The car entered the mountains.
The road was a rutted dirt track that wound through the mountain forest.
"I wonder if the other two groups have started their games yet," Shi Lianshan suddenly muttered as he drove.
Qin Manjiang seemed interested. "Is there a difference between challenge mode and exploration mode?"
He Jian answered while sorting through the tools he had brought. "Oh, that? It's not really complicated. Challenge mode refers to places where players were previously assigned a Ghost Story Game, but were all wiped out. Ghost stories that leave no survivors are considered extremely challenging, but the rewards for completing challenge mode are also greater."
"Rewards?" Qin Manjiang had heard an unfamiliar term.
"Of course there are rewards. It's a game!" This time, several of them turned to look at him. "Didn't you get a reward for your Beginner Level?"
"There's an icon shaped like a pupil, called a Spirit Pupil, on your phone's Personal Interface. Every time you play a game, as long as you make it out alive, you get some Spirit Pupil Rewards. The Ten Seats are also ranked by how many Spirit Pupils they have."
Under their strange looks, Qin Manjiang carefully searched his memory. An icon shaped like a pupil?
Spirit Pupil?
He was certain he had never seen anything like that.
"I've never seen one. Not even in my Beginner Level."
"No way. Could it be a game bug?" Shi Lianshan was surprisingly up to date; he even knew terms like that.
"I... know of one possibility," Liu Jingqing suddenly said softly.
Seeing the faint confusion on Qin Manjiang's face, the female novelist explained, "Something like this has happened before, but... not in an individual Beginner Level. It was a Multiplayer Mode ghost story. Everyone only managed to escape because of one person, and the entire group made it out. After they left the ghost story's area, that person received all the spirit pupils. The others didn't get a single one."
"Huh? That can happen? Who was it?"
Liu Jingqing's expression shifted subtly. She lowered her head and whispered, "That person was... Yang."
Yang!
The top-ranked player, the undisputed number one.
"Oh... it was him." Shi Lianshan nodded instinctively. "That explains it. But no one else would have taken part in Qin's Beginner Level. How could someone have taken a share of his spirit pupils...?"
Yet at those words, Qin Manjiang froze slightly. No... someone else did take part in my beginner stage.
Not only had someone else been there, that person had contributed enormously. He had helped Qin Manjiang avoid danger at the last possible moment several times, pointed him toward numerous clues, and even at the very end... he had been the one to throw Qin Manjiang out of the fire-
Li Xijiu.
If Li Xijiu was still a player, still alive, then it would make sense that Qin Manjiang had received no Spirit Pupil Rewards for his Beginner Level...
But he had clearly become a vengeful ghost and vanished completely from the real world.
What was going on...?
Qin Manjiang frowned slightly, seemingly unaware that someone behind him had been secretly watching him all along.
"What are those spirit pupils used for?" Qin Manjiang asked.
"They're definitely useful!" Shi Lianshan immediately perked up at the question. "You can exchange Spirit Pupils for some extremely bizarre but useful One-Time Items. Those items still can't let us fight vengeful ghosts head-on, but they can greatly improve our chances of survival. Unfortunately... each player can only ever buy three."
"What's unfortunate about that?" He Jian interrupted Shi Lianshan. "Qin, don't listen to him talk them up just yet. Even One-Time Items aren't something we can afford anytime soon."
Shi Lianshan said ruefully, "True enough. Players like Mr. He and me have been through three Ghost Story Games, counting our Beginner Levels, and we've only saved up about five Spirit Pupils each. But even the cheapest One-Time Item costs ten!"
"If you ask me, our best hope this time is that Tenth Seat player. He's in the top ten! He might even have a permanent item..."
"A permanent item?" Qin Manjiang was even more surprised. Besides One-Time Items, there were permanent ones too?
"Yes. Like One-Time Items, they can't let you fight a vengeful ghost head-on, and you can only use them once per game. But they can serve extremely unusual purposes in a Ghost Story Game! For example... rumor has it that among the Top Ten Seats, the player called Doctor has a cursed scalpel as his permanent item. That scalpel has only one effect: once it's plunged into someone's heart, that person cannot die for half an hour, no matter what happens. But after that half hour, if they haven't escaped the ghost story, the scalpel's curse will immediately turn on them, and they'll die without even a body left to bury."
