Chapter 310: Joyful Fate 31

Chapter 310: Joyful Fate 31

In Qin Fei's view, everything that was happening now seemed very much like a warning from the system to the players.

The system had long known the purpose of his entry into this strange tale.

Moreover, when he and Gala were whispering earlier, they could prevent the audience in the live stream from hearing, but not the system.

The system was doing its utmost to obstruct Qin Fei, preventing him from progressing further in the strange tale.

While Qin Fei was still cursing the system in his heart, the other players began to panic.

At this time, no one was staying in the guest rooms. Even the players on the second floor were searching for clues related to the ancient painting in the corridors.

Now everyone was locked outside the guest rooms, facing the increasingly active paper monsters, making it difficult for them to remain calm.

Gala glanced at Qin Fei.

So many people simultaneously searching the Tulou without any results was enough to show that the situation was indeed the same as three years ago.

The ancient painting would only refresh itself at the right time; it couldn't be found simply by searching.

But now, the paper monsters were in revolt.

The players had nowhere to hide and had been stripped of their life-saving trump cards.

If the refresh time of the "Blood Coffin" painting was the same as three years ago, how could the players deal with so many paper monsters to survive until evening?

The players fell into confusion, which was directly reflected in their actions.

Half of them stood there dumbfounded, while the other half, spurred by the crisis, worked even harder, using the last bit of deterrent power of the porcelain bottles to move through the rooms.

Unfortunately, what they were doing was destined to be futile.

The audience in the live stream was also getting dissatisfied.

"When will that painting be found? Searching for a few old paintings for three days, I'm getting bored."

"Now the effect of the porcelain bottles is also weakening. If the paper monsters really attack en masse, the players will be done for."

Indeed, apart from a few die-hard fans of the streamers, most viewers enjoyed seeing death scenes in the live streams.

However, this live stream had been running for three days, and it seemed almost cleared. Getting stuck here would indeed be frustrating.

Moreover, this was a special instance in a guild competition.

If the players failed this time and didn't clear it, they wouldn't have another chance to see it again.

Unhappy viewers reacted by sending abusive comments.

"Can you guys step it up? After three days, you still don't know how to deal with the paper monsters?"

"What good are you? You're supposed to be top-tier elite players, yet you're drowning in a sea of trouble."

"Can you do it or not? If you can't, just die early and save us some time."

These abusive comments, unrelated to the plot, were all generously displayed to the players by the system.

The more the players read, the darker their faces became, and the tension around them grew thicker.

The members of Black Feather were still standing under the large locust tree.

Gala watched the increasingly agile movements of the paper monsters, his expression becoming more serious.

"We must find a new breakthrough," Gala said. "Given the speed of the paper monsters' mutation, the players can only freely move in the courtyard for another half hour at most."

After half an hour, the porcelain bottles would likely become completely ineffective.

The number of paper monsters was continuously increasing, constantly refreshing from various corners, and would probably surround the players soon.

But finding a new breakthrough was easier said than done. The information about this instance had already been thoroughly explored by the players.

"Let's go to the second floor first," Gala decided.

The corridor on the second floor was easier to defend and harder to attack. Even if new monsters kept spawning, it was better to defend than the open courtyard on all sides.

The players from Dark Fire chose to ally with Black Feather. The other players, lacking complete teams, were scattered in small groups.

Some players continued to observe Black Feather's movements, silently following them to the second floor, while others were still determined to find the final painting.

...

The situation on the second floor wasn't much better.

The narrow corridor was already occupied by the continuously spawning paper monsters.

Fortunately, the number of players wasn't small. When they gathered together, they quickly cleared out a space.

However, they still couldn't relax.

Looking down from the edge of the second-floor corridor, they could clearly see the movements of the remaining players on the first floor, who were still running around in the rooms, obviously without any results.

Cui Wenxuan grew increasingly frustrated: "What should we do now?"

In the instance, what made players suffer the most was not the endless ghosts and death threats, but the lack of hope.

That was the case now.

The porcelain bottles were losing their effectiveness faster than the players had imagined. After just ten minutes, they had become useless.

The paper figures' current attack speed is still insufficient, not even reaching half of the peak state that the players have witnessed, yet it has already left everyone struggling to cope.

The masks have also lost their effectiveness, and many players have discarded them.

It's hard to imagine how dire the situation will become after some more time passes?

"There must be another way..." Xie Jingtian muttered with a frown.

He was not the only one harboring such thoughts.

"All the monsters in this instance are made of paper. What does paper fear the most?"

A calm question, as if part of a casual conversation, came from behind, causing Xie Jingtian to pause and turn around.

The speaker was Qin Fei.

Upon hearing these words, many people looked over.

Xie Jingtian responded to Qin Fei's question: "What paper fears, water or fire?"

"However, neither of these two things work," said a player who had entered the Wedding Banquet Scroll with Qin Fei before, "We've tried both before. These paper figures are not afraid of water or fire. The only method that can suppress them is direct confrontation."

"Is that so." Qin Fei did not comment on his reminder, "Ordinary fire might not be effective, but what about special fire?"

The player looked puzzled: "What do you mean?"

