Chapter 38: The Haunted Mansion by the Tarn (V)
Feng Bujue continued down the tunnel; the terrifying scene earlier didnāt affect him in the slightest. He still advanced forward as normal, not the least bit pressured.
Not long after, he arrived at the end of the tunnel at which there was a small, narrow, damp vault.
There was only one door to the vault, but this wasnāt strange at all. In a more distant era, mansions of this kind had vaults that were used for more sinister purposes, such as a prison cell. In this mansion, it was now being used as a burial ground. The floors, corridor, and walls were all carefully copper plated and the bulky iron vault door was incomparably heavy. Once pushed open, the hinges would issue an unusually ear-piercing screeching sound. Right in the middle of the prison cell was a coffin. Standing a distance away and using a flashlight would reveal right away that the lid was not secured with nails; the coffin lid wasnāt closed properly.
With a few great shoves, Feng Bujue pushed opened the iron door and walked in. He wasnāt in a rush, however, to open the coffin. Instead, he swept the walls with his flashlight and gave the surrounding walls a once-over. Sure enough, there was a reward for his effort. On one of the walls, he found yet section of āThe Haunted Palaceā. This time it was written in blood.
ćBut evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarchās high estate;
(Ah, let us mourn!āfor never morrow
Shall dawn upon him, desolate!)
And round about his home the glory
Is but a dim-remembered story
Of the old time entombed.ć
āHnā¦should be the fifth stanza,ā said Feng Bujue softly after he finished reading.
Accordingly, the System Notification beeped:ćSide Mission progress updatedć
The mission logās message also changed to:ćFind all six sections of āThe Haunted Palaceā; current progress 1/6ć
Feng Bujue walked over to the side of the coffin, one hand raised the flashlight, the other clenched in an empty fist. Then, as if knocking on a door, dong dong dong, he knocked three times on the coffin. āHey, Miss Madeleine, you still there?ā Who knows how he knew this name?
As time went on, Unrivaledās Terror Value gradually climbed until it stabilized at 15%. He wasnāt frightened because of some an encounter with any physical monster. Rather, it was because he couldnāt find a way to leave the second floor even after searching for some time nowā¦
Every corridor, every room, even the paintings, lights, ornaments on the wall seemed unfamiliar yet gave a sense of dĆ©jĆ vu.
This building displayed a distinct spacial anomaly; its inside seemed much larger than what the outside dimensions of the house would have it appear. The length of the corridor Unrivaled was in seemed to be constantly changing; every time he counted the number of doors on both sides of the corridor, he would get a different number. Not only that, but up until now, Unrivaled could not successfully reach the end of any corridor. Each time he reached the end of some section, heād just see another new turn in the corner or a T-intersection.
When it came to just general walking, Stamina consumption was fairly minimal. It was only when walking for ālong periodsā of time that there were signs of a significant decrease in Stamina: relatively similar to real life. If you had someone walk for a little more than twenty minutes, heād only feel slightly tired; for over forty minutes, heād feel sore. If Unrivaled, under these circumstances, walked for over an hour, he would definitely have to stop and rest to recover. But naturally, this example only applies to ordinary people, not athletes and other competitors.
This kind of exhaustion is the type that builds gradually, becoming more pronounced over time. And now, the more Unrivaled was worn down by terror, the more he sped up this process. Instead of calmly choosing to rest, he chose to speed up his pace as soon as he saw his Stamina dipā¦
He was no longer exploring, but fleeing.
Suddenly, he was hit by the thought that if he didnāt do something quick, he wouldnāt just be trapped here. Once his Stamina dropped low enough, something dreadful would come out from the darkness and look for himā¦
āHahā¦ hahā¦ā Unrivaledās breathing became heavy. He glanced at the game menu; his Stamina was still pretty full around 1000 or so. Plus he hadnāt been running but just power walking. Strange, it shouldnāt have been like this.
He paused and crouched over, resting both his hands on his knees, trying to even out his breath. He forced some saliva down. Over this short period of time, he suddenly found that the insides of his stomach felt peculiar. But it was a feeling he couldnāt quite describe.
āWhatās happeningā¦ā said Unrivaled softly. Talking to himself helped ease some of the effects of his fear and helped keep his mind focused.
All of a sudden, his eyes caught something. He turned to face it. Unexpectedly, there was a mirror by his side. The two-meter high rectangular mirror was embedded into the corridor wall. It was enclosed in a wooden frame with simple yet delicate carvings.
āThatās weirdā¦ was this here before?ā He couldnāt help but ask, his face a mask of suspicion.
Up until now, Unrivaled had been heading forward as if in a trance: completely fixated upon heading toward the seemingly distant ends of the corridors. He had no longer been paying attention to how many doors were on either side of the walls. He was even less likely to pay attention to the miscellaneous things like portraits, wall lamps, sculptures, and other such decor. However, this corridor wasnāt particularly wide. There was no excuse for him not to notice something like a mirror, much less such a large mirror.
Unrivaled was bent over at the waist, his hands propped on his knees for support with his side to the mirror. But, when his attention shifted over to the mirror, he instinctively straightened up and turned to face it. He was nearly scared to death when he turned.
