Chapter 184
Chapter 184
Behind the tall, slender figure, the ballroom doors opened.
Bright moonlight streamed through the half-open gap and spilled into the room, illuminating the dead woman’s face.
And that blood-soaked face… belonged to Liang Chen.
“Ah!” Liang Chen cried out, yanking her hand away from the Crystal Ball in terror.
She immediately took off the Crystal Shoes on her feet and put them back on the prop table.
The vision had frightened Liang Chen so badly that a mist of tears instantly gathered on her lashes.
“Jie, this game… do we really have to play it?” Liang Chen’s voice trembled, tears glimmering in her eyes.
It was mankind’s instinctive fear of death.
Liang Chen knew she might die, but she had never imagined she would die so horribly.
“There’s still time for you to quit,” Jiang Li said, trying to comfort her.
“Jie, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry!” At this point, Liang Chen could no longer care about anything else.
She immediately returned to her seat, grabbed her own backpack and Da Yao’s, then ran out of the waiting hall without looking back.
Four teammates. Three dead in gruesome ways.
Then what about the fourth…
Jiang Li glanced at Zhang Jiang beside her, who was currently toying with the King’s Scepter.
Once again, she closed her eyes and used the Crystal Ball.
This time, she would predict Zhang Jiang’s future.
One second later.
The vision unfolded.
What came into view was Zhang Jiang’s tall profile, a crown on his head and a golden robe draped over his shoulders.
He was standing atop the tower of an ancient medieval castle.
Zhang Jiang’s right hand rested on the scepter, his neck craned high and his body ramrod straight.
Judging by his posture, he seemed to be admiring the scenery.
The only strange thing was that the direction Zhang Jiang was staring at without blinking was not the view below the observation deck.
It was… the opposite direction from the scenery: the black door at the top of the castle tower.
Jiang Li felt both uneasy and pleasantly surprised.
Zhang Jiang wasn’t dead!
A dead person’s head couldn’t stand upright on their neck.
Nor could a dead person stand perfectly straight.
This time, Jiang Li tried controlling the prophetic vision.
To her surprise, after several attempts, she really could walk within the vision.
With her heart in her throat, Jiang Li walked toward Zhang Jiang.
She had countless questions she wanted to ask him.
What exactly had happened in the fairy-tale world?
Why were her friends being murdered one after another?
Just as Jiang Li was about to see Zhang Jiang’s face clearly, a hoarse, low chuckle sounded from behind her.
Jiang Li’s heart clenched. She immediately turned to look behind her.
In the hollow, silent castle behind her, only a thin sliver of moonlight seeped through the crack of the open black door.
Everywhere else was so dark she couldn’t see her hand in front of her face.
That figure from earlier flashed past.
Jiang Li immediately chased after it.
The third rule of the Fairy Tale World Survival Rules:
[The killer is the Red-Eyed Rabbit.]
Perhaps that figure was the “Rabbit” who had killed the four of them!
But right now, Jiang Li was foreseeing Zhang Jiang’s future.
Because of that, she couldn’t move too far away from Zhang Jiang, and her movements were restricted.
Letting the killer get away filled Jiang Li with regret.
If she could obtain more details about the killer, perhaps she could make plans in advance and prevent the tragedy from happening.
Jiang Li gave up the chase and turned around.
Who would have thought that behind her, a lifeless dead face would stiffly lunge toward her?
Zhang Jiang’s body slammed straight into Jiang Li.
Fortunately, Jiang Li was only an observer. She could observe the scene, but she could not affect it.
After Zhang Jiang’s corpse passed through Jiang Li, it fell straight to the ground.
Only at that moment did Jiang Li finally see Zhang Jiang’s face clearly.
It was a bloodless face, eyes wide with terror and pupils dilated.
Zhang Jiang’s mouth gaped open. His tongue and teeth had all been pulled out.
Jiang Li knew the ability of Zhang Jiang’s King’s Scepter was to make others obey him unconditionally.
