Terror is resurging, but only I am.

Chapter 5: The theme of this bizarre game is... "Mahjong"?
"Hiss—ya—"

The street was right outside the inpatient building. It was already past 10 p.m. Yan Ming didn't know what had happened when the stick insect fell onto the street. He only heard the girl let out a few painful cries, and then the area returned to calm.

An elderly woman and a young girl walked down the corridor of the inpatient department. To their left was the darkness brought by stick insects, while to their right was the light they had never yet set foot in.

Yan Ming looked to the dark ward on his left. He could vaguely see two or three patients lying on the beds, their blankets neatly tucked in, and the patients were all sleeping peacefully.

Looking to the right, in the ward where the stick insect girl had just entered, it appears to be a private room…

No, it should be called a "one-legged ward," because Yan Ming only saw a section of a man's thigh that he hadn't had time to finish enjoying in the ward.

Was it eaten by that stick insect?
She looks like she has a small mouth and a thin neck, but actually has a big appetite.

“Something’s not right tonight.” The old woman walked cautiously along the wall with a cat-like gait. “There are supposed to be night patrols at 10 o’clock, but it used to be doctors and head nurses. Today it’s the patients in the psychiatric ward. I suspect things have gotten chaotic in the psychiatric ward.”

Yan Ming suggested, "How about we talk about it tomorrow?"

The old woman shook her head: "We're probably being watched now. We need to find out what's going on at this hospital."

“Okay,” Yan Ming accepted.

During the past six months of paranormal resurgence, he was forced to develop a personality of "not taking initiative, not refusing, and not taking responsibility," that is, "not taking initiative when encountering the supernatural," "not refusing team decisions," and "not taking responsibility for violating taboos."

Now that strange things have come knocking, there's no room for hiding.

"You're not from this city, are you?" the cat-faced old woman suddenly asked.

Although she said she was asking, she already had the answer in her heart. She continued, talking to herself, "But you are different from the outsiders I met more than 20 years ago. I can feel it."

Yan Ming remained silent. There was no need to deceive a seventy or eighty-year-old man now, given the generational difference between them.

Although the old woman was prone to emotional outbursts when facing ghosts, it did not diminish her profound experience and clear understanding.

In comparison, he was more interested in the outsiders the old woman was talking about.

How could someone have entered the Ghost Realm more than 20 years ago?

Doesn't that mean this big-bellied ghost existed more than 20 years ago?
"Can you tell me about those outsiders?" Yan Ming asked curiously.

The old woman didn't hide anything; it was as if these secrets had been buried in her heart for decades, and she couldn't reveal them to relatives or friends until she met a new stranger.

“They are playing a deadly game, and Wangcheng is the game arena. I had brief contact with them before, and they are a very special group of people.”

“During that period, Wangcheng was more turbulent than ever before, but after about half a month everything returned to calm. I tried to find these people, but soon realized that all the winners of that game had left.”

game?

This strange statement immediately reminded Yan Ming of some novels he had read before, such as some bizarre games in the infinite flow genre. They also set up a special place where players would use their wits and courage to fight against vengeful ghosts and seek a way to survive.

Generally speaking, he refers to each game as a "dungeon," and what is called a dungeon is actually a ghost realm within a ghostly entity.

“I’ve never heard of these people.” Yan Ming shook his head. Before the resurgence of supernatural phenomena, he had never had any contact with the supernatural in the nearly twenty years before.

“In the past, I thought that all of this might be fake, or that I had developed a mental illness from pretending to be a ghost for too long. But every time I see these products that are clearly not from Wangcheng, and these things left behind by outsiders, I know that those experiences are all real.”

As the old woman said this, she took two marbles out of her pocket.

Yan Ming's eyes widened in surprise. He remembered taking a look inside the bag. Where did this old woman find it?
The marbles were crystal clear, about the size of walnuts, with small balls inside that were constantly moving irregularly, like goldfish swimming in a pond.

He looked closely and saw that each marble contained four small balls, each a slightly different color, and there were words on their surfaces.

The characters “物” (thing), “缺” (lack), “境” (circumstance), “行” (travel), and “病” (illness) are represented by eight balls in two marbles, totaling five different characters, but their meanings are currently unclear. “Wait a minute.”

Yan Ming looked at the five characters and suddenly felt that they were somewhat familiar, so he quickly took out a small notebook from his backpack and turned to a certain page.

This was something the Wheelchair King had taught him before; it was his basic classification of some ghosts. He looked at the five tentative types of ghosts, then at the words on the marbles, and surprisingly, he completed the matching.

Object ghosts are ghosts that possess specific objects, such as candles, umbrellas, and coffins.

The term "缺" (qu, meaning missing or incomplete) refers to a ghost whose body is either missing or supplemented, such as a slit-mouthed ghost or a headless ghost.

The term "境" (jing) refers to environmental ghosts, or earthbound spirits, such as water ghosts or ghosts in mirrors.

"Xing" refers to a behavioral ghost, which possesses a certain rigid behavioral logic, like the spying ghost that clings to him.

Sickness, sick ghosts, ghosts that are obviously sick, such as the tuberculosis ghost that Dr. Wang mentioned. He said that if you can scrape out the "unbreakable" ghost phlegm from the tuberculosis ghost, the success rate of entering the ghost realm of the big-bellied ghost will increase by 99%.

The words inside the marbles surprisingly match Wang Ming's classification of ghosts. What does this mean?
The plagiarism rate for the wheelchair-bound king's doctoral dissertation is a bit high.

Despite the joke, Yan Ming could sense a deep connection between the two, as they were both set to originate from the same source.

Could the Wheelchair King be from a bizarre game?
"What are you looking at?" The cat-faced old woman leaned closer to look at the words on the small notebook, squinted, thought for a moment, and then understood. "You mean that each word in the marble represents a ghost?"

She pondered for a moment, then shook her head and said, "No, that's not what those people said. They said the words here represent 'elements,' and no one said anything about ghosts or anything like that."

Yan Ming nodded silently. He felt that words and ghosts had something in common, but they couldn't be the same thing.

Real-world ghosts are definitely not things that can be held in your hand; otherwise, how could the world have completely collapsed in less than a month?

Players of those eerie games probably didn't make a ripple at all in the face of the supernatural revival.

The old woman continued, "I once helped a girl and took her in for three days. Before she left, she gave me these two marbles, saying that if I made them collide violently, I could temporarily borrow some strange powers or save my life in danger."

"Collision?" Yan Ming looked at the marbles, puzzled.

The old woman pointed to the marbles and said, "Look, there are two 'realms' in one marble, and one 'realm' in another marble. When they collide, they can form three. You can use the power of the realm by silently saying 'collide' to temporarily create a special environment."

Can three identical balls "touch" each other?
hiss--

Don't rush, I know this well.

Before this, Yan Ming had considered that these players from the eerie game must have some means to fight against the ghosts.

It may not be possible to completely suppress the ghost, since the supernatural power of ghosts is hard to describe, but at least it can give you time to escape.

However, he never imagined that the method of fighting ghosts could be like "mahjong"!

What kind of eerie game is this?

If three are "pong", then four are "kong"?
If you collect four sets plus one pair, can you still win?!
Yan Ming wasn't sure what this game was all about, but the bizarre player struggling to survive in his mind suddenly became abstract.

Clearly, the use of this special combat item will be full of strategic elements.

Yes, it must be a real game of strategy.

The kind of game where someone else might lose their life in a single lucky draw.

　New author, new book, seeking everything!
　　
　
(End of this chapter)