You're a Jellyfish!

Suddenly, something stirred in Su Chen's mind.

Something felt wrong. Why would "it" be kind enough to bring visitors to see the jellyfish and restore everyone's missing body parts?

There had to be a scheme behind this.

Su Chen looked intently toward the Cross-Eyed Staff Member.

The man was staring at the jellyfish without blinking, a look of obsession on his face.

"The jellyfish are truly beautiful, but I don't think there are enough of them."

He kept his eyes on the jellyfish as he spoke, standing sideways to the group.

Su Chen frowned at those words.

Sure enough, this bastard was up to no good.

The next moment, the Cross-Eyed Staff Member turned around, looked at the contestant from Pottery Bowl Country standing closest to him, and said softly,

"You're a jellyfish too."

The words had barely left his mouth, before the contestant could react.

The chosen one's body abruptly vanished, then appeared out of thin air among the jellyfish.

Terrified, he thrashed desperately in the water, but the harder he struggled, the more jellyfish he touched.

That only left him severely poisoned.

Before long, the chosen one from Pottery Bowl Country stopped moving and drowned.

His corpse floated among the jellyfish, their faint glow illuminating his contorted face and making it look especially eerie.

Yet he hadn't turned into a jellyfish as "it" had said.

"Why haven't you turned into a jellyfish yet!"

The man shrieked at the corpse.

He was like an unreasonable child.

"It must be something wrong with you. I'll try another one."

With that, he turned to look at the other chosen ones.

Now everyone was terrified. The contestant from Pottery Bowl Country had been killed so suddenly that they had been too stunned to react.

Now his words made it clear that he intended to kill more people.

Everyone snapped out of their daze and scattered in a panic, desperately running back the way they had come.

At this point, no one cared whether they affected his perception.

He was killing people himself now, ignoring the rules.

Anyone who didn't fucking run now would have to be a complete moron.

But before they could take more than a few steps, they discovered, to their despair, that their legs no longer obeyed them.

Anyone who contradicted his perception would become his target.

That rule still applied.

Now everyone fell into utter despair.

Su Chen stood among the crowd without running.

Although he was shocked too, he knew running was useless.

He was trying to work out the underlying logic behind this.

There was no way the man could kill people at will just because he felt like it.

If he could, why would this world even be called a rule-based horror story?

If he didn't have to follow the rules, wasn't this all a joke?

Su Chen racked his brains.

Meanwhile, the Cross-Eyed Staff Member paid no attention to everyone's panic.

His brow was furrowed, as though he too was pondering something.

Then he flicked his arm, and the chosen one from Marijuana Country vanished in a flash, likewise appearing in the jellyfish area.

The same struggle followed, then the same death by drowning.

The floating corpses filled everyone with an ever-deepening chill.

The man stared at the two bodies, his frown growing deeper.

"Why? Why won't you turn into jellyfish!"

He spoke in furious frustration.

"It must be something wrong with you. Remember this: you're jellyfish!"

As his shrill cries rang out, a thought surfaced in everyone's mind, constantly suggesting that they were jellyfish.

Then the man grew even more frenzied, waving his arm repeatedly.

Five chosen ones were thrown into the water at once.

Before long, the outcome was the same. All five drowned, and death notifications appeared before the survivors' eyes.

Sweat broke out on Su Chen's forehead too. He kept feeling as though he had remembered something, but he couldn't grasp it.

As time passed, more and more chosen ones died.

The corpses floating in the jellyfish area gradually obscured the jellyfish's glow.

Then the Cross-Eyed Staff Member walked up to Su Chen.

He glared at Su Chen angrily and said through gritted teeth,

"You're a jellyfish! You're a jellyfish!"

At that moment, everyone in Dragon Country's livestream chat fell into despair.

"Fuck the Horror Story World! It's getting more and more unreasonable! At least it used the rules before. Now it's just flipping the table, huh?"

"If this is how it's going to be, just give everyone a Gatling gun that spits blue fire. Whoever gets picked can blast those freaks to hell."

"Exactly. All fear comes from insufficient firepower!"

"We're screwed. It's Su Chen's turn. I've already closed my eyes. I can't bear to watch! This is so fucking infuriating!"

The people of Dragon Country voiced their discontent.

Yet even as Su Chen faced "it," he didn't give up resisting.

Instead, at this most dangerous instant, a flash of insight lit up his mind.

He finally understood.

He understood why the man thought the chosen ones were jellyfish!

Looking at the contestants who had drowned so far, Su Chen realized that every one of them had been bitten by the White Lion.

Yet not a single person who hadn't been purified by the White Lion had died.

That wasn't normal!

He combined this with the theory about jellyfish he had deduced earlier.

Only when someone was bitten to death by the White Lion would the part of them remaining in the Surface World turn into a jellyfish.

In that case, what "it," with its impaired, childlike mind, understood might have been this:

Get bitten by the White Lion, then die, and you would turn into a jellyfish.

As everyone knew, jellyfish and rabbits could comfort "it," and "it" loved jellyfish.

But "it" feared the White Lion, which also meant that "it" had never actually seen how jellyfish were created.

So "it" had most likely happened to receive a written message from a staff member.

But because "it" only had a child's level of understanding, "it" had completely misinterpreted the meaning.

By then, the man had already raised his hand and was about to throw Su Chen into the water.

Su Chen finally spoke.

"I'm not a jellyfish!"

He said it firmly and without hesitation.