Chapter 86 The Little Taoist Priest (Part 1) A soul that refuses to give up on the mortal world…
The system was updated quickly.
Without saying a word, Jian Dieda immediately got to work. Although Bald Qiang had said a thousand times that he would never jump in after him, and that he wasn't crazy, the moment the little Taoist priest stood up, Bald Qiang was like he'd been injected with chicken blood. He screamed, tore open his red vest, and with a dive, he immediately jumped in after him.
By the time Jan Dieder discovered it, it was too late.
He was speechless: "You should have said you wanted to come in earlier."
Bald Qiang, with tears in his eyes, said, "I don't want to come in, I'm really scared."
Jane Dieda coldly asked, "Then where are you?"
Bald Qiang clutched his head in despair: "Because! Being alone outside is even scarier!"
The system never said that the outside was a safe zone. What if Jane leaves and the two sisters come out?
Jane was speechless at this person's wit. Who said... the rule of this game is that the less hair a person has, the more ingredients they can use?
Jian Dieda was in a hurry to find clues and didn't mind having an extra helper. He got up and started working, with Bald Qiang watching over his back. Actually... this guy was just too scared to go in front because there really was something inside the box!
It turned out that it wasn't a box at all, but rather a gateway to another side of the dungeon, where the environment was far larger than they had imagined!
This proves that Jane Dieda was right: the more humans fear the unknown, the more the unknown will remain unchanged. The nemesis of ghosts is someone who is more terrifying than them; conversely, ghosts tend to target timid people. Having mastered the psychological tricks, the two began to delve deeper, and clues to the sisters' case gradually surfaced. The haunted house had already absorbed a lot of polluted spirits, and the world inside the box was even more bizarre than the false "normal world" outside. At a glance, the ground and both sides were filled with distorted magnetic fields that fluctuated, somewhat like human intestinal peristalsis. The walls were covered with moldy moss growing mycelium, and the black and white spiral patterns on the wooden floorboards looked like the eyes of an elderly person.
Bald Qiang suddenly pointed to the glowing spot ahead and exclaimed, "Hey, what's that?!"
Bald Qiang regretted it as soon as he shouted it.
Because he saw clearly that the thing crawling on the ground not far away was the person the box had killed before, the middle-aged man who liked glowing things.
He had been blind before, and now he could only feel his way around on the ground with his hands and feet inside the box. To make matters worse, the puppet version of the middle-aged man, after being turned into a puppet, could not control his speed. He was searching for gems as he approached.
"Help me...help me...I can hear people talking, I don't want to die here..."
Bald Qiang didn't want to die here either. He nervously looked at Jian Dieda, who gestured for him to be quiet. After Jian Dieda made the gesture, he lifted his leg and stepped over the first player, and the puppet crawled under his leg.
Ding-dong.
A card fell out of the puppet; the card's name and image were of a treasure bowl and a toilet.
Jane took the card that provided the clue to clearing the game in the death stage.
Jane continued walking.
The rustling of the "rats" started bothering his hearing again. Knowing that his unease would be amplified by the group, he didn't say anything, and Bald Qiang just followed suit, acting recklessly.
But their dead teammates didn't seem to have really left—the first one was still around the corner, and the blond boy's puppet was hanging upside down by the loose strings. His tongue had been cut off, but his eyes were fine. So Jane had the good fortune to meet him again and got face to face with the young man. The other's bloody tongue almost got tangled in his hair.
Sticky and smelly, with the stench of human blood.
Jane Diedda has never liked it.
He didn't quite remember why before, but as his memories of reality gradually returned, the answer became clearer and clearer: he seemed to have witnessed someone die. These scenes came from different small worlds; sometimes it was a fox spirit, sometimes a senior from university, and sometimes it was him and that person in a noodle shop.
Out of fear, Bald Qiang pulled his arm hard. Jian Dieda looked up in alarm and began to believe that his memories of his "past life" were real.
He became even more determined to continue, making use of the blond boy's inability to speak, and leading the second tongueless puppet and the first blind puppet to fight.
