The impact from sight, touch, and sound was too overwhelming. Zhao Tiezhu gagged instinctively with a "retch" and stumbled off the bed. Instead of stepping on the slippers by the bed, his foot landed on an unusually smooth hard shell. The moment he put his foot down, it bounced back up again. Zhao Tiezhu gagged once more, his stomach convulsing and churning violently, each dry heave more intense than the last!
Moonlight crawled up the window, and only then did he see that his entire room was crawling with countless bugs. As he lowered his head, he saw black insects and ants swarming all over his pants—
"Ugh!"
His stomach gurgled and churned; with each retch, it felt as though he really was about to vomit something out. Tears leaked from his eyes from the nausea, but when he finally threw up a puddle of green liquid mixed with white, half-solid chunks of something unknown, he completely broke down.
What was that? Had bugs gotten inside his body too? Eggs? How would he die tonight—would the insects hatch inside him, tearing their way out of his body!? No… Zhao Tiezhu was on the verge of madness. As soon as he felt something crawling inside him, his skin began to itch—not the itch of bugs crawling on his skin, but as if something was slowly wriggling underneath it…
Zhao Tiezhu stared in horror under the moonlight as blisters of various shapes began to bulge up on his arms. A swarm of insects surged toward him, drowning him completely. Unable to bear it any longer, he let out a miserable scream, jumped barefoot to the floor, and rushed out of the room. He clawed frantically at his own skin, leaving deep bloody scratches. When he tore open the blisters and blood oozed out, he seemed to see the bugs beneath his skin startled, wriggling and fleeing through his arm.
"No—no! No!——"
He regretted everything completely. This nightmare of the insect swarm was absolutely not something a human could endure! He shouldn't have spoken to Li Cuihua that way. How on earth had Li Cuihua survived this without losing her mind? God!
Zhao Tiezhu wished he could faint right then, but the stabbing pain under his feet, the unbearable itch on his skin, and the dense swarm of insects gave him no chance to breathe! He even tried stopping and letting the swarm devour him to end it, but he realized he simply couldn't hold on. "Ugh!——"
A nightmare in the truest sense.
...
Morning.
Zhao Tiezhu's eyes were vacant, his face bluish-purple, like a wandering ghost. Trembling, he walked to the gathering place of the players. Except for Wang Erma, who was getting married today, everyone else was there—and their faces, unexpectedly… looked normal?
Though they didn't look great, they were still in much better shape than Zhao Tiezhu, who seemed half-dead.
"What's wrong with you?" Sun Goudan asked quietly. "Has your pollution worsened? Or is it a new kind of pollution?"
"Didn't you all have dreams last night?!" The whites of Zhao Tiezhu's eyes were laced with blood. He wanted to roar the question in anger, but his voice was completely hoarse. "Bugs—disgusting bugs everywhere—ugh!" He couldn't help retching again. He hadn't eaten anything that morning, so nothing came out. His face grew uglier by the second, his lips turning deathly pale. He even looked somewhat fragile, on the verge of death.
It took him great effort to suppress the urge to gag before he managed to speak, forcing the words out: "They were everywhere—the bugs—outside, inside, in my body, on my body… It was terrifying. I wanted to faint but couldn't. I kept running, but I couldn't escape from anything…"
"..." Sun Goudan opened his mouth but didn't say anything in the end. Just yesterday, Zhao Tiezhu had scoffed at this type of nightmare. Who would've thought the illusion would really change last night—and of all things, Zhao Tiezhu got the insect swarm and was tormented into this miserable state… When Sun Goudan heard that there were bugs inside his body, his scalp tingled, and he didn't dare respond. After all, who knew whether they'd be able to clear the level today? If they couldn't, and he said something—what if the swarm came for him tonight?
Zheng Dujuan glanced unexpectedly at Zhao Tiezhu, then at Li Cuihua. For an illusion that could torment a grown man into such a state, Li Cuihua hadn't seemed nearly as broken down when she came yesterday. This player was impressive!
Li Cuihua, on her part, felt a bit proud—and thought Zhao Tiezhu deserved it. But what did he mean by bugs inside the body? What the hell was that? Could the illusion actually change? Though she found it strange, she didn't explain anything. After all, just yesterday Zhao Tiezhu had claimed the insect swarm dungeon wasn't scary at all.
Without delving further into the topic, the players gathered and waited outside Wang Erma's house.
"There's a mark in front of my door," Li Cuihua whispered to the others. "If nothing goes wrong, after Wang Erma gets married, the next one chosen by the mountain god will be me." She looked firmly at Wang Erma's courtyard. No matter what happened today, she had to clear this level! She didn't want to play this damned game for another single day.
The wedding preparations were extremely complicated, and many villagers had gathered inside Wang Erma's yard, making it impossible for the players to get close. Zheng Dujuan went to the kitchen, stole two bowls of steamed buns, and brought them back to share with the others. They ate the buns in big bites, washing them down with cold water, then huddled by the wall, continuing their watch.
