SWBG - Chapter 11

The bodies of the two were discovered by Wang Meng Yuan. After finding them, he didn't contact Yao Ruo Ling immediately but went to find He Suo Wen instead.

Yao Ruo Ling currently had no time to dwell on the eagerness her rookie showed toward other veterans—one of the players who entered the instance with her had inexplicably died when she least expected it.

He Nan's expression was even uglier—both were veterans leading newcomers, but while Yao Ruo Ling had only failed one-third of her task, his side had already been completely wiped out.

He was accustomed to rookies dying, but he couldn't accept these newcomers dropping dead one after another without any discernible pattern.

Perhaps because none of the casualties so far were veteran players, He Suo Wen remained composed and calm: "I've confirmed that Mr. Wang discovered the bodies at 5:17 AM and 5:21 AM respectively. By then, Mr. Liu and Mr. Ma's bodies were already stiff."

Gu Jing Sheng thought for a moment and asked, "I recall Liu Han Ru was found in his own room?"

Wang Meng Yuan glanced at her and answered quietly, "His door and window were open, so I just peeked inside."

The baby-faced man stuffed his hands in his pockets and remarked coldly, "Seems like hiding in your own room isn't completely safe either."

He Suo Wen offered his opinion: "The game rules aren't limited to just one. Perhaps they violated different rules. Mr. Wang mentioned just now that Mr. Liu's door and window were open?"

Wang Meng Yuan's eyes suddenly lit up, as if a drowning weight spirit had spotted a lifeline, and he clung to it desperately: "Brother He, are you saying Xiao Liu had an accident because he opened the window at night?"

Gu Jing Sheng still felt something was off: "Liu Han Ru wasn't particularly brave—he didn't seem like the type to dare open a window secretly."

He Nan: "Anything can happen in an instance. Don't just apply real-life logic to it."

Since her own gaming experience was limited, Gu Jing Sheng chose to not participate in the debate and first listen to the other veterans' perspectives.

You Yi Ming, whose face hadn't fully recovered from swelling, cleared his throat and raised his hand: "Uh, I have a bit of a discovery here."

He cautiously glanced at Yao Ruo Ling first, confirming that her rage meter was still far from maxing out and beating him to death, before continuing, "Under the bedboard in my room, there's a note—maybe part of the instance's background or a clue left by previous participants. It says, 'Between blue and black is not orange.'"

This sentence closely matched the style of the three clues Old Ivan had given the players and didn't contradict any known conditions, making it highly credible.

He Nan's tone was somewhat stern: "Why didn't you mention this earlier?"

You Yi Ming wanted to smile apologetically, but his swollen facial muscles couldn't manage anything too complex: "I only found it last night."

The participants didn't dwell on when exactly the note had appeared. The current issue was—

The baby-faced man: "Since your room had a clue, others' rooms might have them too."

In the instance, all players' routines were forcibly adjusted to early-to-bed, early-to-rise types who didn't scroll through their phones before sleep. There was still plenty of time before heading to the orchard—enough for them to return to their rooms and ransack the place.

He Nan's room now only had him left, and his desire to escape the instance was the most urgent: "First, everyone should return to their own rooms to search for clues. If anything happens, shout loudly. Then regroup in front of the main house to check Cao Wan Yan, Liu Han Ru, and Ma Cong's rooms together."

The baby-faced man added: "No more than half an hour. Whether you find clues or not, come out and regroup."

No one voted against it.

Although hours had passed since entering the instance, Gu Jing Sheng's understanding of the cabin remained superficial—just enough to serve basic living needs—with no deeper exploration.

She searched everywhere possible, from the bedboard to the ceiling—even tearing open the bedding, only to find that "the cotton inside was probably moldy and clumped." No useful clues. Unwilling to give up, she combed through the bathroom and this time succeeded in finding a clump of unidentified black hair behind the toilet (…), half a tube of [Frog Brand Toothpaste] under the sink, and a damp black bristle brush by the water tank.

"?"

Gu Jing Sheng wrapped her hand in her clothes and carefully picked up the brush—it was normal for the bathroom to be more humid than the bedroom, but there were no signs of leaking pipes, and she had made sure to tighten the faucet. Yet this brush was as damp as if it had been soaking in a basin of water, abnormally wet.

[Water-Stained Brush: It has been soaked in a water nymph's well and possesses special magic. Even if left under the sun for a hundred hours, it would never dry.

This brush looks no different from any other used to clean washrooms, except that it can transform into a massive thorny thicket at the user's will.

"Poor little Bode. After he drowned in a wash basin, his sister wept until her tears filled the dried-up well."

Item Rating: ★★★★★

Note: Part of the [Water Nymph] series.]

Gu Jing Sheng felt her hand tremble slightly.

—As a potential powerhouse with ten card slots, she had brought every usable item into the game. The medical supplies alone were enough to sustain her for two or three rounds, but Gu Jing Sheng still had one fatal flaw: a lack of combat-related equipment.

