Infinite Weird Game

The sky gradually brightened, and the mist was steaming. The thin morning light, as thin as a silk ribbon, penetrated the window lattice and splashed into the room on the second floor of the mansion.

Tang Yu and Lin Chen woke up in bed at the same time.

Last night they entered the same room as the old lady requested, and not long after, the door was locked from the outside.

With the experience of the first night, they quickly completed the separation of beds and division of labor.

Lin Chen slept on the bed near the door, guarding the two lanterns to prevent them from falling over.

Tang Yu sat on the bed by the window, holding various weapons and props, guarding the window to prevent the ghosts outside from breaking in.

Nearing midnight, the pile of corpses outside the window let out screams, and smoke formed by evil spirits and monsters rushed around.

Fortunately, the players had sufficient supplies of props, and the terrain of the mansion was easy to defend but difficult to attack. The two finally resisted the ghosts outside the mansion and waited for the sound of the night watchman at "midnight".

The swarm of ghosts retreated layer by layer like the tide, and the two people in the house fell into a deep sleep under the effect of the copy mechanism. When they opened their eyes again, it was already daytime.

Lin Chen immediately contacted Qi Si through the soul leaf: "Brother Qi, are you okay? Did anything go wrong last night?"

Two seconds later, Qi Si's weak voice sounded faintly: "I'm still alive, and I have made a great discovery. We'll talk when we meet. Please wait a moment. If no one opens the door after half an hour, I'll open it for you."

Lin Chen breathed a sigh of relief and said, "We are not in a hurry here. We waited for a full hour yesterday before the door opened."

"Well, you guys wait then."

……

On the deserted avenue of Yanghua Town, Qi Si, holding a gong, walked slowly towards the residence.

It would only take him half an hour at most to get to the residence from where he was.

Judging from the situation yesterday morning, it would take at least an hour for the old man who manages the residence to open the door for the locked player.

He didn't have to worry about coming back late and being discovered by Lin Chen and the others that he was not in the house, thus exposing his identity as a ghost.

What concerned Qi Si more was last night's discovery.

At the moment when the midnight bell rang louder, he entered the Ink Soul Scroll as planned, and was carried by the black shadow ghost summoned by the black umbrella, shuttling between wooden buildings, courtyards and alleys.

The specific details were vague. He only remembered that the originally pitch-black night sky faded at a certain moment, and the white sunlight rising from the east spread in all directions with the refraction of fog. In just a few seconds, the whole Yanghua Town was covered with a layer of milky white glaze belonging to the early morning.

Its daybreak.

When time passes midnight, the darkness reaches its peak and all living things fall into a deep sleep. At that moment, the day comes suddenly without any warning or transition.

The townspeople who were lying on the beds, stone slabs and other corners like corpses turned into scarecrows with white faces and red cheeks at one moment, and then returned to normal in an instant, stood up unsteadily, walked out of the door, and gathered on the street.

Qi Si remembered that Qiu Xin passed out on the street at midnight last night, but woke up safe and sound the next day. He thought that these townspeople should not be able to see the existence of the player.

He ordered the black shadow ghost to fall back to the ground with the Ink Soul Scroll and stand in the middle of the crowd. As expected, he did not attract any attention.

All sights passed through him as if they were penetrating nothing; the townspeople coming and going stepped over his body without any sense of touch, as if he was completely isolated from the world, belonging to another layer that would never intersect with the townspeople.

He stood there for a while, and suddenly something came into his mind, so he did as he wished and raised his hand to strike the gong.

"Bang——"

The clear sound of clappers exploded in the crowd, and all the townspeople turned their heads at the same time and looked in the direction of the sound.

"Did you hear that? It's the sound of a clapper!"

"But isn't it daytime? Why is there the sound of a clapper?"

"I heard it. That's where the clapper sound came from! But why is there nothing there?"

"Damn it, I have a feeling there might be someone there that we can't see..."

The voices of people were noisy and gradually became unclear.

The effectiveness time of the Ink Soul Scroll expired, and Qis fell heavily to the ground.

When I woke up again, the time on my fate pocket watch showed six o'clock in the morning.

……

At half past six, Qi Si arrived at the residence on time and went up to the second floor.

It was pretty much as he expected. The person in charge of the residence had not arrived yet, and the iron lock on the wooden door of the room where Tang Yu and Lin Chen lived was still hung tightly.

He simply pulled the wire out of the bracelet, inserted it into the keyhole, and pried the lock open.

