Shh~ Don't Speak

The coffin had appeared out of nowhere, right in front of him. A strange, indescribable feeling surged through his limbs like a tide, and the oppressive air made him feel as though he were suffocating.

But before he could figure out how the coffin had appeared out of thin air—

"Ah!!!"

A shrill scream interrupted his thoughts.

A shadow lunged at him in the darkness. Xu Tong dodged to the side, and the other person slammed hard into the ground, mud spraying in every direction.

Seeing the spots of mud on his shoes, Xu Tong grimaced and reached down to wipe them off. But halfway there, he noticed in surprise that his leather shoes had somehow turned into cloth shoes sewn from coarse fabric.

It wasn't just his shoes. His pants and shirt had all changed, too.

Xu Tong glanced from side to side, then quietly pulled open his pants and looked down. "Hey, nice and breezy!"

"What the hell is this place? Show yourselves, you bastards! Waiter! Host—"

The angry roar came from the side. Xu Tong didn't need to look to know it was the fat man, Li Bo. He had finally crawled out of the mud and was staring around at his surroundings, astonished and terrified.

The houses before them had vanished without a trace. In their place was a forest that stretched beyond sight.

No one knew what kind of place this forest was. The trees were tall, their leaves broad, yet even when sunlight shone down, only a few faint beams pierced through the gaps.

And right in front of them stood a battered coffin full of holes, half buried in the earth.

"Where's my watch? Where's my gold chain?"

After a brief moment of shock, the fat man suddenly realized that his clothes were gone. His watch, gold chain, and phone were missing, too.

That sent him into a rage. He stamped his feet and started cursing.

"Robbers? Thieves? Do you know who I am? As soon as I get back, I'll have your shop torn down!"

"Brother Li?"

A figure crawled out of the bushes and asked in a quiet voice.

"Huh?"

Li Bo turned around. But when he saw it was Wang Shaohui, disappointment washed over his face. He even cursed impatiently, "Damn, these people are completely out of their minds. They'd even rob a poor student like you?"

It sounded as though he was sticking up for Wang Shaohui, but what he really meant was that being robbed alongside him was beneath Li Bo.

"You're here!"

Zhang Hao and Zhou Yu soon emerged from a corner nearby. They were still seven or eight meters away, but Li Bo's voice was so loud that anyone who wasn't deaf could have heard him from twice that distance.

Li Bo calmed down a little when he saw Zhang Hao and Zhou Yu.

"You got robbed, too?"

Li Bo stepped closer and glanced at Zhou Yu's clothes. A hard-to-detect lecherous look crept across his fleshy face.

"Robbed?"

Zhou Yu froze for a moment, then frowned. "If we'd only been robbed, that would be one thing. But do you really think we were robbed?"

Zhang Hao and Wang Shaohui shook their heads. Everything had changed too quickly. The moment they saw the coffin, the world before their eyes seemed to spin, and the next thing they knew, they were here.

On top of that, their clothes had all been changed without their noticing.

As Zhou Yu had said, they could have accepted it if they'd merely been robbed.

"Did we... see a ghost?"

Wang Shaohui looked at the gloomy forest around them. He could make out plenty of graves and broken coffins among the trees, and a chill began to creep over him.

"Don't scare yourself!"

Zhang Hao was a little bolder. He tried to reassure Wang Shaohui. "There's no such thing as ghosts."

"Everyone, check yourselves for clues," Zhou Yu reminded them.

At her words, they hurriedly searched their clothes.

"There's something!"

After rummaging around inside his shirt, Zhang Hao really did find something: a short knife and an envelope.

"I've got something, too!"

Wang Shaohui pulled the same kind of envelope from his sleeve. He didn't have a short knife, but he did have a jade plaque shaped like a bagua symbol.

Zhou Yu had something, too, but hers was a bronze mirror.

Seeing that everyone else had found something, the fat man, Li Bo, started rummaging through his clothes as well. "What the hell is this?"

He stared at the thick stack of Underworld Banknotes in his hands, and his whole face fell.

The others had daggers and jade plaques, or at worst a bronze mirror. Why was he stuck with a thick stack of Underworld Banknotes?

"Damn it, are you screwing with me? Host, come out! Next Qingming Festival, I'll burn this money for you!"

Zhou Yu ignored the fat man's complaints and looked toward Xu Tong. But when she raised her head, she found him staring at her. She frowned. "What about you?"

"Just a little trinket!"

Xu Tong shook the Cinnabar Bracelet around his wrist.

