Chapter 307: Joyful Destiny 28

Chapter 307: Joyful Destiny 28

This night, Lu Cheng suffered from insomnia.

Not just Lu Cheng, many players were unable to sleep.

After experiencing such a heart-stopping hour, it was difficult for everyone to quickly fall into a deep sleep.

Lu Cheng's thoughts wandered aimlessly.

Perhaps Xiao Qin had fallen asleep; it wasn't impossible. He always had an uncanny ability to relax in strange places.

But for some reason, Lu Cheng felt a constant unease.

He felt that something was going off track somewhere he didn't know about.

Miyang also had this feeling.

The two chatted idly in the guild channel, and Xie Jingtian categorized their worries as nervousness about the upcoming decisive day.

But in fact, everyone understood that Xie Jingtian was the one trying to ease others' minds with his jokes.

Xiao Qin was the bride, he was special.

What he encountered earlier might have been different from theirs.

No one went to knock on Qin Fei's door.

It was too risky, not only for themselves but also possibly for the person in the room.

Moreover, Qin Fei had long said that the rule of his room was that once asleep, one could not open their eyes again, making it impossible for him to open the door for visitors.

Lu Cheng lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling.

His mind was not focused on the ghost stories but was tangled up in a mess.

Time ticked by minute by minute.

Initially, Lu Cheng would occasionally check the time and say a few words in the channel, but later, he stopped even these actions, lying alone in the dark, lost in thought.

Outside the door, the night wind blew through the corridor, howling like a mournful cry.

This night, no one knew how many players could truly fall asleep, and how many, like Lu Cheng, silently tossed and turned.

...

What all the players feared indeed happened.

The sky did not brighten.

Five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock.

Outside remained pitch black as usual.

As soon as it hit seven in the morning, the quiet guild channel suddenly became lively.

"Lu Cheng": It's safe outside. Two players left their rooms half an hour ago.

"Mengchang": Those two circled around the second floor and then went back. They didn't go downstairs or approach the paper figures near the stairs.

"Xie Jingtian": What should we do? Should we follow the vice president's suggestion and make masks?

There were no paper figures moving on the second floor. If they were to make masks, the targets could only be the NPCs standing at the stairwell, which was a known fact.

Mengchang typed thoughtfully in the channel.

"Mengchang": I think it's feasible. On the first night when I was out watching, a NPC at the stairwell turned into a paper figure and was burned by the steward. The other NPCs nearby didn't react at all.

They seemed indifferent to the disappearance of their companions.

In that case, stealing one or two from the end of the line shouldn't be a big problem, right?

"Xie Jingtian": That's great! There are five paper figures on each side of the stairwell, ten in total, enough for us to use.

The other members of Black Feather, seeing this message, couldn't help but grimace.

They were really not being polite. Even wool couldn't be sheared from the same spot continuously.

It was Vice President Gala who made the final decision.

"Gala": Let's do it.

Everyone was experienced players, so more details weren't necessary.

Soon, players quietly emerged from the two rooms closest to the stairwell.

Gala had explained the method last night. Each of those two players held a finished prop, a combination of a long steel pipe and a wooden stick, with a switchblade tied to the top.

Lu Cheng also opened his door.

His vines could provide assistance.

Since he hadn't left the room, Lu Cheng didn't light a lantern. The vines followed the direction of the two guild players, while his eyes glanced worriedly towards Room 014.

After thinking for a moment, he asked in the channel.

"Lu Cheng": Should we check on Xiao Qin's room?

Why hasn't there been any movement yet?

It always felt a bit off, no one should sleep that long.

Unexpectedly, the request was actually refused.

"Cen San Ya": Don't go yet, wait for him to come out of the room himself.

"Lu Cheng": Captain Cen, do you know something again?

Cen San Ya stopped responding, leaving Lu Cheng's question hanging in the chat channel.

After Cen San Ya said this, Lu Cheng became less tense.

Captain Cen clearly foresaw something; since he's so calm, Xiao Qin should be fine.

At the stairwell, the Black Feather players' plan against the paper figures was in full swing.

Players on the right side of the corridor gradually noticed their actions, but the Black Feather members didn't avoid them.

Now, all the players in the instance, except for Butterfly, were like grasshoppers on the same boat, and leaking information at the right time was feasible and necessary.

The method proven by practice indeed worked, and the first pair of players returned safely very quickly.

To be safe, both wore gloves and used chopsticks to pick up the paper figure's head.

Their first victory made the players very happy, and they smiled brightly as they walked back to their rooms.

The audience on the light screen, who had been watching with great interest, now felt chills down their spines due to the smiles on the two players' faces:

"Damn, who's the monster and who's the player here..."

"Holding someone's head and still smiling so happily, even the paper figures would cry."

"Forget it, those paper figures are just dumb, they don't even run away."

...

With the first group setting the stage, the subsequent players also acted smoothly, and soon it was Lu Cheng and Mi Yang's turn.

Without any incidents, they quickly each obtained a mask.

