Ch18 – Vanishing Clues

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“Bam—”

As everyone fled, someone slammed into He Jianlan hard.
His black-framed glasses fell straight from his face into the darkness, shattering into glass shards as the people behind him trampled ahead. 

Not only that, the oil lamp flew out of his hands and fell to the ground in a broken heap.

“Lao Qin!”

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He Jianlan gave a low shout, “My glasses broke.”

He was so nearsighted that without his glasses, he could only see a blur of colour and light; another person had to stand right in front of him before he could clearly recognise their face.
By right, the system could repair this problem with a single click.
But the more insignificant the problem, the more expensive the repair.
Cancer would only take five hundred survival points to treat, whereas fixing the eyesight could take two thousand survival points.
He Jianlan had always been reluctant to use his precious survival points on such an area. 

“Shit, it just had to happen now… hide first, we’ll work it out later!”

 

Qin Ye also knew this shortcoming of He Jianlan’s.
He cursed and tugged the other’s sleeve, glancing over his shoulder as he did.

With the night vision he gained from being blessed by a werewolf, he could easily see the peculiarities on both sides of the corridor.

It was as if the walls were smeared with a broken paintbrush, starting from the stairwell of basement 2, all the way through the corridor along the walls.

 

Wherever it brushed, rust danced in the air, and the walls peeled off in large swathes.
Blackened blood and broken bones littered the sides of the walls, and the dense stench of rotting corpses permeated the air like a descent from earth into a twisted, dark, otherworldly hell.

Although Messiah shouted for everyone to split up, the group at the core tacitly chose to stay together.

The veterans weren’t fools.
In such a critical situation, it would be sheer idiocy to break away in a panic and lose their headcount advantage instead of following the Holy Son, the walking healer.

Apart from He Jianlan and Qin Ye, Meng Tianlu remained firmly with their group. 

Under the psychic’s guidance, the four of them sprinted into one of the dilapidated wards along the corridor.

In the distance, where there was still some light from the stairwell, a twisted, non-humanoid shadow was cast onto the ground.

And with the sound of footfalls, the shadow gradually elongated.

After finding their hiding place, the three people looked in unison towards Meng Tianlu. 

“So? Where’s the clue?”

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The psychic didn’t look to be in good shape.
His eyes were tightly shut, and his entire body was shivering.

Large beads of sweat rolled down from his forehead.
“No… None… No clues, I don’t sense anything.”

When he had only probed slightly earlier, his spiritual energy had been instantly drained away and unimaginable pain tore through him.
Now that he was allowed to step into this abyss-like realm, Meng Tianlu only felt that his body was submerged by an eerie chill.
Ubiquitous laughter shrilly shrouded his five senses, and a million hands tugged him into the mire. 

How could there be no clues?

They were aghast.

 

“How can there be none?” He Jianlan was taken aback.

“Didn’t that newcomer say that Vincent was on basement 2?” 

Meng Tianlu, however, couldn’t speak; his lips had turned purple, and a milky white clouded his pupils.

“Something’s not right with him.”

Messiah rested the high priest staff on the psychic’s shoulder, a stern look on his face.

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection.
If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

A faint golden glow radiated from the tip of the staff, enveloping the latter in a soft warmth. 

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Gfrqjlg yijcxfafv atf mbgglvbg. 

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Right at this moment, a door was suddenly kicked open not too far ahead.

The white-coated doctor gathered a man in his arms and walked unhurriedly towards the stairwell.
All they could see from their angle was white hair cascading down from the crook of his arms like a waterfall, and a sliver of his unconscious face.

[Damnit, the white-haired beauty has been caught! Nooo!] 

[AHHH did anyone see the whole thing? I only went out for a bit to peek at the brawl in the venue next door and came back only to find out that A’Jiu has been caught?]

[Replying to upstairs: Zong Jiu didn’t expect that that pervert doctor was standing behind him as he crouched in the room.
In the end, a syringe took him down, GG.]

[Oh god, so screwed.
He got caught by the boss of this instance.
What a waste of his face, after the surgery, he’ll become a fool.]

“That thing’s almost here.” 

Qin Ye stared as Dr.
Chu’s figure disappeared not far off from them.
He broke the stalemate.
“Shall we risk it and make a break for it?”

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Although there wasn’t a way for them to fight the supernatural head on, with their combined strength, it shouldn’t be an issue for them to escape this danger zone together.

 

But that would also mean that this venture was once again a failure.
Not only did they fail to get any clues on how to clear the instance, but worse than that, the instance had already entered the third day and there was very little time for them to do so.

He Jianlan recalled that there was an A-rank instance that had a very similar setup to this one, named ‘Jingbai High School’. 

This instance had a harsh time limit, the task lasting seven days.
If not enough clues were found from searching the campus within the first six days, all the teachers and students of the high school would turn into demons and begin an indiscriminate massacre.

While Jingbai High School and the Mental Asylum looked different at first glance, in a certain sense, they both sang the same tune.
Even if they were able to escape the murderous rampage of the supernatural on basement 2, there was still a full twenty-three hours left on the third day.
Special props, even the permanent ones, had limits on the frequency of use and the cooldown time.
This interval was undoubtedly the ripest time for ghosts to claim their lives.

He Jianlan stared down at his feet.

Without his glasses, he couldn’t see anything, let alone in such a dark and cramped environment. 

He kept feeling that he had overlooked something.

From the beginning, before the clue to the S-rank prop appeared, none of the veterans had really taken this one-man show instance seriously.

Everyone assumed that because the system had stuffed so many newcomers in, it wouldn’t go too harsh on them.
Not to mention that this copy also had No.
7, the Holy Son, leading them, and the command floor was very unified.
Everyone methodologically searched for clues and put them together, and everything proceeded smoothly.

