Chapter 77: Hesitation |
Qi Si opened his eyes to a hazy, gray sky.
Beneath it stood a row of ochre, European-style buildings constructed from alternating wood and stone. The houses were packed tightly together, a claustrophobic cluster that left no room for even a sliver of light to pass through. Murals and shrines, rich with religious imagery, were bathed in shadow, adding to the oppressive, grim atmosphere.
Men and women in tattered clothes moved between the archways. They all had the high-bridged noses and deep-set eyes of Caucasians, their expressions so solemn they were nearly blank. From a distance, their ashen faces looked like specters.
Qi Si was sitting on the steps in front of a small wooden hut. He glanced down and saw dead fish strewn carelessly on either side of the door.
Scales and blood had been ground into a foul sludge by the feet of passersby, smeared greasily across the ground in a filthy mess.
Qi Si frowned, realizing he couldn't smell the stench of blood he'd expected.
And then he realized he was dreaming.
He no longer felt any urgency to stand. Lazily, he propped his chin on his hand and began to analyze the situation.
"According to the principle of a truel, Lu Li should have been the first target. And by the logic of picking the weakest first, I doubt I'm the only new official player here. Other than that, I haven't done anything special. If drinking that Sleep Aid Soup was the cause, then Chang Xu drank it too. If we die, we die together..."
He turned his head just in time to see Chang Xu standing stiffly in the doorway, his face blank and his eyes unfocused. He clearly had no idea what was going on.
...Never mind then.
After a two-second pause, Qi Si was the first to speak, a smile spreading across his face. "Brother Chang, what a coincidence. You're here too. You have more experience than I do. What do you make of this?"
Chang Xu tilted his head, glanced at Qi Si, and grunted an acknowledgment before turning away and sitting down on the steps himself.
Qi Si froze for a moment.
A suspicion forming in his mind, he tentatively waved a hand in front of Chang Xu’s eyes. There was no reaction.
Chang Xu just kept staring blankly ahead, his consciousness visibly clouded.
"Could it be... that I'm the only one who's lucid in this dream?"
Qi Si saw the potential, and a dozen interesting possibilities bloomed in his mind.
He leaned closer to Chang Xu, his voice a low, gentle murmur. "What's your name?"
Chang Xu seemed puzzled. The man clearly looked like he knew him, so why was he asking? Still, he answered, "Chang Xu."
Qi Si asked again, "Gender?"
Primed by the first question, Chang Xu answered naturally, "Male."
"Age?"
"Twenty-five."
"Where are you from?"
"Jiang City."
It was a classic hypnotic technique: use a series of innocuous questions to lower the subject's guard before circling silently toward the crucial point.
Qi Si's tone remained unchanged. He smiled. "What a coincidence, I'm from Jiang City too. Where do you live?"
Chang Xu's eyelashes trembled. "I can't say."
"Why not? Let me guess, your identity is probably quite special. You're not a police officer like you claim... You work for a confidential department, don't you?" Qi Si stared at Chang Xu's face, not blinking, observing his state. "I know the Federation has taken notice of the Weird Game and established agencies to deal with it. You work for the Federation, don't you?"
"I can't say means I can't say." Chang Xu’s speech quickened, his eyelids fluttering violently as if he were about to wake up.
Qi Si realized he couldn't push any further and decisively changed the subject. "What was your relationship with the man who died in the Flesh Eating instance?"
Chang Xu calmed down. "Uncle Yang had met a friend of mine. You could say they were colleagues."
"I see."
This solidified Qi Si's resolve to keep the truth about Yang Yundong's death buried forever. He asked nonchalantly, "Since he was your friend's colleague, he must have heard about you. How could he not know your name?"
Chang Xu replied, "For a very long time, I didn't have a name."
"..."
The door behind them opened again. Liu Yuhan emerged, head bowed, and silently sat down between Qi Si and Chang Xu. She looked as if someone owed her a fortune.
When she noticed Qi Si's scrutinizing gaze, she lifted her face, pale as a corpse, and stared back at him.
After two seconds, she suddenly grabbed his sleeve and said, enunciating each word, "You have to find my father. Quickly, before it's too late."
...Great. This one wasn't lucid either.
