Chapter 312
Chapter 312
The question?
What was that?
Gu Chen didn’t even listen. He simply hit the buzzer.
Little Cao’s worry proved unnecessary, however.
Gu Chen still had cards. How could one person’s screams sound as good as a whole group’s?
Another Skip Card made the parents’ eyes gleam with fury.
The father in seat No. 3 gritted his teeth and swiped across his screen.
[Penalty Transfer Card: Choose another number to take your punishment!]
Gu Chen raised his eyebrows at the notification but ignored it.
He had that card too and could cancel it out.
But there would still be nine people screaming. Did it matter if one was swapped for another?
Not at all!
Little Cao was still feeling relieved when he was whisked into the air.
Little Cao: Ha. Adults!
“Aaaah!”
“It hurts! It hurts!”
“Help, help, help!”
The miserable cries made Gu Chen laugh until his eyes were mere slits.
As one of the few people who understood Boss Zhang’s joy, he already had the outline of his next horror novel forming in his head.
Meanwhile, up on the surface, the old monk had found the Morgue sparsely occupied and joined Zhang Bei to watch the tablet.
“Benefactor, they’re still children!”
Zhang Bei nodded eagerly. “Exactly! We’re improving their circulation and clearing out stagnant blood. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
The monk gave him a conflicted look. “Amitabha!”
Forget it. He’d go chant. Every villain had another villain to deal with him. He would wait for the day the Buddha took this owner away.
After the Drop Tower, he’d given up all hope for the man.
Even the most terrifying evil spirit described in Shakyamuni’s scriptures wasn’t one hundredth as bad.
Back in the Underground City, several rounds of questions had nearly exhausted Gu Chen’s cards.
The competition was also heating up.
Even hands that could type three thousand characters an hour couldn’t guarantee him the buzzer anymore.
[Question Fifteen…]
Gu Chen pressed immediately, but the screen informed him that No. 9 had beaten him to it.
The father in seat No. 9 drew a deep breath and studied the question.
History. He vaguely remembered this.
[Who was the fourth emperor of the Tang dynasty?]
[A: Emperor Suzong. B: Emperor Zhongzong. C: Emperor Daizong.]
Years of watching historical dramas with his wife had given him a slightly deeper knowledge of history.
He carefully recalled the shows he’d seen and confidently chose B.
Yes. He was right.
Nine ropes rose into the air, accompanied by an unbroken chorus of wailing.
With tears in his eyes, Little Cao watched Gu Chen laugh himself senseless and prepared to commit murder and dismemberment.
He was hired to play along, not fucking risk his life!
This wasn’t just torment anymore. It was torture that shaved years off a person’s life!
After this ordeal, Little Cao was beginning to feel that his allotted lifespan had genuinely shortened.
As the combined screams died away, the mechanical voice sounded again.
[Final question. No buzzer required.]
[What line precedes “The meditation chambers lie deep amid flowers and trees”?]
[You have thirty seconds. Countdown begins.]
Gu Chen’s eyes lit up. He knew this one!
He’d used “Inscribed at the Rear Meditation Courtyard of Poshan Temple” countless times in his novels. He knew it inside out.
Then he saw the blank writing area on his screen and fell silent.
Why did it have to be handwriting?
Where was the full-pinyin input?
Even double-pinyin would do!
He was a young man of the modern age who had spent years typing on a computer, posting more than ten thousand characters every day.
Gu Chen had forgotten how to write by hand!
“A bamboo path leads to a secluded place.” How did you write the character for “secluded” again?
He scratched his disheveled hair and shook his head at Little Cao on the open floor.
It wasn’t that his army was incompetent. The enemy was simply too cunning.
Gu Chen didn’t mind, but Little Cao nearly burst into tears at that shake of the head.
Couldn’t he try a little harder?
There were still more than ten seconds!
The person beside him was so close. Couldn’t he take one little look?
At a time like this, forget being an honorable gentleman!
Copy!
Unfortunately, none of Little Cao’s thoughts reached Gu Chen.
In the end, two parents answered the fill-in-the-blank question correctly.
The other eight children were hoisted up again.
The agony of the acupressure mats drew especially pitiful screams.
While parents ached for their children, nobody was happier than Gu Chen.
This attraction might have been custom-made for Little Cao and his group, who made a business out of exploiting the amusement park.
Here, a paid play companion’s usefulness was magnified enormously.
The customer, too, got to experience extraordinary pleasure.
Naturally, Little Cao hadn’t been joking about raising his prices.
This attraction took a long time, involved far too much suffering, and required a certain base of knowledge.
During the acupressure-mat ordeal, he’d already devised a tiered pricing plan.
Knowledge would determine the tier. Prices would start at fifty yuan and go as high as three hundred.
With the final question over, the Underground City entered its last stage.
[Welcome to the final challenge: Wind, Fire, Mountain, Forest!]
As the mechanical voice faded, a layer of steel plating replaced the acupressure mats.
The children’s safety ropes detached and rose overhead.
[This round tests how well the parents understand one another. The game begins now.]
Soundproof glass enclosures rose among the chairs, enclosing the ten parents.
Gu Chen stared at the screen rising before him for a long time.
Clearly, this was a game of telephone.
The screen displayed a four-character idiom: “The horse never stops its hooves” – to press on without pause.
After a moment’s thought, Gu Chen held up four fingers.
“Four characters?”
Reading the lips of the man beyond the glass, Gu Chen held up one finger.
Then he launched into a horse-riding dance.
His performance of the second character was equally vivid.
Once he’d acted out all four, the man on the other side gave him an OK sign.
The ten-minute round of telephone soon reached parent No. 10.
At the input box on his screen, the man confidently entered a different horse idiom: “Success the moment the horse arrives.”
[Incorrect. Beginning the first punishment.]
The ten children below looked innocently up at the seated parents.
From where they stood, they could see the words on the main screen and had watched the whole process.
By rights, nothing had gone wrong along the way.
Yet No. 10’s peculiar train of thought had somehow produced the wrong answer.
Of Wind, Fire, Mountain, Forest, the first randomly selected punishment was Fire.
The metal floor began to heat up. The children flailed their arms and danced unknown dances as though seized by spasms.
Soon, the second round of telephone began.
At the idiom on his screen, Gu Chen desperately wanted to swear.
[Demons, spirits, monsters, and fiends!]
He recognized the four characters. A horror novelist could hardly fail to know them.
But knowing exactly what they meant only made things more troublesome.
After a full half minute of thought, Gu Chen hit upon an excellent solution.