Chapter 203
Chapter 203
The wound on his back slowly healed. This was no ordinary candy.
It was an item with healing properties.
Items like this were worth a considerable sum in horror games.
Yet Xiao Huai had taken out several, divided them into separate portions, and given them to Zhong Jiangyuan and Shen Yun.
Shen Yun lowered his head in embarrassment and thanked him again in a quiet voice.
Xiao Huai shook his head lightly and looked ahead. “Keep going?”
“Of course.” Zhong Jiangyuan let out a long breath. They had barely survived that perilous encounter. If they turned back now, those things might target them again.
Rather than retrace their steps, they might as well see where this passage led.
“By the way, was the rubber doll you saw under the bed one of those things?” Zhong Jiangyuan asked in puzzlement.
Xiao Huai nodded. “Mm. More or less.”
Zhong Jiangyuan could not help drawing a sharp breath. “Those things are seriously sinister, and there were so many of them at the bottom of the wells.”
No wonder the word “survive” appeared in their main mission. If all those creatures crawled out of the wells, they would be in truly mortal danger.
They did not turn back. Instead, they chose to follow this path to its end.
They had no idea how long they had been walking when they suddenly heard the crackle and pop of firewood.
Zhong Jiangyuan and Shen Yun immediately went on alert, but Xiao Huai was unusually calm this time.
He continued forward, his gaze settling on the figure seated beside the fire.
“Lu Yuanshi.”
Lu Yuanshi turned his head. “Mm.”
He was turning pieces of firewood. Sweet potatoes were roasting among them.
Xiao Huai smelled the sweet potatoes. As he drew closer to Lu Yuanshi, he also caught the faint, clean fragrance that belonged to him alone.
This Lu Yuanshi was not a fake.
Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan were rather tense when they first saw Lu Yuanshi. Their encounter with the fake one was still fresh in their minds.
But when Xiao Huai casually sat down beside him, the two gradually relaxed without realizing it.
It seemed the Lu Yuanshi before them was real.
“What did you run into?” Lu Yuanshi asked with a faint smile, glancing at the others’ faces.
They did not look well.
Zhong Jiangyuan told him about their encounter with the fake Lu Yuanshi.
After listening, Lu Yuanshi arched one brow slightly. A trace of coldness flickered deep in his eyes, nearly imperceptible.
“Someone impersonated me? Ha, how interesting.” His gaze fell on the burning flames, and an invisible pressure swept over them.
“Fortunately, we had Xiao Huai. He recognized right away that it wasn’t really you and drove the impostor off.” Even now, Zhong Jiangyuan still felt grateful to Xiao Huai when he mentioned it.
Lu Yuanshi’s eyes widened slightly. He looked up at Xiao Huai, who was sitting beside him.
Before Lu Yuanshi could begin to speak, Xiao Huai had already answered him.
“Just one of Loki’s childish tricks.”
Loki, the evil god. Across the entire horror game, almost no one dared speak his name directly.
Shen Yun’s and Zhong Jiangyuan’s hearts both lurched. They wanted to warn Xiao Huai not to say that name so freely.
Xiao Huai, however, made no effort to conceal the contempt in his eyes.
Lu Yuanshi said, “Oh? Is that so? Then it seems one of his secrets is hidden here.”
“Maybe.” Xiao Huai answered without concern. He suddenly turned to meet Lu Yuanshi’s gaze, pointed at the fire, and asked, “Are they ready yet?”
Lu Yuanshi blinked, then laughed. “Mm.”
The pressure in his eyes from moments ago vanished without a trace.
Lu Yuanshi had roasted only two sweet potatoes, and he gave both to Xiao Huai.
Xiao Huai shared one with Shen Yun and Zhong Jiangyuan, then split the other with Lu Yuanshi.
As always, they each took half.
Zhong Jiangyuan was curious where Lu Yuanshi had found the ingredients. Logically speaking, the System Shop was currently restricted. They could not buy food, not even raw ingredients.
But one look at the roasted sweet potato’s golden surface, and he swallowed his questions along with his saliva. He did not ask.
As they ate, they also realized what sort of place this was.
It was much as Xiao Huai had described. The eight wells had to converge into a single passage somewhere.
The space here was vast, pitch-black, and seemingly endless.
Where exactly did this underground passage lead? It felt as though they were drawing ever closer to the truth.
Under the beams of their flashlights, they could also see more clearly what this place contained.
It was gloomy and damp, without the slightest trace of living presence. Yet there was spirit money here, some of it reduced to burnt remains and some left only partially consumed by the flames.
They continued forward. Suddenly, a strange noise came from above, as if someone were repeatedly pounding the ground overhead.
Shen Yun stopped and shone his flashlight ahead.
Xiao Huai’s brows drew together slightly. At that moment, great quantities of dense fog began seeping out around them, surging into the passage.
Then a thunderous boom erupted overhead, as if explosives had detonated.
Two figures fell from above, instantly kicking up a cloud of dust.
They had not yet had time to protect their eyes from the sudden fog when the two people who dropped in front of them gave everyone another shock.
Zhong Jiangyuan’s eyes widened. “You two?!”
Chen Chong and Jiang Wenmei.
Their bodies were covered in wounds of every size. Some were so deep that bone showed through, as though something had viciously torn the flesh from them.
Blood poured from the wounds and stained their clothes dark red.
Jiang Wenmei’s face was white as paper. Her lips were bloodless, her forehead covered in beads of sweat, and her breathing came fast and faint.
She raised her head and immediately looked toward the passage blasted open above them. Her hair hung in a wild tangle, and her body bore marks from the explosion.
She growled in a weary, low voice, “There’s no time to explain. Run!”
Chen Chong had already lost consciousness. His condition was far worse than Jiang Wenmei’s. His clothes were in tatters, and his body was covered in blood and dirt. His eyes were in the worst state of all.
They were tightly shut, with blood streaming from them without pause.
Zhong Jiangyuan immediately hoisted Chen Chong onto his back, while Shen Yun helped Jiang Wenmei up and hurried away with her.
Xiao Huai heard movement from above. He grabbed Lu Yuanshi and ran without looking back.
Several minutes later, just as Jiang Wenmei had warned, wave after wave of wailing and shrieking suddenly erupted from the place they had just left. The screams shook the air.
They heard several voices crying, “Give me back my eyes! Give me back my eyes!”
“Why did I go blind? The Yang Residence! It’s all the Yang Residence’s fault!”
Those were the ghosts of wronged souls who had died in the dense fog. They had wandered there for a long time, only for Chen Chong and Jiang Wenmei to encounter them.
None of them knew how long they had been running.
There was light!
Light had finally appeared ahead. More than that, they could hear people chatting and talking.
Firelight showed faintly through a gap in the door.
With a tremendous bang, Xiao Huai kicked the door down. It slammed heavily against the ground with a dull crash.
They entered an entirely new place.
No… it could not be called entirely new.
It was somewhere they had been before.
Red Mansion.