ambiguous in a mocking tone: "You'll know later."
"Stay and have a cigarette before you leave." Xuan Ming, who had remained silent all the time, suddenly spoke.
His deep voice echoed through the narrow stairwell, resonating like the sound of a bell. The woman found the sound pleasant and glanced back, her gaze instantly drawn to the box of cigars Xuan Ming handed her.
She couldn't remember how many years it had been since she'd smoked such a premium product. In this hell filled with the living dead, her only pleasure was watching the smoke spew out of her mouth, rising and transforming into various shapes in mid-air.
In these ethereal shapes, she seemed to see the outside world.
This morbid addiction made her completely lose her resistance to tobacco.
"What do you want to know?" The woman quickly walked down the stairs and took the box of cigars.
Of course she knows the principle of being lenient when taking advantage of others.
Meanwhile, Zi Wei lit the talisman, but could not summon Liu Yuanyuan's spirit. He had indeed vanished, gone forever.
Zi Wei looked at Zhuang Li and shook his head with a pale face.
Zhuang Li then looked at the woman and asked politely, "Senior, how should we address you?"
The woman lit the cigar impatiently, took a puff like a wolf, then threw her head back and let out a climax-like moan. In the midst of extreme enjoyment, she said in a gentle tone: "You can call me a smoker. They all call me that."
Smoker? He lives up to his name.
Zhuang Li curled the corners of his lips in amusement, then introduced himself and his teammates to the woman one by one.
"This is my partner." Finally, he pointed at Xuan Ming and said.
Xuan Ming pulled him into his arms and kissed his cold forehead.
After learning the truth about this world, Xuanming felt no fear in his heart, only relief that his lover was still by his side. A tomb burying a living person was indeed terrifying, but if the tomb was for two people, it would be more acceptable.
Zhuang Li felt the same relief, so he kissed Xuan Ming on the cheek in return. Their foreheads touched, silently conveying the quiet thought, "No matter where you are, as long as you're by my side, everything is fine."
Sensing this thought, the two of them hugged each other's heads and chuckled.
The tenderness between them deeply touched the smoker. In this damned place, she hadn't seen such light, such warmth, such a beautiful scene for a long time. All she felt was despair, despair, despair...
She greedily took a few puffs of her cigar, exhaled a puff of thick smoke, and squinted her eyes. "If you fail the mission, you will be trapped here forever. When the next batch of players arrive, the time of this dungeon will reset, and Liu Yuanyuan's body will fall from the roof of this building again." "When the reset occurs, all players trapped in the dungeon will fall into a coma, and when they wake up, they will face another cycle of despair. No one can rescue Liu Yuanyuan before Wang Xiaodan takes action. The setting of this dungeon was a dead end from the beginning, and you—"
She pointed at Xuanming and asserted, "I can see that you are very powerful, so you must have died first."
Zhuang Li, who had always been fearless, felt a tremor at this moment. He quietly grasped Xuan Ming's hand, concentrating his fingers with all his strength.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
