Before dawn the next day, Xu Tong was already at the door.
Old Man Song gave him the little house on the left, giving him a place to call home in this city.
Over the next two days, Xu Tong tidied up the courtyard during the day and began learning the basics of paper crafting under Old Man Song's guidance at night.
Most people had to practice those fundamentals day after day before they got the hang of them. But with the help of the Prop Card, Paper Craftsman Manual, Xu Tong found them incredibly easy to learn.
Old Man Song only had to demonstrate something once, and after a few tries, Xu Tong could do it effortlessly—and make it look just like the real thing.
It gave Old Man Song an entirely new appreciation for Xu Tong's talent.
But that was still far from enough. The foundations of paper crafting involved more than just technique and skill; one also had to know how to draw and write. Without a Prop Card to help him there, Xu Tong had no choice but to learn the old-fashioned way.
Fortunately, Old Man Song had the patience to teach him. Though neither of them had formally acknowledged their roles, they both understood that they had become master and apprentice.
After dinner that evening, Old Man Song took two black-and-white photographs out of a box and handed them to Xu Tong.
Xu Tong took them and looked. In the photographs, a group of people in official robes and queues sat in neat rows on horseback.
At first, nothing seemed amiss. But when he looked closer, he raised an eyebrow and turned to Old Song, who was sitting in a chair fiddling with his pipe. "Paper dolls?"
Seeing that Xu Tong had figured it out, Old Song nodded with a smile and pointed to the man in a threadbare padded jacket in the lower-left corner of the photograph.
"That's my master! Back when Empress Dowager Cixi was on her deathbed, my master went to make paper dolls for her. He made all of these. Remember, his name was Xue Gui."
Xu Tong stared at the photographs, momentarily stunned. Xue Gui's craftsmanship was on a whole other level from Old Man Li's.
The black-and-white photographs had no color. If Xu Tong hadn't seen Old Man Li's paper dolls before, he would never have guessed that these people riding magnificent horses were paper dolls.
"My master was a famous paper craftsman back then. Nobody could find fault with anything he made."
Old Song picked up his pipe, packed a pinch of tobacco into it, then sat in his chair and began to smoke.
As he puffed away, he reminisced about how his master had taught him to fold paper dolls, his face full of pride.
He kept talking, then suddenly fell silent. When Xu Tong looked up, he saw that the old man had dozed off, eyes half-closed. A steady snore escaped him.
Xu Tong glanced at the clock. It was already 11:20 p.m. He quietly took the old man's pipe, found a blanket to cover him with, turned off the lights, and slipped out.
He had just closed the door when lights flickered in the distance, wavering in the darkness. Looking up, he saw a huge illuminated sign on a nearby building: the Script Murder Experience Hall.
"The next round of the Script World is about to begin. All players, report to the lobby immediately."
"Attention: all players must gather as soon as possible before the script begins. Anyone who is late will lose 10 Script Points per minute. If you don't have enough Script Points, you will be eliminated!"
At the prompt in his ear, Xu Tong curled his lip. Just as he had suspected, there was a penalty for being late.
But the penalty seemed more lenient than he had expected. It wasn't completely hopeless—if you had enough Script Points, you still had a chance to survive.
He changed his clothes, quietly closed the door, and headed toward the building.
It wasn't far. He remembered there being a restaurant over that way, and it would take about five minutes to walk there.
At eleven, the streetlights had dimmed, and there wasn't a single car on the road.
The closer he got to the building, the more the surrounding structures seemed to fall into ruin.
Even the trees lining the street seemed to loom over him, sinister and oppressive.
The traffic lights seemed to stay red forever, like a silent warning that made his heart pound.
"Vmmm..."
He gently pushed open the glass doors, and a familiar face came into view.
Her face was pale, and her sweetness was still cloying enough to make him sick.
When she saw Xu Tong, the woman reminded him nonchalantly, "You have half an hour to prepare. If you don't have anything to do, you can wait in the lobby for the other players."
Then she pointed to a sign hanging on the wall to the left.
A line of small red writing on the sign read: [Players are forbidden to discuss anything related to the script in the lobby. Violators will receive one warning and lose 10 Script Points.]
Xu Tong nodded thoughtfully, whistling as he strolled past the woman.
"Typical!"
The woman rolled her eyes at him. A moment after she sat back down, she looked up again to make sure Xu Tong had really left. Pouting, she returned to her chair, bent down, and pulled a metal box out of the pocket underneath it, setting it on the table.
Just then, her eyes suddenly narrowed. A paper crane had appeared on the table without her noticing.
She picked up the paper crane and glanced beyond the counter, then pouted. "So stingy!"
Even so, she rummaged through the drawers and found a glass jar full of eyeballs. She tossed the eyeballs into the trash, dropped the paper crane into the jar, and admired it.
After looking at it for a while, she seemed satisfied. She set the jar in front of her, casually opened the metal box on the table, and licked her lips with her long, slender tongue at the sight of the food inside.
Before long, a low chewing sound came from beneath the counter...
In the lobby on the other side, Xu Tong discovered he wasn't the first to arrive.
A young man sat across from him. Their eyes met, and after sizing each other up, they both sensed something familiar about the other.
Like Zhou Yu, he wasn't a newcomer.