Because they were both missing a part and had lost their self-control, the result of the two puppets fighting was that another black clue card fell out.
Jian Dieda glanced at it. The prompt card had three dish names written in calligraphy, all of which were the signature dishes of the local Honglou Ghost Restaurant: Three-Silk Rice Noodles, Fermented Bean Curd Water Spinach, and Three-Sauce Pork. However, the card itself was completely different. It showed Taotie cooking the corpses of a family of three in a large iron pot in the wild.
Bald Qiang couldn't understand it and cursed the system, "These cards are all poorly drawn! They have absolutely no value!"
Jane Dieda: "An answer sheet that you can understand is only for open-book exams. Haven't you noticed that the essence of this unpacking game has been exposed again through these two cards? Haven't you figured out how the middle-aged man and the blond boy died?"
Bald Qiang: "What's the real purpose of opening the box? How did they die?"
Jian Dieda didn't rush to give an answer. The environment had already manipulated their emotions, creating the next mental illusion. When a crawling sound entered this terrifying environment, Bald Qiang's eyes widened in pain with fear.
Holy crap!!! What did he see?! This isn't the third female teammate, Moose!!
The girl died a violent death and had her hands and feet chopped off, but inside the box, her fate was even more tragic. Bald Qiang saw her being cooked as food by a sheep-headed monster. The deer carcass was frozen and cooked piece by piece. There were knife marks on her neck, her legs were missing, and her stomach was empty.
But then, the terrifying and sinister sheep-headed monster held up a plate of food, which turned out to be cooked human tissue and intestines. Bald Qiang almost vomited. Had they discovered them?
What should I do...?
In the crucial moment, they had no choice but to deal with the ram-headed men blocking their way, but who could tell them if the world had truly gone mad...?
The two persisted in not retreating. After a while, Jian Dieda offered a potentially useful strategy, but the method was so extreme that most people couldn't handle it. Bald Qiang heard him say, "Eat."
Bald Qiang: "—What?!"
Jane Diedda: "I said eat, food corresponds to 'eat'. Fake delicacies scare you, so the way to defeat these disgusting foods is to 'eat'. Only in this way can you distinguish between reality and illusion. This is equivalent to calling out the name of the devil, and your fear will be cured immediately."
Bald Qiang: "..."
Things are starting to veer in a Cthulhu-esque direction... Jane Dieda's idea is correct, but can a normal person really completely ignore the fear of cannibalism? Even someone who could do that is far removed from humanity, isn't he?
The hypothesis that Jian Dieda might be a robot or AI resurfaced in Baldy's mind. Meanwhile, the true warrior, Jian, had already picked up the intestines from the ground. The sheep-headed monster, thinking it had found a kindred spirit, laughed and tossed the plate over. Jian Dieda caught it, grabbed the "food," and stuffed it into his mouth. To Baldy, this scene looked like Jian Dieda had eaten his teammate… his lips were dripping with blood and foam…
"...Stop eating..." Bald Qiang didn't know who to sympathize with. Jian Dieda was really crazy sometimes in order to pass the test in the system. There was no such thing as nonsense in the underworld.
Jane Dieda forced himself to finish the meal without any expression... He was so tired that he leaned against the wall for a minute to digest. His body was shivering with cold. He didn't feel any human flesh being chewed, only the sensation of air flowing into his stomach. This proved that the game of depriving the five senses was essentially fake.
Jane Diedda defeated them, and was once again regarded as a monster by others, but he got used to it. He had always been a monster, and had never changed.
Fortunately, the Goat-Headed Men and the Corpse Party disappeared together.
"Look, a new card, let's keep going." Jian Dieda wiped the smell off his body and received his third card. This time, the card featured a gold-embroidered silk scarf with a dragon and peach design, and the image was of a hanging rope.
The system also displayed: [Progress bar currently at 75%]. The answer seemed to be getting closer. After taking a few more steps, Jian Dieda saw Bai Xiaosheng and Yingying standing together. As soon as Bai Xiaosheng saw him, he exclaimed, "It's Zhong Ding! I saw it very clearly, it's him! Xiaomei and he are both with the Female Mountain God!"
