After the Evil God Pretends to Be a Player [Infinite] - Chapter 7

Men’s faces… women’s faces… the wrinkled faces of the elderly… the vibrant faces of students all were displayed one by one in the glass cabinets, watching every visitor with a cold and malicious gaze.

Even knowing these were merely masks, when the realism reached a certain level and the quantity accumulated to a certain point, it evoked a massive sense of dread and absurdity. It felt as though, under the high vaulted ceiling, you were the only living soul walking among them, subject to the faint, haunting stares of every mask.

You were not the visitor; you were the exhibit.

The air conditioning on the second floor was set very low. A continuous stream of cold air poured in from the players’ ankles, snaking up their spines and necks, causing a wave of shivers.

Lalai followed behind the group. She was one of the few who observed these details closely; most of her teammates had already fallen into a state of panic upon seeing the masks and were busy undergoing Sanity (SAN) checks.

Because of her focus, she noticed that although these masks didn’t have large introduction plaques like the exhibits on the first floor, a tiny slip of paper was tied to the bottom of each one, covered in handwriting the size of ants.

Despite Lalai’s superhuman vision, she still couldn’t decipher the writing on the slips. She realized this was a clue that required a dice check.

[Spot Hidden] Check / Result: 70/94 — Failure

Previously, she had learned from Meng Luo that a player could only perform the same check on the same object once per hour.

Lalai looked ahead and saw that the large group, which had been clustered tightly together, had begun to drift apart. The young couple, terrified of being left behind, followed closely on the heels of the Keeper at the very front, already several meters ahead of her. Behind them were the punk and the female streamer; neither spoke, both appearing tense and alert as they hurriedly glanced at the masks before rushing to keep up with the Keeper’s pace.

Further back was Li Zhu. Like Lalai, he walked slowly, his gaze toward the masks filled with interest and concentration, as if he were admiring some rare works of art.

A sudden sense of strangeness surfaced in Lalai’s heart. Wasn’t something missing?

But there was no time for hesitation now. Only five minutes remained before the mandatory end of the tour. She clicked her tongue in annoyance and called out to Li Zhu.

“Li”

She had only uttered one syllable of his name when the man turned around. His handsome brows arched slightly, and a smile slowly blossomed on his face. “What’s wrong?”

Lalai internally critiqued: Hypocritical, sanctimonious, and rotten to the core.

Her expression remained unchanged as she slightly tilted her chin, gesturing for him to look at the mask where her Spot Hidden check had failed.

Li Zhu, standing nearly 190cm tall, leaned down to see the mask clearly. He smiled and said, “You should have said so sooner. A petitioner should adopt the proper posture of a petitioner.”

Just as he was about to straighten up, a wave of coldness brushed against the back of his neck. The thin blade of a fruit knife was pressed firmly against his skin, inches away from his carotid artery.

Lalai sneered, “This is my posture for petitioning.”

Li Zhu remained in his hunched position, but the smile on his face gradually faded. This man, no matter whom he faced or what the situation, was usually smiling. But when he stopped smiling, his handsome features revealed a biting coldness, making him look quite dangerous.

He whispered, “You seem to dislike me very much.”

“But no matter how hard I think, I can’t recall ever meeting you before. Why is that?”

Lalai felt a surge of irritability—not just because time was running out, but because her left eyelid was twitching uncontrollably. She felt as though she had missed something crucial. If they didn’t find the most vital part of this museum soon, something bad was going to happen.

She said decisively, “Stop wasting breath. We’ll talk later. Roll the dice!”

She withdrew the knife and tucked it back into her waistband.

Li Zhu murmured something under his breath that she didn’t catch, but it didn’t matter. In the next moment, she heard the light rattle of rolling dice.

Li Zhu said, “Passed.”

He glanced at the mask again and spoke quickly, “It’s a string of dates. December 18, 2048.”

He looked at the mask next to it and continued, “This slip says December 21, and this one is December 31…”

He looked up, his voice rising, “The dates are sequential. The slips are recording…”

“…The production dates of the masks!”

They needed to find the very first mask! That was likely where they would find the reason why Pretty Middle School transformed from an ordinary school into its current state.

With only three minutes left before closing, Lalai’s sense of foreboding grew stronger. She and Li Zhu broke into a run toward the direction of the earlier production dates.

Soon, they overtook the others. The streamer, the couple, and the punk didn’t understand why they were running, but they had no choice but to chase after them. Within seconds, only the Keeper was left in the original spot.

Keeper: How is this batch of players so disorganized and undisciplined? My little surprises were prepared for nothing! Hmph!

The “little surprises” the Keeper had meticulously prepared would have been nothing but horrors for the players.

When Lalai and Li Zhu finally reached the end of the exhibition hall, they found a standalone cubicle. Inside, only one mask was on display. The caption beneath it read: “February 14, 2000.”

