DLMSWSHH Chapter 31

TL: Hua

Chapter 31: Game Over

Zhong Ming’s breath hitched.

An ominous premonition seized him almost instantly, and he instinctively turned to run toward the room.

However, Li Yizhi moved first, blocking his path. “Wait here. I’ll go check.”

Zhong Ming’s footsteps faltered. He looked up at him and nodded.

Li Yizhi strode toward Ye Qing’s room. Zhong Ming stood rooted to the spot, watching as Li Yizhi reached the door, grasped the handle, and pulled the wooden door open.

In the next heartbeat, a round object came rolling out, thud-thud-thud.

Zhong Ming’s eyes widened. His gaze dropped to the object on the floor.

It was Ye Qing’s head.

The girl’s face still held a look of sheer terror. Her wavy black hair was scattered across the floor, matted into clumps by the sticky, clotted blood.

Li Yizhi hadn’t expected the head to roll out the moment he opened the door. His heart sank, and he immediately looked up at Zhong Ming.

But it was too late. Zhong Ming’s eyes were wide with shock.

After a few seconds of paralysis, he began walking toward the head, reaching out as if to pick it up.

“Don’t touch it!”

Li Yizhi ran over, grabbing Zhong Ming’s hand and pulling him into his arms. He dragged him away from the head, covering Zhong Ming’s eyes with his hand while whispering urgent, low comforts.

“Don’t look, don’t look anymore. It’s okay… it’s okay.”

Zhong Ming went still and gripped Li Yizhi’s hand where it covered his eyes. “Let go.”

Cold sweat broke out on Li Yizhi’s brow. He glared down at the head on the floor; if he weren’t afraid of making Zhong Ming angry, he would have kicked the thing away. He desperately didn’t want Zhong Ming to see such a gruesome sight.

However, Zhong Ming gripped his hand and repeated, “Let me go.”

This time, his tone was almost stern.

Li Yizhi had no choice but to release him, though he kept his arm half-wrapped around Zhong Ming, fearing he might collapse from the shock.

Zhong Ming opened his eyes, looked down, and stared at Ye Qing.

The girl’s head lay on the floor, her eyes wide and refusing to close. Her features were twisted in a grimace; the terror of her final moments had ravaged her originally delicate face.

Zhong Ming watched her for a while, then frowned. He slowly knelt down and reached out to cradle the girl’s head in his arms. Li Yizhi’s eyes widened at the sight; the scene before him was chilling enough to make anyone’s skin crawl.

He watched as the blood still pulsing from the girl’s wound stained the front of Zhong Ming’s shirt crimson. His lips trembled, and he mustered the courage to persuade him gently.

“Baby, don’t do this.” He looked at Zhong Ming, feeling utterly at a loss. Seeing that Zhong Ming wouldn’t move, his eyes twitched. “How about… how about you give it to me? I’ll hold it for you.”

But Zhong Ming acted as if he hadn’t heard him. He lowered his head and closed Ye Qing’s staring eyes. Then, he looked up at Li Yizhi. His face was pale, but his voice remained calm as he inquired: “What happened here?”

Li Yizhi scanned his expression with unease, unable to tell if Zhong Ming was angry or not.

Just as he was about to speak, a faint sound came from the floor nearby.

The blonde mercenary walked out of the room, a dagger in his right hand. He tilted his head toward Zhong Ming, looking at the head cradled in his arms, and raised an eyebrow.

“What are you holding that thing for?”

As he spoke, he flicked the dagger, sending a string of blood droplets splattering onto the floor.

“This makes me the last one alive.”

The blonde man turned around, his clothes soaked in blood from chest to hem. He twirled the dagger in his hand and smiled at Zhong Ming.

“We’ll be colleagues from now on.”

The man’s azure eyes flashed with an excited light. Staring at Zhong Ming, he raised the blood-stained dagger and actually extended his tongue to lick the liquid off the blade. He appeared to have lost all semblance of humanity.

Li Yizhi glared at the blonde mercenary, feeling a chill run straight to the top of his skull. It didn’t take a genius to realize that this blonde bastard had eavesdropped on his conversation with Zhong Ming and learned the two conditions for becoming an NPC. That was why he killed Ye Qing, so he would be the last one left!

Idiot!

Li Yizhi was nearly fuming. Had this man not heard the second half of the sentence? When the quality of the players is too poor, no one gets turned into an NPC!

More than half of these fools had died before even reaching the forest, and they still fantasized about becoming NPCs?!

This was a disaster! A total disaster!

Li Yizhi was so angry he could barely catch his breath. But he didn’t scream his thoughts aloud; instead, he carefully looked at Zhong Ming beside him.

