Translated by Crooked
Edited by Dust Bunny
The hands on Gu Xizhou’s waist were trembling; clearly the other person was terrified.
Gradually, Gu Xizhou’s eyes adapted to his surroundings, and he could clearly see the dusky outline of a person. The other person’s clothes were dyed with his blood, and her whole body was shaking in fear, but her hands didn’t stop applying pressure. They pressed down firmly on Gu Xizhou’s wound to staunch the bleeding.
Gu Xizhou had already completely adapted to the dark room and was able to see clearly. He saw another nervous and determined Chinese face.
The man wore a brown jacket and sported bruises on the corners of his mouth and near his eyes. He had average features easily overlooked in a crowd.
But as soon as Gu Xizhou saw his face, he called out a name: Hong Ge!”
The man called Ji Hong showed a blank expression and obviously found the name unfamiliar. He said to himself, “So this was an NPC…”
Gu Xizhou heard the man’s words and couldn’t help but feel disappointed. He was now certain this person was not ‘Ji Hong’, even though he wore Ji Hong’s face.
The man obviously considered Gu Xizhou to be an NPC and tried to find some clues to leave this place. “Hey, do you know why we’re here?”
Gu Xizhou glanced at the man and ignored his question, turning instead to inspect their surroundings.
Sure enough.
This was 1999, back when he’d been attacked and woken up afterwards. It was exactly the same. Even the girl helping him put pressure on his wound had the same face as before.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry… I’m sorry…” The girl hung her head with her back pressed against the wall, mumbling as she staunched the blood.
After some of them died with lingering grievances, they’d finally thrown off the chains. Gu Xizhou’s sight couldn’t help but fall on the other six people in the room apart from their group.
Because Gu Xizhou didn’t answer the man’s question, the man wearing Ji Hong’s face deflated like a ball and said, “The girl NPC is crazy and only knows how to say sorry, and the man NPC doesn’t speak at all. What is this world? Dammit, this is the second world! Does it really have to pit me like this?
“Your second world?” Gu Xizhou asked.
“Eh, you can talk?” The man couldn’t believe it. “Fuck, so you weren’t an NPC. You go through the mission worlds like us too?”
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.
“En, I’m Gu Xizhou.” Gu Xizhou looked at the man and asked, “Who are you?”
“P’w Ojl Vtfcuifl. Tbe’nf yffc ecmbcrmlber obg j ibcu alwf, rb P atbeuta sbe kfgf jc RUJ!” tf rjlv, megilcu tlr wbeat.
“Qtja’r ublcu bc?” Xe Wlhtbe jrxfv.
Qtfc Xe Wlhtbe kbxf eq, tf’v rfjgmtfv atlr ugbeq bo qfbqif obg agjmfr bo Vl Te bg Mjcu Itl’r qgfrfcmf, yea la kjr bynlber atja atfs kfgfc’a tfgf. Xe Wlhtbe gfwfwyfgfv lc gfjilas atja akb qfbqif kfgf xlvcjqqfv jcv lwqglrbcfv klat atfw akb vjsr joafg tf kbxf eq.
Lai Shenglei shrugged with a helpless expression. He said, “There are no clues. I just opened my eyes here, and there’s no one else besides us seven. This girl has only been holding your wound and saying sorry, and she won’t speak to anyone.
“Originally we were just hoping you would wake up, but it seems like you don’t know anything.
“I’ve been here for two hours more than you, but I don’t know anything. I’ve been talking in circles with this girl for an hour, but she didn’t say anything.”
Lai Shenglei complained at length, then he muttered apprehensively. “But in this supernatural world, there haven’t been any ghosts yet. Maybe it’s not even nighttime yet.”
Just then, someone pushed open the wooden door. A man holding a pile of boxed lunches lightly opened the door and set them down at the entrance before turning to leave. How could Lai Shenglei allow this NPC to leave? He hurried forward and tried to use a hand to block the door, but the man used all his strength to pull the door and smashed Lai Shenglei’s palm, causing him to scream in pain.
“Ge, tell me, why are you keeping us locked in here?”
The man frowned and said, “What are you talking about?”
Lai Shenglei rubbed his swelling palm with a bitter expression and asked, “I don’t know, so I asked you. Why are you asking me instead?”
The door guard mocked, “Don’t know? If you don’t know then it’s fine.”
Once he’d finished speaking, he directly shut the door. The mission takers cursed, “Shit, what’s wrong with the NPCs in this mission world? They’re all sick in the head!”
Gu Xizhou couldn’t move because of his injury, so he lay motionless on the ground. The girl repeated the same sentence over and over just like in his memory. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Because the people outside refused to give them information, the mission takers stuck in the room grew irritable. One of them looked at the girl and scolded, “Are you bored or just fucking crazy? Can you say anything besides sorry?”
Gu Xizhou raised his eyebrows. “We don’t know anything; what’s the use of being mean to her?”
They snapped back, “Hehe, wait until you hear her go on for hours and see if you can still remain so calm!”
Gu Xizhou turned to the girl.
Actually, his feelings for her were quite complex.