"Mad Dog!" The young man narrowed his eyes and lifted his teacup with a smile.
Xu Tong sat opposite him. He casually picked up the magazine he hadn't finished reading earlier and said unhurriedly, "Doctor!"
After they had identified themselves to each other, the empty lobby gradually fell silent again.
It wasn't long before footsteps sounded, and three more people arrived one after another.
All three were men, and they were widely different ages. The youngest looked only seventeen or eighteen, while the oldest looked old enough to be the other two's father.
Despite his age, the man made Xu Tong and Mad Dog exchange a glance. He wore a military-green tank top that showed off his exaggerated muscles.
As he sat on the sofa, it almost seemed to tilt toward him.
The man in the middle was about Xu Tong's age. Clutching a pair of headphones, he sat down on the sofa and closed his eyes, as if conserving his energy.
The three showed no interest in introducing themselves, and they didn't even bother to ask Xu Tong and Mad Dog their names.
The arrogance and confidence in their manner made it clear that, in their eyes, Xu Tong and Mad Dog were insignificant nobodies, not worth mentioning.
"Vmmm... clack, clack, clack..."
Red light spilled in from one side of the lobby. Everyone turned to look. There she was, in the same familiar cheongsam.
The only difference was that today she wore a deep purple one.
It lent the hostess's already graceful figure a more mature allure. Like a ripe apple, she seemed to give off a tempting fragrance.
"Welcome to this Script Murder game. Please follow me!"
Her paper fan hid her face. Her alluring voice sent a shiver down the spine, leaving a tingling sensation throughout the body. Mad Dog, sitting on the sofa beside them, couldn't help licking his lips.
But before Mad Dog could get up, two figures had already walked ahead of him into the corridor leading to the game area.
To make matters worse, the hulking man, broad as a mountain, shoved his way past and forced Mad Dog aside.
His mountain-like frame completely blocked the corridor, leaving not even the slightest gap for the two of them.
"Damn it!" Mad Dog didn't dare say anything aloud, but in his head he was already cursing the man's entire family.
Xu Tong didn't mind. He followed at an easy pace, occasionally admiring the promotional photos along the corridor.
As he looked, he suddenly stopped. He had spotted a familiar photo.
A man and a woman sat atop a coffin. Weren't they Zhou Yu and Wang Shaohui, the two who had played the last game with him?
"Know them?"
Seeing that he'd stopped, Mad Dog looked back at the photo. "Anyone who dies in a script leaves a photo here. It's their ending, and the only thing they leave behind when their part is over."
Looking along the wall of photos, Mad Dog drew in a long breath. Each photo showed a player's ending.
Every time he walked past, a chill ran through him.
He always worried that after this trip, his own photo might be added to the wall.
As deep unease welled up inside him, Xu Tong's voice came from beside him. "It's ugly!"
Mad Dog froze and turned to look at Xu Tong. Xu Tong gestured at the photo with a few fingers, his face full of disdain. "Couldn't they at least have taken inspiration from Hong Kong movies?"
"That photographer has to be a single guy. He took such ugly pictures—he definitely doesn't have a girlfriend."
Xu Tong turned back to Mad Dog and said it with a completely straight face.
Mad Dog's mouth twitched a few times. By then, the hostess was standing at the room's entrance. "Players, please enter as soon as possible. The game is about to begin."
The two turned around and saw that the three who had been ahead of them had already chosen a room and gone inside.
They dropped the subject and hurried to the doors.
Three rooms had already been chosen. Only the rooms on the left and right remained.
Xu Tong glanced to the left and was about to head over when Mad Dog suddenly said, "Be careful. They're a team, and they're stronger than we are. Once we enter the Script World, it's best not to follow them."
"Why? Is it so bad to have someone powerful to lean on?"
Xu Tong asked with his hands in his pockets, looking completely carefree.
Mad Dog frowned. "You'd better forget that idea. Teams play differently from us. They can be more aggressive than we can, and they can share information about the script with each other. They can even..."
Mad Dog stopped there, then looked at him coldly. "Just be careful, all right?"
With that, Mad Dog pushed open the door beside him and went inside.
Watching Mad Dog disappear through the door, Xu Tong narrowed his eyes.
Just then, the hostess had somehow come up behind him. Her fan partly covered her face as she whispered into Xu Tong's ear, "Handsome, here's a friendly tip: watch out for the ghost behind you!"
With that, she gave him a shove. The force was so great that he had no chance to resist, and he was pushed straight through the doorway.
"Bang!"
As the door slammed shut, the world before him plunged into a suffocating gloom.
Suddenly, a point of light flickered in the dark room. He looked closely and saw a bright lamp shining from somewhere far away.
The light was drawing closer, little by little.
He narrowed his eyes and studied the approaching light.
"Wooo!!!"
A blurry shape gradually came into focus beneath the light. Staring at the enormous object that had suddenly appeared ahead, Xu Tong narrowed his eyes, silently pulled a nonexistent cigarette from his chest, and took a deep drag of empty air. "Inhale... exhale... I'm screwed!"
The instant the words left his mouth, a huge train burst out of the darkness.
That's the end of Volume One. Volume Two is about to begin. I'll only post one chapter today while I go over the new scenario's story again.
Before you continue