Infinite Weird Game

After Qi Si appeared in the sight of Lin Chen and Tang Yu, a gap quietly appeared in the bamboo forest where they had been unable to find a way out, just enough for the two of them to pass through.

The road they had walked on the way here reappeared in front of Qis, with the other end leading directly to the feet of the two of them, connecting the players who were divided into two groups.

Scarecrows with painted human faces stood on both sides of the road, like servants welcoming and seeing off guests, quiet and well-behaved.

When the wind blew, the bamboo pole and the scarecrow swayed against each other, without making any strange noises or turning, as if the scene that surrounded the players before was just an illusion.

The late arrival of Qis is the beam of light that pierces the illusion. Just by standing there, he can pull the two players who are trapped in the nightmare back to the real world.

"Brother Lin!" Lin Chen subconsciously raised his foot and was about to walk towards the red-clothed figure outside the bamboo forest.

Tang Yu grabbed him and said in a low voice: "Wait a moment, be careful of fraud."

It is not uncommon for ghosts to disguise themselves as players to deceive people, so it is always better to be cautious.

Lin Chen retracted his foot and stood beside Tang Yu.

Then, Qi Si in the distance chuckled, "You are quite alert. How is the information? Tang Yu, a former player of Jiuzhou Guild, was expelled for accidentally injuring his companions. He is currently a free player."

He cast his gaze at Tang Yu, who had a tense face, and said, "Let's get to know each other again. Lin Ya and I are cousins. We haven't joined a guild yet, but we got a team-building item from a certain channel, so we can team up to enter the dungeon."

First repeat the content that only the players know to eliminate the suspicion of being a fake ghost; then explain some information about yourself to convey goodwill and narrow the distance - a very sophisticated and efficient way of communication.

Tang Yu tightly grasped Lin Chen's sleeve and asked casually, "Lin Wen, can you explain it to me? Before, Lin Ya and I had been running around for a long time but couldn't get out. But you found a way as soon as you came. What's the principle?"

"As for the principle, it's actually nothing special." Qi Si half closed his eyes and said, "Do you remember what the scholar said before, don't get too close to the funeral procession, you must stand ten feet away?
"You may think that he is exaggerating, fearing that the players will find important clues. But in my opinion, the scholar may not have much ill will towards us. He suggested that we follow the funeral procession out of town, probably because he hopes that we will find something.

"I guess if you are too close to the funeral procession, you will easily be drawn into hallucinations, just like you are now. Ten feet is a safe distance where you will not be affected."

He paused, and suddenly his fingertips extended from his blood-red cuffs, pointing to the black and white mud: "Look, I am exactly ten feet away from you now.

“I am outside the illusion, and you are inside it, but Lin Ya can hear my voice through the team props, and naturally reconnect with the real world outside the illusion, so that he can use me as an anchor to break through the illusion.

"This also proves one thing. The items we bring in from outside the instance will not be affected by the mechanism of this instance."

"I see." Tang Yu nodded respectfully and forced a laugh. "It's all thanks to you this time. Otherwise, I would have set the mountain on fire if I was forced into a corner."

He took a step forward and was about to walk out of the bamboo forest along the path paved with white stones, but he saw Qi Si in the distance obviously took a big step back, always keeping a distance of ten feet from him.

"Lin Wen, what are you doing..."

"Before you leave the bamboo forest, I need you to help me complete an experiment."

Qi Si raised his eyes to look at Tang Yu. The distance of ten feet was enough to make the figure blur like a block of color and the voice vague like the whisper of a ghost.

He smiled and said, "It's not a very complicated experiment. You just need to pick a scarecrow and chop it with the sword at your waist."

Tang Yu was stunned for two seconds, and finally understood what Qi Si meant. He widened his eyes and said, "Huh? You are also an old player, aren't you mistaken? I finally made them shut down, but you still want to provoke them. Do you think you have a long life?

"What if I get caught and get chased by the entire dungeon? You know, when I was surrounded before, I only dared to cut bamboo, not these..."

Qi Si uttered a low "oh", lowered his eyes slightly, and took a step back.

In an instant, Tang Yu saw that the scene around him was like an ink painting with clear water dripped on it. The dark blue color spread in the air, and in just a few seconds, it underwent expansion and contraction, gradually blurring into a blurry mass.

The road, which had just appeared, was painted the color of a bamboo forest. The gaps were filled with dense bamboo poles in the blink of an eye. The scarecrows on both sides were twisted and arranged in a circle, surrounding Tang Yu and Lin Chen like a fence.

The real world seems to exist with Qis as its center, and everything outside a radius of ten feet is a strange and illusory forbidden area.

