Chapter 204
Chapter 204
“Who was that?! What insolent brat did this?!” The chef, still cooking, heard the tremendous commotion and roared in alarm.
The gust nearly extinguished the firewood in the stove.
Xiao Huai and the others entered Red Mansion, then looked back and found that the wandering ghosts had not followed them inside.
They had burst into Red Mansion’s kitchen. Quite a few people were here, and after hearing the commotion, they all began chattering at once.
Xiao Huai frowned and said simply,
“Tell your boss that Li Ming is here.”
Thanks to Lu Yuanshi, he had already played the part of Uncle Li once on the first day of the game, under his Li Ming disguise.
The head chef froze slightly at the name Li Ming, while everyone else immediately fell silent.
“Li Ming? Could you be Master Li, who came a few days ago? How did you get here? Please wait. I’ll call the proprietress over at once.”
As soon as the head chef heard the name, he carefully headed for the door, calling as he went, “Someone come quickly! Tell her Master Li is in the kitchen!”
Supporting Jiang Wenmei, Shen Yun looked at Xiao Huai. That single sentence seemed to prove Xiao Huai was not surprised by where they had arrived.
“Where are we?” Shen Yun asked.
“Red Mansion.”
“You already guessed?”
Xiao Huai bought some bandages and handed them to Jiang Wenmei so she could dress her wounds. At the same time, he said casually, “I had a vague feeling.”
Xiao Huai did not mention the additional intel the System had rewarded him with.
[Intel: Every player is fortunate. Like envoys, they can travel to many places that are inaccessible to the native residents.]
If only players could move freely around the town, then what had the proprietress meant by what she said at Red Mansion?
“The Yang Residence should be sending over a batch of fresh goods before long.”
It meant there had to be a passage between them, one that connected the town to the Yang Residence.
Perhaps Butler Yang was the only native resident with permission to use that passage.
He represented the Yang Residence and delivered corpses to Red Mansion for processing.
And by a stroke of chance, the players had discovered that route.
For now, however, all of this remained conjecture. None of it had been verified.
What mattered more at present were Chen Chong’s and Jiang Wenmei’s injuries.
Jiang Wenmei’s blast wounds were more severe than they had imagined.
The wounds could not be bandaged directly. Xiao Huai gave her several healing candies from Lu Qian, but they had little effect.
His brows drew together. With her face deathly pale, Jiang Wenmei gave a faint laugh. “I’m currently in a critically injured state. Healing items won’t work on me.”
A critically injured state. Xiao Huai lifted his eyes.
It was not as though he had never experienced that state himself. That time, the insect race had nearly killed him.
Jiang Wenmei said, “I caused these injuries myself. Don’t worry. I’ll recover on my own before long.” She struggled upright, and a small black bomb figure appeared in her hand. Shen Yun leaned back slightly at the sight of it.
Xiao Huai noticed immediately. “Your supernatural ability?”
“Mm,” Jiang Wenmei said. “If I hadn’t used my supernatural ability to blast open a path, that idiot Chen Chong and I probably would have died in East City.”
East City. Jiang Wenmei had finally mentioned it. The two had set out for East City on the third day, yet had not returned even by the afternoon of the fourth.
Only they knew what they had experienced there.
Jiang Wenmei lowered her eyes. “It’s a dead city, full of ghosts and monsters. They seem to have died in a dense fog. The fog killed them… I’ve never heard of fog killing people, but that doesn’t matter. Horror games have everything, after all.
“Chen Chong and I went there to find the master of the Yang Residence. We discussed the Yang family along the way, but somehow that group of ghosts overheard us. They started chasing us like mad, demanding that someone from the Yang family pay with their life.”
She did not explain the events that followed in detail. She summed up everything they had endured in a few short words.
“We spent an entire day in a battle royale.”
A battle royale, two people against a horde of vicious ghosts. The thought alone was almost unbelievable.
Especially since they had held out for an entire day.
“How did you… survive?” Shen Yun could not help murmuring.
Jiang Wenmei’s gaze fell on the unconscious Chen Chong nearby. “How else? Because of him.”
Chen Chong could sense danger. More than that, he could use divination to calculate a path to survival.
He usually seemed rather unreliable, but when real danger struck, he never treated it lightly.
He told Jiang Wenmei there might be a way out underground, so she used her bomb figures to attack the monsters while trying to blast open a route below.
Chen Chong had divined a secret of heaven, and the secrets of heaven were not meant to be revealed. He had defied the law of cause and effect, making the ghosts hate him with particular intensity.
Once he determined the precise location, he shoved Jiang Wenmei away and went off alone to draw their attacks.
The ghosts then grievously wounded his eyes and mutilated his body. He had been only a step away from death.
Jiang Wenmei could never have abandoned Chen Chong. She was determined to bring him back, even if it killed her.
Fortunately, Chen Chong had drawn their attacks long enough for her to blast open an escape route. Once her device was set, she hauled Chen Chong along with her and jumped down.
What followed was their reunion with Xiao Huai’s group.
Jiang Wenmei had encountered them just in time.
Otherwise, this calamity would have killed both of them.
There would have been no escaping it.
Even after they reached the underground passage, they had no strength left to keep running. Making it all the way to Red Mansion would have been impossible.
Zhong Jiangyuan lowered his head and looked at Chen Chong, who lay on the floor.
Chen Chong truly was at death’s door.
As if detecting this, everyone’s System Shop raised the prices of its medicines.
An ordinary medicine might not be enough to save Chen Chong now.
Jiang Wenmei was already preparing to bankrupt herself to keep Chen Chong alive.
Then Xiao Huai lightly patted Zhong Jiangyuan’s shoulder and asked softly, “Can you save him?”
Jiang Wenmei’s head snapped up at the question.
What did he mean?
Were they going to save Chen Chong?
She called out, “We’re already deeply grateful that you helped us once. I’ll take responsibility for keeping him alive from here.”
Xiao Huai looked at her and smiled. “My companion can do far more than merely keep someone alive.”
Zhong Jiangyuan heard him say “my companion.”
That was right. He was Xiao Huai’s soul companion.
Light gleamed in Zhong Jiangyuan’s eyes. Xiao Huai had pulled him up when he was at his lowest. Anyone Xiao Huai wanted to save was someone he wanted to save as well.
Green light began to appear in Zhong Jiangyuan’s palm.
It was his supernatural ability, [Emergency Treatment].
It could rapidly restore both Sanity and physical condition.
He could use it only once a day.
Under Jiang Wenmei’s incredulous gaze, the blood that had refused to stop pouring from Chen Chong’s body finally ceased. His deathly pale face gradually regained some color.
“This…” Jiang Wenmei’s eyes widened. She could not believe what she was seeing.
The healing effect of [Emergency Treatment] was extraordinary. It had instantly stopped the bleeding and restored vitality to someone gravely wounded and on the brink of death.