chapter 122

The world spun.

Everything in front of them was upside down; they could only vaguely tell it was a bedroom.

The shrill voice kept droning on, dripping with dissatisfaction and resentment:

“You and those pets in the videos we watch online are not the same at all. Other people’s pets are cute and obedient and well-behaved-why can’t you even understand what I’m saying?!”

“And I picked you on purpose! You shed fur, you can’t even take a bath-do you have bugs on you or something? Don’t crawl on my bed!”

Being hung upside down, spinning and tossed for so long sent blood rushing to the Players’ heads. They tried to lift their heads, but couldn’t see the speaker’s full figure.

All they could see was the hand gripping their legs.

The fingers were short and thick.

Looked like a little kid.

Gender still unclear.

Yan Xuan, dangling in midair, couldn’t hold it in-she vomited.

Luo Jia Bai had been swung so hard his words came out in choppy beats. His ears whirled like propellers in the air, twisting together then flying apart. “Th-this-this one’s another maniac, wh-what a grip, I-I’m really impressed!”

“The game hint said we have to find strongly related Items. This stage is all about observing and using collected objects to reason things out.” Sun Hai was big-built and in good shape. Forcing his eyes open, he managed to see the whole room clearly. “She should be a girl! There are a bunch of stuffed animals in here! And pink and blue stationery!”

Xia Le sounded a bit weak, fighting back the urge to throw up as he echoed Sun Hai, “Her voice also sounds like a girl’s.”

Lu Li didn’t feel dizzy at all; if anything, he thought the spinning speed was quite slow.

Calmly, he observed the room. The floor was cluttered with scattered sheets of paper.

He tilted his head to line his vision up and looked more carefully-but got the same result as when he’d looked at the Test Report in the previous stage.

The pages were densely covered in writing, but he couldn’t read a word.

Lu Li took out the glasses he’d obtained in the last stage and peered through the lenses at the writing on the papers:

On one sheaf, “44 points,” “59 points,” “3 points” were written across the top. They were exam papers.

On another stack of notebooks, every page was covered in alarming red crosses, with a final line at the end: “Have your parents call me tonight!” Those were homework books.

On a single sheet, crooked handwriting filled the page. At the top was “Self-Criticism Letter,” and at the bottom, a line of red-ink commentary read: “You are forbidden from snatching things from your female classmates ever again!” That was a written self-criticism.

Lu Li then looked toward the toys Sun Hai had mentioned.

Every plush toy showed signs of having been torn at. Two of them had even been ripped open, white stuffing miserably spilling from their bellies.

As for the pretty stationery, each case had a name sticker on the front-and every name was different. Cracks ran along the bodies of the pens and pencil cases, as if they’d been hurled to the ground.

These were all things the speaker had violently snatched from classmates.

So the speaker wasn’t necessarily a girl.

Something suddenly slid past his field of vision.

Lu Li reached out and caught it by reflex. When he opened his hand, it looked very familiar.

A necklace with an oval pendant.

It looked a lot like the one Gu Yu Chu always wore around his neck.

During the spinning, the pendant portion, worn out from age or frequent opening, had loosened.

Lu Li had no intention of prying into someone else’s privacy.

But the moment he picked it up, the pendant popped open on its own.

Inside was a photo of a man.

The man had deep, handsome features, wore a dark suit, and sat behind an office desk, his bearing calm and composed.

His gaze, directed at the camera, was gentle-as if he held deep affection for whoever was taking the picture.

There was no way to tell who had taken this photo.

“My necklace!”

Gu Yu Chu began struggling violently. He burned through Item after Item, trying to attack the speaker’s hand, desperate to jump down and retrieve the necklace.

“You dare bite me?!” The speaker flew into a rage at his actions. “Get out! I am not in the mood to take care of you right now!”

The Players didn’t have time to inspect any more of the room’s contents before they were flung out.

The bedroom door slammed shut behind them.

They crashed onto a wooden staircase and tumbled end over end from the top to the bottom.

Clutching his head, Sun Hai twisted his body to avoid the edge of the steps, and snapped at Gu Yu Chu, “How can you attack an NPC? That whole spinning sequence was giving us time to collect relevant information!”

But Gu Yu Chu ignored him completely. He did everything he could to stop rolling, his lips bloodless with fright. “I have to go back! I lost it!”

An old woman’s voice sounded by their ears, the female NPC scolding someone:

“Weren’t you the one who never wanted to come out? Always pretending to be sick when you’re fine and hiding in your room, walking around with a storm cloud on your face-who are you trying to scare?”

“If you’re not sick, then hurry up and call your parents! They toil away outside all year-do you think it’s so they can send money to the School just for you to take a leave of absence and lie around at home doing nothing? All you do all day is open your mouth for food and drink! I’m already this old, and I still have to feed you and wait on you?!”

The staircase finally ended, and their rolling stopped on the bottom floor.

Dizzy and reeling, the Players staggered to their feet.

Three figures stood before them.

Each one held an open cage door in their hands.

They were:

A “person” whose entire head was wrapped in a gray, cocoon-like mass. The cocoon was uneven, with small dead branches poking out. More dead twigs jutted from the flesh of its wrists, making it look grotesque. This “person” wore a dress.

A lively, energetic Fat Boy with several missing teeth that showed when he grinned.

And a kindly-looking grandmother with a full head of white hair.

Gu Yu Chu, however, had lost all composure. He turned and tried to scramble back up the stairs, eyes brimming with tears. “I can’t lose it…”

His Wristband issued a warning, and then an electric current surged through the skin where his wrist met the Evil Spirit Bracelet. The air filled with the stench of scorched flesh being burned by electricity.

Lu Li had just found his balance. He hurried forward and grabbed the panicking Gu Yu Chu. “Your necklace-I picked it up.”

The Wristbands buzzed a second time, issuing a new warning and updating the Players on their current progress:

[Players must choose one NPC’s cage to enter.]

Three NPCs.

Whose cage would be safe to enter?