Chapter 42: Strange Talk Player
Chapter 42: Strange Talk Player
"I don't know." The rustling sound of clothes rubbing against each other came from the darkness. Bai Zhi held her head with both hands, and her slender body curled up in her mother's arms: "How should I know..."
Feng Yusu felt a pain in her heart and gently stroked her trembling shoulders. For a moment, she didn't know what to say.
"Ningzhe, give her some time, okay?" Feng Yushu said softly, "She... is very scared."
Ning Zhe sighed: "Of course I can act reasonable here, play the role of a considerate and warm man in front of you and your daughter, and take care of your emotions, but ghosts won't do that."
"Ghosts are not the men who lust after your bodies, nor are they the public opinion. Ghosts follow the absolute rule of life or death, and death is the greatest fairness in this world."
"The rules will not stop killing people just because you are so-called weak women. Hugging each other and crying won't make the ghosts stand at attention and reflect on their mistakes. This will only bring death closer to you."
Ning Zhe stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtains to cover the hole he had smashed open:
"Listen, Feng Yushu, I'm not your husband, nor am I your daughter's babysitter. I have no obligation to help you as a stranger. I'm here because I think Bai Zhi can provide me with useful information in the current situation."
"If her answer is no, unclear, or unknown, then I can only wish you the best of luck before I leave here."
that's it.
"Ningzhe..." Feng Yusu's heart tightened, and she subconsciously hugged her daughter's shoulders, feeling as helpless as when she was in Hejia Village.
She had never realized so clearly the fact that she did not have any bargaining chips that could move Ning Zhe - money, status, body, and even everything she could give, Ning Zhe was unmoved. He had no desires and no humanity. He was an extremely rational profit-oriented person, so rational that he did not seem like a flesh-and-blood human being at all.
Instead, it looks more like a... ghost.
"No wonder you were able to come out of Hejia Village alive." Bai Zhi's voice came faintly from Feng Yushu's arms: "The only people who can survive in this world are people like you."
"I'll take that as a compliment." Ning Zhe didn't care about her words: "Calm down and stop crying. Tell me what you know. Why did you dream about Hejia Village? And why do you know the rules of the ghosts in the manor?"
Only by knowing this will the heavy fog hanging over the town begin to dissipate.
"Have you ever played the game of Rule Tales?" Bai Zhi asked quietly.
"I've come across it, but I've never actually tried to solve it." Ning Zhe said frankly: "What does this have to do with the current situation?"
"Yesterday, I dreamed about the strange story of rules with this manor as the background." Bai Zhi said softly, "Just like I dreamed about Hejia Village before."
"Since I was in junior high school, I have often had bizarre nightmares."
"Sometimes I dreamed that I was hiding from a crazy mental patient in a remote hospital. Sometimes I dreamed that the hotel I was staying in was full of dead people, from the manager to the waiters... These scenes were filled with a weird atmosphere and horror elements, as if taking a wrong step would lead to the end of life."
"And those horrific scenes in dreams often correspond to places in reality. The hospital where the mentally ill wandered was the Yongzhou City General Hospital that I often visited when I was a child, and the hotel run by the dead was the Vanilla Hotel opened by my father..."
“Whenever I enter a similar scene in my dream, fear and a sense of crisis will fill my subconscious mind, as if there is a threat of death everywhere.”
"If I saw a freezer in the hospital, I would be scared and subconsciously think that I must not open it or I would die."
"When I met a cleaner mopping the floor in a hotel, I would feel disgusted and subconsciously try to avoid the blood in her bucket, otherwise something terrible would happen."
“The nightmare-like scene was so crowded, closed, and suffocating… There were dangerous death traps everywhere, and evil spirits with bad intentions everywhere, but I was always able to narrowly avoid the death that was so close, and curled up in the corner to survive until the nightmare ended and the sun rose.”
"Because every time before I enter a nightmare, I will subconsciously know the different death taboos in these strange places in a way similar to dreaming or psychological suggestion." Bai Zhi's voice was still so weak, and she seemed to be out of breath. She curled up in her mother's arms and said softly:
"It's like reading a survival manual written by a horror writer before entering a strange world built by rules. Although the ambiguous precautions are vague, they are enough to support me to survive in the nightmare."
I like to solve puzzles in my dreams? That's interesting.
"Do you think you are a ghost story player?" Ning Zhe asked.
"I think I am." Bai Zhi answered seriously.
She went on to explain that since she had the nightmare, she had searched the Internet for many horror-themed video games and literary works, trying to find the cause of those nightmares, but she never succeeded. Because those nightmare scenes did not correspond to virtual game works, but to real places and people.
It turns out that the nightmare was not caused by playing horror games, but that I played horror games because of the nightmare...
"I tried searching for news related to the psychiatric department of Yongzhou General Hospital and found that a mentally ill patient was sleepwalking in the middle of the night and stabbed a doctor and three nurses with a knife."
Bai Zhi continued, “And the night this happened, the nightmare I had was about hiding from a wandering mental patient in this hospital.”
In the dream, a doctor and three nurses also died.
It's just that the real news reports are about stabbings.
"Then you dreamed of Hejia Village again... Last night you dreamed that Bishuiwan Manor was haunted, right?" Ning Zhe tried to understand her way of thinking: "Then what is the content of the 'survival manual' you got this time?"
Bai Zhi took a deep breath and said:
1. Brightness represents danger
2. Darkness represents safety
3. Ghosts are afraid of light
4. Ghosts like darkness
"That's about it." Bai Zhi's soft voice sounded very soft in the dark room: "Ning Zhe, do you have any clues?"
Listening to her quickly calming down, Ning Zhe suddenly had a funny idea:
"Do you feel like you're dreaming now?"
Bai Zhi remained silent and did not answer his question.
"Okay, let me tell you what's going on with your weird attitude. It turns out you think your mom and I are NPCs in your dream."
Ning Zhe shook his head helplessly, his mind full of thoughts. He began to sort out what he had seen and heard along the way based on the four pieces of information provided by Bai Zhi.
"Ghosts need light to find and kill people. Once people hide in the dark, they are just like blind people."
"Ghosts need light to kill people, but ghosts themselves are afraid of light, just like moths that chase fire and hover around a candle. If you get close, they will be disrespectful, but if you stay away, they will complain."
Why does it feel like a fairy?
(End of this chapter)