When Shi Lianshan spoke about Doctor's permanent item, he couldn't keep the envy out of his voice.
"Unable to die for half an hour. Even if you're chopped into mincemeat, you won't die... Something like that is terrifying, but fascinating too..."
At that, everyone fell silent for a moment.
"Forget it. Let's not think about those. A unique item like that costs a full hundred spirit pupils, and it's generated based on the player's own traits, so there are no duplicates. Only exceptional people like the Top Ten Seats could possibly have one..."
"Oh, right, I haven't explained exploration mode yet." He Jian really was a teacher; he stayed organized when discussing serious matters and left nothing out. "You can think of multiplayer modes like ours as ghost stories whose origins the game has already investigated. Take Sick Sheep, for example. It has Opening Lines, doesn't it? That means the game already knows something about the underlying story. Games like that are what we have to play in the vast majority of cases."
"But exploration mode... put simply, it involves ghost stories and curses that even the game can't investigate. If it had Opening Lines, I believe they would be nothing but blood-red question marks. The horror of that mode is far beyond our understanding. I think that's why the Chief Player was chosen."
Qin Manjiang finally understood the differences, but that only stirred his curiosity further. These modes... really made it seem as though someone was controlling everything behind the scenes.
Suddenly, Qin Manjiang looked into the rearview mirror, fixed his gaze on Chen Ping, and asked, "Excuse me, you've been sneaking looks at me for a while now. Is something wrong?"
Chen Ping seemed startled. He waved his hands repeatedly and explained, "N-no, nothing. I just thought you looked familiar."
"Really?" Qin Manjiang smiled, seemingly accepting that explanation. "Maybe we've met somewhere before. Can you remember where?"
Chen Ping shook his head. "N-no... not in Fu City."
Qin Manjiang's interest was piqued. "But I've never left Fu City."
Chen Ping shook his head again. "I... I just think you look a lot like him. I don't think you're actually him."
"You were that sure even before confirming that I've always stayed in Fu City?" Qin Manjiang was increasingly convinced that Chen Ping was hiding something from him.
Chen Ping hesitated, and Shi Lianshan couldn't help prodding him. "Just say it. No one's going to eat you."
At that, Chen Ping quietly glanced up at Qin Manjiang again. "I... I went to university in another city. There was a photo of a young professor hanging in one of our classrooms. He really looked so much like you! Almost... identical."
"But he's been dead for twenty years."
Once Chen Ping had explained, he felt much more at ease. "So I was just surprised that there could be two completely unrelated people in the world who looked so alike. I couldn't help taking a few extra looks."
Qin Manjiang seemed to freeze after hearing Chen Ping's words.
His back went rigidly straight, his mouth immediately closed, and his eyelids drooped before opening again.
Then he slowly raised his hand to reach for the iced coffee in front of him.
The way he turned his neck was extremely unnatural, and in that instant, he began blinking much more rapidly.
Pssht-
He pulled open the tab on the coffee can, mechanically raised his hand, and poured the coffee into his mouth.
Gulp-gulp-
His swallowing maintained a constant rhythm, as precise as if it had been programmed.
His eerie behavior frightened everyone!
Already on their way to the Weird Village, they thought Qin Manjiang had been possessed by a ghost. Shi Lianshan slammed on the brakes!
"Hey! Something's wrong with him!"
Shi Lianshan was just about to open the car door and run.
At that moment, however, Qin Manjiang put down the coffee. His expression, his movements-everything returned to normal.
There was even a hint of confusion on his face as he turned toward everyone and asked:
"What's wrong?"
Thank you to Boqing Shusheng, Fill In the Plot Holes, Okay?, and purej999 for the Helm Master contributions! Thanks to Yi Yu Zhi Qi, Lao Wu Meng, and Twenty-First-Century Refugee for the tips. Thank you, everyone. There'll be another update tonight!
(End of chapter)
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