It moved!
Lin Jue’s pupils constricted and he crawled up from his bed. On this two meter bunk, he had nothing to defend himself with and nowhere to run!
The monster quickly climbed towards him, a pair of sharp claws growing out from its originally palmless ‘hands’. The pair of bloody claws reached onto the ladder to the upper bunk as it dragged its eerie body to Lin Jue step by step.
The head that was like it had been cling-wrapped in flesh had already reached the end of the bed; one more crawl and it would be able to grab Lin Jue’s leg!
Lin Jue’s heart skipped a beat. Without thinking, he grabbed the metal railing on the side of the bed and flipped down. With a crisp crack, the rusted railing snapped under his weight and, midair, Lin Jue had no time to adjust his weight, falling backwards onto the floor. Even though the bed wasn’t too high, the fall still caused his vision to black out for a second.
The monster was already on the bed and stared down at Lin Jue from the end of it.
Lin Jue didn’t even dare to breathe loudly. The fear from first seeing the monster was slowly dissipating, logic and desire to live gaining the upper hand once more. He had to save himself, to at least escape from here… His eyes moved carefully towards the door.
The monster craned its head forward, like how Lin Jue had looked down at it only moments ago, but its gaze was filled with malicious intent, those sharp, newly-grown claws digging into the sides of the bed. Its fleshy wings closed backwards, as if it was readying itself to pounce.
Recovering from the heavy fall, Lin Jue made up his mind: run!
Lin Jue rolled on the spot and immediately jumped up. In that same moment, a strong wind landed not even half a meter from him- where he was just a second ago, a pair of sharp claws dug into the clay tiles, the cracking sounds it made numbing the bases of his ears. He didn’t even dare imagine what would happen should those claws land on his body; even if he didn’t die, he would be severely injured!
Already up, Lin Jue ran towards the door without looking back. He grabbed onto the handle with his right hand and tugged, but he couldn’t open it!
In that moment, Lin Jue felt like he had one foot over the abyss, despair and fear sweeping through his body.
He could already smell the scent of death next to him.
A strong wind blew from behind him again. In that deadly moment, that almost mythical battle instinct dawned on Lin Jue once more. Instead of turning, Lin Jue crouched.
With a clang, both claws sank into the metal door. Lin Jue immediately turned and ran. There was no place to hide in the narrow guest house and even less objects that could be used as weapons. It was certain death to be fighting with an agile and cruel monster in this room that was barely ten square meters.
Rushing to the window, Lin Jue grabbed the chair by the desk and confronted the monster a few meters away by the door.
Outside was moonlight and mist.
He was right where he had first found it, piles of bloodied feathers sweeping up from his movements and slowly drifting back down. If the monster wasn’t so close by, it should have been a scene of somber beauty.
Lin Jue was thinking: if he risked breaking the window now, the monster would definitely come and finish him. There was no way for him to both defend himself and shatter the window, so he had to kill the thing first.
With the stakes as high as they were, all fear had been pushed to the bottom of his heart. Lin Jue held the metal chair in his hands tightly, cold eyes staring sharply at the monster opposite him.
The dim yellow light left the room’s details blurry. Crouched by the door, the monster scratched at the broken tiles on the ground with its claws, a clacking sound over the ceramic. It seemed to be thinking as well about how it could deal with the man jumping around by it.
It was about to attack!
His battle instinct received such a signal from the monster’s movements. The moment it leaped, Lin Jue dodged its lunge with extraordinary agility. Holding the chair in one hand, he grabbed onto the nearby railing with the other.
As the monster landed, its bloody feathers flew up: one, two, countlessly many…
Lin Jue roared, held up the chair, and jumped down, smashing it against the monster. It let out a shrill shriek at the impact as more and more feathers were scattered up, rising and falling in the low light.
Blood splattered, sticky crimson striking the swirling white feathers like a harsh rainstorm. The countless feathers flying in the air were soaked through with blood and crashed to the ground one after the other, the tacky splat of their landings swallowed up in the cries of life and death.
Like a puddle of flesh.
When Lin Jue finally stopped, the monster which had made him so frightened had become a splattered mass of broken meat.
One last bloodied feather twirled in front of him, falling down by his nose. He smelled that scent of bad blood, the sickening stench of death.
Lin Jue threw away the chair that had been completely smashed to pieces and rubbed his numb right hand. After his vicious outburst, all that remained on his face was the empty hollowness of burned-out killing intent.
A burning pain suddenly came from the back of his hand. Lin Jue took a look. The back of his bruised hands had been stamped with a burn mark around two or three centimeters long. He didn’t know where it had come from.
With a click, the locked door suddenly opened a crack as the wood was pushed open by a pair of invisible hands, revealing the mist-covered outside world.
Lin Jue was in no hurry to get out; he was busy trying to find a weapon in this room, but there wasn’t even a fruit knife. The two machetes that had been previously stockpiled inside were nowhere to be seen; the only thing that could somewhat be used was the chair that he had smashed.
Lin Jue broke off a relatively usable metal bar from it. Until he found a better weapon, it would have to do.
Just before he left, Lin Jue took another glance back at the room. That lump of meat wasn’t even recognizable as the monster it was originally: it lay silently among scattered, bloodied feathers, the moon’s glow across it, cold yet gentle.