Zhong Ming, however, gave no response.

Seeing this, the blonde mercenary’s expression darkened. He stared at him and said: “What’s wrong? Aren’t you happy?”

He knew he couldn’t leave and might be trapped in this game forever. But having a beauty like this Asian youth around wouldn’t be bad. The blonde mercenary slowly narrowed his eyes. His frayed nerves and the thrill of the kill had left him in a state of hyper-excitement. It’s fine, he thought. At least I’ll be very gentle with this pretty boy.

As if disturbed by his burning gaze, Zhong Ming finally raised his head slowly to look at the mercenary.

Then, he rose slowly from the floor, staring at the man. “You killed Ye Qing?”

The blonde mercenary seemed to find the stupid question amusing. He cocked an eyebrow. “Yeah, what of it?”

Zhong Ming went silent, then looked up and took a step forward.

Li Yizhi’s heart sank. He could feel that Zhong Ming was angry and wanted to stop him, but he didn’t dare. While watching Zhong Ming walk toward the blonde mercenary, Li Yizhi turned and kicked the hallway railing with a loud clack, shouting down the stairs: “Get the fuck up here! All of you! Something big has happened!”

At the same time, Zhong Ming reached the blonde mercenary.

The mercenary watched him approach, the excitement in his eyes intensifying. His gaze dropped as Zhong Ming drew closer, landing on the youth’s ice-white cheek.

Zhong Ming looked up at him calmly and spoke in a voice only the two of them could hear: “You want to become a servant here?”

The blonde mercenary looked at him and nodded. “Yes.”

Zhong Ming lowered his eyes, his thick lashes trembling. “Is that so?” He paused, then said in a casual tone, “Then that’s really a pity.”

His voice was tiny, but the blonde mercenary heard it. His brow twitched.

“What?”

Zhong Ming looked up at him, a look of confusion surfacing on his face. “You didn’t know?”

He spoke as if he were truly reminding a player. “In the haunted house, there is a rule that ‘guests’ cannot kill one another. Did you forget?”

The blonde mercenary froze. The corner of his eye twitched uncontrollably. “What did… you say?”

“Madam Mary said it on the first day. You forgot?” Zhong Ming answered naturally. “Madam Mary is the housekeeper here; she hates undisciplined subordinates most of all. Anyone who breaks the rules loses their qualification to become a servant.”

His short sentence reached the man’s ears, and the information was processed instantly. The blonde mercenary’s pupils contracted. As if unable to process the words, he tilted his head neurotically.

“…What?”

Zhong Ming didn’t answer again. He said softly, “What a shame. Even if you had left her alone, she probably wouldn’t have lived much longer anyway.”

Zhong Ming looked up at the blonde man, his brow slightly pinched in a display of perfectly calibrated confusion.

“Why were you in such a hurry? Now, everything is ruined.”

The blonde man stood frozen to the spot.

Those few sentences echoed repeatedly in his crumbling mind. His last shred of sanity tried to recall whether Madam Mary had ever actually stated such a rule. But under repeated mental and physical torture, his psychological state had reached a breaking point. Under extreme stress, human memory is severely compromised, much like how a student might suddenly forget knowledge they knew by heart during an exam. No matter how hard the blonde mercenary tried to remember, he couldn’t be sure if Madam Mary had said that rule at some point weeks ago.

“Ha—”

He let out a heavy, ragged breath. He lowered his head, pressing his hand against his throbbing temple. He looked up at Zhong Ming with an almost pathological expression.

“You… you’re lying to me, aren’t you?” The blonde man’s mouth hooked into a stiff grin as he tried to regain his composure. His pupils shrank. “There is no such rule.”

But Zhong Ming didn’t even look at him. He smoothed the hair of the girl in his arms and, without raising his head, brushed past the blonde mercenary toward the hallway behind him.

“Hey!”

The blonde man immediately blocked him. Zhong Ming stopped, looked at the arm barring his way, and frowned. He then gave the man a look of utter bewilderment.

“Move. I have a lot to do.” He glanced at the floor, which was completely covered in Ye Qing’s blood. “Tsk. What a mess you’ve made.”

With that, he shoved the blonde mercenary’s arm aside and walked into the room carrying Ye Qing’s head. Throughout the entire exchange, he didn’t offer the blonde mercenary a single word of explanation.

The blond man stood frozen in place, staring in the direction Zhong Ming had left, his right cheek beginning to twitch uncontrollably. Zhong Ming’s dismissive attitude had sent him into a spiral of confusion; it was as if the other man didn’t care at all that he had killed Ye Qing. Right… Why would he care? When it came down to it, that woman was just another player.