If this girl hadn’t stabbed him, he wouldn’t have been abducted so easily, so he wasn’t in a very good mood when he woke up to see her and was fed up with her apologies.
Gu Xizhou even remembered the first sentence he said to this girl after waking up——could you stop talking?
His tone wasn’t nice at all.
He blamed the girl in the beginning, but then he realized her 60 year old grandma was caught by these demented criminals, and when she, a 17 year old girl, was threatened, she was already scared out of her mind. The kidnappers could have talked her into doing anything.
Moreover, after experiencing so many words, Gu Xizhou could understand how a girl could lose her wits and do such things when she was isolated and alone.
For example, the girl who was raped in the first world had no one on her side. Her father even helped the rapist get rid of the evidence for money and a promotion, while her mother was too weak to help her.
What really drove the girl to despair was not being raped, but the feeling of helplessness after the betrayal of her family. It felt like drowning in the deep, dark sea. Even if she could swim, she couldn’t return to shore.
Gu Xizhou looked at the muttering girl and patted her head gently. He thought for a moment, then asked, “Hey, what’s your name?”
The girl heard Gu Xizhou’s question and her dull eyes finally gained a trace of vitality. “M-my name is Tu Yao.”
At the same time, they heard voices outside the door.
“You really have guts to abduct a police officer.”
“We’re gonna kill ‘em anyway, so it’s better to use ‘em to make some money.”
Everyone was shocked when they heard this, and they looked at each other in dismay. After all, they still didn’t understand the situation here, but they all noticed the key points: ‘Police officer’, ‘kill’ ‘make money’.
“The fuck, what are these people doing here?”
“Organ trafficking,” Gu Xizhou said plainly.
Lai Shenglei’s expression was full of disbelief, and he asked Gu Xizhou, “Hey, Ge, what do you know?”
Gu Xizhou’s words were toneless. “They spoke about a police officer, which means one of us seven is the officer, but they talked about using ‘them’, so that means at least two of us are law enforcement.
“You can look through your clothes and you should find something.”
Hearing Gu Xizhou’s reminder, the five of them immediately rummaged through their pockets. Lai Shenglei quickly found a police badge in his.
“Fuck, it’s here!” Lai Shenglei looked at the name, ‘Ji Hong’, and his eyes narrowed. Just now, when this Gu Xizhou woke up, he remembered that he called him ‘Hong Ge!’
No matter how you looked at it, this was like an NPC!
Lai Shenglei pondered it, watching Gu Xizhou closely. None of the others had police badges, so Lai Shenglei looked at Gu Xizhou and asked, “Who is the other officer?”
“Me.” Gu Xizhou still lay on the ground. “Isn’t it obvious? The only ones who are injured here are you and me.”
Lai Shenglei nodded. “Makes sense, makes sense.”
Even as he spoke, Lai Shenglei was even more certain in his heart that Gu Xizhou was an NPC in this mission world. But why would an NPC pretend to be a mission taker like them?
Fuck, it couldn’t be that he planned to wait for the last minute to ambush them! Good thing he was quick witted and discovered the issue with this guy early!
Lei Shenglei had already decided in his heart to keep a close watch on this ‘NPC’, but there was no sign of suspicion on his face. Instead, he continued to try to get information from Gu Xizhou.
He slyly asked Gu Xizhou, “What should we do now? It’s dinnertime, and there’s no way nights in the mission world will be peaceful. Aren’t all of us stuck in the same room here? The rules could kill us!”
“Right, we can’t continue to wait to leave, and we can’t wait until nightfall. We have to find some way to escape!”
“If we don’t go out, we’ll all be wiped out directly by the rules!”
“This condition does exist,” said Gu Xizhou, “but not everyone in the mission world is in this room now.”
“They aren’t?” asked Lai Shenglei.
Gu Xizhou said, “En. I teamed up with two other people and came in, but they’re not here.”
Lai Shenglei harbored some suspicions about the information Gu Xizhou provided, but at least it was somewhere to start. He turned to the others to discuss their escape plan. Gu Xizhou really was a bit tired, mainly due to his body feeling poor. The pain in his waist shot through his whole body from time to time.
There were no analgesics here, and Gu Xizhou could only grit his teeth and bear it. He closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep. His memory was clear: after two days, two more people will be sent here. If he predicted correctly, those two people should be Si Yu and Fang Zhi. After all, they’re in the same task world, and they shouldn’t have been separated.
If he didn’t remember incorrectly, this area was an abandoned factory. The surroundings were very sparsely populated, and even illegal surgeries were performed here. It wasn’t feasible to seek help from outside, so they could only come up with a way to escape before the next operation. This should satisfy the ‘ghost’s’ wish.
He was too tired and needed to conserve his strength. He could wait for Si Yu and Fang Zhi to arrive to talk about it again.
Crooked: I started a full-time position recently, which doesn’t mean I don’t have time to translate, but it DOES mean I forget when it’s Tuesday. Anyway take this
Thank you for the translation 😍
Thank you for the chapter!
What if he’s the ghost…?