A Survival Game Where You Have to Fall in Love with a Madman - Chapter 14

The livestream chat flashed at a dizzying speed:

[System Livestream Record]

• [ID: Oh My God] They are so incredibly ship-able! Mr. NPC is way too calm.
• [ID: Hey Hey Hey] Listen up, ‘Mr. NPC’ is Gaffer He’s exclusive nickname for the big boss. Since when do you have the right to call him that?
• [ID: Gaffer He Fan] Gaffer He is as terrifyingly powerful as always.
• [ID: Matchmaker] Why does the way these two clear instances look so much like flirting? Someone help me out here!

A blood-red tint suddenly coated You Yan’s field of vision. Through it, he saw the air filling with transparent puppet strings, each one connecting out to the lanterns hanging in the courtyard.

A heavy thud suddenly echoed from the southeast corner. Peering through the carved window, You Yan watched as Chang Zhou actively shoved Liu Xin right into the lantern formation.

Liu Xin’s glasses were half-shattered, and the compass needle clutched tightly in his hand was spinning erratically.

“He wants to use Liu Xin as a scapegoat,” You Yan noted, bracing himself upward. “You’re not going to save him?”

He Yanqing played with the blood-stained tip of his knife. “Won’t it be much more entertaining once the puppet strings wrap around Chang Zhou instead?” He suddenly lowered his voice. “More importantly, your heart rate hasn’t shifted once since we got here. Are you really not afraid of death?”

You Yan stared up at the hangman’s noose dangling from the rafters. “Living is far more troublesome.”

Meanwhile, in the western wing’s main hall, Jiu Chenjing was utilizing the glass of his pocket watch to reflect the moonlight, systematically mapping out the trap paths of the lantern formation.

Guo Xuemei snapped her whip to shatter a cluster of incoming puppet strings, sending a shower of sparks flying onto Jiu Chenjing’s robes.

“Watch where you throw your fire,” Jiu Chenjing warned with a cold face. Forming a hand seal, his prayer beads aligned in mid-air to map out the Big Dipper Array. “Three steps toward the Kan position, seven steps toward the Zhen position.”

“Who do you think you’re commanding?” Guo Xuemei snapped back, swinging her arm to burn through a sheet of human skin attempting to coil around her ankle. “If you have time to talk, why don’t you—”

Before she could finish, the Mark of the Ghost Marriage stamped onto You Yan and He Yanqing’s palms vanished simultaneously.

He Yanqing wore a look of absolute disappointment. “Ah, what a pity. Our couple’s marks are gone.” His gaze drifted over to You Yan’s pale, exposed neck. “Though… a mark is the kind of thing I should really just carve onto you myself in the future.”

The ceiling suddenly gave way, and countless human-skin lanterns cascaded down like cluster tumors.

The moment Jiu Chenjing’s bead formation was shattered, Guo Xuemei’s whip wrapped tightly around a structural beam, pulling both of them clean off the ground. Suspended in mid-air, their eyes met. Guo Xuemei’s whip handle and Jiu Chenjing’s pocket watch pointed toward a hidden wall compartment in the northeast corner at the exact same time.

“There,” the two said in unison, before immediately snapping their gazes away from each other.

Back inside the side-room, You Yan was using his dagger to saw off a section of the window lattice.

He Yanqing suddenly wrapped his arms around him from behind, his hot breath brushing past his earlobe. “My little theorist, care to guess why those lanterns are relentlessly hunting Liu Xin?”

Peering through the newly cut opening, they saw that Liu Xin’s right hand had decayed into a charred black stump, and the compass in his palm was actively melting. Chang Zhou cowered directly behind him, manipulating the incoming puppet strings to latch onto Liu Xin’s mangled limbs instead.

“Because he touched the core of the lantern formation,” You Yan stated. He suddenly reached his hand out of the window, snatching a stray thread that was attempting to coil around He Yanqing’s ankle. “Just like this.”

The thread contracted violently, yanking both of them straight into the epicenter of the lantern formation.

He Yanqing burst into manic laughter amidst the rushing wind, his red string intertwining with the puppet threads to weave a massive web.

In the weightless state of their fall, You Yan’s fingers brushed against the internal frame of a lantern—it was constructed entirely out of a human spine chained together.

Twelve lanterns flared with a sickening green light simultaneously, allowing You Yan to see the vivid imagery stretching across the skin-lampshades: The butler of the Cheng Estate was actively pressing living people into vats of boiling pine resin, forcing the flayed human skin to stretch tightly over glazed glass frames…

“Found it.” He Yanqing’s short knife plunged into the apex of the central lantern, pulling out a still-beating human heart.

The lanterns let out a collective, high-pitched wail that sounded exactly like a newborn baby’s cry, and the entire formation began to implode.

You Yan was caught around the waist by He Yanqing mid-fall, hearing the madman hum softly against his ear: “Sleep, sleep, my darling…”

The instant the back of his head brushed the floorboards, You Yan witnessed Chang Zhou hurling Liu Xin into the very last undamaged lantern. Liu Xin’s agonizing shriek cut off abruptly, his features flattening out to become a new face pattern on the lantern’s surface.

