Inside the Joy God Temple, the right side chamber was sealed off by a rotting old man and a carpet of maggots. To the left stood coffins, and at the very back, the divine statue. The players were confined to a space of roughly twenty square meters.
The two statues, one male and one female, giggled eerily, their heads bobbing as they split up to block both ends of the corridor, closing in on the players from opposite directions.
Qi Si leaned against a coffin as if boneless, his right hand hidden behind him, prying at a nail in the corner. The already loose nail wobbled even more precariously.
The bride statue seemed to sense his movements. It wheeled around and charged toward him, crossing the distance past the candelabras in seconds, its stiff arms raised to snatch him.
A sinister chill washed over him, the stench of decay lingering in the air. Qi Si sidestepped, dodging the bluish-black claws, his hand on the coffin corner still gripping the nail tightly.
He finally found the right angle and twisted his wrist.
With a *click*, the coffin nail pulled free from its hole. Its tip struck the bronze lid with a sharp metallic ring.
It was as if a seal had been broken. The coffin lid, which had been warmed by his body heat and the faint sheen of sweat on his back, suddenly blasted out a wave of icy air so cold it made his bones ache.
Qi Si's hand was still pressed against the seam of the lid, where he felt a cold, sticky liquid.
Thin tendrils of blood began to seep slowly from the seams of the coffin, just like in the photograph he’d seen in his phone’s gallery on the first day.
"Wuuu... save me..."
"Please... let me out..."
The pleading cries seemed to resonate and echo, rising from all directions, one after another in a sorrowful chorus.
*Thump. Thump. Thump...*
A rhythmic banging echoed from within the coffin. The entire sarcophagus began to shake violently, as if something inside was about to burst free from its confines.
Shang Qingbei jumped at the sound, his hand, holding a pen and paper, trembled so violently that he mangled the character he was writing into an unrecognizable scrawl.
The groom statue was already upon him, its grotesque smile looming closer as its arms flailed out to grab him.
Shang Qingbei had no choice but to stop writing. Clutching his handful of items, he dodged toward the left side chamber, nearly colliding with the bride statue that was still confronting Qi Si.
He cursed under his breath and narrowly veered away, slipping past it to take cover behind another coffin. That's when he heard the banging from inside the first coffin grow louder.
Shang Qingbei: "..."
Recalling Qi Si's shifty behavior by the coffin earlier, he gritted his teeth. "Qi Wen, what the hell did you do?"
Gripping the nail tightly, Qi Si vaulted over to the side of an adjacent coffin.
Fortunately, the disturbance didn't spread. Aside from the one he’d tampered with, the other coffins remained perfectly still and silent, behaving themselves immaculately.
Hearing Shang Qingbei's furious shout, he raised the coffin nail and waggled it at him, the corner of his mouth twitching into a slight smile.
Shang Qingbei caught a glimpse of the empty nail hole in the coffin's corner, and in that instant, he understood everything.
He swore under his breath, overcome with the urge to strangle Qi Si.
*Is he insane?* he thought. *Weren't two monsters enough? Did he really have to summon more?*
The relentless *thump, thump, thumping* echoed in his ears, a counterpoint to the frantic rhythm of his own heart.
The bride's attack missed, and its own momentum sent it staggering to the ground.
After a few seconds, it rolled over and pushed itself upright. It swayed unsteadily for a moment before raising its hand to strike at Qi Si again.
Qi Si held the coffin nail before him, meeting the bride's incoming claw.
The instant the tip of the nail touched its palm, the bride let out an agonized shriek. Wisps of black smoke coiled up from its hand as if it had been seared by a flame.
[Soul-Suppressing Coffin: The four Soul-Suppressing Nails at its corners can ward off evil and subdue ghostly spirits.]
The item's description flashed in his mind. Qi Si knew his gamble had paid off—the Soul-Suppressing Nail was indeed effective against these apparitions.
It seemed, then, that he wasn't being targeted by the game's supreme rules directly. If he were, he wouldn't have been given a chance to fight back.
To maintain stability and protect collective interests, those who benefit most from a system are also the most careful to uphold its established rules. After all, their individual gain is inextricably linked to the group's welfare.
Qi Si was confident that as long as the rules themselves weren't acting against him, he had a chance to survive. Even if some malevolent entity was out to kill him, it would still have to operate within those constraints.
Wounded by the Soul-Suppressing Nail, the bride stared blankly for a moment before backing away. Its gaze now fixed on Qi Si, filled with wariness.
It quickly realized it was no match for the young man. Pivoting forty-five degrees to the right, it locked onto its new target: Shang Qingbei, who had just found an undisturbed spot and was once again preparing to write.
The groom, having failed in its earlier attack on Shang Qingbei, now lumbered slowly after the bride, closing in as well.
Shang Qingbei was forced to abandon his writing yet again. He ducked, squeezed through a narrow gap between the coffins, and darted off in another direction.
He had already noticed that neither of the creatures was particularly fast. As long as he kept moving, they wouldn't be able to catch him.
This sudden onslaught had to be on a timer. He just needed to survive until the crisis passed...
The thoughts raced through Shang Qingbei's mind as he panted, circling around the still-vibrating coffin. When he glanced up, he saw Qi Si perched on a coffin in the corner, calmly toying with the nail in his hand.
Wait... the nail? A Soul-Suppressing Nail? A spark of realization ignited in Shang Qingbei's mind, and he finally understood why Qi Si had pulled it out. Without a second thought, he ducked behind Qi Si, swiftly yanked another nail from the coffin his teammate was sitting on, and held it defensively before him, just as Qi Si had done.
A second later, the coffin he'd just robbed of a nail also began to emit sobs and rhythmic thuds.
