It had to be said, the series of illusions arranged by Mr. Black and Miss White, combined with Dramatist's abilities, were truly effective. No matter what kind of terrifying scene Mu Anqi wanted, it could be recreated to the fullest extent.
The three players were scared out of their wits, and their continuously rising emotion values made Mu Anqi very pleased. As for the other two players… their experience wasn't much better either.
Wang Erma, who was "waiting to be married," had long eaten and drunk his fill and was now sitting in a daze at home. He turned his room upside down but couldn't find anything important. Wang Erma thought that, as the first person chosen by the mountain god, there should be something strange in his house or that his "original body" had done something odd to attract the mountain god's attention. But after fiddling around for a whole day, he found nothing.
He sat on the bed and sighed, then noticed the yellowed paper painting stuck on the wall beside the bed. The painting looked like a child's doodle. He had seen it as soon as he arrived, but the background never mentioned who had drawn it… The main color of the picture was black, mixed with gray, white, and faint streaks of dark red. Wang Erma had thought the painting was strange before, but after staring at it for a long time, he couldn't see anything unusual about it. Oh, in fact, he couldn't even tell what the painting was supposed to be.
That sleep felt endlessly long. Wang Erma didn't even know what kind of dream he'd had—he just suddenly woke up in terror from an endless fall, drenched in cold sweat. Sitting up in bed, he found the room pitch dark, not even able to see his hand in front of his face. He swallowed hard, wanting to get up for some water. He could no longer recall the details of the dream, but the fear still lingered. That feeling of being watched by something, of his life hanging by a thread, of falling off a cliff—it still made his heart pound.
Groping in the dark, Wang Erma got out of bed and took a few sips of cold water. Then he heard a rustling sound outside, followed by loud chewing and swallowing noises. Wang Erma didn't dare move, but it was as if the sounds were drilling straight into his ears, becoming clearer and clearer.
He began to hear the sounds of flesh being torn, bones being gnawed, chunks of meat being chewed—and then gulped down with a gurgle… His mind involuntarily filled with horrific images. Gritting his teeth, he saw the gray moonlight shining through the window. Slowly and carefully, he pushed open the bedroom door—but no matter how cautious he was, the instant he opened it, all the sounds vanished.
In the darkness, two crimson eyes fixed on him.
Wang Erma's mind buzzed, and before his eyes formed a picture painted in shades of red, light and dark. They were two red monsters, with scarlet eyes and blood-red hands still dripping with flesh and blood. The blood pooled on the floor, forming a strange skull pattern. Uncontrollably, Wang Erma took a step back—and that single step sent him falling backward. The ground behind him vanished. From above, countless pairs of crimson eyes appeared, staring down at him. The black pupils within those red eyes fixed on him as he kept falling, surrounded by gray walls—falling, falling, endlessly into a bottomless darkness…
Wang Erma woke up again. His head throbbed with pain, his limbs weak and trembling, his whole body soaked in cold sweat. He sat up in bed in shock, but still couldn't remember what he had dreamed.
"Why am I having nightmares? Is it because I'm about to get married? Damn it, what secret is this village hiding?"
Swallowing hard, Wang Erma's limbs were still weak. He got out of bed again and drank a few more sips of cold water to calm himself. Outside the window, the gray moonlight and the crimson moon continued to gaze silently at him—until he heard the rustling sound again…
…
Li Cuihua, on the other hand, didn't encounter any ghosts, nightmares, or anything of that sort. She had just finished taking a bath and, by accident, stepped on a large pile of spider eggs.
These spider eggs were not like the ones in reality—they were large and full, bursting with liquid when stepped on. When Li Cuihua realized what she had stepped on, she almost wanted to cut off her own foot. But that wasn't even the most terrifying part. The truly horrifying thing was that, after she crushed that pile of spider eggs, countless black spiders of all sizes appeared from the corners of her house. They crawled densely across the walls, staring at her from the walls and floor—but didn't come any closer.
"…It's an illusion, right?" Li Cuihua muttered, her scalp tingling as her mind went blank. The thought that she still had to sleep in this spider-filled house tonight… Would her bed and blankets also be crawling with spiders and eggs? Would those eggs burst open in the middle of the night, releasing swarms of tiny transparent spiders? Besides spiders, how many other things were hiding in this house that she didn't know about? Li Cuihua didn't even dare to think further. If her imagination kept running like this, she was afraid she'd give up on the game right now and flee back to the Nirvana Space—she could afford the 500 points penalty.
"Think positively—it's just spiders, at least there aren't any flying cockroaches," Li Cuihua comforted herself, carefully stepping over the spider eggs on the floor as she prepared to return to her room. But the moment she opened the door, several thumb-sized black shadows flew straight toward her. Startled, Li Cuihua waved her hands frantically, slapping down a few of them—only to see in horror that what she had hit were huge, smooth, shiny black cockroaches…
"Ah!—"
Li Cuihua completely broke down. She immediately pulled out a grenade and hurled it into the room, then quickly ran outside. Standing in the courtyard, she watched in shock as the entire house was engulfed in flames. But strangely… it didn't reset? Her NPC family members didn't come out either. Just as Li Cuihua was puzzling over it, a swarm of insects burst out from the fire, surging toward her like a tidal wave.