Midnight; by the window, moonlight.
This scene, he should have seen it before. Such a thought suddenly appeared in Lin Jue’s head.
He remembered it now.
One night before the start of the second round, he had woken from a nightmare, certain that he was being watched by omnipresent eyes. He had been scared up and as he sat, had seen Song Hanzhang next to the window, his back to him.
Cold sweat dripped down from Lin Jue’s forehead.
He had thought that bathed in the moonlight, it was as if Song Hanzhang was carrying a pair of wings. It must have been a pair of white wings, holy and far away from the mortal realm.
Lin Jue suddenly turned around. The white feathers had long been drenched in blood, filthy and stained.
He suddenly started to doubt his eyes. Was that really a monster?
No, it must have been a monster, it must have been!
Lin Jue no longer had the courage to look nor think. He pushed open the door and ran outside. In front of him wasn’t the corridor of the guest house, but rather a misty section of the campus. When he turned around again, that door and that room had disappeared; it was as if he had crossed a gate that twisted time and space, binding him to be unable to return.
In front of him was the A-G complex. Once he crossed the bridge across the artificial water system, he would arrive at Time Plaza.
Song Hanzhang had to be there, had to be!
Lin Jue ran wildly through the night; through the mist, through the buildings, across the man-made rivers, until he was at Time Plaza.
All that the eye could see was in bleak despair. The towering clock tower had been heartlessly corroded away by blood and rust, the surrounding greenery withered to decay. There were no more lush trees or bushes left, only dead leaves and wilted grass swaying in the wind.
Gu Fengyi stood in the wind. She nodded when she saw Lin Jue.
“Have you seen Song Hanzhang? Is he not here yet?” Lin Jue asked restlessly.
Gu Fengyi shook her head, her expression slightly worried. “You’re the second to arrive. I’m waiting for Qingqing.”
Lin Jue’s strung-up heart couldn’t settle down without seeing Song Hanzhang. He looked at the survivor count: five. It gave him a pang of anxiety.
None of the previous games had such a small starting number; were there no new players this round?
But even if there weren’t any new players, there was him, Song Hanzhang, Lu Ren, Gu Fengyi, Liu Qingqing, and Dan Liang; that should still be six people! Which one of them was already dead?
During the time between the start of the game and the rendezvous at the plaza, it was highly likely that the players would die to powerful monsters because they had yet to retrieve their skills, and have their bodies possessed by Judas after. Since the round started abruptly as well, almost everyone started without a weapon and by themselves. If someone really was to die, no one would know.
Lin Jue paced anxiously around the plaza, not even in the mood to draw his reward, desperately praying that it wasn’t Song Hanzhang.
Gu Fengyi watched as he walked around like a headless fly and couldn’t help but feel frustrated. “There’s no point in worrying now, go get your reward first. Oh yes, the reward from the last round will get carried over to this round as well; I’ve retained my snake-sense.”
Lin Jue shook his head absentmindedly, staring hopefully in the direction of the man-made water system as if Song Hanzhang would appear in the next second.
“I’m worried for Qingqing as well, but there’s no point in it; all we can do now is wait.” Gu Fengyi played with her chipped metal blade and sighed deeply.
Lin Jue looked at her. Gu Fengyi was also splattered in blood, but not nearly as frighteningly so as him.
“You met a monster as well?” Lin Jue felt his heart sink, realizing that the monster he met at the start wasn’t a mere coincidence.
Gu Fengyi nodded and pointed at the back of her hand. “After I killed it, I got this line here. I’m not sure what it means.”
“That monster…” Lin Jue didn’t know how to describe it. Even now, he still found it scarier and creepier than the zombies. The way the room appeared and disappeared as well, it didn’t make sense. He felt like there was some sort of metaphor there.
Gu Fengyi gave it a moment’s reflection. “That monster was related to us.”
“……”
“I don’t know what sort of monster you met, but at least for me… I know that I’ve seen it before…” Gu Fengyi frowned, troubled with a hint of guilt. “I’m afraid that it was a projection of our minds, whether it was fear, desire, or hatred, made to be seen as a grotesque monster.”
Gu Fengyi stood by the clock tower and caressed the rusted wall. “Have you played the game ‘Silent Hill’ before? Many parts of the school now resemble the style of that game; it’s most likely the theme of this round. Like the zombies of round one and insects of round two, what we will have to face in this round are probably monsters of the heart.”
Demons of the heart? Lin Jue couldn’t help but recall the one he had just killed.
What was it hinting at?
“Someone’s coming.” With her snake-sense back, Gu Fengyi was much more sensitive to her surroundings than the average person. Before Lin Jue felt anything, she was already pointing behind him.
Lin Jue immediately turned around. Under the hazy light, a person in a white shirt was hurrying over to them.
Even though they were so far apart, even though they were merely a blurry shadow, they made Lin Jue tremble with excitement.
Without hesitation, he was running, sprinting towards them, and finally embracing them once again.
In that embrace, all of his apprehension, his jumbled-up thoughts, his fatigue, was wiped clean. Finally, peace.
Vera & Luci Translations 