Kaleidoscope of Death

After dawn, the terror of last night had dissipated quite a bit.

Lin Qiushi was heading down the second floor corridor, but he heard rustling noises coming from the third floor, as if there were many people discussing something. He didn't intend to look, but then he heard a woman's wailing, which was so grief-stricken that it seemed as if something extremely tragic had happened.

Lin Qiushi hesitated a bit, but still turned around and went to the third floor stairs wanting to see what had happened upstairs.

The stairs here were made of wood, and the wooden planks on the stairs were somewhat aged, so they creaked when you stepped on them, and some places would tremble a bit, as if they were about to fail to bear the weight of the human body.

When Lin Qiushi reached the third floor, he saw several people standing in the corridor. But what caught his attention was the thick smell of blood in the air.

The smell of blood was so strong that it stung one's nasal cavity, and Lin Qiushi had some bad feelings as he moved his feet and cautiously walked behind several people.

"I knew it." The tall man who picked up Lin Qiushi and the others yesterday, Xiong Lacquer, was discussing something with someone in a low voice, "Something really happened yesterday..."

Xiao Ke was also speaking, she said, "I also think, Ben thought it was..." she said here, she turned to look at Lin Qiushi who walked behind her, "Forget it."

Lin Qiushi thought to himself what do you mean by that, who did Ben think it was, did Ben think it was me and Ruan Baijie? He looked up and saw a door behind Curtis.

The door was half closed and blood was dripping on the floor, congealed because of the cold. But still you could see the amount of blood was very heavy.

"What happened?" Lin Qiushi asked.

"A dead man." Xiong Lacquer's tone was flat.

Lin Qiushi: "...A dead man?" If it had been yesterday, he probably would have found it unbelievable how these people could say such things in such a flat tone. But after experiencing those events last night, he had clearly realized that the place he was in now was no longer that world that could be explained with common sense.

"Well." Xiong Lacquer said.

Lin Qiushi changed his angle and took a glance towards the door. The glance made him involuntarily suck in a breath of cold air. There was congealed blood everywhere in the room, and the two corpses were disheveled on the floor, their flesh and blood so blurred that they were completely unrecognizable. Rather than people, they were more like two pieces of flesh without skin. The blood trickled all the way down the floor of the house, from floor to wall, there was hardly a clean spot on the entire third floor.

Although Lin Qiushi was mentally prepared, he was still disgusted by this scene. He covered his mouth and turned around, but Ke was very understanding and said, "There's a toilet in the next room."

Lin Qiushi hurriedly rushed into the toilet and vomited.

Waiting for him to vomit out, Xiao Ke said, "I thought you wouldn't vomit."

Lin Qiushi: "Huh?"

Ko said indifferently, "You and Ruan Baijie are already newcomers of good quality, the state of the first door of newcomers is usually particularly poor, the survival rate can be 20%."

Lin Qiushi: "........"

Xiao Ke said, "Let's go, go down and have breakfast."

Lin Qiushi said, "Then leave those two corpses alone?"

Curt's expression was very strange at the news, "How do you want to manage it?"

Lin Qiushi had nothing to say. He was following the people down the stairs when he suddenly remembered something and wondered, "Wait, I heard a woman crying on the third floor when I was on the second floor..." he looked around to make sure that Ke was the only girl among them, looking at her calm appearance, it wasn't like she would be The Howler.

"Women are crying?" Curtis, "We didn't even hear it, so you heard wrong."

Lin Qiushi: "...Okay."

The breakfast on the first floor was already prepared and hot on the table. The people who cooked the meal were said to be villagers, and they looked no different from normal people.

After Lin Qiushi ate his breakfast, he borrowed some thick clothes from them and inquired about the village.

"There's nothing going on in our village for miles." The villagers didn't seem to be able to give any useful information, "Just a few tourists that come every winter."

Lin Qiushi: "Oh... what do you usually do with your household goods?"