Qi Si’s face once again wore that coaxing smile. "Liu Yuhan, what's your faction?"
Liu Yuhan said, "My father told me not to talk to strangers."
"...You spoke to me first."
"You have to find my father."
"..."
Qi Si's eye twitched as he discreetly pulled his sleeve free from her grasp.
The next second, however, he felt a tug on his other sleeve.
He turned his head to see Lu Li appear out of nowhere, gripping his right hand with both of his. "My student, send me another draft of your paper before nine P.M. tomorrow, and I'll look it over for you. Be prepared. You must perform well at next week's seminar."
Qi Si, who had never attended college: "..."
Players began to appear on the street one by one. From their clothes to their faces, they were completely out of place among the local inhabitants, yet not a single one of them seemed to notice anything was wrong.
Qi Si counted thirteen of them, including himself. The backpacker who had been haggling with Yuna that evening was gone, as was another man with a rather grim appearance.
"Is it because only thirteen of us drank the Sleep Aid Soup?"
As Qi Si pondered this, the other players, who had been muttering nonsense to themselves, suddenly fell silent. They formed an orderly line and began to shamble in a single direction.
Qi Si followed silently, keeping a two-step distance from the person at the end of the line.
The line passed through an archway, winding through several narrow alleys before merging like a stream into a bustling crowd.
Before them was an oval-shaped square. The ground sloped gently upward, allowing everyone to gaze up at the church on the high ground.
The towering, spire-topped building sat enthroned on a high marble platform. Against the gray sky, it rose so steeply it looked like a rift tearing through the heavens.
People dressed in simple cloth shirts and skirts gathered before the church, whispering amongst themselves.
"I had that dream again last night... a yellow sky and a yellow sea, with nothing but a lone island. It's terrifying... I pray the Bishop can save us!"
"Last month, when I was out at sea, I heard someone calling my name from the water. I barely escaped with my life, but I can still hear the evil god's voice... This must be a curse from that damned witch!"
"The whispers in the dream are becoming more frequent, and the island is getting closer... The evil god is watching us! Is it because our prayers aren't devout enough?"
Qi Si more or less understood. These people were followers of some religion, afflicted by a curse that plagued them with an evil god's whispers and dreams of the Hopeless Sea.
They had gathered here to seek help from their so-called "Bishop" to solve their problem.
"They dream of the Hopeless Sea, and we, who are in the Hopeless Sea, dream of them. What a fateful connection." The thought reminded Qi Si of the old story of the sage who dreamt he was a butterfly.
Were the players dreaming they were believers, or were the believers dreaming they were players? It was a question worth pondering.
"The Bishop has arrived!"
"God, save us!"
The crowd erupted into a clamor, and the people fell to their knees, prostrating themselves in one direction.
Qi Si followed their gaze. The doors of the church were slowly swinging open, revealing a man in red robes standing on the high platform.
The man had long black hair and East Asian features. His red robes, styled like Chinese ceremonial vestments, trailed on the ground.
The moment he spoke, his voice dripped with the false piety of a charlatan. "Each and every one of you is a sinner, but God is willing to grant you a chance at redemption..."
Qi Si's expression turned strange. He truly hadn't expected a certain evil god to be so persistent, or to have the spare time to engage in role-playing.
...And he wasn't even very dedicated to the role, not bothering to change his appearance.
The red-robed figure seemed completely unaware of Qi Si's presence and continued his speech. "Offer up the price you can afford—money, flesh, or even pain—and I shall listen to your prayers and grant your wishes."
The believers cheered and rose to their feet, rushing toward the platform in a frenzy. The players followed, the same fanatical gleam in their eyes.
Qi Si blended into the crowd, walking step by step onto the platform. He stopped before the red-robed figure, a smirk playing on his lips. "Your Excellency, you just broke free from your chains. Aren't you afraid of being banished by the rules again if you run around like this?"
There was no response. The red-robed figure simply continued to gaze down at the crowd with a look of pity, a mocking smile playing on his lips.
Qi Si's eyebrow twitched. He reached out to touch the figure, but his fingers passed right through its body as if it were an intangible illusion.
The identity card in the upper right corner of his vision trembled, and the phantom of a blood-red card materialized over the figure.