Qin Fei raised his eyes and said seriously, "Ever since we discovered the efficacy of the porcelain bottles, we have relied on them to deal with the paper figures.

But in fact, before we realized the usefulness of the porcelain bottles, the paper figures had already appeared, hadn't they?

The first player to react was Mengchang.

On the night they entered Tulou, Mengchang was on watch duty. He was the first one to see the paper figure in the entire strange tale.

Mengchang's eyes lit up: "When the lanterns in the corridor went out, an NPC servant beside me turned into a paper figure. Later, the steward came and burned it to ashes with a fire."

Mengchang had told this story to Black Feather and other players at the time, but later, everyone focused on using porcelain bottles against the paper figures and completely forgot about that scene.

"Ordinary fire cannot burn the paper figures, but perhaps the fire the steward used can," Mengchang said excitedly, quickly adding, "But where can we find the steward?"

The steward had disappeared for a long time, seemingly from the second day onwards, no one had seen him again.

Lu Cheng pondered, "If we want to find the steward, we might have to go up to the third floor."

Only the third floor of Tulou could still hide people. After the first day's paper play ended, the steward warned the players that the third floor would be set up for the wedding hall and should not be entered casually.

Xie Jingtian: "But we can't get to the third floor."

Although the steward issued warnings, during the past two days while searching for ancient paintings, due to the lack of results, everyone had considered going to the third floor.

Even with the idea, it was useless. The entrance to the third-floor staircase seemed to be separated by a transparent barrier, keeping everyone out.

Standing at the staircase entrance, one could only see red ribbons swaying on the third floor, obscuring everything inside.

"There's no one on the third floor," Qin Fei stated confidently.

He wasn't just thinking of this idea now; the thought had formed vaguely in his mind when they were in the courtyard earlier.

Players couldn't reach the third floor, but ghost infants could. Ghost infants didn't need to use the stairs; they could directly penetrate through the floor and walls.

But there was no one upstairs.

The wedding hall on the third floor had been set up, unlit, making the decorations that should have been festive appear terrifying instead, with no one present anywhere.

Everyone looked at each other.

If there's no steward on the third floor, then where is he?

Gala: "The steward may not be in Tulou. On the second night, we saw a group of paper figures enter from outside Tulou, and one of them looked very much like the steward."

It was likely the steward transformed.

The situation seemed to fall into another deadlock, with the newly ignited hope extinguishing instantly.

Surrounded by numerous gazes, Qin Fei calmly expressed his opinion: "Apart from the steward NPC, there is another place to find special flames."

Qin Fei pointed downward to the courtyard below.

Except for a few players engaged in combat with the paper figures at the outer perimeter, the others all looked in the direction Qin Fei indicated.

Now, the remaining players on the first floor have all gone upstairs. In the dark courtyard, only a couple of moving light points remained.

They were very dim, easily overlooked if not observed carefully. They were the paper figures carrying paper lanterns.

Qin Fei: "If real flames cannot destroy the paper figures, what about using their own fire?"

The fire in the paper figures' lanterns is made of paper scraps. It sounds absurd to expect paper scraps to burn other paper scraps.

However, Lu Cheng found it reasonable: "If paper fire can emit light, maybe it can really burn people."

Xie Jingtian gritted his teeth: "Whether it works or not, let's try it first."

They couldn't just be trapped here forever.

The players decided to give it a try.

There weren't many paper figures carrying lanterns; they only existed in the initial batch. Later, the paper figures that spawned had empty hands.

There weren't many to begin with, and some were lost in battles with the players. Now, only the last two paper figures remained in the courtyard.

There just happened to be one heading upstairs.

The players from Black Feather were lying in wait at the stairwell, taking the opportunity to clear out a few paper figures nearby, making way for the precious lantern-carrying paper figure.

The paper figure holding the lantern stepped up the stairs, unaware that the players who had been avoiding it just moments ago were now lurking above, ready to pounce.

When it reached the second-floor landing and looked up, it was met with the stares of a dozen pairs of eyes.

Paper figure: "…"

Outnumbered, they easily took down the paper figure without breaking a sweat.

The moment its head was severed from its body, the paper lantern began to sway and fall towards the ground.

Mi Yang, quick as lightning, caught the lantern handle with a pair of chopsticks he somehow produced from nowhere.

A thin piece of red paper cut into a flame flickered inside the lantern.

Another player picked up the paper figure's fallen body and brought it close to the lantern.

Then, an eerie scene unfolded.

The red paper began to consume the paper figure's body, and where the two pieces of paper met, real flames suddenly erupted!

Despite being severed in two, the paper figure seemed to regain some semblance of consciousness, and its headless limbs started writhing.

Caught off guard by this sudden change, the player holding the paper figure's torso trembled slightly, allowing it to break free. Even though half of it was already burning, it still managed to lunge forward.

The players ahead instinctively made way, and the half-burnt paper figure soon collided with another paper figure in the corridor.

One after another, almost in the blink of an eye, the entire second-floor corridor became engulfed in a raging inferno.

"Damn!" Lu Cheng covered his mouth.

They just wanted to find a way out; they didn't mean to set the instance on fire!