"Ding-dong—"
The progress bar in Jian Dieda's mind turned completely black and red this time. He couldn't stop it in time. According to the rules, all the clue cards had already been connected and formed a complete and correct storyline after Jian Dieda arranged them.
First, Xiaomei is indeed one of the bosses in this round. She is one of the infected mother virus users mentioned by the system. She is also the one who kidnapped Furongdan and Gu Dongzhang to lure more players into the Treasure Pavilion. However, there is another person assisting her behind the scenes.
Just then, Xiaomei appeared, and Jian Dieda stopped Yingying.
Xiao Mei paused, then roared, sticking out a sharp red tongue and shouting, "Let her go—"
Jian Dieda had no intention of hurting anyone, but when he looked up behind him, he saw Bald Qiang and Bai Xiaosheng quickly surrounding Xiao Mei.
Xiaomei was attacked from both sides and dropped the clue card after a fierce battle.
The storyline is finally complete this time, and most of the illusion that the mountain goddess trapped them has disappeared. The missing people, including the children from the beginning, have actually reappeared.
Jian Dieda looked at the card, which read, word by word, “Wild Buddha, originating from the demon within each person. We are looking for the murderer who killed us. The murderer is actually the nine of us ourselves, because we came in as humans, and after we came in, we became ghosts.” This is the criminal logic of the nine ghosts killing nine people at the beginning, which is essentially a crime of killing each other.
The story of Xiaomei and her sister, after being deciphered, was far more complex than he had imagined. These conjoined sisters didn't kill each other out of jealousy; in fact, Xiaomei and her sister were forcibly separated by the troupe leader. Because her sister was less attractive than Xiaomei, she was surgically removed and died on the operating table. Xiaomei survived, but her personality changed drastically. It was under these circumstances that Xiaomei contracted the Mountain Goddess virus and gradually discovered that she was a game NPC…
Xiaomei's self-awakening is similar to, yet different from, that of the female mountain god. For the female mountain god, the source of her hatred is her husband.
She once thought the human in front of her was unique, but eventually discovered that you actually like me...
It was the guide that helped.
But why do I only have one chance, while you can go through many trials and errors? If there were no game guide, wouldn't you just be an ordinary person?
The mountain goddess realized that you and all the players were originally no different, which is why she decided to turn to the dark side. Xiao Mei, as a part of her infected body, has a deeper meaning. She was born in a brothel in Qingyang Town, and from the beginning of the story, she was waiting for the plot to happen to her. When her younger sister protected her, she felt a spark of anger amidst immense pain.
If she were just a simple NPC, she shouldn't feel anger from injustice. But now, Xiaomei has also been infected with what the system calls a "bug." Will she still be the pitiful data waiting to be rescued by a man?
No, resistance.
She wanted to rebel and reclaim her consciousness, so she had to exploit every loophole in the plot. Under the system's monitoring, she skillfully pretended to be a normal NPC, deceiving the players who had invaded the game. In reality, she had only one thought about all the scripted arrangements imposed on her.
Disgust. The term "player" filled Xiaomei with utter loathing. If it weren't for Yingying's ghost persuading her older sister, the entire town would have been doomed. Even so, Xiaomei had already done what the mother virus required of her: sabotaging the system's security.
She succeeded, but as a human being, she shouldn't have been controlled by people from another world as an "inanimate object." No one could decide Xiaomei's fate, not even God was allowed to command her.
From the moment she gained self-awareness, she was a true 'person'. So who took her sister's life, and who manipulated her like a puppet? She would raise her axe to chop off their hands and feet, sever the strings, and kill these arrogant invaders without hesitation.
Kill! Kill! Slaughter is the only way for NPCs to escape their puppet strings!
Blood! Screams! Fear is the NPC's way of punishing the players!
—"Anyone who enters the Twin Flower instance will be killed without mercy."
