Translator-Rhapsodite
Editor-PerpetualMreow, Proofreader-adjective
With an extremely heavy heart, Ji Dong and his two companions returned to the ‘Liange’.
Ji Xiao’niao raised his head to sip a huge glass of an iced beverage and let out a long sigh of relief.
He must acknowledge that the [Film’s] unexpected rise in difficulty put a lot of psychological pressure on him when he hadn’t been psychologically prepared.
But Ji Dong had been the captain of the youth training team for two years, so he knew how important “morale” was to a team, and if even the leader exhibited a lack of confidence too soon, the others would feel much more anxious…
“I think the next [Film] will be okay.”
Although he was the youngest in this three-person team, he was also the leader of the other two, so he could not show his anxiety too clearly, and tried to liven up the atmosphere by jokingly saying.
“At least the demons and monsters in there all look like they have a human form, which is an improvement over the previous two.”
“You call that fox face ‘humanoid’?”
Mo Tiangen was speechless.
He asked himself to be a mature, stable, and responsible man, and not to drink iced cola like a naive child, so he chose to drink black coffee which would give him more wisdom.
It’s just that the [Peach Blossom Spring] provided freshly ground coffee with the best quality, and the purity and concentration were not comparable to the instant coffee that he used to have for two yuan and eight cents a pack. But for the sake of face, he decided against adding sugar and milk.
“Also, I don’t think that fox spirit will be better than the skeleton monsters of the last [Film]!”
The fox’s face, enlarged to almost fill the screen, was so impressive that after watching the trailer, Mo Tiangen focused almost entirely on it.
“In my opinion, the fox spirit is very powerful!”
“Oh?”
Ji Dong raised an eyebrow.
“Have you ever met a fox spirit before? How do you know they’re powerful?”
“Hey! At first glance, you seem to be someone who rarely plays games, right?”
Mo Tiangen, as a game nerd, played games every day until 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning in his college days, mocked the sports student who couldn’t stop himself from training.
“You’ve heard of Su Daji, haven’t you? The capable official of the Goddess Nuwa herself. With a wave of her hand, she overturned an entire dynasty! Tamamo-no-Mae too, have you heard of her? Any game in Japan without a big-breasted fox girl like her, should be ashamed to show their faces! And Ah’Zi, she’s pretty famous too even though she isn’t a common choice…”
Ji Dong: “……”
“No, wait a minute, I think the focus should not be that fox, right?”
Ji Xiao’niao decisively interrupted the game-setting of Mr. Dagen and led the discussion back to the point.
“I guess that the whole banquet hall should be full of monsters!”
Mo Tiangen shivered, “But it’s too damn pitiful!”
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.
“A whole mansion full of fox spirits, spider spirits, mountain spirits, and hundred-eyed demons. If only three of us rushed up together, wouldn’t it be easier for them to sink their teeth in us? Is this ‘Liaozhai’ or ‘Journey to the West’ ah!”
Although he won’t know from which details Mr. Dagen deduced that there are spider spirits, mountain spirits, and hundred-eyed demons, Ji Dong also agreed that unless they actually have a combative effectiveness comparable to Sun Wukong’s staff that can knock down everything in one swing, then even if there are numerous, tens or twenties of participants in the next [Film], they were just asking for a beating.
“Vb…”
Al Gbcu gfjmtfv bea jcv abemtfv tlr mtlc.
“Maybe the trick to the next [Film] is not to fight them directly?”
Lf rjlv, gjlrlcu tlr fsfr ab uijcmf ja Efc Aljcwb, kjcalcu ab rffx atf batfg qjgas’r bqlclbc.
Efc Aljcwb ujnf Al Wljb’cljb j rtjiibk rwlif jcv cbvvfv.
“Pcvffv, lo jii atf qfbqif lc atja wjcrlbc jgf rqlglar jcv utbrar, atfc atf qjgalmlqjcar klii yjrlmjiis vlf lo atfs tjnf ab gfis bc ygeaf obgmf ab oluta,” Efc Aljcwb rjlv.
“Therefore, I personally think that the key to surviving in the next [Film] is to hide among the demons.”
Mo Tiangen and Ji Dong together drew a breath of cold air.
——This is too difficult!
When you realized that the people around you were a horde of demons and ghosts, but you still had to push yourself to make it appear as if nothing bizarre had happened in order to blend in and not exhibit the tiniest slip…… simply thinking about it made people feel anxious!
“In addition, there is a very important point, I want to hear your opinion.”
Ren Jianmo went on to say, but this time it was a questionable sentence.
“What do you think the last two sentences mean?”
Mo Tiangen scratched his head.
“The… ‘don’t get caught’ and ‘beware of ghosts’?”
He felt that he did watch the trailer very carefully, and his memory was not bad. But the short two-second subtitle flashed by, and it was too hard for him to memorize it word by word, so he just remembered the keywords.
“Don’t be found, don’t get caught. Beware of the ghost that hides around you.”
Ren Jianmo repeated those two sentences in full.
Ji Dong, “The so-called ‘be found’ and ‘get caught’, does that refer to the demon at the banquet?”
He thought for a moment and looked at Ren Jianmo.
“Just as you speculated, if we accidentally expose our human identities and are discovered by the demons, will it be GAME OVER?”
Mo Tiangen also nodded in agreement.
“So the next preparation is to study on how to fight against an evil spirit?”
Teacher Dagen solemnly suggested:
“Starting tonight, we should watch ‘Journey to the West’ every day. Would we be able to improve our acting skills that way?”