His reflection didnāt seem that different from normal, except that entire abdominal cavity of his mirror self was exposed. The area at the stomach had no clothing or flesh; the intestines were visible with just one look.
Unrivaled immediately let out a gasp of shock, and his face went deathly white. He backed up several steps, pressing himself against the wall on the other side of the corridor. For almost ten seconds, he stared, eyes wide open, breath caught in his throat.
āIllusā¦ itās an illusionā¦ā After he somewhat regained and calmed his senses, he walked over with a fierce expression to the mirror. āWhoās scaredā¦ itās just looking at your own innards.ā He may have sounded confident, but his Terror Value didnāt lie. He was still scared, itās just that when people get scared, they react in all sorts of ways; pretending to be angry and violent is just one of many ways.
Unrivaledās eyes involuntarily fell back on his mirror selfās abdominal area. Its intestines were still visible and pulsing. And unexpectedly, it was possible to see some strange details with another, careful lookā¦
The more he looked at the cross-section view of the intestines, the stranger it gotā¦ it looked just likeā¦ like a corridor!
He felt a chill run down his spine and his neck stiffened. Two seconds later he roared in anger and slammed his foot through the mirror, and after he broke it to pieces, he turned to leave.
Without warning, right when he turned away from the mirror, he discovered that all the doors previously lining both sides of the corridor disappeared. Instead, there were mirrors almost everywhere.
āAhh!!!ā Unrivaled Bro bellowed and blundered forward. He didnāt know if his situation was caused by an illusion, or if the mansion was really changing. Now that he felt frightened and in danger, he didnāt want to spend even a second longer in this corridor.
A crash bang bang sound rang out, and a human silhouette rammed and broke through a glass window on the second floor of the mansion and fell.
That moment Unrivaled fell from the sky he was wholly unprepared. Just one second earlier, he was still in the corridor, running down the corridor. There clearly was more path in front. The next second, glass was cutting into his skin and he felt pain from the impact. He didnāt know what he hit before his body lost balance and began to tumble into a fall.
In the short moment leading to his death, he caught a glimpse of the landscape.
He saw the mold covered walls of the mansion, the long dead dried up forest remnants that surrounded everything, and that stagnant tarn. An eerie and dreadful aura unceasingly flowed from the deepest parts of the tarn, from theĀ gable[1]
, and from the mansion. Darkness simultaneously poured out from the spiritual world into the physical.
Unrivaled fell into the tarn in the middle of the shapeless solitary hill outside the building. The sinister pool swallowed him up, not letting out even the slightest sound from his throat. The mansion before his eyes looked like a cold specter watching yet another life wither away.
The last thing reflected in the eyes of this profession player wasā¦ the first phase of the waning blood moon hanging in the sky.
ćTeam member: Unrivaled Brave One, has died; a plot item has been changedć
The System Notification sounded, startling Wang Tanzhi and Long Aomin.
āIt canāt be! A Level 15 professional player died just like that!ā Wang Tanzhi cried in fright. He opened the game menu to verify with the team tab. Sure enough, the playerās name had turned gray, the word next to it, āAlive,ā was now āDeadā.
Long Aomin and Wang Tanzhi both had already searched most of the room by now, but they didnāt find anything substantial. The found nothing, no clues, no rewards. The only thing they found, several times actually, was the kind of pitfall trap where the floor caves in revealing with spikes underneath
āIf the two of us had split up and acted on our own, then the dangers we ran into earlier couldāve been fatal.ā responded Long Aomin. He immediately continued, āI donāt know if FengĀ Xiong is in danger since heās moving on his own.ā
āIf itās Jue Broā¦ then thereās no need for you to worry. Since he was the one who suggested to act separately, he definitely wouldāve considered the risks already,ā said Wang Tanzhi. āOh right, when I idling in the login space earlier, I looked over some of the game descriptions. If some player died while holding a plot item, his stuff would randomly be placed in some teammateās vicinity.ā
Long Aomin had gone through more Team Scenarios and was more experienced than Wang Tanzhi, so he replied, āYeah, I know. Letās look for it now.ā
The two immediately started searching through everything, but this was exactly thatĀ āunintentional poke in the mud grows a treeā[2]
, they did not find the letter. But under a pile of junk on the floor, they found yet another stanza of āThe Haunted Palaceā:
ćWanderers in that happy valley,
Through two luminous windows, saw
To a luteās well-tunĆØd law,
Round about a throne where, sitting,
In state his glory well befitting,
The ruler of the realm was seen.ć
ćSide mission progress updatedć
ćFind all six sections of āThe Haunted Palaceā; current progress 4/6ć
[1]More about Asian gables:Ā Historic Chinese Architecture in Singapore
[2]Full Chinese idiom isęęę ½č±č±äøåļ¼ę åæęę³ę³ęé“. This literally translated is āPlanting flowers in a garden and no flowers bloom, but poking a stick brings shadeā a more liberal translation is āPlanting flowers in a garden yet none bloom, while poking a stick in mud unintentionally will grow a tree [for shade]. TL;DR: Idiom means that things wonāt always happen as you plan; good plans may go awry and success may come when you least expect it.