Chapter 74 – I Woke Up From A Dream

translator: xiin
editor: XavierForest

When Song Yu heard his words, he stilled for a moment in the darkness. The unhappiness and depression that had been stuck in his chest since last night was broken through and dispersed at that moment.

He took in a fresh breath of air and felt his soul grow lighter.

A smile slowly grew on Song Yu’s face, “Yeah, you’re right.”

The past couldn’t be changed, but the present was very good. When it came to going back or not, he could figure it out later.

The bride in the coffin haunted house was really filled with gimmicks. In fact, the rooms and corridors gathered together to form a maze.

Song Yu strode ahead, his thoughts on going back early to get some sleep. He pushed open a door and ignored the fake bloody head that suddenly fell from a beam. He slapped her, and her hair, aside, then looked around and said, “This should be a new room, right?” There were red candles on the table and happy wishes on the window. There were messy quilts on the bed, and dark hair and blood on the ground.

Song Yu headed to the quilt to flip through it. When he neared the bed, a pale hand that was covered in crawling corpse spot stretched out from beneath the bed and grabbed his foot.

Song Yu didn’t even blink as he shook out the quilt and pillow, his voice so sweet it contained sugar, “Old man, don’t do it. If you’re an NPC that’s as useless as a fart, then just stay down there. I’m busy looking for clues.”

Xie Sui burst out laughing from beside him, then followed him over. There really wasn’t any bit of game experience at all.

Song Yu found a letter inside the pillow. The words ‘Clue #1’ were written directly in the upper right corner.

Opening it up revealed a map that looked like the structure of the haunted house. A trail of blood wound through it, and it was likely that it was an escape route that the bride had painted on.

He nodded, “We’ll follow this.”

They just happened to run into another group of people on the way out. They were pale and screaming as they ran out of the room across from him.

One girl was so scared that her legs were soft, her eyes filled with tears. She was being supported by another person.

Song Yu raised his eyebrows and glanced over at them.

Lin Shuangqiu calmed down, gasping as she explained, “It’s a kitchen. We went through half of it, and a body suddenly fell down from the ceiling. Damn it.”

They were incredibly scared, but the other crowd of people from No.13 High were leisurely and at ease.

Yao Rui’s eyes had lingered on Lin Shuangqiu from beginning to end, his gaze both eerie and disgusting.

Lin Shuangqiu took out a piece of paper and said, “This was held down by a knife. There’s a password on it, which should be needed later. It’s likely that there’s something that has to be found in every room, but there’s only twenty minutes and there are ten doors here.”

Song Yu: “In that case, we’ll act separately.”

With that, he shot a look at Yao, his gaze as cold as a knife.

Yao Rui whistled provocatively at him.

They had ten or so minutes. Although each of the ten doors had scary places, they were ultimately only able to find three clues: one map and two passwords. They followed the map and came to a place downstairs where the stairs were very dark and narrow. In order to save time, they could only go one by one.

Lin Shuangqiu went ahead, and Yao Rui followed immediately after her, wanting to be the next one.

Song Yu grabbed his arm directly, “What are you in a hurry for? Don’t you know that handsome guys go first?”

He used a lot of strength, and Yao Rui couldn’t brush his arm aside. He stared at him darkly instead.

Song Yu took a step forward, heading down the stairs. A very narrow corridor connected to the stairs. It was dark and lit up with only a faint red light.

It was too dark, leaving everyone a bit unbalanced. They began to discuss the original plot in <Bride in the Coffin>.

“Ma Xiaoding really is a liar. This is a national work, not an adaptation of a real story.”

“It seems to be a murder house. The main female lead was abducted, then sold into a ghost marriage. She tried to escape and failed, then had her tongue cut out, her eyes dug out, and was buried alive in a coffin. After she died, she turned into a fierce ghost and retaliated against the people in the whole house. I went to the groom’s father’s room, and f*ck, there were two eyes in the drawer.”

“The bridegroom and grandmother’s room were even more terrible. Music started playing when we went in, it really made me panic. There were a pair of embroidered shoes in front of the bed, and I didn’t dare to look at what was above them.”

“The bride in the coffin. They won’t have us go into the coffin, right!”

“You’re thinking too much. If the game settings are really so intense and crazy, there would’ve been people complaining it online a long time ago.”

There was a secret room at the end of the map, but it was set up like a lonely grave in the wilderness.

