Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-CherryApple, Proofreader-adjective
On February 17th, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Ji Dong, Ren Jianmo, and Mo Tiangen came to the door of the Hourglass Cube west of the [Peach Blossom Spring] as promised.
Even though it wasn’t the peak time for drawing lots, there were quite a number of players coming in and out of the Hourglass Cube, either alone or in groups, naturally with the same purpose as Ji Dong and the others, that is, to draw lots.
Ji Xiao’niao and the others did not meet anyone they knew among these people.
The same pretty AI sister stood at the registration desk. She had swapped her airport ground service suit for a pure white, knee-length nurse uniform.
The three of them finished registering as a team and walked through the foyer to the Hourglass Cube filled with [Films].
The hourglass remained the same, countless transparent cubic “grains of sand” suspended in the upper part of the hourglass leading up to an infinite darkness, slowly and irregularly floating, drifting pass each other, and occasionally colliding with each other, losing their original track and separating again.
Ji Dong raised his head to look at the huge hourglass in front of him and swallowed nervously.
He sincerely hoped that his luck would be better than last time, drawing an F-level [Film] should not be that difficult..
“Okay, then I’ll draw ah!”
Ji Dong stretched out his hand and touched the huge hourglass, the top of which he couldn’t see.
Same as before, he felt the semi-solid wall of air about ten centimeters away from the hourglass.
[Please choose the [Film] difficulty you want to challenge.]
A male voice resounded in the void, resembling the standard broadcast tune in the CCTV news network.
Except this time, there was only one option that appeared in front of Ji Dong, [B].
Ji Dong: “???”
He cautiously retracted his hand and blinked hard twice, trying to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating.
However, no matter how long he stared, there was only one selection in front of him – [B].
——Is this a bug in the system?
There was no other explanation Ji Xiao’niao could think of for this inconsistency.
He raised his head towards the AI anchor floating in the void and argued, “System, what’s going on? Why is there only one B-level option?”
Ji Dong protested righteously.
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.
“Doesn’t every newcomer get three chances to enter an F-level [Film]?”
[The query of participant number C0919 has been obtained, the system is confirming, please wait.]
C gfqis mjwf ogbw atf nblv.
Al Gbcu ibbxfv yjmx jcv rwlifv ja Efc Aljcwb jcv Zb Kljcufc yftlcv tlw, “Ktfgf wera yf j wlrajxf…”
Ktf jgalolmlji lcafiilufcmf vlvc’a xffq atfw kjlalcu ibcu, jcv atfs tfjgv atf jcrkfg yfobgf Al Wljb’cljb olclrtfv tlr rfcafcmf.
[It has been confirmed that there is no error in the difficulty selection.]
Ktf wjif jcmtbg nblmf lc atf vjgx cluta rxs mbcalcefv.
[Because the three participants of your team have all stimulated their powers, their strength now fully meets the requirements of the B-level difficulty [Film], so the difficulty of next month’s [Film] drawing is limited to B-level.]
“Wait!”
Ji Dong was simply dumbfounded, how could it be like this!
In the vast expanse of darkness where the top could not be seen, the voice of the AI continued.
[This difficulty adjustment, the [Peach Blossom Spring] reserves the right of final decision.]
——This is too rogue!
Ji Dong was simply dumbfounded by the shamelessness of the [Peach Blossom Spring].
Mo Tiangen, of course, was also shocked and angry, and immediately rolled up his sleeves to join in, using his Mandarin mixed with the Shancheng dialect to make a reasonable argument with the invisible AI. But the other party only used his news anchor-like voice full of texture, methodically explaining that they have become capable of handling the difficulty, and so they must upgrade the difficulty.
The two people were so angry that they were about to jump, but Ren Jianmo remained cold and expressionless, and when he heard the phrase “The [Peach Blossom Spring] reserves the right of final decision”, the corners of his mouth hooked up into a cold smile.
Although he couldn’t remember his previous experiences in the [Peach Blossom Spring] and his past [Films], it was obvious the participants had to dance to the tune they played, this gave Ren Jianmo an inexplicable feeling of deja vu.
He must have been fooled by this so-called “final right to make decisions” back then!
Although now they know that the [Peach Blossom Spring] is deliberately making things difficult for them, the lot for next month’s [Film] still needs to be drawn.
After arguing back and forth for more than ten minutes to no avail, Ji Xiao’niao and Mr. Dagen could only resign themselves to their fate.
Ji Dong reached out again and touched the air-wall in front of the hourglass, and the artificial intelligence, as if nothing had happened, said in a gentle and magnetic tone, [Please choose the difficulty of the [Film] you want to challenge.]
Ji Dong reluctantly pressed [B].
The countless transparent cubes floating irregularly in the hourglass began to rotate clockwise, slowly as if being stirred by an invisible hand through the middle, gradually speeding up and finally converging into a huge vortex of light.
Then one cube broke away from the vortex and fell to the bottom of the hourglass.
This indicated that the draw for the non-competitive captain Ji Xiaoniao was complete.
Gudong.
Ji Dong and Mo Tiangen both swallowed a mouthful of saliva nervously because the critically important trailer was about to begin.
The air wall erected in front of the hourglass lit up, as if a huge holographic projection screen had appeared out of thin air.
Unlike eerie and terrifying words like [Separation of Flesh and Blood] written in blood in the backdrop of dark wilderness, the opening scene of the trailer this time was surprisingly bright and lively, and the color saturation could rival a festive production of New Year’s Eve.
And more importantly, this [Film] was taking place in the damn ancient period!
