Infinite Flow: Becoming a God in a Nightmare Game

Jiang Qi lowered his eyes and remained silent, looking down at the ground in front of him, seemingly lost in thought.

As the moonlight spilled over the edge of the blue brick well, crabapple petals fluttered down onto He Yuping's shoulders.

She reached out and broke off a half-open branch, tucking it diagonally into her dark blue hair, her fingertips still carrying the scent of damp moss.

Immediately, He Yuping slowly got up from the well.

The rustling sound of cloth shoes crunching over fallen leaves grew louder as Jiang Qi approached, and he smelled the sweet fragrance of crabapple blossoms.

The sound abruptly interrupted his thoughts.

"do not move."

Before He Yuping could finish speaking, Jiang Qi had already made a move.

His Adam's apple bobbed as he took a half-step back, only to bump into the cold white wall.

The girl tiptoed and tucked a crimson petal behind Jiang Qi's ear, her sleeve brushing against his taut jawline as she swung it up.

"The crabapple blossoms are a perfect match for you."

"Thank you for the compliment, but my partner will get jealous."

As if on cue, He Yuping suddenly felt a chill on the back of her neck.

Lu Zhi stood with his arms crossed not far away, his eyes dark and his handsome features radiating coldness.

He Yuping wisely moved three steps away from Jiang Qi, saying, "I know what you want."

In the blink of an eye, Lu Zhi had already pulled Jiang Qi into his arms.

The delicate crabapple blossoms were crushed by Lu Zhi, and dark red sap seeped out in his palm.

In a short while, a vermilion stage appeared out of thin air in the center of the courtyard.

He Yuping stepped back to the center of the stage, her feet crunching on the fallen spider lilies. Crimson petals swirled up her moon-white skirt.

The only two armchairs below the stage gleamed with a faint light, their backs carved with a crane with half a broken wing.

As He Yuping flicked her plain white sleeves, dark red flower buds suddenly emerged from the gaps in the stage pillars.

The spider lilies climbed wildly along the faded curtain, quickly engulfing the couplets in front of the stage.

"Would you like to see me dance?"

"Consider him my only audience."

Jiang Qi watched as her embroidered shoes trod across the blue bricks, each step revealing new clusters of flowers.

The words were polite, but the actions were forceful.

He Yuping flicked her wide sleeves and pressed the two of them down onto the armchair, the sandalwood armrests digging painfully into their backs.

She walked lightly, stepping backwards onto the stage, her embroidered shoes shattering the moonlight on the ground.

"This performance of 'The Soul' was originally intended to be sung for Wang Shaoqing during the Qingming Festival."

As she flicked her water sleeves, she hummed a passage from "The Peony Pavilion," the flower juice crushed by her embroidered shoes staining her skin like blood. "But he buried himself in the ruins of the front lines, leaving me not even a scrap of clothing."

Jiang Qi gripped the armrest and watched her spin in the blood-red rain of flowers, the arc of light drawn by her golden hairpin shattering the moonlight.

The paper money that failed to fall at Wang Shaoqing's grave is now turning into white butterflies, chasing after the swaying water sleeves on the stage.

As she tossed her water sleeves into the air, crimson petals burst forth from the ground, surging like a river along her swirling skirt.

"The flowers were in full bloom, a riot of colors!"

He Yuping's wide sleeves fell down, revealing a faded red string on her wrist.

Crimson spider lilies bloomed one after another on both sides of the stage, their delicate stamens trembling as they brushed against her white skirt.

As Jiang Qi gazed at the swaying crabapple blossoms at her temples, a memory that didn't belong to him suddenly flooded his mind.

That was at the city gate of Jinling, where human heads had been hanging for over a month.

That day, the north wind swirled with snowflakes, and scarlet tassels clung to the broken neck bone, resembling the flowing sleeves on a theatrical stage.

The erhu began to play.

He Yuping twirled amidst the crimson petals scattered on the ground, her gold-embroidered shoes crushing the blossoms, yet unable to crush the icy tenderness in the lyrics: "By chance, you seem to be entwined with me, by the edge of Plum Village..."

Jiang Qi's knuckles turned slightly white.

“So this ‘The Peony Pavilion’ was originally just a spectator,” he said, reaching out to catch a falling petal from the other shore, the crimson juice staining his palm.

And those alluring spider lilies were climbing up their shoes through the cracks in the blue bricks.

