Chapter 111
Chapter 111
Qin Musong tensed. It was the voice of his dead daughter.
Perhaps it meant to shake him and lure him into turning around, but it only made him furious. Nothing had the right to imitate his daughter and force him to submit.
Without looking back, Qin Musong drew his handgun and fired a burst behind him.
The handgun was a special Item, useful as an ordinary weapon and devastating to ghosts. Silver bullets exploded behind him into blue flames. The giggling vanished, replaced by a shriek like nails scraping a blackboard.
Qin Musong lowered his deep-set eyes, holstered the gun, and walked steadily on.
Xiao Song waited at the door, relaxed. The game was almost over, and Qin Musong was a veteran player. No one would die. After tonight, Xiao Song could not be selected again.
The knock came. Distracted by relief, Xiao Song opened the door.
His joyful gaze froze. His body seemed plunged into ice water, his pupils quivering.
Qin Musong stood in the dark bedroom with a woman pressed against his back.
Her white dress was soaked in blood and shredded by cuts from a sharp weapon. Deep wounds covered her bare feet and arms, exposing red flesh already turning black as fat maggots writhed inside.
Her tangled hair hung like waterweed around a loose, water-swollen face that reeked of decay. Her protruding eyes had enormous black pupils and bloodshot whites. Her mouth gaped, a blackened tongue hanging out.
She was so close she seemed ready to follow Qin Musong out.
Xiao Song froze. The others, relaxed after completing their turns, craned forward and were horrified too.
“Blow! Blow at it!” Yang Ke shoved Xiao Song. Xiao Song opened his mouth, but his lips shook uncontrollably.
The thing moved, about to crawl out.
What should he do?
Su Yang’s casual words flashed through his mind: “If you’re too scared, just close the door. Who can promise they won’t protect themselves first?”
Close the door.
Close it!
His body moved before thought. Xiao Song slammed the door shut.
Everyone outside stared.
“What are you doing?” Yang Ke grabbed his collar, no longer resembling a sunny school heartthrob. “You killed him!”
“I didn’t!” Xiao Song tore free and clutched his head, yanking his hair. “You saw that thing! If I didn’t close it, it would come out and none of us would escape!”
Bang!
Recovering from his shock, Yang Ke watched Baili Qianqiu kick Xiao Song hard into the door.
Xiao Song slid to the floor, coughing violently and spitting blood.
Inside, Qin Musong tensed like a leopard, alert for the attack to come.
It was not as though Xiao Song’s decision to close the door had come without warning. His expression had made it clear that the last thread of reason in his mind had snapped. Nothing he did in that state would have been surprising.
But Qin Musong was equally unwilling to sit there and wait for death.
He fired a burst toward where the door had been. Nothing happened. The darkness seemed to swallow the bullets without so much as a ripple.
His Item was called the Eagle-Eye Gun. It had never left his side since he obtained it, and its ammunition replenished endlessly.
After its upgrade, in addition to ordinary bullets, it could fire three tracking rounds per instance.
Those rounds were immensely powerful, capable of destroying any target they locked onto.
Qin Musong’s profession had given him reflexes beyond those of ordinary people. Combined with the battles he had survived inside instances, his mobility and agility were many times greater than the average player’s.
The instant Xiao Song began closing the door, Qin Musong had drawn his gun with extraordinary speed and fired a tracking round through the narrowing gap, locking onto the door itself.
One more round would let him escape.
Just as Qin Musong raised his right hand, a ghastly pale arm reached out of the darkness and seized him.
He immediately transferred the gun to his left hand and riddled the arm with bullets.
The mangled arm retreated. At the same instant, countless thin white arms emerged from the darkness and grabbed his right hand.
Cold and stiff as the limbs of corpses, they possessed tremendous strength and tore at him relentlessly.
Qin Musong fired repeatedly with his left hand. Each time he shattered one arm, another replaced it. The densely packed limbs twisted together into a thick, nauseating white mass around his right arm.
As they began dragging him into the darkness, resolve flashed in his eyes.
He holstered the Eagle-Eye Gun and drew the Fishbone Dagger Cheng Miao had forced upon him.
Without the slightest hesitation, he hacked down at his own right upper arm.
In Room 201’s living room, the others faced a dilemma. Did this count as the end of the game? What were they supposed to do? Could they leave?
Yang Ke looked at Xiao Song, who lay on the floor like a dead dog after Baili Qianqiu’s kick, and spat in disgust.
He patted the sobbing Little Red. “Let’s go. We’re leaving.”
Xiao Song’s fingers twitched. He forced himself up, but before he could stand, an enormous boom erupted behind him.
Everyone stared in disbelief as Qin Musong staggered out, covered in blood and deathly pale.
He held his smoky-gray handgun in his left hand, pressing that arm against what remained of his right upper arm.
Little Red clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a scream. Qin Musong’s right arm was gone!
“Go,” he forced through bloodless lips.
Yang Ke and Little Red snapped out of their shock and hurried to support him toward the apartment’s front door.
Baili Qianqiu followed behind them, then suddenly twitched an ear.
He turned. Countless long, horrifying arms reached through the destroyed bedroom door, seized Xiao Song, and covered his mouth and nose. Slowly, they dragged him toward the darkness.
Unable to make a sound, Xiao Song vanished into the mass of white arms. Only one hand remained, clawing uselessly at the doorframe.
Baili Qianqiu watched for a moment, then looked away and followed the other three.
Outside, Cheng Miao could not explain the ominous feeling that gripped her. For the first time, she was too restless to sit still. Lin Zhu was racking his brains for ways to comfort her and Qi Jiajia.
Suddenly, the door to Room 201 burst open. Yang Ke and Little Red stumbled out, supporting Qin Musong, who looked as though he had been dipped in blood.