It was an illusion—the village was eerily silent, the NPCs made no sound, and though the fire blazed sky-high, no one came to check. The other players had vanished too. Li Cuihua ran out of the courtyard, the village houses all pitch-black and unlit. She fled in panic through the darkness, unwilling to spend even one night surrounded by spiders and cockroaches, even knowing it was only an illusion.
The dark clouds in the distance swept closer, and the piercing buzzing sound nearly drove her mad—it was a swarm of locusts. As Li Cuihua ran, her foot slipped, and when she looked back, she saw green slime smeared across the ground where she had stepped. In the darkness of the night, she couldn't tell what kind of insect she had stepped on, but judging from the shape, it seemed to be something soft and wriggling… Ugh.
"Ah, a bug battle royale inside an illusion? How tragic…" Even Mu Anqi felt her scalp tingle watching the scene. If it were her, she'd probably have pulled out grenades and a flamethrower to go down with the bugs. "This wasn't my idea!"
"It was mine," said Dramatist. "This should be the simplest illusion. It's obvious that it's not real, and it has nothing to do with ghosts or spirits… I just happened to have known someone afraid of insects when I was alive, so I thought of this. The effect seems good, doesn't it?"
"…'Good' is an understatement." The player's emotion values had skyrocketed to second place, just below the male player who had glanced at Cthulhu. And those emotional readings were incredibly complex—"fear," "disgust," "revulsion," "nausea," "despair," "anger"… So many emotions blended together, spiking higher with every new wave of insects that appeared and pursued her. Mu Anqi even felt that this female player's emotional surge might continue climbing until her mind couldn't take it anymore and she passed out.
Mu Anqi kept an eye on the performance of each player. The female player trapped in the insect swarm managed to keep running for more than two hours, constantly using skills and items, but in the end, she was still overwhelmed by the swarm and passed out. When she woke up the next day, she would find herself lying in bed—as if it had all just been a dream. Only, she would remember everything: the memories, the sensations, the terror.
The male player who had stared at the pseudo–Elder God vomited several times during the night. His expression was dazed, and he could barely form coherent sentences. Mu Anqi figured that even if he wanted to talk with his teammates tomorrow, he would probably have some difficulty. The impact was significant, but with time, he would recover. This made Mu Anqi curious about occultism, though unfortunately, unlike Wu Sansheng, she didn't possess absolute rationality, making it very difficult for her to study. Better to leave that to Dramatist to research diligently. Perhaps in the future, she could even invite Wu Sansheng as a consultant? Once this game became a success, creating a new "Cthulhu"-themed zone didn't seem like a bad idea.
Zheng Dajuan's mental resilience, however, genuinely impressed Mu Anqi. This female player calmly finished her meal, showing no visible change from before, and went to bed early. Even when she heard the rustling of paper, the shifting shadows by the window, and the faint whispers calling to her… she didn't react at all. She didn't even pull the blanket over her head—she simply continued to sleep, appearing completely at peace. Of course, her emotional value was still steadily contributing, but judging from the visuals alone, you'd never guess how panicked and terrified Zheng Dajuan truly was inside.
Wang Erma was trapped in a cycle of dreams. He could already sense something was off, but hadn't realized where the feeling of wrongness came from, so the loop continued. If he managed to stay trapped in this cycle all night… the emotional values he provided might even shoot up to first place? However, as the cycles went on, the emotional value generated each time gradually decreased—perhaps his subconscious was starting to recognize these scenes as too familiar? The dramatist, however, wasn't worried. She had prepared two sets of illusions; if Wang Erma could no longer yield any emotional value from this dream sequence, she would switch to the second one—where he would be hunted by the red monsters.
Zhao Tiezhu, on the other hand, spent a tense and anxious night. He too heard all sorts of noises outside, but he didn't go out; he just sat on his bed, clutching his weapon tightly and staring nervously at the door. Footsteps? The sound of bones being chopped? Murmured voices he couldn't make out…
He stayed on edge the entire night, until dawn finally broke and those strange sounds disappeared. Only then did he allow himself to rest lightly for a short while. Zhao Tiezhu didn't know whether those nighttime sounds were meant to lure him outside to investigate, or to suggest that "the room is safe," but in any case, since nothing happened to him, that was what mattered most.
This game… is really torture. Zhao Tiezhu sighed, wondering how the other players had fared after a sleepless night.
After all, all of the players had assumed that everyone was treated the same. That is, until they met up at eight o'clock.
After comparing experiences, the five players felt both despair and relief. They compared their nights but couldn't even tell who had it the worst. However, they all agreed that Zhao Tiezhu had the best luck.
"This game's difficulty must be hell-level, right?!"