ITOTIABSAM | Infinite Flow | 176
"King?"
What nonsense was he talking about?
Realizing that the person in front of him was the ghost who had given him an umbrella and candy during the day, Xie Ye should have greeted the golden-haired youth with a smile.
However, the inquiry about killing Gu Cong made him unconsciously show a colder expression.
"There have been rumors circulating between the instances about you leaving home," the golden-haired youth straightened up without embarrassment despite not receiving a response, smiling. "It seems they are true."
Rubbing his calves, Xie Ye casually sat down at the edge of Gu Cong's bed, lowering his eyes to hide the confusion in them. "No one else calls me that except for you."
There were many times when he was injured by the monsters in the instances.
"After all, your disguise is so perfect," speaking Chinese but with the tone of a magnificent aria, the golden-haired youth fluctuated in his speech. "If it weren't for you deliberately breaking the rules last night and leading you into a dream, I might have been fooled like those foolish players."
Xie Ye: You're thinking too much; he was just innocently led by Jiang Chuan.
It was Jiang Chuan who wanted to sleep in the same room as him.
And on the same bed.
The refreshing night breeze gently flowed into the room through the wide-open window, cool and refreshing. Behind Xie Ye, the man who should have been alert and awakened showed no reaction, his eyes closed, almost as if he were in a stupor, sound asleep.
Expressionless, the black-haired youth asked, "Is this your ability?"
"Of course," snapping his fingers lightly, the top hat disappeared, and the golden-haired youth walked over to Xie Ye, bowing and making a gesture of invitation. "Shall I take you for a stroll?"
However, Xie Ye did not take the offered hand.
With a self-taught air, he raised his chin and gestured with his eyes for him to step aside. "Lead the way."
"Forget to introduce myself, I'm Dis," the smile at the corner of his mouth was like a nailed-on mask, the elegant ghost introduced himself as a magician. "I'm a magician."
As if to match his words, a small bouquet of flowers suddenly exploded in Dis's empty palm, and then transformed into a lifelike paper rabbit, its voice sharp as it urged, "Please, please."
Under the moonlight's brilliance, the entire town fell into boundless silence. No one was awake, and no one could stop them. As leisurely as taking a stroll in their own home, Dis stood in the dim hallway and casually opened a nearby door.
It was room 207.
Inside were Tang Yan and Cheng Xiaorong, two girls. From their postures, it seemed they hadn't gone to sleep yet but were sitting face to face, as if they were having a conversation.
"Don't worry, the lady's pleasant chat has not been interrupted—allow me to take over in their dreams," with no intention to harm the two, Dis stopped politely just outside the door. "As long as they don't repeat this conversation tomorrow morning, no one will discover this well-intentioned little trick."
Hearing this, Xie Ye suddenly remembered something. Xiao Baimao, who slept a lot in room 205, once claimed to have kept watch until dawn. Perhaps they all overlooked one thing: rather than the appearance of death, what should be checked more precisely is the actual time of death.
——If the middle-aged man had already passed away before midnight, it would conflict with Xiao Baimao's testimony and naturally arouse the players' vigilance.
Or perhaps the doctor had already discovered the truth but chose to conceal it due to various reasons.
"Players are like this. Clearly of the same kind, yet always harboring their own calculations," Dis sighed softly, shrugging helplessly. "It's precisely because of this that it gave me an opportunity."
However, Xie Ye wasn't swayed by Dis's sentimentality. "That doesn't make sense."
Based on the information he obtained from the player's wristwatch, aside from the final challenge, the instances in the Infinite Game were divided into nine difficulty levels.
The forced sleep and the lifelike dream worlds, almost indistinguishable from reality, even if there were flaws, the clues were too obscure. The probability of completion was far lower than what Xie Ye remembered from difficulty level 7.
"Don't you know yet?" Dis's eyes dimmed slightly, as if he had seen something. "Nightmare Town was not originally intended for them—any player other than Jiang Chuan."
"But there's no other way. Since this is Jiang Chuan's final instance, dying by my hand is still better than being sent to challenge Eternal Slumber, don't you think?"
Eternal Slumber.
Although it was the first time he heard this term, Xie Ye felt strangely familiar with it, and his temples throbbed as if struck by a heavy hammer, pulsating with pain.
"His scorecard is too skillfully managed. He can easily squeeze into the top ten by just completing a difficulty level 1 instance," Dis explained as he stepped forward, bypassing Room 205 and opening another door. "As the gatekeeper of Eternal Slumber, I could only rudely rush onto the stage before I could prepare."
The so-called randomness, manipulated by the game system, was nothing but a joke.
Regardless of what instance Cheng Xiaorong should have been assigned to, as long as there was "Jiang Chuan" in the team, the only possibility left on the poster was Nightmare Town.
As for difficulty level 7? During the seventh night, just let a few players other than Jiang Chuan escape, and everyone would be happy. It would also ensure a high completion rate, a simple solution indeed.
Still wearing Jiang Chuan's coat, Xie Ye pinched the hem calmly and asked, "What was the original 10th place on the leaderboard doing? Wouldn't he go into the instance? If Jiang Chuan and that person both successfully completed the instance, then even if Jiang Chuan survived, there is still a great possibility that he would be ranked 11th."
The system had no reason to send Jiang Chuan into Nightmare Town before the outcome was determined.
"The tenth? Isn't he already dead?" Dis chuckled pleasantly. "Or perhaps, among the top ten on the leaderboard, who else is still alive?"