The villagers said, "It's not easy to go outside the mountains, but we have to find a way to get there. But as soon as it snows, there's no way to get out. The mountain road is blocked, so you have to stay here all winter."

Lin Qiushi thought about it and suddenly asked, "Are all the wells in your village drilled in the middle of the courtyard?"

I don't know if it was Lin Qiushi's illusion, but when he brought up the word well, the villagers' expressions seemed to become a lot more tense, but they didn't give any special information, they just nodded their heads, said yes, and turned around to leave.

Lin Qiushi thought for a while and didn't make any sense, so he decided to give Ruan Baijie the clothes first and then talk about the rest.

When he entered the house, Ruan Baijie was lying on her bed playing with her phone, and when she saw him come in, she hummed softly, "You're slow oh."

Lin Qiushi handed the borrowed clothes to the bed: "Get up, there's breakfast on the first floor."

Ruan Baijie hmmmed.

Lin Qiushi said, "I'll go out and wait for you."

"Wait." Ruan Baijie suddenly called out, "What's that on top of your head?"

"What?" Lin Qiushi was baffled.

When Ruan Baijie waved at him, Lin Qiushi approached her.

"It's all red... "Ruan Baijie reached out and touched Lin Qiushi's head, then turned his palm over, "What is this?"

Lin Qiushi felt bad as soon as he saw what was in Ruan Baijie's hand, as it looked like frozen hard blood.

"I'll go take a look." Lin Qiushi hurried into the toilet, and as Ruan Baijie said, he noticed that his hair was full of bits of ice residue, which were dark red and hidden in his hair for a while, not visible at all. Nor did I know when it had gotten on my head.

"Fuck." Lin Qiushi cursed lowly, using a towel to wipe his head, this is not wiping okay, the more you wipe the more shocking, a hot towel is almost all dyed red, his hair is still not wiped clean.

Ruan Baijie, who had changed into thick clothes, came over and said very unceremoniously, "Good thing this stuff isn't green."

Lin Qiushi: "...You've seen green blood?"

Nguyen Baijie said, "This is blood, huh?"

Lin Qiushi sighed and simply told us what happened on the third floor, and when he said that someone had died, Ruan Baijie cried softly again and said Lin, I'm so scared, will we be the next to die?

In the end, she was a beautiful girl, crying so miserably, it made the heart feel unbearable.

Lin Qiushi stepped forward to comfort her, and Ruan Baijie suddenly came when she was about to rest her head on his shoulder: "Brother Lin, how tall are you."

Lin Qiushi: "...1.8 meters."

"Oh." Ruan Baijie, "Even shorter than me."

Lin Qiushi: "...wronged you ah.

Lin Qiushi turned around and cleaned his hair while thinking about where he got all this blood from. In the end, he had a very creepy thought...it couldn't be from the ceiling of the third floor...dripping down, right?

"I want to go to the third floor." Lin Qiushi said, "You can go to the first floor for dinner first."

"Going alone?" Nguyen Baijie said, "Let's go together."

"You're not scared?" Lin Qiushi was suspicious, but Ruan Baijie was crying pear-shaped just now.

"Isn't this with you?" Ruan Baijie flicked up the blue silk in her ear and laughed very gently, "You're here, what am I afraid of."

Lin Qiushi thought right, after all, from last night, you ran faster than me.

So the two went down the corridor to the third floor again.

Still full of blood, still the same unpacked corpse, but this time Lin Qiushi's attention was on the ceiling, he raised his head, and sure enough he saw traces of blood on the ceiling as well, but the traces were very uncomfortable, it looked like something was sticking to the ceiling and slowly crawling over. Around time, the blood stains on the ceiling were also frozen, but still vaguely visible dripping on the floor.

Lin Qiushi looked numb, and he really didn't want to think about what had been hanging from the ceiling when he first appeared on the third floor... and they hadn't even noticed it the whole time.

Ruan Baijie looked up at the ceiling for a long time.

Lin Qiushi asked her what she saw.