Ji Dong: “……”
——No, I don’t think that’s what Ren Jianmo meant. You can see that he is looking at you with sympathy mixed with pity…
“If it said ‘be careful, don’t get caught,’ it might also mean hiding among the monsters and not revealing your human identity…”
Ren Jianmo retracted his gaze.
“Then it’s enough to have this one sentence as a reminder, why add an extra ‘don’t get caught’?”
“Perhaps it’s for a rhyme. In movies, aren’t there often such lines that have to be paired to create suspense?”
Mo Tiangen scratched his head and self-mockingly said.
“When I was a student, I was never good at comprehension reading. What could I do? I have a total science major brain.”
Ren Jianmo smiled noncommittally and continued to explain his analysis.
“If you connect ‘don’t be found, don’t get caught’ with the next sentence ‘beware of the ghost hides around you’, will it remind you of anything?”
Ji Dong’s eyes widened.
A second later, he let out a soft “ah”.
“… I don’t know if I’m thinking right…”
Seeing Ren Jianmo and Mo Tiangen both looking at him, Ji Dong gently shook his head, “Those two phrases remind me of a game…”
He paused and uttered three words word by word, “Hide-and-seek.”
“Hiss!”
Mo Tiangen slapped his forehead, “Yes! At the end of the trailer, the owner of that hand… ah, the hand that covered the man—didn’t he say, ‘next, it’s your turn to be a ghost’?”
Mr. Dagen desperately recalled the rules of hide-and-seek that he played with his friends as a child.
“That game, but whoever is caught will become a ghost!”
Ren Jianmo nodded silently.
He confirmed the guesses of Ji Dong and Mo Tiangen.
“If it really is a game of hide-and-seek…”
Ji Dong tried to speculate on this clue.
“Then we have to face a ‘ghost’ who is just like us, mixed in with the pile of demons, and cannot be caught by ‘him’…”
As he spoke, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Listening to your analysis, what I’m more worried about now is…”
Teacher Dagen’s lips trembled along with his body:
“… What will happen if you are accidentally caught? Will we really become a ‘ghost’?”
Ji Dong: “……”
The small conference room suddenly fell into an eerie silence.
A series of classic female ghost images such as Hanako, Sadako Gaya, and Mimiko so on appeared in the minds of Ji Xiao’niao and Teacher Dagen.
He thought that if he was accidentally caught, he would probably turn into that dreadlocked ghost, and he felt that such an end would not be any better than the flesh-and-bone skeleton monsters of the previous [Film].
——The [Peach Blossom Spring] is really cruel!
——This is clearly the definition of not giving them even a decent way to die!
Ren Jianmo looked at Ji Dong and Mo Tiangen’s expressions and thought it was a little funny.
The two of them first looked horrified, then gritted their teeth, the synchronization rate of change between these two was amazingly high.
Ren Jianmo coughed gently and changed the subject.
“I wonder if you guys have heard of the story, ‘The Painted Wall’?”
Ji Dong and Mo Tiangen shook their heads together, moving like mirrored images.
“Cough….”
Ren Jianmo lowered his head and covered up his laughter with a cough.
“It is one of the titles from the collection of bizarre stories by Pu Songling of the Qing Dynasty about a person named Zhu who saw a mural with many fairies in a monastery in the capital. Zhu’s heart was shaken, and when he came back to his senses, he had already entered the immortal world in the painting.”
“Oh, it turned out to be this type of story!”
Mo Tiangen sniffed and suddenly realized.
“Next must be the standard drama of the transported master and the painted fairy falling for each other and having a spring fling!”
Ren Jianmo nodded.
“Later Jinjia Shen came to the immortal world and said to have searched for the mortal hiding there, the fairy panicked and hid Zhu under the bed, and she also escaped. Jinjia Shen entered the house and searched, but did not find anyone, and left.”
Ji Dong had completely entered the state of listening to the story, and couldn’t help but ask,
“Then what?”
Ren Jianmo replied with a smile.
“After that, the person surnamed Zhu did not dare to crawl out from under the bed, and could only lie where he was, waiting for the fairy to return…”
He paused here, and his relaxed tone suddenly became serious, “This person surnamed Zhu remained hiding under the bed, quietly eavesdropping on the conversation of others outside the house, and gradually forgetting who he was and where he came from…”
Ji Dong swallowed heavily.
“Then, then what? He just stayed in the wall painting?”
“No.”
Ren Jianmo shook his head.
“Afterwards, the monk from the temple knocked on the wall and called out Zhu’s name, causing him to hear a sound like the roar of thunder. He followed the thunderclap and went forth, thus exiting from the mural.”
After saying this, Ren Jianmo looked at his two companions.
“This story, does it make you think of anything?”
It doesn’t make me think of anything specific but I’ll follow their thoughts LMFAOO.
Thank you for the chapters!!! <3
It makes me think that I don’t know about Chinese myths…
Thank you for new chapter
It doesn’t make me think of anything specific
Thanks for the chapter
It makes me think that I’m too dumb to understand what Ren ge is saying lol
Thanks for the chap!
It makes me think of how I should brush up on my Chinese mythology and how I cant even enjoy reading a novel without having to study for it T_T
It makes me think of nothing in particular! But anyway, maybe he is referring to the fact that:
1- they must avoid being discovered by demons and ghost. 2- they must avoid staying in the same place for a long time and not be seduced by the temptations of the banquet, thus forgetting their own identity and becoming part of the scenery, that is, they must pay attention to what they consume too! (just like in the Percy Jaskson movie at the casino, yes I never read the book) . I just wonder if there will be someone like this sage to finish hide and seek.
Reminds me of paintings of terror