Chang Zhou attempted to use the opening to sprint toward the exit gate, but Jiu Chenjing’s prayer bead shot out, piercing straight through his kneecap.

“The sacrifices are sufficient,” Jiu Chenjing noted, the hands of his pocket watch locking directly onto the third watch of the night. “It is time to meet the bride.”

[Player Chang Zhou is confirmed dead.]

The western wing began to dissolve, liquefied flesh and blood cascading down the window lattices.

You Yan lay in the puddle of blood and let out a soft yawn, completely indifferent as He Yanqing scooped him up into a horizontal carry. Lifting his eyes to look at the crumbling ceiling, he faintly heard the mechanical prompt of the system:

[Current Surviving Players: 3]

The stream chat hovered over the side:

• [ID: Hardworking Rookie] Did Liu Xin really just die that easily? He was supposed to be the entire database for this instance!
• [ID: Kitten] I doubt he’s permanently dead. He has a massive inventory of items; there’s no way he didn’t have a life-saving tool.
• [ID: Gaffer He’s Bowtie] Maybe he just got forcefully teleported out of the instance? Even if he did die, Gaffer He has so many points, couldn’t he just resurrect him later?
• [ID: Belial] Did none of you notice that Guo Xuemei never made it out either?

The entire Cheng Estate was actively collapsing. Decayed main beams snapped in half, roof tiles shattered like rain, and blood seeped from the walls to converge into thick, viscous streams.

You Yan stood in the center of the main hall, his boots stepping over shattered lantern frames and human skin remnants. The air was heavy with the suffocating stench of blood and burning resin.

He Yanqing stood right beside him, his moon-blue hair flecked with blood. The red string on his short knife had snapped, leaving only a few loose threads wrapped around his fingers. He tilted his head, smiling carelessly. “Looks like it’s just us left.”

A simultaneous quest notification popped up across the wrists of the three remaining players:

[Main Quest:] Survive until the wedding ceremony concludes. [Side Quest:] Purge the instance Bride and collect the scattered Concentric Knots (0/3). [Time Remaining:] 1 hour. [Failure Penalty:] Become a wedding sacrifice.

Jiu Chenjing took the lead, stepping forward. “Time is short. Splitting up will yield higher efficiency.”

“Wait.” You Yan blocked his path, his dagger scraping away the loose topsoil on the floor to expose a buried fragment of a soul-attracting banner. “This is the Seven Fiends Soul-Lock Array. Splitting up means instant death. Furthermore, I am intimately familiar with the architectural layout of this estate. We must move together.”

Both men turned their eyes to look at him simultaneously.

You Yan took a deep breath. “This layout was my design. The front courtyard is rigged with mechanics; one wrong step will trigger a rockfall.”

He Yanqing’s eyes lit up instantly. “See? What did I tell you? My little theorist always comes in handy.”

Jiu Chenjing scrutinized You Yan for a long moment before finally nodding. “Lead the way.”

Suddenly, He Yanqing used the tip of his knife to hoist a fragment from the ground. The dark red vein patterns on the piece seemed to come alive, instantly coiling around his wrist. You Yan reacted immediately, slicing his own finger and pressing a drop of blood onto the center of the talisman. The blood boiled, releasing a plume of white smoke.

“Since when did you add such a vicious element into your layout parameters?”

“I didn’t design this part.” You Yan’s face went pale. A sharp, stinging pain flared across the back of his neck. Reaching a hand back, his fingers traced the raised, hard contour of an encoded talisman beneath his skin his physical form as a former NPC was violently rejecting the player data stream.

It appeared he had always been an intrinsic part of the System.

No way? Why did the NPC say he designed this instance? Can someone explain what they’re talking about? I’m completely lost. Can’t the System read a player’s memories and construct an instance based on them? Why would the System bother reading a novice player’s memories?

You Yan walked at the front, relying on his deep-seated memory to bypass the trapdoors hidden beneath the floor bricks.

The interior of the ancient estate was far more sinister than his original blueprints. The eyes of the ancestral portraits hanging on the walls tracked their every movement, and white silhouettes flickered intermittently across the dark corners.

“A left turn leads to the Ancestral Hall; a right turn leads to the Bridal Chamber,” You Yan said in a low voice. “The wedding gown should be in the bridal chamber, but…”

“But what?” Jiu Chenjing asked.

“In my design, the bridal chamber is a decoy trap.” Cold sweat beaded across You Yan’s forehead. “The real bride is located inside the Ancestral Hall.”

He Yanqing let out a sharp whistle. “What a crafty little NPC.”

They decided to head to the Ancestral Hall first. Shoving open the heavy wooden doors, they were greeted by rows upon rows of ancestral tablets. Sitting directly on the central sacrificial altar was a brilliant, crimson wedding gown, looking exactly like a pool of fresh blood under the dim light.

“Too simple,” Jiu Chenjing noted, holding his ground. “It’s definitely a trap.”

You Yan carefully analyzed the structural layout of the Ancestral Hall. His eyes suddenly locked onto the floor brick patterns directly beneath the altar; they were completely inconsistent with his blueprint files.

“Something’s wrong,” You Yan muttered. “This isn’t my mechanism.”