"I saw the ceiling." Ruan Baek Jie said, "What else could she have seen, stars and dreams?"

Lin Qiushi: "........"

She was also really brave and went to round up the two bloody corpses after looking at the ceiling. She didn't show any discomfort the whole time, and even looked a little excited.

Until Lin Qiushi gave her a suspicious glance, "Aren't you afraid?" It was only as if she had remembered something, and she was very cooperative and started to ooze.

Lin Qiushi: "...Don't wince, are you still eating breakfast?"

"Eat eat eat." Ruan Baijie, "I'm hungry too."

Only then did they go downstairs and saw that everyone had finished their breakfast and seemed to be waiting for them both.

"Where have you two been." Xiong Lacquer, "Just waiting for you."

Ruan Baijie wasn't nervous at all in the face of the crowd's gaze, sitting lightly next to the table with a light posture and picking up her bowl to eat breakfast.

Lin Qiushi wasn't as thick-skinned as Ruan Baijie and told him about the blood on his hair and said that he had also seen certain strange marks on the ceiling of the third floor.

Everyone didn't look too good after hearing that, and some even looked up at the ceiling reflexively.

They were discussing the people who died last night and the strange marks, when a middle-aged man in his forties walked in the door. Dressed in a thick army green jacket and carrying an oil lamp in his hand, the man slowly walked into the hall.

"Hello." The man spoke up, "I am the chief of this village, you are the people I hired to help, right?"

When he opened his mouth, everyone in the room quieted down.

"It's cold and our village wants to build a coffin for the coming year." The man said in a hoarse voice, "I'll ask you to give the carpenter a hand."

No one answered the village chief's words, and the chief didn't seem ready to get any answers from them.

After he finished speaking and coughed a few times, he lifted the rickety kerosene lamp again and headed out of the house. The snow had stopped outside, but the wind continued to blow. The whistling of the wind against the tops of the trees on the doorstep sounded, at first glance, like a human howl.

"It's starting." Bearpainted gently, and said something.

As soon as his words fell, a gust of wind blew outside the house, blowing the half-hidden door heavily against the wall, clattering it, and the wooden door, which looked quite sturdy, was actually smashed right into several pieces.

The crowd in the room was silent, and it was Xiong Lacquer who finally opened his mouth first: "It should be the coffin-making."

"How could this happen, how could this happen!!!" There was a howling sound in the room, but Lin Qiushi turned his head and saw that it was a man from the team who was emotionally broken, "It's a difficult world - how can we survive, who can build coffins, we'll die, we'll die here - -"

Bear Lacquer seemed to be used to seeing such scenes and looked unfazed between the eyes.

The emotionally devastated man roared and smashed everything on the table on the floor, his eyes and nose covered in tears and snot, "Thirteen people came in, and two died on the first day... This kind of difficulty, I've never encountered it before!!!"

"All right!" Bear Paint was impatient, "You don't have to die if you cry? What's the mood, you think you're a newcomer, look at the quality of other newcomers!"

This caused Lin Qiushi to inexplicably get a vicious glare from that man, he thought to himself if it was his own fault that he was too psychological.

But that man's mentality falling apart wasn't really a strange thing, it was hard to remain calm in a different dimension from the normal world with all kinds of terrifying omens.

"Let's discuss what exactly we're going to do first." Xiong Lacquer said, "The village chief said he wanted to build a coffin, so the key must be this."

Lin Qiushi said, "Excuse me, what do you mean by the key?"

Bear Lacquer had a look at him: "It's the thing used to open the door, we need to follow the clues provided by the characters inside to find the key to get out, and then find an iron door to get out of here."

Lin Qiushi said, "Is there a time limit?"

Xiong Lacquer sneered, "Before all the people die, of course."

So that was it, Lin Qiushi was a little more at ease, at least there was a way out, what he actually feared the most was the incomprehensible terror. There was no escape to shake it off, no matter what you did, it would be futile.