It was undoubtedly a master card. The art depicted a bishop in red robes, his crimson eyes downcast, holding a black cross aloft before a teeming crowd below.
[Identity Card: Scarlet High Priest]
[Effect: You will more easily gain the faith of other beings and convert that faith into your own power.]
It looked incredibly powerful. He wanted it...
For a moment, Qi Si felt his own [Humanoid Evil] card paled in comparison.
Rather than making deals with an evil god—bargaining with a tiger for its hide—it would be better to ascend to a divine throne himself and reap the faith of others...
To have others pray to him, to answer them himself, to control his own destiny until he obtained the status and power of a true god...
Qi Si realized this would be a crucial bargaining chip in his game against the evil god, one that could tip the scales of power.
He reached for the newly appeared card, but it merely flickered twice before vanishing, replaced by a line of blood-red text:
[This instance does not support role-playing. This identity card cannot be unlocked.]
Qi Si: "..."
Below the platform, the believers formed a long queue before a bronze donation box, muttering prayers "not to be noticed by the evil god," completely unaware that the greatest evil god of all was watching them from above.
They prayed devoutly before tossing gold coins into the box or slitting their arms to drip in their own blood.
Fighting an evil god's whispers with extreme faith... he couldn't tell if it was fighting fire with fire, hedging their bets, or just jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire.
In no time, the players also lined up at the donation box.
Unlike the believers, however, as the players approached the box, thick black smoke began to rise from their bodies, flowing into the red-robed figure.
Qi Si knew exactly what that black smoke was. He narrowed his eyes and muttered to himself, "The Weird Game really never misses an opportunity to collect sin..."
"The Weird Game?" Chang Xu's confused voice sounded by his ear.
For some reason, the guy hadn't followed the main group. Instead, he had drifted over to Qi Si's side like a ghost, resembling nothing so much as a follower pet from a mobile game.
Qi Si asked, "Aren't you going to make a donation?"
Chang Xu said, "I have no wish."
"How could you not have a wish? Everyone has a wish. For example, my wish is—" Qi Si faltered.
He suddenly realized he couldn't quite say what his wish was.
When he was sixteen, Qi Si had been buried alive by a group of "righteous youths" who had sensed his calamitous nature.
They had dug a pit, placed the unconscious Qi Si inside, poured cold earth over his face, and then covered it with thatch and broken bricks.
They detested Qi Si the way one might detest a rat or a cockroach.
They didn't want to get their hands or clothes dirty with the disgusting fluids of this filthy creature; it was best to make him disappear quietly, without any blood.
As Qi Si lay on the brink of death, a wingless god had silently descended, crouching by the edge of the pit. "Pray to me," it said. "Become my believer, and I can grant you one wish."
Back then, Qi Si had answered it silently: "I have no wish."
The god said, "You are about to die."
Qi Si asked it, "Do you not want me to die?"
The god was silent.
Qi Si asked again, "Then if I don't pray to you, and I don't want to be your believer, can you dig me out?"
That day, Qi Si did not die. And he had stubbornly survived until now.
But he still didn't know what kind of wish he ought to have.
To cure his illness? That was just incidental. If it couldn't be cured, then choosing a nice way to die and getting it over with wasn't a bad option either.
Destroy the world? That sounded as hollow and pretentious as "my dream is world peace."
Qi Si subconsciously glanced at the red-robed priest, who was still standing solemnly, meticulously presiding over the donation ceremony.
He remained in the same spot, but his gaze had shifted, fixed on a certain point with a smile in his eyes.
Qi Si followed his gaze and saw a little blond girl clutching a pure white ivory statue, crouched quietly in a corner where foul water pooled.
She had a sweet face, but on her throat was an ugly fish scale, so unnatural it looked like a curse.
It was Yuna. Or more precisely, a younger version of Yuna.
"What is your wish?" Chang Xu had waited for a while without an answer, and he pressed again.
Qi Si stared intently at the statue in Yuna's hands, his intuition screaming that it was a key item.
Chang Xu asked, "What is your wish?"
"My wish—" Qi Si drew out the word, then suddenly raised his hand and pointed at Yuna, huddled in the corner. "I want the statue in her hands."