As the last tremor of the string sank into the well, He Yuping's skirt was entangled with two nearly withered spider lilies.

The butterfly wings embroidered with gold thread were still hanging on the cuff, but the person had already staggered and fallen to the edge of the platform.

The crabapple branch slid from her temple to her collarbone, the edges of its petals showing signs of withering yellow wrinkles.

Bloodstains seeping from the cracks in the stage were creeping up the moss and onto the soles of Jiang Qi's shoes.

"The 23rd day of the first lunar month..."

He Yuping suddenly chuckled, and the red string on her wrist snapped.

The countless spider lilies withered at the same time, turning into tiny specks of light floating in the moonlight.

The stage pillars began to fade, revealing the original mottled vermilion lacquer, with half a rusty arrowhead stuck in the crack.

Suddenly, a draft swept through the well, carrying fragments of opera lyrics that landed on Jiang Qi's face.

Lu Zhi raised his hand to shield Jiang Qi, but instead caught a few cold begonia petals, their crimson color faded, resembling frost-covered scraps of paper money on the city wall.

When I looked up again, the stage was just a blurry outline. He Yuping's last line, "Like these flowers and grasses, people love them," was stuck in the broken strings of the zither, becoming a sob.

Before the afterimage of the stage had faded from sight, the red umbrella's joints were already pressed against Jiang Qi's back.

The umbrella surface was stained dark red, as if a layer of blood had congealed on it.

"Let's go, save your friends."

As the gust of wind stirred up by the rotating umbrella swept across the stele forest, Lu Zhi saw the winding cracks on the sandalwood coffin.

The once vibrant vermilion lacquer was peeling away, revealing the moldy cypress wood underneath, as if it had been forcibly dragged back to the present from the depths of time.

He Yuping leaned her red umbrella against the blank monument next door, and two pigeon-blood-colored pills rolled out of her sleeve.

Lu Zhi smelled a strong metallic rust scent—a scent he had smelled countless times in the mass graves, a sweet and metallic smell that only emanates from pent-up resentment.

He Yuping tapped her fingernails on the coffin lid, and cinnabar powder fell from the cracks.

She poked her fingertip into the crack in the coffin, and the rotten wooden planks recoiled as if they were alive.

"The Soul-Suppressing Nail is completely rusted."

Jiang Qi stared as she pried open Lin Wanchu's chin.

The moment the pill entered her mouth, frost suddenly billowed from the bottom of the coffin, and the thin layer of snow clinging to Lu Xue's hair began to melt.

A white mist rose from the entire cemetery, and dew on the pine needles condensed into ice beads that hung in mid-air.

The elixir energy, condensed from a century of cultivation, was reshaping the decaying flesh, and Jiang Qi saw Lin Wanchu's fingertips tremble.

He Yuping retreated into the shadows, bent down to pick up the umbrella, the red tassels hanging from the umbrella entangled with the remaining opera script.

A drop of elixir was seeping into the crack in the coffin along her pale wrist bone.

The begonia in He Yuping's hair had completely withered, but the surface of the umbrella was rippled with blood, vaguely revealing the outline of the eaves of the opera house from years ago.

"Take me out of here, and I will preserve their souls and bodies for you, making them immortal and able to return them to their original lively and energetic state."

As soon as he finished speaking, the system's cold, mechanical voice sounded at just the right moment.

[System announcement: Players Lin Wanchu, Lu Xue, and Xu Cangsheng are all dead.]

[Lin Wanchu and Lu Xue's soul recovery rate is 30%, Xu Cangsheng's soul recovery rate is 100%.]

[Countdown to dungeon end: 5:00]

[Surviving players, please answer the questions as soon as possible!!!]

A scarlet dialog box exploded in the void, and a blinding red light, accompanied by a sharp buzzing sound, crashed into the center of Jiang Qi's pupils.

Those bloody "Warning! Warning!" words were multiplying wildly along the air cracks, crawling across the field of vision like a spider web.

The countdown timer started flashing, and with each tick of the number, He Yuping's body became increasingly transparent.

Perhaps due to the time constraint, the system voice suddenly rose in volume: "Please identify the culprit within three minutes, or you will be permanently trapped in the dungeon '囍'!"

Jiang Qi held He Yuping's red umbrella between his fingers, his voice calm and unhurried.

"There are two brides in the dungeon, one of whom is named He Yuelin, and she committed suicide."

"One of them was named He Yuping; her death was a combination of suicide and homicide."