The S-rank clue was given to them; the entire ground and basement 1 floors were searched and no information could have slipped past them. 

With only one piece of the puzzle left to be completed, it was only logical that they would expand their search to basement 2, which they hadn’t touched prior.

By He Jianlan’s estimate, if all went smoothly, they should have been able to obtain a clue on basement 2 and successfully clear the instance.

But things had taken a turn for the worst.
Not only were they trapped, but the expected reward was also a lost cause, leaving them blind.

How could there be no clues? 

Qin Ye’s sudden roar broke He Jianlan’s concentration.

“Now’s the time! Break through!”

Wolf fur raised on the man’s herculean physique, bursting through the blue and white striped hospital gown.
He dropped onto all fours and pounced to the door.

He Jianlan hurriedly rose to his feet and, with Messiah, supported Meng Tianlu.
He held onto his knotted lasso, following close behind his partner. 

The huge half-werewolf let out a long howl in the darkness and fearlessly charged straight for the dark figure perched in the corridor.

“Wait… Wait, don’t go…”

 

At that moment, Meng Tianlu, foaming at the mouth, suddenly let out a weak cry.

“You, you’ll die—” 

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But it was already too late.

The next second, the huge werewolf’s head was plucked clean off the neck, and a bloody spine stained with strips of tattered flesh collapsed onto the floor, dripping.

Qin Ye’s pupils flared as an eye was pierced by a sharp, unidentified claw that dug straight through to the visual cortex of the brain.

“Bang—” 

The immense corpse crashed down.
The bloody, gaping hole in his neck sprayed blood and organs onto the ground, flaring in their sight with a deep red imprint.

“Lao Qin!!!!”

He Jianlan’s eye sockets bulged, tears escaping from his eyes.

This turn of events caused the bullet chat to instantly explode. 

[WTFWTFWTF, this isn’t some smallfry.
It’s Qin Ye, an A-rank! An A-rank!!]

Out of the tens of thousands of thriller trainees, only the top 200 were A-ranked.

In the end, such a powerful A-ranker was killed on the spot despite having taken out his ace.

It finally dawned on everyone. 

[Holy shit, the monster in this instance is an invincible supernatural entity!!!]

[It’s over, the true massacre has started, this is the rhythm of a team wipeout.
I’ve said it already, although the difficulty level in this instance doesn’t look like much, how could an S-rank prop appear? Man, it was just lying in wait down here.]

[…it may not reach the perverse difficulty level of S-rank, but it’s surely an A-rank at least.
Instant killing an A-rank on the spot, what else could it mean?]

“We… we… we should go.” 

The severed head slammed heavily to the ground.
The werewolf’s jaws were agape, blocking the front of the twisted black shadow.

He Jianlan couldn’t see what was happening; neither did he have the courage to keep looking.
He sprinted forward, holding back his tears.

 

He and Qin Ye were renowned partners amongst the veteran contenders, and many people had heard of their names.

That aside, they were also close friends who had met and fought alongside each other in the infinite loop for many years.
The depth of their bond was thicker than blood. 

Qin Ye’s body had corroded down to bones when he received the blessing of a werewolf, and He Jianlan broke five of his fingers in order to obtain a special prop.
Fortunately, they could recover as long as they had enough survival points.
But He Jianlan never expected that after triumphantly bulldozing through many perilous horror instances together, Qin Ye would fold at this insignificant first instance of the Thriller Trainee.

And what was even crueller was that he had no room to grieve.

Qin Ye, an A-rank, couldn’t even charge his way through.
It was impossible to escape this supernatural entity with the constraints of their humanity.

Hopelessness washed through He Jianlan. 

At first, he had thought that it didn’t matter if the clues weren’t complete, he only had to skitter around escaping for the remaining twenty or so hours before he could make it back.
But this last path had also been cut off; he was trapped in a blind alley.

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How was it possible? How could this be?

Even in harder and more horrifying instances, the system wouldn’t give unsolvable puzzles.
It would always leave a trail of clues.
After meticulous investigation, the contenders could, from the many obstacles, find the only correct path.

But now, it was a dead end. 

A cold chill inexplicably ran up He Jianlan’s spine.

It was too coincidental.
So coincidental that it seemed like there was an invisible hand pulling all of the strings, a hand that cut off hope at the time when hope was needed the most.

After desperately bolting for it, they once again regained their footing on the landing of the stairwell that led to basement 1.

Dim light leaked through the gaps of the stairs from above, resting on every iron plate of the steps covered in dust. 

There was only one explanation.

Unless… they were misled from the very beginning.

Who was it? Was it Zhuge An who had left behind false information? Or was it that white-haired E-rank who had not told the truth?

“Your Holiness—” 

He Jianlan swiftly whipped his head to the side, wanting to ask for Messiah’s opinion.

Unexpectedly, the golden-haired Holy Son who had been standing beside him, supporting Meng Tianlu with him, was nowhere to be found.

 

From the blobs of colour that his retinas could make out, it was clearly empty space.

“Your Holiness?” 

He Jianlan wavered.

Had Messiah stopped to treat Qin Ye when that incident happened, therefore accidentally wandering off?

He glanced back towards the stairwell.

The pitch-dark stairwell looked like it could swallow people whole, a fuzzy black patch in his vision. 

The asylum was very quiet.

The weight on his shoulders grew heavier.

Standing on the stairs, the golden-haired Holy Son gazed down at him with a smile.

He Jianlan shuddered and lowered his head. 

At some point in time, Meng Tianlu had stopped breathing.

An unfamiliar pale, ghastly face was sprawled on his arm, grinning widely at him.