In the room, Lin Chen and Tang Yu sat on the bed, looking at each other in silence.

Hearing the door open, they both stood up almost at the same time and walked to the door.

Tang Yu asked first: "Lin Wen, how is it? Did you find anything?"

Qi Si took out a stack of photographic films from his sleeve and handed them to Lin Chen behind him.

Lin Chen took the photos and, following Qi Si's instructions, placed them in a row on the wooden bed near the window.

In the misty morning light, the black photo reflects fragmented light and slowly turns into color in the swaying light and shadow.

The first two photos show the scarecrow sleeping in the house.

These are probably two poor families. Seven or eight scarecrows are crammed in a cramped little house, covered with quilts like living people, some lying on their sides, and some sleeping on their backs.

Without exception, they all look nothing like humans, with big heads and broad bodies. Although they are sloppily drawn, you can still make out their overall shapes - they are tigers made of straw!

"It turns out that the scarecrow was really made into the shape of a tiger. No wonder the shadows of the townspeople were all tiger shadows. Is this to ward off evil spirits or to scare people?"

Tang Yu complained, then looked at the photo again, and exclaimed in amazement: "What kind of prop is this? If we had taken it out earlier and snapped photos in all directions, we might not even have to go to the east of the town to know the true identities of the townspeople."

"This is Mr. Luo's photographic negative. I asked them to deliver it last night." Qi Si said with a smile, "But before realizing that the townspeople might be scarecrows, no one would think of wasting props to take pictures of the scenery in the dungeon, right?"

He lowered his head and reached out to fiddle with the photos, dividing them into groups of two into several sections. Tang Yu moved closer and pinched a photo with two fingers to examine it: "Teacher Luo and the others can send things over, which means that props can travel through different spaces?"

"It seems so. Sound, props, text, many things can be common anchors between the two spaces."

Qi Si spoke vaguely, raised his hand and pointed to the group of photos in the middle, motioning Tang Yu to look at them.

It was a set of horrifying photos, all dyed a midnight-like grey and black, but a closer look revealed that it was not the original color.

Every corner of the photo is filled with distorted, gray faces. It is after this superposition that can trigger people's claustrophobia that the color of the picture appears as dark as ink in visual effect.

If you look closely, you will find that the faces are distorted because they are moving at high speed, and you can then see their movement trajectories between the darker outlines.

In several parallel arcs like dragons and rainbows, human faces emerged from the scarecrows piled like corpses on the ground, rushing in the same direction, breaking through the edge of the photo, and it is unknown where the end is.

Qi Si waited for Tang Yu and Lin Chen to finish looking at this set of photos, then quietly pushed them aside and pushed a new set of photos in front of them.

This set of photos is also obscured by the crowded faces of people, and the movement trajectory is similar in shape to the first set of photos, but in the opposite direction.

They come from outside the picture and pour into the tiger-shaped scarecrow on the ground with great momentum.

In the latest set of photos, the cast scarecrows stand up and bask in the morning light.

Yes, time actually changed from night to day in an instant!

"In this way, the mechanism of this instance is clear." Lin Chen murmured and concluded, "At midnight, all the ghosts in the scarecrow shells will change at the same time, with some leaving and some entering.

"They may not have the time to choose a specific scarecrow, or they may not have the memory or awareness to choose, so they basically possess randomly.

"The same ghost may have to change its shell every day, and the identity and memory are inherent in the shell. So from our perspective, the identities of the townspeople change over and over again."

Qi Si did not comment, just nodded slightly and simply recounted his experience last night half-truthfully.

The story omitted the existence of hatred and focused on how Yanghua Town welcomed daylight after midnight.

He looked around at the two of them and said calmly, "I don't know if you still remember that the night before yesterday, near midnight, the ghosts outside the mansion turned into black smoke and wreaked havoc. The next day, we found the same pile of corpses behind the mansion in the east of the town.

"I suspect that the ghosts that haunt the corpse are the source of the ghosts that possess the scarecrow. The ghosts in the west of the town become townspeople after midnight, while the ghosts in the east of the town are active before midnight.

"At midnight, the ghost in the scarecrow flies to the east of the town and lives in the pile of corpses in the east. The ghosts in the west of the town run out of the pile of corpses, possess the scarecrow, and live like a living person, enjoying their day.

He lowered his eyes and stroked his fingers: "From this, it seems that all the townspeople are ghosts. They have to use scarecrows as bodies to pretend to be living people. All they need is a fire to burn them all."