Even if the [Water-Stained Brush] couldn't be used offensively, it could at least help block attacks.

Gu Jing Sheng cardified the newly acquired item, temporarily storing the displaced instant coffee in her backpack, then went out to regroup with the other players.

The baby-faced man was already waiting there—though rationally, Gu Jing Sheng knew he couldn't have been standing in front of the main house for more than thirty minutes. But his frosty expression, as if he'd been waiting since the dawn of time, made her unconsciously soften her footsteps.

"Find any clues?"

Gu Jing Sheng had no qualms excluding the brush from the clue category and answered, "No." Then asked, "How about you?"

The baby-faced man replied bluntly: "No."

You Yi Ming had also emerged. He had already thoroughly searched his cabin earlier, and since his first sweep had been meticulous, this second exploration yielded no progress. Yao Ruo Ling and He Suo Wen also claimed to have found nothing—whether they, like Gu Jing Sheng, had discovered items unrelated to clearing the instance or genuinely found nothing was unclear. However, in He Nan's room, they found a small note wedged in a floor crack that read: [The blue fruit tree is next to the yellow one.]

Gu Jing Sheng paused her hand, which had been about to jot this key information into her memo: "..."

Completely accurate, utterly useless.

They already knew Tree No. 3 was yellow and Tree No. 2 was blue, so the statement that the blue tree was next to the yellow one was a conclusion requiring zero deduction.

He Nan: "Next, we'll first go to..."

The baby-faced man suddenly interrupted: "Let's check Mr. He's room first. Since his vision is impaired, there might be something overlooked."

He Suo Wen smiled: "Very well."

He Nan had actually considered this but hadn't dared suggest it himself, lest he offend this clearly more senior player. Now that someone else had taken the lead and the named party hadn't objected, he naturally seized the opportunity.

"...Brother He, your room is really tidy."

The moment they entered, Wang Meng Yuan began buttering him up with genuine admiration.

Gu Jing Sheng silently agreed—though she didn't have many cabins for comparison, both her own bedroom and Liu Han Ru's death site were at least twice as messy as He Suo Wen's room.

The blanket was folded into a neat "tofu cube"—Gu Jing Sheng hadn't seen bedding arranged with such crisp edges since military training ended. The floor was spotless, and even the bathroom seemed to have been scrubbed inch by inch.

Being clean wasn't a rare trait, but maintaining such habits in a life-threatening game instance was another matter. Gu Jing Sheng glanced at the immaculate room, then at He Suo Wen's crisp suit and polished shoes, and for a moment felt nothing but awe.

He Suo Wen, unable to see the others' complicated gazes, simply smiled: "I prefer keeping my living environment organized—it's more comfortable and convenient."

As the others helped search, even the usually proud Yao Ruo Ling unconsciously softened her movements to avoid accidentally messing up his room.

The room truly had nothing—it was as clean as if it had just undergone a deep cleaning, the kind with high standards that left no corner untouched.

While the participants had returned to their rooms to search for clues, Liu Han Ru's door had been relocked, with the key temporarily held by He Nan, who had shared the room with him. When Gu Jing Sheng and the others returned to one of today's crime scenes, the center of the cabin—physically secured against NPC interference—still quietly held the young man's corpse, unchanged from when they had left: his head nearly severed, connected only by a thread of flesh, his abdomen completely hollowed out.

The baby-faced man remarked coolly: "When there's time, look into how Liu Han Ru died. I think there’ll be new victims tonight."

Gu Jing Sheng's heart sank slightly. She wasn't naive enough to think activating [Detective's Friend] would guarantee her survival till the end. The top players would inevitably fall last—this minor luck aura would at most keep her rookie self alive slightly longer than other weak participants.

He Nan whispered something to Yao Ruo Ling, who nodded and handed a card to Wang Meng Yuan.

"You'll be responsible for using this item." Yao Ruo Ling glanced at him and added, "You can refuse, but you should know you're the only reserve player left among the survivors."

Wang Meng Yuan paled slightly but couldn't refuse the veteran's demand, so he tremblingly accepted the card.

Gu Jing Sheng wasn't far from him and took the chance to glance at the card's instructions.

["Do Not Peek" Magnifying Glass: Its edges are heavily worn, its surface stained with unremovable grime. It may be completely broken, but Dr. ▇▇ refused to sell it during his lifetime.

Sheriff ▇▇▇ once claimed that with this magnifier, he saw very old bloodstains in the newly renovated Chandelier Blossom Hotel.

"We don’t know why the sheriff poured acid into his own eyes. According to the nurse, he kept shouting about dust on his glasses that had to be cleaned—but for heaven's sake, the sheriff wasn’t even wearing glasses!"

Item Rating: ★★★★★★

Note: Do not use it for extended periods, or the participant's vision will undergo irreversible changes.]

Translator's Note

*** The term “cardified” will be used throughout the translation to describe how players can turn items into cards ***

Oath here, I am finally back. Due to personal reasons, I was not able to post, but I am back now. I will be releasing a few more chapters today to make it up.