The ground was covered in dirt, and there was an earth grave in the middle of the room. The lighting was dim, and the scene appeared quite gloomy.

“This should be the last step. It’s likely that the ghost bride is in the grave. There should be clues if we look around there.”

Lin Shuangqiu didn’t want to stay in this place at all. She suggested, “Let’s look separately. There has to be a mechanism somewhere.”

Song Yu went to study the tombstone and made a guess, “Will the grave split open, and the ghost climb out?”

Xie Sui had been following him from start to end. He smiled lightly, but his gaze seemed to freeze when he saw Song Yu standing in front of the grave.

The youth was crouched halfway, and his side profile was gentle and pale. His eyelashes curled up in a slight arc.

Ahead of him was a cold tombstone.

Song Yu held out his hand and placed it on the tombstone, looking up. His pale colored pupils were unfocused and considering.

Xie Sui stared on in a daze.

His brain tingled abruptly, and it felt like a thunderbolt shot through his heart.

After feeling a tearing pain in his soul, what was left were traces of scorched blackness and blood.

Black rain, green grass. The cemetery, fresh flowers.

A half kneeling youth, a kiss that landed on a cold tombstone.

Desperation, darkness, craziness, all kinds of negative emotions flooded in, submerging him.

Only by planting his feet did he manage not to bend over in pain.

Song Yu suddenly called out happily, “Come look, the words written on it seem to be the key.”

Lin Shuangqiu ran over first, comparing it with the password in her hand. “Ahh, yes, there are nine numbers, and there are nine lines of text here. It should correspond to the sequence for pressing down.”

After pressing down, the mechanisms in the secret room began to move. A square hole appeared in the wall, big enough for people to climb out.

“Ahhhh, it’s out, it’s out.” The crowd quickly gathered around it.

Song Yu went over to Xie Sui’s side, then discovered that there was something wrong with his expression. He was horrifyingly pale.

Song Yu was stunned, “Xie Sui, what’s the matter with you? Are you scared?”

Xie Sui’s mind felt like it was cramping, and his heart as well, cold and empty. He only came back to his senses after hearing Song Yu’s voice.

“Are you really scared?”

Song Yu was surprised, and he asked the question carefully.

Xie Sui thought about it for a long time, then smiled and said, “Yeah.”

It was as though Song Yu had discovered a whole new world, “So it turns out you’re afraid of ghosts, hey.”

“Mm. Let me lean on you a bit.”

Xie Sui hugged Song Yu gently. Song Yu was a little stunned, then finally took pity on him and allowed him, “That scared?”

The youth’s waist was thin and straight. He’d just eaten a candy, and the smell of mint was very cool. Xie Sui leaned his head against Song Yu’s shoulder, closed his slightly reddened eyes, and smiled, “Very scared.”

Song Yu hadn’t yet spoken—

The crowd of people at the exit suddenly started screaming with fear.

“Aaahhhhhh—!”

This passageway wasn’t an exit, but rather the most terrible part of the bride in the coffin. They thought that it was the end, but when they climbed in, there was a woman with scattered long hair and red clothing at the other end. Her red eye sockets were filled with blood as she rushed over in a frenzy, a broken roar bursting from her mouth.

Xie Sui suddenly hugged him tightly. His arm exerted a lot of strength, and he refused to let go at all.

Song Yu cursed that group of people for their timidity while finding it funny. His voice was a little evil, “Fellow student Little Xie, don’t panic, Brother Yu will protect you.”

In this closed up secret room, both the boys and the girls were frightened into a panic.

Fear was contagious. Xie Sui felt like he’d fallen into a cold, deep sea.

Perhaps thinking calmly had already become an instinct, even if he’d felt pain, despair, and madness all the way to his fingertips just now.

His mind was still able to make a sudden, calm and cold judgement—sure enough, their last life wasn’t worth remembering.

To Song Yu, it was a nightmare.

To him, it was hell.

Song Yu couldn’t stop laughing at how scared he was. He said, “Brother Yu will give you a candy, don’t be scared anymore.”

He took a mint candy out of his pocket, tore it open, and stuffed it straight into Xie Sui’s mouth.

Xie Sui’s eyes were still red as he smiled slightly, staring at him deeply. He bit at the candy gently, but it was more like a kiss on his fingertips.

Warm, fresh, and real.

The deep sea receded, and the sky came in.