There were only four paper figures left at the edge of the stairs, four thin pieces of paper stuck to the wooden walls, their expressions dull, unaware of the impending disaster.

Mi Yang glanced at the mask in his hand and did not turn back to the room but asked Lu Cheng: "Shall we go check on Xiao Qin?"

Coincidentally, Lu Cheng had the same idea: "Don't knock, just take a look from outside the door."

Several people had already passed by the corridor, although they didn't know what was happening inside Room 014, taking a look from outside the door should definitely be fine.

Neither of them expected things to be so coincidental.

They had just arrived at the door of Room 014 when there was a creak, and the door suddenly opened.

Mi Yang was startled and turned to see Qin Fei's face.

Qin Fei looked terrible, his hair damp with sweat, his complexion pale, and his lips devoid of color, looking as if his spirit had been drained.

He leaned against the door, listless: "You came?"

Mi Yang looked him up and down: "What happened?"

Qin Fei wiped his face, answering somewhat disjointedly: "I know everything now."

He had dreamt all night. He saw everything that happened three years ago in his dream.

"Let's go," Qin Fei straightened up.

Lu Cheng asked blankly: "Where?"

Qin Fei had already started walking, leaving a sentence that drifted over with the wind: "To find Gala."

...

Gala's room already had five or six people gathered.

Those who had obtained the paper figure masks had come over, and the four players from Cui Wenxuan's side had also arrived.

When Qin Fei pushed the door open, Gala was assigning tasks, detailing which groups would be responsible for which areas, all meticulously planned.

Qin Fei stood quietly at the door, listening.

He noticed that these plans did not include himself and Gala himself.

After assigning everyone's responsibilities, Gala emphasized two points:

"Always pay attention to your own safety; preserving yourself is the most important. The areas you are responsible for overlap, so escaping at critical moments will cause no loss."

"The sixth scroll is likely to appear only in the afternoon. Once you find clues about the ancient painting, do not risk entering the painting yourself, regardless of the situation. You must, must, must synchronize the information with me, and I will rush over with Xiao Qin."

He repeated "must" three times, emphasizing its importance.

No one questioned how Gala knew so many details; Cen San Ya was sitting next to him, and it was natural for them to predict some information in advance.

No one objected, everyone nodded and went to find their teammates.

Just then, a clear and unhidden sneer came from the doorway.

Who was so arrogant, trying to cause trouble? Everyone in the room looked up.

Seeing it was Qin Fei, they all breathed a sigh of relief.

The only person who did not breathe a sigh of relief was Gala.

Having known Qin Fei for so long, he had never seen him wear such an expression before.

Xiao Qin had a very good temper, or more accurately, he had a very large capacity for tolerance, especially when it came to his own people.

The vice president suddenly had a rather unpleasant premonition.

And then, his premonition came true.

"I already know what you're planning," the young man by the door said with a half-smile. "I've remembered everything."

He didn't elaborate further, as there were still many viewers in the live stream, but these few words were enough for Gala to understand his implications.

Gala's expression visibly stiffened for a moment, like a primary school student caught reading extracurricular books by their parents. "What do you mean?"

Cen San Ya rarely opened his eyes, but when he did, he gave Gala a sympathetic look before closing them again.

This deliberate act of opening his eyes just to witness Gala's embarrassment made Gala feel even worse.

"What I mean is," Qin Fei stepped into the room and slowly walked over to Gala, speaking in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, "I remember the content of the next painting, and I also guessed that you want to go and die."

"I understand everything now," Qin Fei chuckled softly, making Gala's skin crawl.

Three years ago, the sixth painting that Qin Fei and Wen Yian found depicted a coffin.

A blood-stained coffin.

This painting showed the scene that the bride most wished to forget—the day her lover died.

Exactly what happened to the lover remains unknown to the players; at the start of the plot, he had already become a cold corpse.

According to local customs, unmarried young people who died prematurely would be thrown into the river, drifting downstream to an unknown land of freedom.

But the bride was unwilling.

The bride and her lover had long agreed that they would follow each other in life and death.

At that time, the bride had already decided to leave with her lover, but before doing so, she wanted to do one last thing.

She wanted to steal her lover's ashes.

After entering the blood-stained coffin painting, the players would experience the process of stealing the ashes.

This part of the plot was supposed to appear in the paper play, serving as a clue for the players, and indeed, it did three years ago.

But this time, the segment in the paper play was maliciously erased by the urban legend.

Like the combing branch quest, the blood-stained coffin was also a task requiring two players to cooperate simultaneously in both the surface and inner worlds.

The player portraying the bride was in the surface world, responsible for fighting the paper figures, while the groom was in the inner world, tasked with assisting the bride and providing clues about the location of the ashes.

It sounded quite ordinary, no different from the tasks in the previous paintings.

Qin Fei thought so too at the time.

Until the crucial moment of the task, he realized a chilling truth:

One of the necessary conditions for completing the blood-stained coffin painting task was that the player in the inner world must remain trapped within the painting forever.