After Qi Si left, it seemed as if the world also left with him.

"Fuck! Lin Wen, fuck you..." Tang Yu was about to curse when he saw the scarecrows disperse again and the road reappeared.

Qi Siqia, dressed in red, stood at the end of the road, his scarlet shadow embedded in the mist like blood, and his voice was gentle and harmless: "I'm sorry, I slipped and took a step back accidentally.

"I didn't expect the mechanism of this dungeon to be so precise. The distance of ten feet cannot be more or less."

This is obviously a lie.

Tang Yu was so angry that he laughed: "Can't you just say it nicely if you have something to say? If you want to chop the scarecrow with a knife, can't you do it yourself?

"Switch me out and stand in your place as a landmark. I'll lend you my knife. Come over here and chop down a scarecrow..."

“Um, Brother Lin, Brother Tang…” Lin Chen raised his hand cautiously, “How about I give it a try? I’ve always had good luck, maybe nothing will happen if I chop it…”

Long before Qis took a step back, he heard Qis's reminder in his mind, so although he felt that Qis's behavior was a bit radical, he was not surprised.

He knew that Qi Si had helped him a lot, and he would stand on Qi Si's side no matter what; and Tang Yu seemed to be a good person after getting to know him, and he was very protective of him in details...

After weighing the two options, I can only try to be the peacemaker and try to smooth things over.

Qi Si knew Lin Chen's psychology very well and sighed quietly: "Lin Ya, you didn't use a knife to cut anyone last night, so how can you do a control experiment?
"Aren't you curious about what kind of people the residents of Yanghua Town are, and why they have shadows?"

Lin Chen was speechless. He really didn't understand how the comparison of cutting scarecrows was done, and what it had to do with the next two questions.

Tang Yu heard the hidden meaning of Qi Si's words and raised his eyebrows slightly: "I understand your plan a little bit. You don't mean to say..."

"It's hard to say for now. We'll know only after we try."

Qi Si lifted up the left half of his long sleeve and stared at the [Destiny Pocket Watch] on his wrist: "You don't have to worry about your life being in danger. I have a prop that can go back one minute. It can be activated at any time when you encounter a difficult situation.

"You can believe that I have no reason to harm you, and I am willing to guarantee your survival within certain limits. After all, I hope to survive with my cousin, so I cannot take the NE clearance route that triggers the guaranteed death toll mechanism.

"I don't know how long it will take until the end of the dungeon. If I want to clear the dungeon with minimal casualties, I need the strength of you, a former core player of the Jiuzhou Guild who is experienced and powerful.

"And just like we can't leave you, you are alone and weak, and if you want to achieve something, you can't leave our help. This is a team dungeon, isn't it?"

Qi Si's words are sincere and earnest. They are not empty rhetoric, but pragmatic analysis from the perspective of interests. Although they are cold, they are extremely credible.

There are no permanent friends, only permanent interests. Most of the old players who have survived to this day understand this truth.

Tang Yu stared for a while, then nodded slightly, agreeing with Qi Si's words. "Okay, okay, okay." He said "Okay" three times, turned around and paced back and forth in front of a row of scarecrows beside him, and finally stopped in front of a scarecrow wearing a black straw raincoat.

That was a scarecrow made of a newly dead old man. Tang Yu had chopped the old man twice yesterday.

To conduct a controlled experiment, you must control the variables, and the smaller the differences between the experimental subjects, the better.

Lin Chen watched from the side a little nervously, and his mind involuntarily began to replay Qi Si's words.

"No matter what, I will be the one who wants you to survive the most."

'I want you to survive, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that you do.'

"I will do my best to help you survive..."

The weird game changes rapidly, who can guarantee that someone will survive to the end?
The context and tone of Qis' words were too weird. Lin Chen always had a bad feeling that he might do something crazy, such as... killing other players.

"Brother Tang..." Lin Chen called out hesitantly.

"What's wrong?" Tang Yu didn't even turn his head. As he spoke, he raised his knife and chopped the scarecrow in half with a "swish" sound.

The straw at the broken end exploded, and the lower half of the scarecrow was still stuck straight in the soil, while the upper half flew out, hit the bamboo pole and slid down.

Tang Yu stared at the remains of the scarecrow, waiting for the next development with bated breath.

Time passed by minute by minute, and nothing unusual happened.

The scarecrow seems to be just an ordinary scarecrow. Apart from its weird makeup, it has no other magical features. It will not be resurrected and will not cause any harm to the player who destroys it.

"Did you feel it?" Qi Si asked lightly, and put down his sleeves.