Fortunately, the mountain god's wedding didn't have to wait until dusk. At noon, a bright red bridal sedan was carried out of Wang Erma's house by the villagers, accompanied by suona music along the way. Yet none of the players recognized the tune—it was unlike any wedding music they had ever heard. The villagers escorted the sedan all the way to the village entrance, where only the four sedan bearers continued forward. The players hid for a bit, then left the village from another path and closely followed the bridal sedan.
The sedan kept moving forward, leaving the village behind. Though it was midday, the sky suddenly darkened. There was no wind and no rain, but it felt as if time itself had been fast-forwarded—suddenly, it seemed to be almost dusk. This strange phenomenon made the players extremely uneasy. When they reached the foot of the mountain, a thick fog rose abruptly, enveloping all of them! The mist was so dense that they couldn't even see one meter ahead, let alone the other players chasing the sedan.
"What the hell is going on!" Sun Goudan gritted his teeth. "Where are you all? Don't get separated!"
But right after he said that, he froze—he actually heard his own echo?! Even with the fog surrounding them, how could there be an echo at the foot of the mountain? That wasn't normal.
However, at that moment, a stack of cards suddenly appeared before his eyes. The cards floated past him one by one, and Sun Goudan saw a "person" wearing a black-and-white mask, their entire body shrouded in a black robe, seemingly drifting within the dense fog.
——Choose.
"What the hell?" The word that inexplicably appeared in his mind left Sun Goudan bewildered. He frowned deeply, looked at the cards, hesitated for a moment, then finally picked one. The black-robed figure seemed to murmur something, though Sun Goudan couldn't make out the words. But in the next second, the fog cleared—and he suddenly saw Zhao Tiezhu's wide, staring eyes.
Then, his body began to move on its own. Sun Goudan had completely lost control, forced to watch as he ran toward Zhao Tiezhu, watching Zhao Tiezhu spread his arms as if "flying"—and together, the two of them began to dance.
And so, to the tune of Zhao Tiezhu's singing—"No matter how I fly~ I can't escape~ the flowery world~"—he and Zhao Tiezhu began to dance passionately.
Neither Zhao Tiezhu nor Sun Goudan knew how long the movement lasted. They even started to feel as though they were still dreaming and that everything was just another illusion. But the dance seemed to go on for a century, long enough for the two of them to build a grand luxury villa together in their minds.
When the dance finally ended, Sun Goudan hooked a finger under Zhao Tiezhu's chin and, in a disgustingly flirtatious tone that even made himself sick, said, "You little temptress, you've set me on fire." Zhao Tiezhu, true to form, immediately started dry-heaving again.
In the next second, the thick fog rose once more, and Sun Goudan saw that mysterious black-robed figure again.
"God, if I have sinned, let the law punish me—not send such a devil to torment me…"
No one was spared. No one survived.
Even Wang Erma, fully made up and dressed as the groom, couldn't escape this ordeal. When he knelt before Zheng Dujuan, kowtowing and shouting, "Dad, I was wrong!" he silently wished he would never have to see Zheng Dujuan again in this lifetime. But Zheng Dujuan wasn't faring much better—her body was unbearably exhausted, yet she uncontrollably kept doing fifty push-ups. She even felt as though her hands no longer belonged to her. And when she finally finished, it still wasn't over—she was actually forced to look at the kneeling Wang Erma and say, "Baby, look how strong I am!"
That one word—"baby"—made both of them feel utterly sick.
Too terrifying. Just too terrifying! They had been through so many games, but had never experienced anything like this before. Dangerous? It seemed dangerous, but nothing here was actually trying to kill them. All those horrifying illusions weren't meant to end their lives—they seemed designed purely to disgust and humiliate them. And now, right when they were about to clear the level, they were being forced to draw cards and perform all kinds of "shameful plays." How could that be reasonable?
Awkwardness. Despair.
By the third action, most of the players were already dead inside. It was as if their bodies and souls had been completely severed. They watched themselves—and the others—perform all sorts of socially mortifying, humiliating acts from the detached perspective of an outsider, their souls utterly numb—
…or so they wished!
The emotional value reached yet another peak!
Mu Anqi, after all, didn't push things too far. After each person had randomly drawn and performed six actions, she finally let them go. Dramatist cooperatively adjusted the illusion—the dense fog dispersed, and the red bridal sedan stopped at the foot of the mountain. The four villagers who had carried it were already gone…
The players stood blankly at the mountain's base, their expressions dull, the dim sunset stretching their shadows long across the ground. Zhao Tiezhu met Sun Goudan's gaze expressionlessly, then looked toward Zheng Dujuan and Li Cuihua. In silent understanding, none of them mentioned what had happened within the illusion. Whether it was real or not, they would only treat it as a dream.
From inside the sedan, Wang Erma stepped out, his face deathly pale. When he saw the other players, there was still lingering embarrassment and fear in his eyes—but he said nothing, only spoke heavily: "…Let's go up the mountain."
No matter what was on that mountain, no matter how powerful the mountain god was—this damn game, whoever wants to play it can play it!
Zhao Tiezhu and Sun Goudan, both cursed and polluted, naturally couldn't wait any longer. The players reached an unspoken agreement—those with items gripped them tightly, those who'd used theirs up clenched their skills in readiness. Step by heavy, cautious step, they began climbing the mountain.