The bride climbed to the exit and stopped moving. She stretched out her hand and grabbed desperately at the air, her face distorted with a crazy and strange expression. Everyone dodged far away, and a girl was frightened into tears, hiccuping and short on breath, “This is fake, there are two clues, there’s another one, hurry and look for it.”

One of the boys said, “I found that clue in the bridegroom and grandmother’s room. It’s blank, and if it didn’t say ‘clue’ on it, I wouldn’t have known that it was a clue.”

Ma Xiaoding hugged his peach wood sword and trembled. He was about to burst from anger, “So it’s the female ghost charging over. Shit, that scared me to death.”

Song Yu saw that Xie Sui had regained his composure, so he went over to join in on the discussion, “Where did you find the clue?”

The boy: “Inside a hairpin box. The box was empty.”

Song Yu glanced at the ghost who had stuck half of her body out from the hole in the wall and was performing dutifully, and the corners of his lips pulled down, “In that case, the two clues should be interlinked. Isn’t there a hairpin on her head? Just take it out.”

Everyone looked at the female ghost with her green face and fangs in horror. She bared her teeth at them and opened her mouth, revealing the blackness inside.

The girls all took a step back.

Finally, one of the boys hesitated slightly, then stretched out his hand halfway before pulling it back. He was almost crying as he turned back, “Is she going to bite me?”

Song Yu rubbed his forehead and pulled him away.

Ignoring the ghost’s waving hands, he went and pulled the hairpin out from her messy hair.

The female ghost stopped moving as soon as the hairpin was in his hand. Her acting was very lifelike as her body turned stiff.

Everyone was afraid that she would start up again and snuck to the side quietly, but the ghost only slowly, slowly crawled back the way she’d come.

Thirty seconds later, the strange sound of the opera suddenly started playing in the secret room. The hummed, laughing words seemed to come from an old man’s mouth, sounding creepy and old.

“If you cut off the tongue, there will be no appetite. Dig out the eyes, and there’ll be no evil roots. My innocent daughter-in-law has had all her blood drained out has been all cleaned up. Today, she will marry my good son underground.”

Everyone sucked in a breath of cold air. Then, there was a projection on the wall, showing an old lady with a fierce expression on her face. Driven by an unknown force, she stabbed herself in the throat with a hairpin.

This was probably the whole story for the bride in the coffin.

After the projection ended, the walls separated and a corridor appeared. The exit was just outside, and they could see the amusement park’s Ferris Wheel in the distance.

The staff member who was waiting for them outside spoke into their walkie talkie, “Cleaning can begin for <The Bride in the Coffin>.”

It had been dark inside, with all kinds of blood and depression. After finally going outside, everyone breathed out a sigh of relief, then started beating up Ma Xiaoding.

“None of what you said was useful.”

Ma Xiaoding wrapped his arms around his head, “Stop beating me up, stop beating me up, I’ll kowtow to you guys.”

The atmosphere was very cheerful after that. Everyone started chatting, and it was very lively. Lin Shuangqiu bent over to tie her shoelace and fell behind, and then she suddenly felt a hand covering her mouth while the other drilled under her skirt.

She’d relaxed her vigilance as they were about to leave and hadn’t stayed close to anyone else. She grew so angry her eyes turned red, struggling to call out and praying for help.

Yao Rui smiled and said, “I’ve been watching you for a long time. I have to do something in this last stretch.”

Yao Rui hadn’t yet finished speaking when he was suddenly grabbed by his collar and swung towards the wall in a movement that was fast and cruel.

Bumping his head against the wall left him in a daze, and when he raised his head up in surprise, he was met with Song Yu’s cold face. The youth said arrogantly, “I’ve been dissatisfied with you for a long time. I have to beat you up once in this last stretch.”

Lin Shuangqiu was frozen in surprise off to the side.

No.1 High and No.13 High’s students waited for a long time before they saw a Yao Rui come out, his face green and purple and brimming with anger.

Yao Rui’s eyes seemed to want to dig out a piece of Song Yu’s flesh. He said, “You dare to block Laozi? You just wait.”

On the way back, Ma Xiaoding asked in confusion, “Brother Yu, how did you end up in a fight with Yao Rui? What happened?”

Song Yu kept his eyes closed to catch up on sleep, “He was walking too slowly and blocked my way.”

In fact, Song Yu wasn’t even thinking about Yao Rui. What he’d been thinking about constantly in his heart was Xie Sui.  Something had been off with him in the haunted house, hey.