Zhou Yu frowned. She didn't like this flippant guy at all, but she still forced herself to remain patient. "Let's open the envelopes and see what's inside."

As she spoke, Zhou Yu opened her envelope. Inside was nothing but a black-and-white still.

The moment Zhou Yu saw the still, she froze. Her eyes were fixed on the face in the picture—a face identical to her own.

Zhang Hao glanced at it from the corner of his eye. The still showed a coffin suspended in midair, with Zhou Yu sitting beneath it in a red bridal gown. Even stranger, a pair of rotten hands were clamped around her throat.

The still was so eerie that just one glance made Zhang Hao's scalp prickle. And the main character in it was Zhou Yu herself.

The others hurriedly opened their envelopes, too.

Like Zhou Yu's, each envelope contained a still.

But the instant they looked at the pictures, a jumble of images flooded their minds.

A black coffin.

Two Paper Dolls holding suonas, grinning at them.

Amid the chaotic memories, Zhang Hao saw himself bound to a large wooden table. Beside him stood a butcher with a pig's head, holding a gleaming cleaver in each hand.

Just as the cleavers came down toward his head—

His throat suddenly tightened, and a chill swept over him. Zhang Hao jolted awake from the vision, hopping about and flailing his arms.

His scream snapped the others out of their visions, too. They looked at Zhang Hao's terrified expression, their own faces now strange and uneasy.

Only Xu Tong sat on a rock to the side, his eyes half closed and his expression calm. Unlike the others, who were overcome with fear, he seemed to be immersed in the vision, savoring its pleasures.

In the vision, it was as if he were examining the scene he had just witnessed from a third-person perspective.

When he saw himself in the vision, hoisted high into the air by two iron hooks, Xu Tong couldn't help frowning.

He clearly didn't like that scene. If it were up to him—

He'd prefer something like this.

A thought flashed through his mind, and the vision before his eyes twisted along with it...

Two rusty iron hooks pierced through his flesh, one on either side. As they were slowly pulled up, his flesh peeled open with them, torn alive from his body and hung high in the air. Like a paper-cutting, it formed a huge 囍 character.

"Hss..."

Watching the scene unfold in his mind, he drew a deep breath of air, like a smoker desperate for a fix.

When he opened his eyes again, he felt even more eager to explore this so-called Script Space.

That's right, it was Script Space.

Besides the visions they had seen, each of them had also been infused with fragments of information.

From those fragments, they could determine that they had been drawn into a strange space called the Script World. They could only leave alive by following the rules set by the script, playing the roles assigned to them, and completing their mission.

Otherwise, they would be trapped in the Script World forever—or meet their deaths.

"Hahahahaha!"

But just then, an abrupt burst of laughter interrupted their thoughts.

Pointing at Zhou Yu and the others, the fat man laughed. "Come on, seriously? People still pull this kind of stunt these days?"

"Keep your voice down, Brother Bo!"

Zhang Hao stepped over and grabbed the fat man's arm, signaling him to lower his voice.

But the fat man couldn't care less. He only raised his voice and pointed around at their surroundings. "It's all fake! Have you ever seen a hidden-camera prank show? They must've drugged us with some kind of sedative or hallucinogen, brought us here, and started messing with us. I bet there are cameras hidden all around us!"

"Hey, you lot, come out! What you're doing is illegal, and I'm calling the police on you! Come out right now! Hurry up! I'm done with this!"

Cursing as he went, the fat man walked over to a coffin poking halfway out of the ground and planted his foot hard on it. "Come out, or I'll have the police arrest you!"

"Li Bo!"

Zhou Yu scowled and shouted sternly, "Cut it out!"

Zhang Hao and Wang Shaohui also stepped forward and grabbed his arms, trying to stop him from carrying on.

But the two of them were no match for the fat man. He shoved them aside in a couple of movements, and just as he was about to keep throwing a fit—

Xu Tong suddenly clapped a hand over his mouth. "Shh~ Don't speak!"

The others froze, unsure what Xu Tong meant.

But when they saw him tilt his head and prick up his ears as if listening for something, they fell silent, too.

The surroundings fell quiet. But soon, a "shashasha" sound rang out.

"Creak... creak... creak..."

The sound grew louder and louder. When everyone followed it and looked down, they saw a hairy hand reaching through the fist-sized hole in the coffin beneath the fat man's feet...

I made a few changes to the previous two chapters, including changing the protagonist's name and adding a few little details. Those who are interested can look for them; those who aren't can just keep reading, since they shouldn't affect the plot.