Tang Yu frowned and asked, "It's understandable that those ghosts want to live like living people, so they possess the scarecrow. But why do they have to be divided into two groups to take turns possessing? Can't we make a few more scarecrows?"

"Not enough space." Qi Si raised his eyelids and looked at the ceiling, "Whether before or after midnight, the townspeople's activity space is in the west of the town, and the east of the town belongs to Xiyi's mirror space.

"And the number of townspeople is just as large as the number of residents, so they can almost occupy the entire Yanghua Town. Since half of the town has been allocated to others, they can only put up with it and live in different houses in batches."

Tang Yu: "...The urban planning of this town is really thoughtful."

Lin Chen thought for a moment and asked, "Xiyi are silent and colorless, and generally do not interfere with other beings. Why are they placed alone in the east of the town?"

"Who knows? Maybe someone is terribly afraid of Xiyi..."

Qi Si said casually, changing the subject: "There is one more thing that can be made clear: this copy is shrouded in a huge illusion. Not only can we not see the real world, with ruins as prosperous towns; the townspeople are also confused by the illusion and cannot see things that a certain existence does not want them to see.

"They couldn't see the body behind the mansion, nor could they see the scene of the other half of the day; after midnight last night, the group of townspeople who were newly possessed by the scarecrow could not see my existence.

"It's understandable to confuse the players, but it doesn't make sense from a game design perspective to deceive the NPCs. What's the purpose of this, you ask?"

"For stability." Lin Chen blurted out.

He pondered for a moment and then whispered, "I remember there is a saying in the Tao Te Ching: 'The ancients who were good at practicing Taoism did not enlighten the people, but made them ignorant. The people are difficult to govern because they are too smart.' The less the truth the people know, the easier it is to manage them, and the less likely they are to cause unrest."

He paused and looked at Qi Si: "By the way, Brother Lin, the saying 'If you can't see it, it's called Yi; if you can't hear it, it's called Xi' also comes from the Tao Te Ching. I wonder if there is any connection between the two.

"I now have a stronger and stronger feeling that this copy seems to be based on the ideas of the Taoist Tao Te Ching, constructing a paradise hidden away from the earthly world.

"Ghosts, demons, and Xiyi can all exist, without interfering with each other, and enjoy themselves; the highly respected Mr. Meng has not appeared for a long time, lives a simple life, and governs by inaction; the identities of ghosts and monsters are randomly swapped every day, and nature takes its course.

"But many clues are contradictory. In the letters we found on the first day, whether it was the belief in resisting foreign invaders or the decision to build strong defenses and clear the countryside later, they were all Confucian ideas. Throwing oneself into the tiger's clutches in order to escape the chaos of war is in line with the principle of 'a harsh government is more ferocious than a tiger'...

“I still haven’t figured out what’s going on.”

Lin Chen spoke out everything he thought of like pouring beans out of a bamboo tube, earning a respectful look from Tang Yu beside him.

"You know a lot. How did you do it? Even if you prepared outside the dungeon and entered the designated dungeon, it shouldn't be so exaggerated, right?"

Lin Chen smiled embarrassedly: "Maybe it's because I'm still a college student. The school library has more complete information, so I just memorize some when I have nothing to do. In fact, I don't know much, and there are many things I haven't memorized yet..."

"…Are you sure you are a college student and not a high school student? I remember when I was in college, I even gave back high school knowledge to my teacher."

"Haha, it was only after I entered the weird game that I started to actively expand my knowledge..."

While the two were arguing, Qis collected the photos scattered on the wooden bed, turned around and walked out of the room.

He walked downstairs at a moderate pace and headed towards the main door of the residence. He saw an old man in a black straw raincoat and a scholar in blue clothes walking in one after the other.

The old man was holding a bunch of keys. It seemed that he was the one who came to manage the mansion after the dead old lady, and there was a high probability that he would not survive the night.

The scholar has a strange face, but looks familiar to the players.

He carried a jar of wine, placed it on the table in the mansion, and smiled at Qi Si: "I am Li Yi, and Master Meng asked me to bring some good wine to the heroes. I will lead them to find the tiger monster's lair later."

He undoubtedly has the memories of the first two scholars, but his personality is different.

Qi Si gave him a friendly smile, walked past him out of the mansion gate and looked to the east.

Soon, a figure in a purple skirt appeared at the intersection, holding a lantern, and walked towards the residence.

The revenge is here. (End of this chapter)