In the trailer was a large mansion with carved beams and painted buildings. A group of beautiful maids wearing embroidered skirts, hairpins, and their hair tied up in a cloud bun, holding all kinds of fruits and snacks, wine and delicacies, walking in a straight line through the corridor leading to a banquet hall.
The hall was brightly lit, with twenty to thirty tables set up, prepped for some kind of a banquet.
At that moment, the picture suddenly became hazy, as if covered with a translucent veil, followed by four characters written in traditional calligraphy with Chinese ink.
“Crap!”
Teacher Dagen almost burst out a national curse, “This word is written too fucking scrawly! Who knows what is written!”
Ji Dong knew nothing about calligraphy, so he wasn’t sure if he read it right, but he could vaguely make out that the four words read “Wall painting for soul”.
While he was still trying to distinguish the title of the next [Film], the scenery in the trailer had already switched again.
The handwriting quickly faded and dissipated like ink marks in water, and the veil covering the front of the screen was lifted. The festive picture of a banquet that used to be a gong-chop staggered was replaced by a large mansion that looked to have been abandoned for a long time.
At this moment, the camera was slowly passing over the house from an overhead angle.
Ji Dong could see a garden full of overgrown weeds, covered in withered flowers and trees, crumbling walls, and long-unrepaired broken tiles, it was a mansion in ruins…
The camera lingered for two seconds in front of a huge illuminated wall in the dilapidated mansion, and then fiercely went pitch black.
Immediately after, Ji Dong heard a young man’s rapid breathing and panicked sobbing.
The trailer switched from the third person point of view to a first person point of view, the owner of the voice was running—or more accurately, running for his life.
He ran while crying, tripping over himself, the camera swayed, jittered, and changed angles with his staggering pace.
“Damn!”
Mr. Dagen wanted to curse this time.
What the hell was this trailer, shaking like this, it was giving him motion sickness from this 3D vertigo, he felt as if he was gagging as a lump persisted in his throat unable to move forward or back.. And on top of that he couldn’t see everything on the screen clearly!
However, Ji Dong still kept his eyes wide open, trying to make out the messy and broken elements in his field of vision.
Through the eyes of the running man, Ji Xiao’niao saw that he had reentered the mansion where the banquet was being held, with beautiful maids and handsome servants busying about everywhere, as well as enchanting dancers and musicians holding silk and bamboo, and from time to time, a few drooping children grabbing snacks in their hands and jostling as they ran past him…
In the process of escaping, there were often people laughing and trying to pull at the young man’s hand, as if to invite him to go with them, they would simply come up to him with glasses full of fine wine and persuade him to drink, or put delicacies and exquisite food into his hands, all of which were blocked by the young man in panic and fear.
Although the screen shook violently, the distance was close enough that Ji Dong and the others who were watching the trailer could clearly see the appearance of the guests with the eyes of the young man.
The guests, surrounded by a group of beautiful maids, were dressed in coarse, linen clothes, their face and body were filthy with dirt. Some of the guests had sharp weapons such as hoes and sickles sticking out by their waists. They looked like a group of mountain bandits. Their appearance and behavior was completely at odds with this luxurious and extravagant banquet!
And in the short three or four seconds of the first-person perspective, Ji Dong quickly noticed an anomaly.
The further the youth ran, the more bizarre the appearance of both the guests and the servants became.
The ragged guests began to grab the food on the table with their bare hands and crudely stuff it into their mouths, while the beautiful hostesses accompanying them with drinks had hands that were either bony or wrinkled with black hair…
He ran past another couple of tables, and when he looked back, the person to his left looked like a blown up beach ball, and the one on his right had completely collapsed onto the banquet table, head arching over a plate of delicious food, spine protruding like a fleshy hill sculpted out of rubber, shape so obscured that he barely seemed human.
At this time, a woman in a yellow skirt with a bun and a wine cup stood up and tried to pull the sleeves of the young man who was running wildly. The young man cried while trying to shake her away. The girl in the yellow skirt turned around her slender neck with a smile, and at such a close distance, a fox’s face covered with long hair was revealed!
“I, I …fuck!!!”
Mo Tiangen was taken aback and let out an exclamation, and Ji Dong couldn’t help but gasp.
——This turned out to be a demon banquet!
While the young man running for his life—along with everyone outside the screen—was frozen in fear, a hand appeared on the screen. To be precise, the hand stretched out from behind the young man and went on to cover his eyes without a warning.
Ji Dong and others heard the man let out a scream in a nearly broken voice, filled with panic and despair.
“I caught you.”
A hoarse and dry voice rang out, but the words were tinged with obvious laughter.
“Next, it’s your turn to be a ghost.”
The youth’s eyes were tightly covered, a black screen and silence, and the trailer ended abruptly here, leaving them with only the last two lines of the message:
[Don’t be found, don’t get caught.]
[Beware of the ghost that hides around you.]
——————
The author has something to say:
Peach Blossom Spring (Rascal’s face): If I want to increase the difficulty, you must accpt the difficulty, and commit suicide if you refuse to accept it!
Feel like this trailer have too little clues
Thanks for the chapter
Thank you for the chapter!
Thank you!
Oooo a demon version of hide and seek?
Im remembering the Natsumi episode suddenly…
Such a creepy trailer!
I just came here from a novel where the scene with the ghost closing his eyes is sexy, not scary, so I can’t stop laughing
Thank you very much for the translation
Thank you for the update ❤️💯
Peach Blossom Spring: Yes, I raised the difficulty. Whatcha gonna do about it?