The young man in room 405 was revealing Meng Qing’s secrets.
After listening, Song Mingliang left with heavy steps. He descended the stairs and headed in the direction of room 304.
There, there was one person he was particularly interested in—his father, Song Qiang.
The thought of being near him sent shivers of excitement coursing through his veins.
It was strange. He hadn’t always felt this way. He used to avoid Song Qiang and was even afraid to face him, doing everything to stay out of his way. He couldn’t pinpoint exactly when this had started.
All he remembered was that when he was very young, Song Qiang, who wasn’t doing well as compared to his relatives and friends, had been especially strict with him, often resorting to physical punishment. He wanted every minute of his son’s life to be devoted to studying and prohibited him from going out to play or making friends.
Once, when he had just started elementary school, he brought three friends back home to play. Song Qiang, exhausted from work and frustrated, chased away his friends, and then proceeded to give him a severe beating.
He would never forget the fear, shock, and sympathy he saw in his friends’ eyes that day, nor the searing pain when the leather whip struck his body.
After that incident, no classmates ever came to his house to play, and even in school, none of his classmates wanted to befriend him. More and more of them began talking about him behind his back.
Of course, he would never invite classmates to his house to play again.
He locked himself in that cramped room, dedicating all his time to studying. As a result of the repeated beatings, he became increasingly silent and withdrawn, growing more afraid of Song Qiang, resisting him from the depths of his heart.
If Song Mingliang wanted to use the bathroom and Song Qiang was about to finish work, he would first open the door just a crack and press himself against the door to check if Song Qiang had returned.
If he saw that Song Qiang hadn’t come back, he would hurriedly go to the bathroom. After using the bathroom, he would once again peer through the crack to see if Song Qiang had returned. If Song Qiang had unfortunately returned, he would sit in the bathroom, waiting for him to leave the living room before he dared to come out.
Sometimes, when Song Qiang found him lingering in the bathroom, he would kick the door and scold him. This would commonly be followed by a beating.
Song Qiang thought he was just being lazy and hiding in the bathroom to avoid work, just like some of his colleagues. But in reality, Song Mingliang was doing this to avoid him.
His aversion towards Song Qiang had already reached that point.
He frequently observed Song Qiang through the narrow gap in the door to see if he was there and what he was doing. He didn’t want to see Song Qiang, but he’d get anxious if he didn’t know what Song Qiang was doing.
That small room felt like a prison, making him increasingly isolated and gloomy. However, it was also his safe haven for evading the monster prowling outside. That narrow slit was the safest passage between him and the outside world. He was scared, yet he longed for it.
Later, Song Qiang, with his silver tongue and flattery, finally secured a small management position and a slight increase in salary, which slightly improved their family’s living conditions. He finally had something to brag about in front of family.
It was also then that Song Qiang started to criticize other aspects of his son. He felt that Song Mingliang didn’t know how to speak well. He abhorred the fact that he wasn’t lively or outgoing. He didn’t think Song Mingliang would amount to anything in the future.
At family gatherings or when colleagues came over for dinner, he would force his son to make toasts and say flattering words, publicly berating him for being useless.
Because from his shallow experiences, only those who had friends, connections, could speak well, and were skilled at pleasing their superiors had a future. Otherwise, even if he excelled academically and got into a good university, it would all be in vain.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Wasn’t it funny? Song Mingliang found it to be the most ironic thing in the world.
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He said he named him Song Mingliangbecause he hoped he would become a dazzling person.
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Nor could he be a normal person like Meng Tianyou. The latter was easily disliked, but he had the confidence to stand tall because he had a mother who loved him deeply.
Most of all, he couldn’t become someone like Xia Bai. He found him peculiar, yet he was envious of the young man too. Xia Bai was eccentric and quiet, yet there were two people who unconditionally protected him, quietly drawing everyone’s attention and making them unknowingly focus on him.
His name was Song Mingliang. His name meant ‘dazzling’.
But he wasn’t.
He was someone who hid in that cramped room, cautiously peering at the enormous, terrifying monster of his childhood. Over time, he had become increasingly self-conscious, isolated, melancholic, and gloomy.
Just like now. Every cell in his body was screaming at him, like the devil’s whispers, to do what he had done in childhood: to find where Song Qiang was, to spy on what he was doing, to approach him and figure out what he was thinking, to understand him more deeply. Only then could he find solace, huddled in that small, dark room.