This line of thought led the blond mercenary in a different direction: Why would Zhong Ming lie to him? What reason would he have? After all, it shouldn’t make a difference to Zhong Ming, who eventually became an NPC, right? Madam Mary was indeed someone who valued rules. Would she want a disobedient subordinate? Perhaps she really had mentioned this rule? It would be normal for guests to be forbidden from killing one another, wouldn’t it?

In an instant, the mercenary’s mind was flooded with ten thousand possibilities. Suspicion caused his brain to rev like an overheating engine; the internal components began to glow red-hot, grinding against each other with a harsh, rasping sound, yet he couldn’t stop.

The man’s face grew visibly paler by the second. His breathing quickened, and his pupils trembled with a frantic lack of focus, the telltale signs of an imminent psychological breakdown.

The truest form of horror a human can feel is, in reality, the despair of shattered hope.

It is that sudden plunge into darkness when one realizes that, through their own blunder, they have personally destroyed a hope that was once within their grasp.

Li Yizhi had been paying close attention to his condition. As the blond mercenary underwent changes, all the muscles in his body gradually tensed up, and he very cautiously circled around to face the blond man.

By now, the mercenary’s breathing had lost all rhythm; he was practically gasping for air. However, a moment later, he suddenly stopped shaking and fell still.

Li Yizhi’s eyebrow twitched.

In the next heartbeat, the mercenary slowly raised his head, the dim light of the corridor casting shadows across his face.

“So… I’m the one who disqualified myself from living?”

A smile hung on the corners of his mouth, but his expression was more harrowing than any sob.

“How can something so cruel exist in this world?”

Li Yizhi’s eyes widened slightly. Realizing what was happening, he snapped backward.

The next second, the mercenary’s right hand shot up as if controlled by some external force, plunging the dagger into the side of his own neck. A wet squelch echoed through the air.

He moved with such force that the blade pierced the carotid artery directly. Blood sprayed out under the intense pressure.

“Holy shit.”

Though Li Yizhi had dodged quickly, he was still splattered with a few drops. He looked up, his mouth hanging open in shock as he saw blood spray all the way to the ceiling.

“Wow. Hardcore.”

With a heavy thud, the mercenary’s body collapsed to the floor. The blood pooling from his neck mingled with Ye Qing’s blood on the ground.

Even at the end, his blue eyes remained wide open, as if he still couldn’t comprehend how he had ended up like this.

The other menservants, whom Li Yizhi had called upstairs, stood behind him. Having witnessed the entire process of Zhong Ming driving the mercenary to his death with just a few sentences, they couldn’t hide their astonishment. Jack frowned deeply, his hands shoved in his pockets as he muttered a curse under his breath. Archie stood behind Li Yizhi, patting his shoulder and whispering, “…How did it turn into this?”

Li Yizhi, feeling a complex mix of emotions, shook his head and wiped his face.

“I screwed up,” he gave an annoyed tsk. “Dammit, I never expected him to survive the confessional. He must have overheard us talking that day.”

Archie understood. Then, looking at the dagger in the corpse’s neck, he fell silent for a moment before asking, “Did you know the guy inside had this kind of capability?”

They could all tell that Zhong Ming’s words were a total lie. There was no such rule here about players not being allowed to kill each other. Zhong Ming had made it up on the spot.

None of them had expected Zhong Ming to be capable of going this far.

Hearing this, Li Yizhi paused, covering his face with both hands. “I didn’t know.”

Archie’s gaze immediately turned sympathetic. He sighed and patted Li Yizhi’s shoulder in consolation. Nearby, Sun Qian’s eyes flickered. Seeing his colleagues standing in stunned silence, he hesitated before whispering: “Zhong… Zhong Ming is still in that player’s room, right?”

He bit his lip. “Shouldn’t someone go check on him?”

Archie nudged Li Yizhi with his eyes. “Hey, aren’t you going?”

Li Yizhi kept his face buried in his hands, his voice muffled. “I don’t dare.”

Archie: …For fuck’s sake. Could you be any more of a coward?

In the end, the menservants reached an agreement to go together. A group of grown men marched toward the door with an aggressive momentum. Caught in the middle, Sun Qian looked at the frowning Jack, then at Li Yizhi, who was leaning against the wall looking at the floor with his arms crossed. Swallowing hard, Sun Qian gathered his courage and pushed open the wooden door.

The door creaked as it slowly swung open before them.

It was nearly noon, and the sunlight outside was brilliant. Beams of light streamed through the small window, illuminating the floorboards.

Zhong Ming sat by the bed with his back to them. Ye Qing’s body lay on the bed.

Or rather, her corpse.