Seeing Tang Yu in a daze, he added indifferently: "How did the sound and feel of chopping off the scarecrow compare to when you killed the NPC last night?"

At this point, Lin Chen finally understood what Qi Si meant by the control experiment.

It seemed that he was overthinking it. Qi Si did not intend to harm Tang Yu. As the only player who had chopped down an NPC, Tang Yu really had to do the job of chopping down the scarecrow.

Tang Yu held his sword, his expression unpredictable.

He seemed not to have heard what Qi Si said, staring at the void in front of him in a daze. After a few seconds, he suddenly raised the knife and chopped at another scarecrow nearby.

"Sha——" The upper half of the scarecrow's body fell down and fell on the wet mud ground.

Tang Yu turned around to chop the third and fourth bodies...

"Sand, sand, sand..."

After five or six attempts, Tang Yu put the knife back into the scabbard at his waist, his face as gloomy as water: "There is no difference from the sound to the feel. The old man I chopped twice last night must have a body made of straw.

"NPC ghosts can possess anything they want. As long as there is a new and intact scarecrow, their souls can attach to it. No wonder it can't be killed using ordinary means..."

The previous doubts have now been resolved.

The ghost attached itself to the scarecrow, and from then on the scarecrow had a body and a shadow.

There are only a few types of clothes that the scarecrow wears, so the townspeople's clothing is also very monotonous, and the same image is used for the same profession.

Memory follows the profession, which means that the memory belongs to the scarecrow itself.

The ghosts of the townspeople randomly attach themselves to different scarecrows, thus acquiring different identities and corresponding memories.

Lin Chen stroked his chin and thought: "This makes sense. The trade and the townspeople are separate. The trade is determined by the type of scarecrow. The ghosts of the townspeople attach themselves to different scarecrows and have different identities...

"In other words, the scarecrows possessed by each ghost are not fixed every day? They will collectively release the possession at a certain time, and then shuffle the order and randomly select a scarecrow to possess again?
"But if the old man was a ghost, how was he killed by the ghost? His body was a scarecrow, how did the tiger eat it? Did it eat the straw directly?"

New questions came one after another. Tang Yu shook his head and said, "I don't know. The clues are too confusing. Let's go back to find the scholar. If there are any questions we can't figure out, maybe we can ask Master Meng."

Lin Chen: Why do you ask Master Meng everything?

As the two talked, they walked one after the other along the path in the bamboo forest.

This time, Qis did not move. He stood quietly with his hands hanging down, acting as a landmark.

Lin Chen and Tang Yu quickly came out of the bamboo forest and stood next to Qi Si.

Qi Si turned towards the two of them and smiled: "Long time no see."

Tang Yu smiled with a fake smile: "Okay, okay."

He was half-forced and half-persuaded by Qi Si to do a control experiment. Although he knew the reason behind it, it did not stop him from feeling unhappy.

Moreover, judging from the young man's half-speaking and half-hiding attitude as a riddle teller, he has the potential to become a massacre player.

Lin Chen sensed that the atmosphere was not right, and he quietly sandwiched himself between the two of them and asked, "Brother Lin, Brother Tang, the name of this dungeon is "Ghosts", and our main quest is more or less related to tigers, but why do we feel like we are just wandering around the periphery of the clues and haven't even seen the shadow of a tiger?"

"We will see it." Qi Si's smile did not fade, "Master Meng led us to Yanghua Town just to deal with the tiger. Even if we don't want to see the tiger, he will let us see it.

"Besides, do you really think that ghosts are necessarily related to tigers? Can soldiers who burn, kill, and loot during wars, and those who carry out massacres, also be considered ghosts?"

Qi Si's words were sinister and sounded suggestive.

Lin Chen nodded repeatedly: "Yes! In addition to the earliest allusion, the subsequent extended meaning of the term 'serving a tiger as an accomplice' mostly refers to being the minions of evil people.

"In Yanghua Town, one person dies every day in exchange for the safety of others. Are those townspeople who choose to sacrifice the town's elderly with a clear conscience also part of the evil spirits?
"Not only that, there is also Mr. Meng who is trying to get the skin of a tiger..."

"Lin Wen, did you find anything upstairs in the residence?" Seeing that the discussion was about to go off topic, Tang Yu interrupted Lin Chen's reading comprehension with a crisp and clear voice.

He looked at Qi Si: "What is the situation of the mansion here? How does it relate to our mansion? What is there on it? Tell us."

"Upstairs in the residence..." Qi Si cupped his hands, lowered his head and looked at his fingers through the wide sleeves of his robe, "I saw Teacher Luo and the others in the room on the left, and the letters you wrote to them... Do you want to go up and take a look together?" (End of this chapter)