Without his tongue and teeth, Zhang Jiang could not possibly make a sound, let alone issue an order.
Jiang Li bent her knees and crouched beside Zhang Jiang’s corpse.
She noticed that there seemed to be something perfectly straight running through Zhang Jiang’s body.
That straight object pierced him from head to toe.
It was what held Zhang Jiang’s neck upright and kept his body rigid.
Moonlight fell over Zhang Jiang. By its glow, Jiang Li finally saw what was inside his body-
Inside Zhang Jiang’s split-open stomach, a section of a blood-soaked club was exposed.
The thing that had stabbed into Zhang Jiang’s body was none other than that Bloodied Club.
Someone patted Jiang Li on the shoulder.
Her body jolted, and she woke from the prophetic vision.
“Stop spacing out. Look at the screen. They’re assigning the props,” Zhang Jiang’s voice sounded beside her.
Following Zhang Jiang’s prompt, Jiang Li looked toward the large screen.
By now, almost every prop had been marked with the name of its owner.
The players chose the props, but the props were also choosing the players.
Before Jiang Li and the other four had arrived here, the props in their hands had also been touched by other children in this round.
But without exception, those children had been forced to put them down for all sorts of reasons-the props were too hot to hold, too heavy to carry, and so on.
Because that group of children were not the owners of the props in this round of the game.
On the large screen in the waiting hall, the props paired with Jiang Li’s group of five were exactly the items that had appeared in Jiang Li’s prophecy-
Zhao Qingqing’s Big Red Cloak, Xu Haoran’s Knight’s Sword, Liang Chen’s Crystal Shoes, and Zhang Jiang’s King’s Scepter.
At the entrance to the waiting hall, Liang Chen, who had been planning to run, was dragged back by the staff with a gloomy expression.
Liang Chen looked at Jiang Li and shook her head.
The Crystal Shoes had already chosen their owner, Liang Chen.
Once a prop was successfully paired, the player would lose the right to leave the game.
Jiang Li gave Liang Chen a reassuring look, then held up the Crystal Ball and closed her eyes again.
There was still one future she was most curious about, one she had yet to explore.
Jiang Li’s own face surfaced in her mind, and she silently recited her own name.
Then the image unfolded.
Before Jiang Li’s eyes was an endless void.
Her power of foresight… seemed to have failed.
Jiang Li opened her eyes and tried again.
But the image that appeared the second time was not only even darker, there also seemed to be something violently battering Jiang Li’s cranial nerves.
Jiang Li quickly opened her eyes and pulled herself out of the vision.
She saw her Health Points drop from 70 to 69.
She gave up on the idea of “forcibly viewing her own future.”
The Crystal Ball must have a hidden rule: “You cannot foresee the future of the prop’s owner.”
“Jie, I don’t want to end up like the prophecy said.”
Liang Chen walked up to Jiang Li, tears rolling down one by one.
When someone knew they were going to die-and that they would die after having their limbs cut off, their eyes gouged out, and their heart hollowed out-there was no way they could remain unmoved.
“There might still be a turning point. Don’t panic yet.” Jiang Li raised a hand and wiped away Liang Chen’s tears.
Liang Chen nodded through her tears.
Jiang Li knew that what she was saying now was nothing more than empty comfort for Liang Chen, a way to deceive both of them.
The second instruction for using the Crystal Ball:
[Once the future has been measured, it cannot be reversed or changed.]
Only at this moment did Jiang Li finally understand just how valuable the Colorful Ice Cream handed out to them by the Mascot Little Princess of Children’s Paradise truly was.
Just then, a blurry figure in a pink dress seemed to push a Pumpkin Carriage past behind Liang Chen.
The Little Princess wove through the children and teleported into a wooden door.
The Mascot…
Jiang Li’s expression tightened.
She immediately grabbed Liang Chen’s hand and, with Liang Chen in tow, chased after the Mascot.