SWBG - Chapter 29

[Li Tiao said to He Qinghua: Qingqing-jie, I found the key to open the main door of the reception hall. I’ll be able to get out right away!

Don’t worry, I’ll leave the door open for you.]

Gu Jingsheng finished reading the message Li Tiao had sent, her expression unchanged.

She didn’t mind him stepping on her assist to vault over the high wall of clearing the instance—but could he at least notify others about what he’d discovered before leaving?

Even if people like them, mere background extras in other rooms, were insignificant to Li Tiao, He Qinghua had entered the instance together with him…

Before Gu Jingsheng could finish that line of thought, she received a new message.

[Sender: Happy Board Games

 Formal Participant [Li Tiao] has died. Please continue striving in the game, surviving participants.

 Note: Due to the unexpected elimination of [Li Tiao], an important item ▇▇▇▇ has been lost. Game difficulty increased.]

“……”

If Li Tiao hadn’t died himself, Gu Jingsheng would have suspected he was a mole planted by the natives among the players. As for the blacked-out mosaic at the end of the message—even though [Happy Board Games] had applied unnecessary censorship to the information, simply linking it with the details from the previous message made it easy to guess that the “important item” was most likely the key Li Tiao had found.

Wei Jiashi stammered, “Didn’t Li Tiao say he’d be able to get out right away? How could that…?”

Gu Jingsheng said, “If it were really that simple, what Li Tiao went through wouldn’t have been a punishment instance.”

Wei Jiashi was confused. “But didn’t we already find the hidden iron chests in the room?”

Gu Jingsheng raised an eyebrow. “I was the one who found those too—he clears his punishment instance and raises my—cough, our—difficulty. Does Happy Board Games have any sense of fairness at all?”

In the spirit of teamwork, Gu Jingsheng considerately sent her wording back for repairs, changing the subject from singular to plural.

Xiao Luo, who was on the receiving end of this consideration, sincerely felt that Gu Jingsheng probably didn’t have many friends in real life. ==

[X said to Y: Our third partitioned room is the “Rest Room.” Its area is much larger than the previous two rooms.

 …

 There’s also a sanatorium notice here. I think it’s related to Player Li Tiao’s death:

“Notice Regarding Maintenance of the Sanatorium’s Ground Facilities. Please pass this along to all staff:

 Due to unexplained leaks of poisonous gas from swamp water, the underground pipelines need to be excavated for repairs. During this period, please use the side entrances as much as possible. Absolutely do not enter or exit through the main door of the reception hall, to avoid accidentally breaking your neck.”

Some clue excerpts are as follows:

“Mr. ▇▇ once worked at the Rosemary Sanatorium that sparked a wave of public debate throughout the kingdom. He was once an experienced doctor, but unfortunately, the incident that year inflicted severe psychological trauma that was difficult to heal. He must overcome this and personally shatter his former nightmare in order to completely cure his mental illness.”]

Gu Jingsheng more or less understood the cause of Li Tiao’s death—perhaps the lighting was too dim, or perhaps the excitement of being on the verge of clearing the game made him neglect observing his surroundings, causing him to fall into a pit the moment he left the reception hall and completely empty his health bar.

Fang Qiju paid more attention to the final clue in the message. “It seems the accident at the sanatorium left the staff who experienced it with psychological disorders. They need to personally shatter their former nightmares, which is why we appear here in the role of doctors.”

Xiao Luo first glanced at his own white coat, which was covered in bloodstains, then looked around at the terrible conditions in the ward, and finally listened to the sounds of furniture colliding in other rooms. His face was full of disbelief. “Then there was no need for them to deliberately come back—aren’t they afraid that the old trauma won’t heal and new problems will be triggered instead?”

Fang Qiju said, “They don’t need to worry. In the end, the ones who come are us formal participants anyway.”

Xiao Luo muttered a curse under his breath.

Wei Jiashi frowned. “Then do ‘we’—uh, I mean, do these doctors—know that there are natives roaming around the sanatorium?”

Fang Qiju replied, “They should know—the earlier newspaper mentioned that some patients were never apprehended after escaping the sanatorium.”

The corner of Wei Jiashi’s mouth kept twitching—between the mental treatment plan that might well send sanatorium survivors to their deaths, and the Forest Kingdom police force’s work efficiency, he really couldn’t say which one he had more objections to. ╮(￣￣)╭

While the others were discussing quietly, Gu Jingsheng didn’t participate. She was holding her phone, seemingly editing a message.

Xiao Luo frowned. “Time is limited. Is there anything else you need to explore? If not, hurry up and leave!”

The earlier clue about poisonous gas leaking in the reception hall had also sounded an alarm for Xiao Luo—in this instance, time pressure might not be limited to just the pursuers behind them.

Gu Jingsheng’s fingers flew across the screen. She didn’t even look up when replying, looking exactly like a new-generation salted-fish youth hopelessly addicted to their phone. “I still have some things to prepare. No rush.”

“……”

If it weren’t for the fact that her brain was still useful, Xiao Luo would have liked to use his fists to engage in some team communication targeting the superficial layers of her body.

Among all the items found in the large ward, Gu Jingsheng only took the spray. She turned a blind eye to Xiao Luo pocketing the flint, seemingly not worried at all that he might kick down the ladder after crossing the river.