"The clue is the coffin." Bearpaint looked at the weather outside, "Let's go to the village carpentry man and ask about it."

"Good." Curt said, "I'll go with you."

Lin Qiushi raised his hand: "I want to go too."

Xiong Lacquer nodded indifferently, "Okay." Unknowingly he had become the leader of the entire team, he instructed, "You guys check the building for any useful clues."

At this time, Ruan Baijie came up and gently pulled Lin Qiushi's sleeve and whispered, "I'm afraid, I want to be with you."

Although this girl was indeed quite tall and didn't feel like a bird at all, but Naiya was good-looking, in the end, it made people feel some pity, Lin Qiushi nodded, "Alright, but I can't guarantee that I can protect you."

Ruan Baijie smiled, "It's okay." She lifted the hair by her ear, "I'm quite at ease when I'm with you."

Lin Qiushi thought to himself girl you're quite good at provoking.

So the four of them hurried out while it was still early in the morning.

On the way Lin Qiushi asked Xiong Lacquer some more details about this world, and learned that the ghosts here normally don't kill indiscriminately. However, there were exceptions, if one encountered a difficult world, the ghosts and monsters would have no inhibitions and would strike whenever they wanted. In such a situation, it would be a true nine deaths.

"What exactly is the meaning of this world's existence?" Lin Qiushi asked the question he was most curious about.

Xiong Lacquer gave him a deep look when he heard the question: "Wait until you return alive."

Lin Qiushi: "...Oh."

They had learned the address of the village carpenter from the villagers, and the snowy roads were so difficult to navigate that it took almost an hour to get there.

Lin Qiushi observed the village in passing.

The village was small, surrounded by dense jungle, which was usually fine, but this time the snow basically cut off the road to leave. There weren't many people in the village, and occasionally two or three could be seen walking along the roadside, it was reasonable to say that it was a very special thing to meet outsiders in such a place, but looking at the villagers' appearance, they didn't seem to be curious about Lin Qiushi's arrival at all.

The carpenter's house was in the eastern part of the village, and when they went outside, they saw the faint light of an oil lamp coming out from inside.

Xiong Lacquer went forward and knocked on the door, a moment later, a short old man appeared behind the door, his age was about sixty or seventy, his hair was thin, he was wearing a tattered grey jacket, his face was cascading with wrinkles and his eyes were cloudy, he said, "What do you want?"

"It's too cold outside, can we go inside and talk?" Bear Paint asked.

The old man didn't say anything, but turned to make way for the door.

The four people outside the door fishtailed in.

The house wasn't large, it was very cluttered everywhere, but Lin Qiushi observed the surroundings, but noticed that the window had a hole broken and was roughly nailed to the window frame with a wooden board, simply blocking the wind.

"Old man, we were hired by the village chief to make a coffin," Bear Paint said, "but we don't know much about this stuff, and I heard that you are a famous carpenter in the village, can you give me some advice?"

The old man looked at Xiong Qi indifferently, "To make the coffin, first cut down the tree, cut down the tree, the wood is sent to me, then go to the temple and pay your respects, then you can start making it."

Xiong Lacquer grasped the keyword: "Go to the temple and pay your respects?"

The old man nodded, "There's an ancient temple next to the village, here, making a coffin is something that damages yin virtue, you have to go and pay your respects first."

He repeated the word worship many times, which was uncomfortable to hear.

"What happens after the worship?" Bear Paint said.

The old man didn't say anything.

Xiong Lacquer said, "Old man?"

The old man still did not speak.

Under Xiong Lacquer's repeated questions, the old man smiled, a smile that looked incomparably fierce against the firelight, and he lowered his voice, saying, "When you are still alive, you can ask me again then."

Xiong Lacquer's face was livid.

Ruan Baijie wasn't polite at all and said, "Don't inter, old man, it's so cold, what if you die first after we're done?"

The old man sneered: "The old man has a hard life."

Ruan Baijie: "I see that you are just as hard as your life can be."