With two sources of noise now filling the cramped space, the temple had become almost absurdly raucous. Shang Qingbei kept his eyes glued to the bride and groom statues, silently counting the seconds. He watched them halt a meter away, circling hesitantly but refusing to advance. He knew then that the immediate danger had passed.
With the Soul-Suppressing Nails in hand, the two creatures dared not approach. And while two of the coffins were now unsealed, the corpses inside seemed capable of little more than making a racket; they couldn't get out.
The situation had settled into a strange stalemate. Neither the players nor the monsters could harm each other. The only remaining challenge was to overcome the pervasive, intangible fear.
Du Xiaoyu's legs had given out in terror at the very beginning. He now lay unconscious before the statue, his eyes rolled back in his head.
And the red-robed statue, at some point, had stepped down from its altar. It now stood a single pace from Du Xiaoyu, its gaze lowered in a posture that seemed at once compassionate and mocking.
The incessant *thumping* continued as the bride and groom statues paced restlessly nearby, radiating a palpable stench of rot and decay.
It turned out the statues weren't made of clay at all, but were molded around corpses that had turned a sickly bluish-green. The skin had been treated with some special process to give it the smooth texture of plastic, while a crude layer of clay and glaze had been brushed over the top. Now, as the figures moved, this coating flaked away like dead skin.
Following the principle of 'out of sight, out of mind,' Qi Si lowered his head, tuning out the gruesome sight to the percussive soundtrack of the thumping coffins.
The paper money had fallen from his pocket during his earlier struggle with the statues. He stared at the white paper circles on the floor for a moment, then asked abruptly, "Shang Qingbei, last night in your dream... the creature that wore my face, did it take any paper money?"
Shang Qingbei, though confused, answered truthfully. "Yes. I even tried to convince 'you' to wait until daylight to investigate, but 'you' said that danger and opportunity go hand in hand and insisted on dragging me out."
Qi Si's eyes narrowed.
He remembered in last night's 'dream,' after he and 'Li Yao' had stepped outside, paper money had rained down from the sky.
'Li Yao' had been the first to grab a handful and stuff it into her pocket. Seeing his disposable teammate do exactly what he'd been planning to, he hadn't bothered to exert himself.
And yet, when he woke up, there was paper money in his pocket. The creature disguised as 'Li Yao' certainly wouldn't have put it there, which left only one possibility...
Qi Si smiled. "You know, Qing, maybe the 'creature' in your dream really *was* me. Or at least, it was me for part of the time."
Shang Qingbei nearly blurted out, "I knew there was something wrong with you," but he held his tongue and let Qi Si continue.
"At first, only the two of us woke up. We went outside together to explore, hoping to find some clues about this instance's lore. But sometime after we left—to be precise, sometime after I put that paper money in my pocket—we were unknowingly pulled into a nightmare."
After laying out the facts, Qi Si drew out his words. "So tell me, why would the instance go to all the trouble of creating a chain of dreams that pulls in every single player?"
"If the goal was simply to confuse us, it could have just continued the scenario where we explored outside together and thrown a bunch of random, nonsensical imagery at us. That would have been just as disorienting, and I never would have noticed the discrepancy with the paper money."
"Doesn't that suggest that separating us within the dream was a necessary step? Why would the instance split us up? Did it want us to experience different events, or did it simply want to get one of us alone for some reason?"
It suddenly occurred to Qi Si that if some entity truly wanted to target him, the easiest way would be to turn the other players against him.
It could cultivate their fear and suspicion, incite one player to turn on their companions... and according to game theory, as the de facto leader, he would be the primary target.
This would also explain why there had been no casualties so far in this instance—
Of course. The entity was preserving its pawns, saving its strength to deal with him.
It might sound paranoid, but even a one percent chance of that being true would become a one hundred percent certainty of disaster if it came to pass.
Besides, there was more than one god in the Weird Game. In this divine gamble, he was a natural enemy to every entity except Qi.
Qi could help him against the Puppet Master, but what reason did he have to believe other, hostile gods wouldn't enter the fray to move against him?
Qi Si fixed his gaze on Shang Qingbei, his expression an unreadable half-smile. "I've been meaning to ask... how exactly did you wake up from that dream within a dream?"
"Didn't I already tell you? I fell, and it jolted me awake. Are you accusing me of hiding something?" Shang Qingbei's words came out in a rush. "If some entity wanted to use me without you knowing, it could have just continued our shared dream and woven the plot from there..."
Qi Si asked, a spark of interest in his eyes. "And how are you so certain my suspicion is that 'an entity wanted to use you' and not that 'the instance wanted us to experience different events'?"
Shang Qingbei realized he'd walked right into a trap. He retorted instantly, "Your entire line of questioning has been implying I'm in contact with an NPC! If there's something you want to know, just ask. You don't need to set such a clumsy trap."
Qi Si let out a languid "Oh." "I do suspect one of us is in contact with an entity here. The chain of dreams was a smokescreen, designed to create the illusion that what happened last night was just a mandatory plot point."
"If only the two of us had dreamed of each other, then one of us would be the obvious suspect. But with all five of us forming a perfect loop, and the dreams being so similar, the suspicion is diluted. When everyone is a suspect, it's the same as no one being a suspect."
He slowed his speech, enunciating each word. "Illusions exist to hide the truth. So, what is the real truth?"
Outside the temple doors, the clear, crisp sound of a small bell drifted through the air, growing steadily closer.
Shang Qingbei pressed his lips together, his ears straining to catch the sound from outside.
Qi Si, too, held his breath and fell silent.
He noticed that as the bell began to ring, both the bride and groom statues began to turn clumsily, shuffling back toward the altar.
They moved quickly, soon reaching the spot where Du Xiaoyu's unconscious body lay. But they didn't pause for even a second, instead proceeding directly to their places beside the altar, where they reassumed their original positions and became perfectly still.