Xiao Luo said indignantly, “Can’t you send messages anywhere? I’m going to the next room first. Whether you follow or not is up to you!”

With that, Xiao Luo twisted the doorknob of the large ward’s main door.

The room was quite spacious. Gu Jingsheng was standing by the side door, still a fair distance away from Xiao Luo. When she heard the sound of the doorknob turning, she raised her voice to stop him. “Wait—stop!”

Her tone was somewhat sharp.

Since entering this instance, this was the first time the other three had seen Gu Jingsheng display such an obvious emotional fluctuation.

Xiao Luo was extremely displeased. He hadn’t been good-tempered to begin with, and now he was determined to oppose Gu Jingsheng to the bitter end. “You’re talking too lou—”

His voice cut off abruptly.

The corridor lights weren’t on. The door silently opened a crack the width of a finger.

Xiao Luo was horrified to discover that outside the crack, in the darkness, a bloodshot eyeball was suspended.

It was as if a bucket of ice water had been poured over him from head to toe. His entire body went numb as an unnatural stiffness and cold swept through him. He wanted to divert his attention, but his gaze was firmly glued to that eyeball.

One second later.

The eyeball blinked.

“……”

Xiao Luo finally realized that this wasn’t an eyeball floating in midair—someone was pressed up against the door crack, peeping into the ward.

Corridor 1

Ding Fa, Chen Zai, and Huo Wen were hiding in the second room. At the beginning, they could still hear screams coming from the neighboring room. Later on, there was only the heavy rolling of furniture and the sound of something like limbs being torn apart.

After capturing one formal participant, the natives didn’t immediately press their advantage. Instead, they stayed where they were, leaving the other three with roughly one round’s worth of breathing space.

This was likely [Happy Board Games]’s instance protection mechanism, meant to prevent the players from being too disadvantaged and getting wiped out by the natives as soon as the first round ended.

Fortunately, the password mentioned in the message was completely correct. When the three stumbled into the second room, their minds were blank. It took two or three minutes before they recovered from their limp, paralyzed state.

In the time that followed, they searched the room almost hysterically for any possible clues, but in the end, they found nothing.

Huo Wen suddenly grabbed a battered chair, strode over to the window, and swung the chair back straight at the glass.

“Crash—”

Chen Zai fiercely yanked Huo Wen’s arm, pulling her off balance, and roared, “Are you crazy?! Those damn monsters are right next door!”

Huo Wen struggled desperately, her voice tinged with sobs. “The so-called clues in this game don’t exist at all! We’re on the first floor—we can escape through the window!”

“Bang! Bang! Bang!”

 “Bam!”

While the two were grappling, the natives—who had originally only been active next door—were drawn by the noise. They walked with heavy steps to the door of the second room. After pausing briefly, they began pounding on the door with force.

Chen Zai shuddered and instantly released his grip on Huo Wen’s arm.

The door was wooden and already somewhat aged. Combined with the natives’ strength, which far exceeded that of the participants, after seven impacts the entire door shook loose from the frame and crashed heavily onto the ground.

“……!”

The natives’ clothes were stained with fresh blood, and with every step they took, a vividly colored bloody footprint was left on the floor.

Huo Wen stared at them, her face deathly pale, and let out an ear-piercing scream.

To NPCs whose eyesight had deteriorated to the extreme, such a high-pitched sound was nothing less than a suddenly lit beacon in the darkness of night.

Chen Zai wanted to slip out from the side while the natives’ attention was drawn by the scream, but there were three natives roaming this corridor. Two were walking toward Huo Wen, while the third stopped at the doorway, blocking the exit completely.

As the natives closed in, the players’ available space grew smaller and smaller. A thought suddenly flashed through Chen Zai’s mind: perhaps only after Huo Wen was truly captured would the NPC blocking the doorway leave a path of survival for those remaining…

Among the three formal participants, Huo Wen was in the most perilous situation. Her back was nearly pressed against the wall by the window, and she could already smell the foul stench emanating from the monsters. At most, they needed to take two more steps to catch her.

In [Happy Board Games], even players who emerged from the same room wouldn’t necessarily help one another, let alone strangers encountered by chance in an instance. Huo Wen didn’t place any hope in the other two coming to save her. She clenched her teeth and took a snow-white down comforter out of her card slot.

From Chen Zai’s and Ding Fa’s perspective, it was as if Huo Wen had conjured the comforter out of thin air. But formal participants who had experienced multiple instances all knew that the lottery pool contained many items with baffling uses. Their only common trait was that the greater their power, the more severe their side effects.

Huo Wen gripped two corners of the comforter and began shaking it forcefully. Large amounts of snow flew out, transforming into transparent ice crystals halfway through the air.

Accompanied by the cold wind generated by shaking the comforter, the room temperature dropped rapidly. A thin layer of frost even formed across the floor.

Huo Wen’s hair, eyelashes, and eyebrows all turned a crystalline white due to the low temperature. She looked as though she was on the verge of freezing solid, yet she continued desperately shaking the down comforter.

The monster’s mobility was affected by the cold wind and became extremely sluggish. Its foot was lifted, but it took a long time before it could set it down.

But the first ones unable to endure this terrifying cold were Chen Zai and Ding Fa, who were in the same room.

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