Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Under the stunned gazes of the Livestream Room audience and the four children, Yu Lingling grabbed the old-fashioned flashlight and rammed it into the man’s mouth. At the same time, she plunged the fingers of her other hand into his eyes and gouged viciously.
One hand kept working the flashlight until his mouth was full of blood, while the other ripped out his eyeballs.
The burly man instinctively clawed at the rope around his neck, but Yu Lingling had caught him off guard, leaving him unable to break free. The teeth shattered by the flashlight and the blood pouring into his mouth clogged his throat. By the time he stopped struggling, not only had the Livestream Room fallen silent, but even the four children were staring at Yu Lingling with wide-eyed fear.
It was a long time before a single comment appeared on the empty screen.
“If she’s really a newbie, I’ll eat shit while standing on my head!”
Yu Lingling had no idea someone was offering to put on such a performance for her. Even after the burly man stopped struggling, she didn’t release the rope. Instead, she pulled it tighter and tighter. Only when she heard the sharp crack of his neck breaking did she finally let go.
Even with the ladder helping her apply leverage, the rope had dug deep into Yu Lingling’s flesh.
As if she couldn’t feel the pain, Yu Lingling rose to her feet and tilted her head, studying the corpse.
“How did she know that NPC was playing dead?”
“What’s she going to do now?”
Ever since Yu Lingling had finished off the burly man, the chat had become considerably more civil.
Yu Lingling bent down and picked up something from the ground. Gripping it in both hands, she plunged it straight into the corpse.
When she stood up again, the audience finally saw a bamboo shard sticking out of the corpse’s chest, right where the heart should be. She had even worried that the man might have dextrocardia, so she’d stuck another shard into the right side of his chest for good measure.
“…”
“Are all newbies this savage nowadays?”
Yu Lingling turned to look at the four bound children.
Their eyes immediately became clear and innocent, and their faces radiated friendliness as they gazed back at her.
Yu Lingling scoffed. “Drop the act.”
They were all personalities created by her schizophrenia. How could she not know what they were like?
Who were they trying to fool with that innocent-little-bunny act? Every last one of these alternate personalities wanted to kill the main personality.
The four children’s expressions froze.
“How did she see through them?”
“How did she figure out that these four are the real final bosses?”
“So many players thought they’d cleared the instance, only to die at their hands in the end.”
“Aren’t the four ghosts in Auspicious Village known as the cruelest and most sadistic monsters in any beginner instance?”
Yu Lingling picked up the flashlight, now smeared with blood, saliva, and bits of flesh, and wiped it clean on the burly man’s clothes.
Pure delight shone in her almond-shaped eyes as she looked at his corpse. Her favorite part had finally arrived.
Yu Lingling rubbed her hands together, bowed to the corpse, and muttered a quiet prayer. “Give me gold, give me gold! Max luck and boosted drop rates! Here I come!”
“What is she doing?”
“Is this some kind of ritual she performs after killing someone?”
“This newbie looks Asian. Could she know witchcraft?”
Yu Lingling figured that since she had both a new hallucination to play with and a brand-new personality today, her luck had to be off the charts. Once she finished praying, she happily began looting the corpse.
In the end, however, Yu Lingling stared dejectedly at the rusty dagger and shabby wallet lying on the ground. There wasn’t much money inside, the outer leather was ugly and peeling, and even the logo had faded.
Yu Lingling stared at the Cuggi logo and clicked her tongue. She might not have seen much of the world, but even she could tell this wallet was a painfully obvious knockoff.
Having found nothing worthwhile, Yu Lingling looked like a stray dog that had fallen into a river only to be kicked while it was down. She stared at her battered hands, then couldn’t resist smacking the back of her right hand.
“Useless.”
Because her right hand had let her down, Yu Lingling sank into a dark mood. She stashed away what she’d looted, then turned to the four new personalities she’d split off from herself. Given how well she knew herself, she raised the rusty dagger and threatened them. “Make a sound or cause trouble on purpose, and I’ll kill you.”
Yu Lingling had plenty of experience disposing of alternate personalities.
The four children nodded furiously. They had a feeling that this new player who had appeared out of nowhere really was capable of killing them.
True to her policy of taking anything that wasn’t nailed down, Yu Lingling even pulled the burly man’s belt off him before carrying everything up the bamboo ladder.
Yu Lingling’s behavior piqued the viewers’ curiosity, and some casually hit Follow.
“I wonder if he can… Ah!”
“Fuck, why’d she suddenly look back?!”
“Ahhh! She’s even scarier than those four brats.”
Halfway up the bamboo ladder, Yu Lingling had abruptly turned her head. Her pale, chubby-cheeked face and pitch-black almond eyes gave the viewers watching through their screens a fright.
Yu Lingling stared at the four alternate personalities, who remained seated where they were. She didn’t say a word, but her gaze was locked on the child who had just shifted her foot slightly.
The child looked bewildered at first, trembling in fear. But when she realized Yu Lingling was staring at her foot, she instinctively pulled it back.
Yu Lingling regarded her ominously. “Move it back another seven centimeters.”
The child parted her lips, then cautiously pulled her foot back a little farther. She had no idea how far seven centimeters was, so she could only watch Yu Lingling’s expression. “I-Is that enough?”
Yu Lingling only knew the girl had moved. How was she supposed to know exactly how far? Her eyes weren’t rulers. Seven centimeters had just been something she’d blurted out.
“Move again, and I’ll chop your foot off.”
After saying that, Yu Lingling swept her gaze over the other three children as well. Only then did she turn around and resume climbing.
The four children weren’t the only ones intimidated by Yu Lingling’s menacing presence. The viewers in front of their screens were also stunned into silence. It took a while before someone finally posted a comment.
“Wait, is there something wrong with her?”
Not that Yu Lingling knew what the viewers thought of her. If she did, she would have answered them with perfect honesty.
Yes. There was.
The kind that required her to check in with a psychiatrist every few days for an evaluation.
Once Yu Lingling climbed out, she started lowering the cellar lid back into place.
Tied up in the darkness below, the four children had just begun to breathe a sigh of relief, vicious expressions creeping onto their faces, when the cellar lid suddenly flew open again. The beam of a flashlight shone straight into their faces.
Their vicious expressions froze. Under Yu Lingling’s watchful gaze, they hastily rearranged their faces into weak, pitiful, and helpless looks.
Yu Lingling clicked her tongue. What a bunch of useless little things these four newly split personalities were.
Yu Lingling didn’t say a word, but both the children and the viewers could hear the contempt packed into that single click of her tongue.
The children’s expressions stiffened. Still, nothing Yu Lingling had done had triggered a death rule, and they hadn’t reached the final death phase yet. With the strength the four of them currently possessed, they might not necessarily lose-
They glanced at the burly man’s corpse.
All right.
It wasn’t a maybe. They were definitely no match for this lunatic player.
So what if she looked down on them? They were ghosts anyway. It wasn’t as if being looked down on would cost them a chunk of flesh.
Yu Lingling closed the cellar lid, then picked up the rusty old padlock from the ground and locked it again.
If these four useless little things died here, they wouldn’t be worth adding to her collection.
If they survived, she would stuff them back into her body and keep pitting them against one another.