"Role models, hopes, it's all just bait dangling in front of the stupid fish climbing upwards. Didn't all those initial top ten players end up falling into Eternal Slumber?"
The system concealed their deaths, manipulated the score changes slightly, deceived everyone, maintaining the lie of the leaderboard. Once someone emerged as a rising star with hopes of breaking into the top ten, the system would pull them into Nightmare Town early, causing the newcomer to fall prematurely and leaving behind only sighs among the players.
However, these sighs would soon fade away. No one could perceive anything wrong, after all, death was just another ordinary occurrence in the infinite game.
"Isn't it strange?" Dis mused, as if leading, "Why would the system lie, why would it go through all this trouble for such ungrateful tasks?"
But Xie Ye already had an answer in his heart.
Sure enough, the next moment, as he expected, Dis raised his eyebrows.
"Because the boss of Eternal Slumber has gone missing, and no one can call it back home."
"Now the final instance is just an empty shell. What if a player breaks into the top ten? They can't even enter the door. How is the system going to explain that?"
"What do you think?"
"King."
"The boss of Eternal Slumber."
In a flash, Xie Ye's ears seemed to reverberate with those noisy murmurs again, repeating over and over, come back, come back, leave the players behind…
Killing anyone who wanted to escape.
"Although I really want to teach this rude fellow a lesson, unfortunately, even I can only follow the rules and harvest the ugliest souls of tonight."
With disdain, Dis glanced at Li Jie, who was sitting on the bed with a frustrated look, smoking. Then he raised his hand towards Sun Pengyu, who was smiling obsequiously nearby. The tip of the long-handled umbrella oozed out small black snakes, which immediately wriggled into Sun Pengyu's facial features.
Rules?
Rules.
Feeling a shock in his heart, Xie Ye turned around and, without hesitation, left the magician who was indulging in his performance. With three quick steps, he pushed open the door of room 208.
A strong smell of rust filled the air.
The man who had actively violated the rules was now lying on the bed, frowning. A deep red stain had already soaked through his left shoulder, spreading from the wound inflicted by the horn.
The magician, now devoid of his audience, silently followed behind, discontentedly saying, "What are you..."
But before he could finish, mist surged between Xie Ye's fingers. Xie Ye turned back, precise and ruthless, and firmly grabbed Dis's neck, almost choking him.
"Cough!"
Ghosts didn't need to breathe, but Dis, for the first time in a long while, tasted the sensation of suffocation. Despite being in his own territory, he couldn't find the slightest opportunity to escape.
But he was a madman.
A fanatic who worshipped the strong.
"Do you like him? It doesn't matter. When he dies, he'll naturally become a part of you."
Fed up with Xie Ye's gentle and weak appearance, Dis's chest heaved violently, resembling an old, worn-out bellows on the verge of being discarded. Hoarsely, he struggled to draw closer to Xie Ye and laughed, "When you came to town... Did you see the bodies on the bus? They were all the nutrients that nurtured you."
"They will be sent into Eternal Slumber from, cough! each of the instances, cough cough!"
Monsters nourished by mountains of corpses and seas of blood, the pinnacle of resentment and hatred, what's spoken of as goodness, must be mad enough to be beautiful.
And who would have thought that in the infinite game, the thing least desired to leave was the player itself?
—--[I'm dead, why should he be able to return to reality?]
[Leave him, leave him! Leave him to accompany us!]
[The meaning of being alive is to be killed by players, aren't you angry?]
[Go home! Hurry home! Come and fulfill our wishes!]
The noise... It's so noisy.
In the depths of his consciousness, countless murmurs, carried by thick fog, crossed the barriers of the instances, whispering in Xie Ye's ears, stirring up chaos. The once clear phoenix eyes of the young man turned dark, like a vortex of confusion, with faint traces of crimson emerging from the depths.
The magician being choked by him was far from elegant, struggling as if a painting erased by an eraser, gradually becoming transparent from his feet, disappearing bit by bit.
"Are you really going to kill me?" The fear of complete disappearance overwhelmed the frenzy in his mind. Dis looked at Xie Ye in distress, speaking rapidly, "Without a boss, the instance will be settled."
"He will clear it, he will break into the top ten, he will be silenced by the system!"
"Or... are you willing to open Eternal Slumber for him?"
Open Eternal Slumber?
"Go home"? Kill Jiang Chuan with his own hands?
Suddenly, the black-haired Xie Ye loosened his tightened fingers, and with a clatter, the magician, now only half a body, fell heavily to the ground, rolling over.
"Instead of letting him suffer in the final instance, it's better to let him die here," extending his fingertips, Dis firmly grasped Xie Ye's pant leg, "I will weave a beautiful dream for him, let him smile..."
Crack.
Before he could finish his sentence, Xie Ye's foot heavily stepped on his wrist.
With lowered eyelashes, Xie Ye parted his lips:
"Get lost."
His skin was too pale, almost translucent, and his dark eyes made the hint of color on his lips appear even more eerie and mysterious. As the cold wind swept through, the magician, lucky to escape with his life, immediately turned into a flat shadow and hastily left through the unclosed window.
As the curtains fell back into place, Xie Ye stood still in place for a while, then decisively lifted the man's blanket, tore off his own shirt to use as a bandage, and opened Gu Cong's clothes.
His movements were swift, but his tone was filled with cautious softness: "Wake up."
"I don't want you to die yet."
Author's note:
That's right, this time Xie Ye is still the biggest "Villain".
Because of the "runaway from home" debuff, he's the one being bullied. (Actually, there's also an element of deliberate indulgence by the system.)
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