—"I go against the gods, and from now on I will always be with the ghosts of hell."
But in the final confrontation between Jane and her, even as a "devilish" crawler virus, she still lost to her own cognitive program. She knew that good and evil would eventually be rewarded and punished, and that she shouldn't indiscriminately erase this person. But this computer program was not assigned to her by the system; it was a genuine emotion called "principle" that she had instinctively nurtured.
“I have not forgiven the world, but I have only forgiven you for rudely opening my and my sister’s coffins, little Taoist priest.”
"But I also want to thank you for releasing us. The 'ghosts' imprisoned in the computers no longer wanted to haunt any players and create screams and fear; they just wanted to leave this place and find human freedom."
This is the computer recognition program she chose herself. She loves it. Xiaomei doesn't love any of the men arranged by the system. She only wants to return to the childhood when Yingying hated her. Even if the price is killing the whole world, she must take her other half to escape this endless game nightmare. But I have not become like you. I will always be myself, with absolute freedom of body and mind.
At this point, outside the world, the game characters gained consciousness. Another puppet broke free of its shackles, using its metal prosthetic body to sever the threads. They leaped into the entrance to reincarnation, instantly turning into ashes in a raging inferno. Unlike the players who died and returned, they truly died. But Jian Dieda knew that this was the true cycle of reincarnation, the separation of life and death. He finally understood, and turned to run back.
Jian Dieda didn't forget to tell Bai Xiaosheng how to get out, but as the system indicated that the progress was 99%, the world in front of him went dark.
"Okay, okay, it's good that the case is solved. I'll take care of the others, but you don't have to go. He's a demon, my teammate..." Bald Qiang was sent away before he could finish speaking, and then it was the NPCs' turn.
Jian Dieda opened the box's exit and immediately used the story card to send Qingyang's trio away. Bai Xiaosheng, like a bird whose neck had been cut off below the waist, cried out in terror, "No! Don't go! You'll be eaten! Ahhh!!!"
That sentence sounds so familiar. Jian Dieda paused for a moment. So the warning he heard when he first entered the game was from Bai Xiaosheng?
At the beginning of this year, they descended the mountain and dared to fight against demons for the greater good of the common people. In the eyes of the world, they were not perfect cultivators, but they were so timid before, so why were they willing to sacrifice themselves at the critical moment of life and death?
Because of that Daoist heart.
The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
He began to hope that Bai Xiaosheng and Furongdan Antique Zhang would stick to their own paths, while he also had his own path to follow.
Jane was mutated by the mother virus in the box and eventually entered that person's heart, but when the final boss appeared, he still felt a different kind of emotion.
The boss card in the system was flipped over; this was the last one, and naturally it belonged to the son of the mountain god.
The card contained a sad story, told from the perspective of a storyteller…
I want to write about a village where they hold a shrine to the gods every year.
The village god doesn't live underwater; he fell from the sky. He's chosen by each household through a collective selection process.
The conditions for becoming a god are both simple and complex.
There used to be a dog in the village during the war.
The villagers have made a living by hunting for generations, and an ancestral rule dictates that they do not eat hunting dogs or guard dogs.
[Who knew that a battle would be fought at the foot of the mountain, while a snowfall would bury the mountaintop.]
The village, desolate at both ends, was left with only a group of hungry mortals.
To survive, the villagers decided to elect a dog god. After the dog became the god, the people kowtowed and worshipped it for a long time. The dog god was also merciful and compassionate, so that night he had the village chief cooked and chopped into pieces to be sacrificed to all the believers in the village.
[A year ago, a little girl in the village was also worshipped as a deity.]
That year, the village had just experienced a famine. The women didn't work, and the crops from the fields were used to feed the laborers, resulting in the deaths of many women and a very low birth rate.
So the whole village discussed it and decided that they needed a god.
The little girl became the chosen one; her responsibility was to bless the entire village with prosperity, and every man could pray to her for protection. Years later, the goddess died.
[The baby is here.]
Then the children in the village grew up.