The girl’s long black hair was spread across the mattress. Zhong Ming was focused on tidying the strands that had become disheveled during her struggle. His expression was one of intense concentration and earnestness. At the sight of this, the men felt a collective jolt to their hearts, an unbidden chill creeping over them.

It didn’t feel like a player’s bedroom; it felt like the scene of a taxidermy workshop.

Li Yizhi’s gaze fell upon Ye Qing’s body, and his brow furrowed.

Ye Qing’s head and neck had been sewn back together with thread. Her eyes had been closed, and she looked peaceful and quiet, as if she were merely asleep.

Sun Qian saw the sewing kit sitting by Zhong Ming’s hand. The mental image of Zhong Ming stitching skin with downcast eyes made him shudder with fear.

“…Zhong, Zhong Ming.” His voice trembled. “How… how are you?”

Zhong Ming seemed to only just hear them. He turned his head slightly; because he was backlit, his expression was somewhat blurred. “Is he dead?”

The “he” naturally referred to the mercenary. Sun Qian froze. Looking at Zhong Ming’s beautiful, refined profile, he still found it hard to believe that this person had intentionally used words to drive a man to suicide.

Li Yizhi withdrew his gaze and said softly, “He’s dead. You can rest easy.”

Upon hearing this, Zhong Ming nodded. He turned back, refocusing on smoothing out every stray hair on the girl’s head.

Seeing this, Li Yizhi’s Adam’s apple bobbed. He stepped forward slowly until he reached Zhong Ming’s side. As he approached the bed, he noticed a blood-stained handkerchief by Zhong Ming’s hand; he had wiped away all the blood from the girl’s face and hair.

Except for the wound on her neck, Ye Qing now looked as though she were sleeping. Li Yizhi felt that Zhong Ming’s handling of the body was a hundred times more professional than that of a mortician.

Li Yizhi looked at Zhong Ming’s profile, unable to tell if he was acting out of madness or if he was simply “off” to begin with.

“Babe,” he whispered, gathering his courage to place a hand on Zhong Ming’s right shoulder. “Don’t be sad, okay?”

Zhong Ming didn’t look up, but he didn’t reject the comfort either. He stared down at Ye Qing’s quiet, lovely face in his lap and suddenly spoke: “It’s impossible for Ye Qing to be resurrected, isn’t it?”

Though phrased as a question, it sounded more like a confirmation.

Li Yizhi shook his head, his hand on Zhong Ming’s shoulder tightening slightly. “Her mental state was too poor.”

The psychological damage players took did not recover. Even if they waited until 12 o’clock, Ye Qing’s mental state wouldn’t be enough to support the reconstruction of her physical body.

Zhong Ming’s hands paused. “I see.”

Then, he gently lifted the girl’s head and laid her flat on the bed.

Li Yizhi’s eyes followed his movements as Zhong Ming took the girl’s arms and crossed them over her chest. Once she was positioned, he removed the crucifix from his own neck and placed it over her heart.

Watching Zhong Ming with his eyes cast down, Li Yizhi felt, for a fleeting second, a sense of divine compassion radiating from him.

Having finished, Zhong Ming stood up and looked at the group of menservants at the door for the first time.

“Bury Ye Qing in the backyard garden,” he said softly. “Can you do that for me?”

His gaze was calm, yet Sun Qian shivered under it and nodded frantically.

“Thank you,” Zhong Ming said plainly.

Then, he began walking toward the door. The menservants paused and instinctively moved aside to create a path, watching him pass through.

His clothes were still stained with Ye Qing’s blood, his profile was as white as ice, and his thick lashes were lowered as he walked out.

Frowning, Jack reached out to stop him as he passed. “Where are you going?”

Feeling his arm being held, Zhong Ming stopped and turned back to look at Jack.

“I want to go for a walk.” He looked up, his cold expression revealing nothing. “It’s fine. Let me go.”

Jack froze, his hand subconsciously letting go under the weight of Zhong Ming’s gaze.

This time, no one dared to stop him. The group stood in silence as they watched Zhong Ming walk down the stairs, pull open the front door, and step outside.

Sun Qian looked from one person to another, hesitating. “Wh… what now? Should we send someone after him?”

“Fuck,” Jack cursed, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. “If you think you can bring him back, go ahead.”

Sun Qian had nothing to say to that; he could only shut his mouth. Li Yizhi let out a long sigh and crouched on the floor, irritably messing up his hair. Suddenly, he leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of Ye Qing’s body, and stared at the girl on the bed with unprecedented seriousness.

“Little sister!” he wailed, looking like he was on the verge of tears. “Why don’t you just come back to life? I-I can trade Archie’s life for yours!”

Archie almost dropped his cigarette. “…Hey!”

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