But it wasn’t the mask itself that was terrifying it was the fact that the glass display case was gradually dissolving from the inside, revealing a door made of shimmering water-like ripples. Standing at the threshold of that door was a girl in a school uniform. Her eyes were tightly shut, and she was pressing her hands, her face, and her entire body against that door.

She was about to merge into the glass display case!

Lalai blurted out, “Meng Luo!”

Meng Luo’s ears twitched slightly, and her eyelids fluttered, but she didn’t wake up. She seemed trapped in a nightmare from which she couldn’t escape.

Lalai stepped forward and grabbed her arm, but she couldn’t pull her out as she had imagined. Instead, she felt a terrifying suction force, as if it wanted to pull her in as well.

“The player needs to pass a Strength contest.”

“Of course, there is a risk to the roll. If you fail, you won’t even be able to save yourself.”

At some point, the Keeper had appeared at the entrance of the cubicle to offer this prompt. He placed heavy emphasis on the word “player.”

If Lalai had entered in her true form, let alone pulling one person out, she could have reduced the entire cubicle to dust in the blink of an eye. However, since she had entered the game as a player, she had to accept all the constraints that came with the identity.

In an instant, half of Meng Luo’s body had been sucked into the semi-solid, semi-liquid glass door. She had woken up now and was looking at Lalai with a look of profound sadness.

Lalai looked directly into her eyes, her heart cold to the point of being emotionless. She thought to herself that she could choose not to save her. The lives of one or two humans were as light as feathers compared to the big picture. Ultimately, this girl was just one of many human subjects for observation.

But…

She remembered the girl’s warm smile, her weak yet brave demeanor, and her voice saying—

“My name is Meng Luo. I’ll be eighteen in three days.”

Lalai flicked the dice before her.

Lalai: [Strength] Check / Result: 70/34 Hard Success

???: [Strength] Check / Result: 90/75 Standard Success

Lalai breathed a sigh of relief. The next second, she felt the opposing force loosen. Due to the momentum, Meng Luo fell straight into her arms.

Standing up and catching her breath, Meng Luo immediately began to vent: “Aaaaah! I was originally following you, then somehow I heard the sound of dice rolling. I thought, ‘Oh no, the Keeper is rolling a hidden check. Who is going to be the victim of his prank? It wouldn’t be me, would it?’”

“And then! I really ended up here for no reason and saw that mask.”

Following the girl’s finger, Lalai saw a woman’s mask resting in the glass case.

The mask was beautiful, appearing like the face of a sixteen or seventeen-year-old girl. It wore no makeup, yet every movement of its simulated expression exuded the clearest, most pure elegance a beauty sufficient to incite either jealousy or worship.

Meng Luo shrunk her neck. “I feel like she’s looking at me. She seems to be smiling.”

Lalai thought to herself that even without looking at the mask, she could sense it was a vital item because she felt the aura of a “kindred spirit” coming from it. This mask was inextricably linked to the Boss of this dungeon.

She asked Meng Luo nonchalantly, “You saw her, and then you were bewitched?”

Meng Luo felt wronged. “I wasn’t!” Facing Lalai’s obvious look of disbelief, she said self-destructively, “Fine, I was attracted at first. The mask said to me: ‘Do you want to become the most beautiful person in Pretty Middle School? I can help you.’ Then I saw a vision of myself, ten times more beautiful. I was incredibly excited for a moment, but just a second before I agreed, I suddenly remembered wait, I still have to apply for college! I want to major in Aerospace or Biotechnology! Why would I waste time on this useless stuff? Then, I suddenly snapped out of it, and the glass door melted and started sucking me in.”

Lalai looked her up and down with a strange gaze. Does observing a human like this really have any universal scientific value?!

Meng Luo blinked. “So, if I had agreed then, would I have turned into something weird by now? Or gone insane?”

To her surprise, Lalai shook her head.

Lalai said in a low voice, “No. If you had temporarily submitted to Him, He wouldn’t have made things difficult for you.”

Meng Luo was confused. “Why?”

Lalai studied her for a while, then lowered her voice to ensure only the two of them could hear:

“Because in this game, what They want is not your life it is your faith.”

Meng Luo only half-understood, and Lalai had no intention of explaining further. Just then, the Keeper announced that the visiting time was over and ordered everyone to leave the museum immediately.

Lalai took one last look at the woman’s mask, which remained perfectly preserved despite spanning over twenty years, confirming once more that this was likely a strange, new Evil God.

However, the moment she turned around and stepped out of the cubicle, she suddenly felt a gaze fixed upon her.

It was Li Zhu.

From the moment they entered the cubicle, he had stood in the corner with his arms crossed, without saying a word. Now, seeing her notice his gaze, he didn’t seem flustered at all. Instead, he responded with a smile though the smile seemed somewhat subtle.

Lalai felt the man was inexplicable and turned to walk away.