Song Mingliang approached Song Qiang step by step. He saw that Song Qiang’s mouth was moving, probably saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. He only urged himself to get closer, just a little closer. He wanted to get a better view. He wanted to look deeper.
He saw it all, just like how he’d seen everything in that narrow, suffocating view from his childhood.
Lin Xiang, who had legs longer than Hua Haoming, was the first to arrive at the door of room 304.
He had assumed nothing was wrong, but he now stood frozen in front of the dormitory door. This time, he didn’t vomit, but his eyes were filled with horror.
Hua Haoming arrived next, and he too stood shell-shocked at the door.
Xia Bai, who had been delayed by Meng Tianyou, was the third to arrive. When he saw the two standing at the door like that, he knew something had gone wrong.
Two tall guys, both over 180 centimeters, stood at the door, nearly blocking the entrance to the dormitory.
Xia Bai squeezed between them and looked inside through the narrow opening. He, too, was briefly stunned, unable to find words just like the others.
The teenager who had kept his head lowered all along had climbed on top of Song Qiang, embraced him, and pushed his head into Song Qiang’s mouth.
The dormitory manager arrived quickly with security personnel. They pulled Song Mingliang out of Song Qiang’s mouth and took away the lifeless body of Song Qiang.
As they carried the body away from them, they all knew that if Song Qiang was taken to the morgue, he would definitely become another cadaver whose mouth was stitched shut.
It had to be stitched.
When Wen Qiu came downstairs and saw his body, she was so startled that she clung to the staircase railing for support.
On the same floor, several dormitory doors had cracks in them, with many pairs of eyes peering secretly through them. However, not a single person came out. It was as if they had no idea what had happened.
As Wen Qiu slowly walked over, her face pale, she noticed that Song Mingliang, who was now covered in blood with open, gruesome wounds on both sides of his face, had passed out. His hair was damp and sticky, and the area around his head was a mix of black and red.
She was startled once again and hurriedly asked, “Wen Dong! Where’s Wen Dong? Is he okay?”
Hua Haoming said, “Go check the dormitory.”
All the players gathered in Xia Bai’s room, room 312.
When they came back, Wen Dong was already lying in bed. Xia Bai remembered that Wen Dong was holding a mirror when he heard the scream. However, the mirror was now nowhere to be found.
Hua Haoming tied up Song Mingliang with his soft white sword. It was the first time Xia Bai was seeing it.
By now, it was well past 3 a.m., but no one felt sleepy. The atmosphere was silent and oppressive.
Tonight, two people had died suddenly, and each death had been bizarre and gruesome. It was a massive shock for the teenagers who were experiencing the game for the first time, and even for those who had entered games before, their current situation was still hard to accept.
Each of them still had traces of death and blood clinging to them, and the scent of death and bloodshed still hung in the air.
Hua Haoming was the first to break the silence. He took the lead in getting them to recover from their heavy moods and focus on clearing the game.
“It seems that Song Mingliang fits the profile of voyeurism that Xia Bai mentioned.”
He continued, “Even though he hasn’t tortured himself to death as Dai Liangyuan claimed, Xia Bai’s suspicion seems right. His actions also fall within the realm of madness. He also… caused Song Qiang’s death.”
“Yes,” Lin Xiang wiped his sweaty face. “Meng Qing has germophobia, Song Mingliang has voyeurism. So, every person who enters the morgue will have their fixations infinitely magnified and distorted, eventually leading to their own or someone else’s death?”
Hua Haoming nodded. “That seems to be the case.”
Lin Xiang’s mouth twitched. “The game exposes one’s secret fixations and twists it into a weapon of lunacy. Players are all stripped of their dignity.”
Hua Haoming said, “You still want dignity? In a horror game, you’re lucky to even survive. What dignity is there to speak of? This is one of the cruelties of the game.”
Wen Qiu seemed to have accepted this lack of dignity and was numb to it. In the face of life and death, everything else was trivial; the most important thing was to clear the game.
She said, “I wonder if their bodies have been taken to the morgue. If they have, it might confirm our earlier speculation. Perhaps the cadavers in the morgue come from students and teachers who were killed. Their souls are trapped in the morgue, cursing or possessing the students who enter. When the students are cursed and die, they become cadavers and restart this cycle.”
Lin Xiang made an inappropriate comment, “If that’s the case, this school is really good at recycling. There’s no waste at all.”
Xia Bai nodded. “It’s too much. We shouldn’t treat corpses like this.”
