Chapter 200
Chapter 200
Snap!
Shen Yun’s rope was severed, and he slammed heavily into the ground. The impact nearly broke his spine.
He groaned in pain. When his clenched eyes slowly opened, he saw a familiar figure at the mouth of the well.
The blonde woman.
She peered down, seemingly to confirm that Shen Yun had indeed fallen.
But after only a glance, she left at once, replacing the well cover behind her.
She had not only cut Shen Yun’s rope. She had severed everyone else’s as well.
“What are you doing?!” Zhong Jiangyuan roared at her.
The blonde woman’s hand trembled slightly, but she hardened her heart and closed the well cover anyway.
After sealing all four wells, she collapsed to her knees as though her strength had deserted her.
“I had to do it. If I didn’t, I might have been the one to die…”
She had been eavesdropping on their conversations from her room. The moment she heard them discussing a descent into the wells, her heart had lurched.
There were things inside the wells. Terrible things.
And she was a player with an identity card. All she needed to do was victimize the other players and secretly sabotage them. It would be even better if they died.
Then, naturally, all of their good fortune would transfer to her.
That food… she had actually prepared it all. It was the privilege the instance had granted her this time.
When the players refused to eat, the System had even forced them to do so.
This was the first time she had ever received an identity card. She had been so nervous, constantly afraid that she might give herself away.
She had never expected all of them to descend into the wells. It was an incredible opportunity, and she absolutely could not let it pass.
If the monsters at the bottom of the wells ate them all, most of her mission would be complete.
And the two who had gone to East City had probably met with disaster already.
She did feel guilty, but at the thought that she would soon be able to leave safely, she forced herself to take comfort and burst into laughter.
Then she heard an infant’s laughter rising from the wells.
They were coming out. Those terrifying monsters.
The bottom of the well was pitch-black. Shen Yun’s flashlight had rolled away when he hit the ground, its beam now stretching across the darkness in a single line. Only then did he discover how much space lay below.
Rather than a well, it was an entrance to a web of tunnels.
“Shen Yun?”
A beam of light fell on Shen Yun. He looked up. “Brother Jiangyuan.”
The eight wells were connected. Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan had found each other.
“That woman cut our ropes,” Zhong Jiangyuan said.
Shen Yun’s expression darkened. They had suspected that one of the eight might be a player with an identity card, but he had never expected someone like her to stab them in the back.
As soon as the two reunited, they began searching for Xiao Huai and Lu Yuanshi.
Their flashlight beams swept the dark passage. It was not long before they noticed someone slumped against the wall.
“Xiao Huai?” Zhong Jiangyuan called his name tentatively.
It was far too dark. Even with the flashlights, visibility was poor.
His call dwindled into echoes, but no one answered.
Shen Yun shot Zhong Jiangyuan a look, and the two advanced warily.
Zhong Jiangyuan patted the figure’s shoulder. There was a dull thud.
The person toppled straight to the ground, revealing his face.
Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan exchanged a look, both frowning.
He was a stranger, and he was already dead.
His eyes were milky white and his face twisted, as though he had experienced a terrible fright.
Zhong Jiangyuan’s voice turned cold. “Was he frightened to death?”
Shen Yun crouched to examine the wounds on the corpse. “No. He has fatal injuries. Here, and here.”
The dead man wore black, so without looking closely, it would have been difficult to spot the wounds in his heart and abdomen.
Something seemed to have punched straight through him, killing him instantly.
Just then, the two men heard soft footsteps drawing steadily closer.
Shen Yun immediately rose and aimed his flashlight toward the sound.
They heard a quiet chuckle.
Lu Yuanshi raised a hand to shield his eyes. “What’s wrong? Why so tense?”
Only then did they switch off their flashlights’ high-beam mode. It was bad enough that Lu Yuanshi had approached like that; he had not even used a flashlight.
Anyone who did not know better would have taken him for some monster dwelling at the bottom of the well.
Lu Yuanshi glanced at the corpse on the ground.
The dead man wore modern clothes, which meant he was not a native resident of the game, but a player.
Of course Zhong Jiangyuan and Shen Yun had realized that too.
Zhong Jiangyuan immediately asked Lu Yuanshi, “Have you seen Xiao Huai?”
Shen Yun looked up at him as well.
The two were normally inseparable, yet Xiao Huai had vanished down here.
“Didn’t you hear his voice?” Lu Yuanshi suddenly asked.
“What voice?”
“Go west and save him,” he enunciated.
The two of them had been relatively quiet the entire time. Ordinarily, they should have noticed any sound.
But they had heard nothing at all.
Was Lu Yuanshi’s hearing really that sharp?
Then again, Lu Yuanshi was unfathomable at the best of times. It would hardly be strange if his hearing was extraordinary too.
Lu Yuanshi pointed into the dark passage ahead. “West.”
Shen Yun rose, a trace of doubt in his eyes.
Would Xiao Huai… really say something like that?
“Come west and save me”?
Why did that sound so inexplicably strange?
Shen Yun frowned deeply and gave Zhong Jiangyuan a guarded look.
In truth, Zhong Jiangyuan had sensed that something was wrong even without Shen Yun’s warning.
The name “Lu Yuanshi” deserved quotation marks at the moment.
“Then let’s save Xiao Huai first. He’s an important companion, after all,” Zhong Jiangyuan said, playing along before taking the lead.
They slowly headed west. Along the way, they found even more corpses, all just like the first: faces frozen in terror, bodies bearing fatal wounds.
“Lu Yuanshi” followed behind them without a word.
Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan advanced with their flashlights raised, constantly watching the “Lu Yuanshi” behind them.
After perhaps a dozen minutes, the sound of twisting bones came from their rear.
In an instant, “Lu Yuanshi” appeared directly behind them. His eyes were wide, and his smile had turned dark and manic. Like a mischievous child delighted by a successful prank, he giggled softly.
“Did you fall for it?”
A sharp blade appeared in “Lu Yuanshi’s” hand, its point only a few centimeters from Shen Yun’s heart.
Before the last word had left his mouth, a rough black diamond shot through “Lu Yuanshi’s” heart with blinding speed.
Black blood splattered across Shen Yun’s face. At the same moment, Zhong Jiangyuan reacted swiftly and yanked him aside.
Only then did Shen Yun evade the dagger about to pierce his heart.
After “Lu Yuanshi” was struck, a clown mask suddenly appeared over his face. Then his body dissolved into wisps of black smoke.
The only trace proving that he had ever existed was the clown mark etched into the ground.
And the person who had attacked “Lu Yuanshi” without hesitation now appeared before them.