The old man: "........"

Others: "..."

Lin Qiushi thought to himself why are you so skilled ah, is it really no problem to dislike NPCs this kind of thing, the average person would be a bit terrified when they encounter this kind of person with a terrifying atmosphere, but looking at Ruan Baijie that little white eye roll was not a problem at all.

"Alright, alright." Lin Qiushi said, "If he doesn't want to talk about it, don't force it..."

Nguyen Baijie said, "Can this not be reluctant? We'll admit it if we get cold first, what if he gets cold first." This girl said jerking up her sleeves, her eyes wandering around the room, finally stopping on an arm-thick wooden stick.

Lin Qiushi cursed the fuck out in his heart, thinking that it's really okay to be rough, this is a fucking horror world, it's really okay to be rough with NPC's?

Who knew that before Ruan Baijie picked up the stick, the old man first wimped out and said in a rage, "After the worship, go fill a well and the coffin will be ready!"

Ruan Baijie: "Boing Boing, Qiushi, he's staring at me~"

Lin Qiushi: ".......the look in your eyes just now was much more terrifying than his.

Xiong Lacquer didn't seem to think it could still operate like this, following Ke all stunned for a moment. Which person they came to this world to not be polite to for fear of offending, who knew that Ruan Baijie didn't follow the rules at all. And it was so easy to get the final answer - although this answer, not necessarily the right one was right.

When everyone came out of the carpenter's house, Bear Lacquer asked Ruan Baijie's name in a complicated mood.

Ruan Baijie looked pitiful and said that my surname was Ruan Baijie, and that it was fine for you to call me Jiejie, big brother.

Xiong Qi called her Jie Jie, but he felt something was wrong, so he and Lin Qiushi called her Bai Jie Jie.

It's been almost a day since he came here, and Xiong Lac still just knew Ruan Baijie's name. He saw Ruan Baijie's crying face yesterday, and thought that Ruan Baijie wouldn't live long in this world, so he simply didn't even ask her name.

But after Ruan Baijie's wonderful performance just now, Xiong Lacquer also felt as if this girl wasn't as weak as she had shown herself to be.

"Weren't you afraid just now?" Bear Paint asked her.

Nguyen Baijie's response was convincing as she said, "Afraid? Why be afraid? Even if you're afraid of ghosts, isn't it a little too tragic to even be afraid of people. And this kind of person is a key NPC at a glance, if we really die, isn't our information broken, then how can we still live to the end."

The three of them were speechless, but they all actually felt that what she was saying made sense.

At any rate, having received the key information from the carpenter, everyone was much more settled, so they decided to depart back to tell everyone about it.

Although it was daytime, the sky was covered with a thick layer of dark clouds, there was no snow, and the blustery wind was hanging on. Ruan Baijie was wearing her long skirt, with two thick coats over it, following behind Lin Qiushi, her fragile, thin appearance as if she would be blown away by the wind at any moment.

When Lin Qiushi saw her, he couldn't bear to see her, so he reached out and held her back, letting her walk in front of him and shielding her from the wind behind.

Ruan Baijie was quite touched and blinked her beautiful eyes and asked Lin Qiushi, "You're so kind."

Lin Qiushi said, "You're welcome."

Ruan Baijie said, "Are you always this nice to everyone?"

Lin Qiushi: "...Did you see me do this to the bear paint?" He joked, "It's not because you're good looking."

Walking in front of the bear varnish: "I heard that ah."

Ruan Baijie gave a thoughtful expression at the news, "Just good looks?"

Lin Qiushi only took her as a joke, so he came up with a random sentence: "Of course you have to grow taller."

Ruan Baijie: "Oh..."

What the author has to say.

Ruan Baijie: Boing Boing Boing

Lin Qiushi: You don't ooze, it always makes me think of a word.

Ruan Baijie: What?

Lin Qiushi: Lao Boing catches chicks

Nguyen Baijie: So you're a chick oh?

Lin Qiushi: .......