chapter 30

“You mean…” Luo Jia Bai’s mind went completely blank. “Jump down?”

He couldn’t understand what on earth was wrong with Lu Li.

After all his painstaking persuasion, not only had he failed to convince Lu Li-now he was about to get himself involved as well.

“It’s all Mutilated Corpses down there!” Luo Jia Bai stammered, “I-I can’t come back to life!”

Lu Li told him, “There’s nothing down there.”

“Huh?” Luo Jia Bai was easily swayed by the certainty in his voice.

The veins in his neck stood out from straining for so long. He looked up, thought for a moment, and said, “Alright!”

“So noisy, so noisy!” Jian Yingying, after scratching at her eyes, picked up the knife, staggered to her feet, grabbed Luo Jia Bai’s arm, and stabbed down hard.

The blade struck the side of the slide with a dull thud.

Jian Yingying’s hand was suddenly empty.

Luo Jia Bai let go on purpose.

The two of them fell into the Sand Pit.

Jian Yingying lay on the edge, looking down at them struggling in the sand, and broke into wild laughter.

All her opponents had been eliminated.

No one would compete with her anymore.

A wave of heat and moisture welled up in her eyes. Jian Yingying wiped them, and instantly, a large patch of blood bloomed in her palm.

She wiped her hand clean on her blue dress without a care. When she looked up again, her pupils had dilated even further-now the black nearly filled her eyes, leaving no trace of white.

After Lu Li and Luo Jia Bai left, the ground shrank smaller and smaller, and at the edge of the slide, there was barely enough space for one person to stand.

Jian Yingying sprawled across the upward-sloping slide pipe, greedily staring at the Blue Dress Doll lying there, unique in the damp, rotting surroundings.

Only she had found it.

This special Doll.

So what if Lu Li had performed so well in the last round? He was just a bit luckier, a little more cunning.

Now, her own luck had arrived, hadn’t it?

The blue dress of the Doll glowed faintly in the gloom, carrying a fatal, seductive allure.

[Come, come to me.]

Jian Yingying believed that this special Doll, the one summoning her, wasn’t aggressive. She no longer imitated Luo Jia Bai’s rough approach with a stick, but instead reached out and reverently cupped it in her hands.

Like the other Dolls, it opened its eyes.

But its eye sockets were empty.

There were no Eyeballs inside.

Jian Yingying trembled with excitement.

The eyes really were different!

This was the one!

Jian Yingying found her arm growing stiffer and stiffer, but the thrill of finding the special Doll was greater than her fear. Her eyes began to itch again.

An itch like ants biting crept from her eye sockets deeper in, and her Eyeballs began to throb.

With great effort, Jian Yingying raised both arms, clawing at her eyes, gouging out large clots of blood. The itching finally subsided a bit.

She thought, it must be because the fog was so thick here, too cold and damp, that her arms wouldn’t lift.

“I found it!”

Jian Yingying opened her mouth, ready to shout to Nuo Nuo, but found her lips felt as if they were smeared with glue – opening and closing them was nearly impossible, and she couldn’t make a sound.

The Doll’s face suddenly drew incredibly close to hers.

Eye sockets pressed to eye sockets.

Blue dress overlapping blue dress.

The voice that had been luring her from the beginning grew louder and louder, drowning out Jian Yingying’s panicked heartbeat and the scream she could never let out.

[You finally found me, because I am you.]

Jian Yingying melted from skin and flesh into the same rotting, murky black liquid as the other Dolls, pouring down from the place where she and the Doll were joined.
After Jian Yingying completely turned into black water and stained one corner of the slide, the doll’s blue dress lost its color, becoming black-gray like the other dolls, with rotting limbs from the melted corpse still clinging to its forehead and body.

It quietly sat back in its original place and opened its eyes.

There was now a pair of pitch-black eyeballs in its sockets.

Now, it was no longer special.

–

Lu Li sank into the soft sand.

He reached down and, sure enough, found the bottom at a very shallow depth.

The sand on the third and fourth floors differed: the mutilated corpses on the fourth floor had performed so spectacularly that it created the illusion the sand below was full of danger.

The constantly disappearing ground also created illusions and cognitive obstacles, making people mistakenly believe that the ground or the area around the facilities was safe.

“There’s something inside my clothes! Quick, help me check if it’s a hand!” Luo Jia Bai was extremely tense. He reached behind his back, fumbling around but couldn’t find anything, and said in despair, “I’m going to become Nuo Nuo’s plaything!”

“There’s a big difference between a plaything and a doll.”

“It’s just a few grains of sand, and you’re already scared out of your wits.” Lu Li stood up, still holding onto Luo Jia Bai’s wrist.

With a gentle pull, he helped Luo Jia Bai to his feet.

“You’re so strong!” Luo Jia Bai staggered a couple of times before steadying himself, staring in shock at Lu Li’s thin frame. “Do you work out a lot?”

His strength was extraordinary, and earlier, when dodging the tentacles of the mutilated corpses, his movements had been far more agile than an ordinary person’s.

Though Lu Li’s frame was slender, wearing the same plain initial outfit as everyone else, he somehow managed to carry an elegant, runway-model aura.

Could Lu Li really be hiding an eight-pack under his clothes?

Lu Li answered honestly, “When I have free time, I just like to lie down.”

“I don’t believe you.” Luo Jia Bai pouted. The sand that had accidentally gotten into his clothes tumbled out as he straightened up.

The sand was shallower than expected, only reaching the knees, making it possible to walk through.

He looked around, amazed. “There’s really nothing under here.”

“How did you figure it out?”

“Because those corpses above had the same idea as you at first.” Lu Li pointed at the four floating platforms overhead.

“The players’ corpses are all crowded on the facilities, which means they encountered the same situation as us. They thought the special item must be hidden in the four facilities. As the ground began to shrink and time ran out, with nowhere left to go, they could only stand on the facilities.”

The way the dolls, once players, clung so tightly to the facilities showed just how much hope they had placed in them before dying.

Little did they know, the real lifeline was the abyss below.

Luo Jia Bai listened, his mouth agape. He touched the sand. “So we need to think in reverse: the sand is actually the safest place, and what we’re looking for is also hidden in the sand?”

Lu Li nodded. “The places that look safest are actually the most dangerous.”

“Then why did Zhu Yue react so strongly when she fell just now?” Luo Jia Bai scratched his head. “I thought she was attacked.”

“Because her injuries were too severe. Even falling this short distance made them worse, and in the end, Qi Mingda even shot her.”

Lu Li glanced around at the seemingly flat sand. “She’s now buried under the sand, but there’s no corpse or doll, and Nuo Nuo hasn’t reacted, so she might not be dead yet.”

Lu Li took out the timer and checked it. “Three minutes left. We need to hurry and search the sand.”

Luo Jia Bai couldn’t think as quickly as Lu Li and said anxiously, “Can you tell me exactly what we’re looking for first?”