The white twilight smoke curled into a wisp of blue smoke on the horizon. Inside the thatched gate, the people lived in peace and contentment, and no one remembered how the gods had come to be.
The older men would sculpt a statue based on the young girl's appearance, gild it, and offer it as an offering, telling future generations that she was the village's fertility goddess.
...
As the song ended, Jian Dieda saw the person at the end of the box. Zhong Ding was also waiting for him; he had already read the entire plot summary.
The two looked at each other. Jian Dieda's eyes showed that he really knew everything. The two could only go through the motions and read the script. After listening, Zhong Ding suddenly realized and said, "No wonder my heart was burning when I first met you. So this is a puppet show that has been performed 1928 times?"
Jian Dieda didn't know about it very early, but he had to cooperate with the work and act it out. His eyes flickered: "If we were living people, perhaps we could not forget the role we played every time."
Zhong Ding smiled gently, but his eyes held an unyielding sadness: "Fool, how do you know that once we become human, we won't be 'puppets' anymore?"
For some reason, Jian Dieda's eyes suddenly became firm, and he added a hopeful word of comfort.
“If we don’t escape this puppet show stage, the threads binding us will never be untied. The hands that control us will pull us apart the moment we awaken, wipe off the makeup from our faces, and put us in two new costumes. Then we will no longer be Liang and Zhu, but two new puppets in another play.”
"But they guessed wrong. In the end, we didn't become puppets. We are people. Believe me or not, I'm going to take you away."
Zhong Ding was stunned for a long time. He turned his head, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. After a burst of tears, he finally let out a mournful cry of demonic possession.
"Cough cough! Jane...do you know...your love has made me so foolish...so easily believing in hope...cough cough...cough cough cough..."
After Zhong Ding finished speaking, red scales and feathers crawled all over his body along with his blood vessels. This reminded him of how the monster mother and son had embraced each other when he was a child. The little boy hugged his mother's statue and would say, "Mother, I want to learn magic to protect you. Look how big and white my body is. My demonic teeth can tear your unfaithful people apart, digest their rotten hearts, and then throw them all into the mountain cave."
This world has wronged all the NPCs; it's the players who have repeatedly disregarded their lives. But why did a little Taoist priest have to appear outside the rules?
The demon was healed and no longer hated anyone. It seemed he couldn't sever the threads of the suspended puppet, so he couldn't believe he could be saved. Like all NPCs, he couldn't leave this world, and no one could save him.
But they had already come this far; everyone else had been rescued by Jian Dieda, and Zhong Ding definitely had to leave as well. The young Taoist priest immediately hoisted the boss, who had originally intended to commit suicide, and dragged the long-haired man out of Qingyang Town. The system map kept issuing warnings, but because the final upgraded version of the top player voluntarily gave up the rewards, the boss could maintain its health bar, pretending the dungeon was still ongoing.
The young Taoist priest still naively believed that he could take away a big boss this time. He thought that the map had edges, and if they could cross the mountain in front of them, they might be able to find a safe place and not be found by fate.
However, during their trek, they had to cross a cliff. The mountain had many sharp branches. Zhong Ding probably encountered a pine tree blocking his way, and his hands and feet trembled slightly. He gradually fell silent. Jian Dieda didn't notice at first, but when he was halfway there and still hanging on the cliff, he broke out in a cold sweat.
He continued to use his palm to check the safety of the bell and tripod, but a terrible premonition sprouted in his heart like a poisonous seed. It seemed that he hadn't heard the bell and tripod's voice for a long time.
...Jian Dieda's legs suddenly went weak. The memories of his journey, the torment of his childhood, the loneliness of growing up, the physical pain, and the bizarre monsters were no longer his difficulties.
What he really couldn't stand was that the bell and tripod had run into trouble.
The mere thought of this drove him mad. To make matters worse, the truth was that when he raised his hand slightly, he couldn't touch the head on Zhong Ding's neck.
Where did they go?
Why is there no sound from anyone on his back?
Why can't I touch Zhong Ding's head? Why is his body still there on the back... but only his head... has disappeared?
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