“…”
Hua Haoming rubbed his temples. “What about Wen Dong? We need to figure out what his fixation is.”
Both he and Lin Xiang looked at Wen Qiu, Wen Dong’s older sister. Wen Qiu furrowed her brow in thought. “He doesn’t have germophobia or voyeurism, and he doesn’t seem to have any specific fixations.”
Lin Xiang chimed in, “His fixation might not be an obvious one. Meng Qing only had a mild germophobia, and we didn’t initially notice Song Mingliang’s voyeurism. It was greatly magnified by the morgue.”
Wen Qiu still couldn’t think of anything. “His personality is very normal. He was brought up properly too.”
The three of them then turned to Xia Bai. Hua Haoming asked, “Did Wen Dong behave abnormally tonight?”
Xia Bai cut straight to the point. “He commented that my lips are really red.”
“…?”
Lin Xiang was instantly agitated. “The heck does he mean by that? What is he trying to do to Xia Bai?”
Hua Haoming, once again, rubbed his temples. Lin Xiang was so nervous that it was as if he was Xia Bai’s father.
Xia Bai continued, “At 2 AM, he took out a mirror. I didn’t have time to see what he wanted to do with the mirror before I heard screams and went upstairs.”
A mirror? What fixation could be associated with a mirror?
Lin Xiang was troubled by Wen Dong’s fixation on Xia Bai’s lips. He pondered over the matter, muttering, “After complimenting Xia Bai’s lips, he searched for a mirror. Logically, he should be looking at his own lips, right? Checking the mirror is mainly about examining one’s face. Is he very concerned about his own appearance? What kind of fixation is that?”
The other three had also never heard of such an fixation.
“Here’s the plan. Let’s not discuss Wen Dong’s fixation for now. Tomorrow, one or two more players will have to go to the morgue. It will be one of us four. While we’re all still rational, we should tell each other about our own fixations,” Hua Haoming suggested.
Lin Xiang cooperated fully and talked about himself. “I’ve never lacked anything since I was a child, so I don’t have any special preferences. I can confidently say that I don’t have any fixations.”
Xia Bai was also very cooperative. He leaned forward with his hands on his knees, like a well-behaved student answering a teacher’s question. “I never used the internet as a child and don’t understand the complicated hobbies of city people. I don’t have any fixations.”
Lin Xiang vigorously nodded. “Yes! Xia Bai hasn’t been tainted by the world. He’s pure and clean! He definitely won’t have any fixations. Didn’t Dai Liangyuan mention that some who entered the morgue turned out fine? Xia Bai will definitely be one of them!”
Hua Haoming, not knowing what to say in response to that, decided to remain silent.
The author has something to say:
An untainted pure white jasmine flower: Xia Bai.
Xiao Bai, you clearly did not need the internet to develope a (certainly still unknown and completely hidden) fixation.
Thanks for the chapter!!! ❤️❤️❤️
“Is he very concerned about his own appearance? What kind of fixation is that?” Uh, vanity? You guys have never heard of vanity?
Bro, Lin Xiang, I think your buddy might have a slight fixation on corpses? 😭
Wen Dong should be at least slightly narcissistic, now becoming very narcissistic. I wonder if he’s going to go full Silence of the Lambs “it puts the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again” and start stealing features he thinks are better than the ones he already has.
Also, our buddy boy has an extreme fixation on corpses or death, and he doesn’t hid it well haha
oh no… if our Xia Bai goes in he’d turn everyone into a corpse cries best if he doesn’t go it
with the comment about the lips… maybe he wants to be beautiful? or has some form of sexual desire he hadn’t shared with his sister? idfk cries
thank you for the chapter!~
I think more like he’ll spend the rest of the game being in the morgue at night (*T^T)
my exact thoughts (*T^T)
Because he is more interested in corpses than living people… cuz you know? He wouldn’t bother killing anyone he would instead go sit with his corpse friends and talk with them, who cares about the living when you have quiet(dead) friends that would listen to you unconditionally (cuz they can’t talk xD)
….you’ll know what his fixation is when you see him sneaking into the morgue at night and having a family dinner with the corpses…. 🙂
Bruh.. Xia Bai’s fixated on corpses and their well-being while Lin Xiang is fixated on Xia Bai and his well-being 😅😂🤣
genuinely feel bad for song mingliang…it sucks that he was never able to get away from his father’s shadow. The fact that Mingliang was so scared of his father that he couldn’t even stand not knowing where his father was (for fear that he would get beaten) is so sad.