Dead Men's Theater

[Actor: Shen Niannian]

[Role: youngest daughter]

[Act 1 identity: sacrifice]

Shen Niannian stared at the scarlet theater ticket in her hand.

She fell silent for three seconds.

(￣ー￣)

She was now seriously starting to wonder.

Did this instance have some kind of misunderstanding about the term "youngest daughter"?

Other families' youngest daughters got to act spoiled.

Was she supposed to be sacrificed to the heavens?

The darkness around her gradually receded.

Only then did Shen Niannian see where she was.

This wasn't a stage.

It was an old backstage room.

Mottled wooden walls.

Clothes racks hung full of costumes.

Paper effigies and white funeral wreaths were piled in the corner.

The air reeked of damp and mold.

All fifteen players were here.

Each held a scarlet theater ticket.

Some had gone pale.

Some immediately checked the exits.

Others had already started reading their roles.

"Master..."

"Butler?"

"How come I'm a sedan chair bearer?"

"Wait, why does my role say I'm dead?!"

As soon as the last remark came out.

Everyone's gaze snapped toward the speaker.

He was a young man in his early twenties.

His ticket clearly read:

[Actor: Zhang Yu]

[Role: second young master]

[Act 1 identity: corpse]

Zhang Yu's face turned green.

"What does that mean? I have to die in the first act?"

No one could answer him.

Shen Niannian, however, paid more attention to the first two lines from the system.

[Actors may die.]

[But their roles must not go wrong.]

This instance clearly didn't care whether the actors lived or died.

It only cared-

Whether the play was performed correctly.

Just then.

A woman walked to the center of the backstage room.

She was twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

Her hair was in a high ponytail.

She wore a tight black jacket.

A short knife covered in dark red markings hung at her left hip.

A length of grayish-white hemp rope was wrapped three times around her right hand.

She didn't rush to draw any conclusions.

Instead, she checked all the exits first.

Only then did she speak:

"Those of you with instance experience, give us your number of clears and the type of abilities you have. Newcomers don't need to share private information, just your roles. The most important thing now is to figure out the relationships between the characters in this play."

Her tone wasn't particularly gentle.

But it was steady.

Someone soon recognized her.

"Ye Qinglan?"

A flood of comments quickly appeared in the livestream too.

"It really is Ye Qinglan!"

"A B-rank player from Nanhe City, with seven clears on record!"

"She's not the rules-analysis type. She's a powerful fighter. I heard she once held off a B-rank anomaly head-on for two minutes!"

"This team has a pretty good lineup."

Ye Qinglan paid no attention to the people who recognized her.

She was the first to show her ticket.

[Role: eldest daughter]

[Act 1 identity: bridal escort]

Then.

The other players reported their roles in turn.

The master.

The madam.

The eldest daughter.

The youngest daughter.

The butler.

The bookkeeper.

Two household guards.

Two sedan chair bearers.

The second young master.

The matchmaker.

The Daoist priest.

And three whose roles simply read-

[Guest]

Fifteen people.

As if they had been forcibly crammed into a complete old-fashioned household.

Shen Niannian looked around.

Her role as the "youngest daughter."

Was clearly at the center of the entire plot.

She had an even worse feeling about this.

Just then.

A deathly pale light bulb suddenly lit up overhead backstage.

Szzzt-

A line of bloody writing slowly seeped out of the wall.

[Dead People's Theater Actor Rules]

[1. Once the play begins, please remain in your assigned role at all times.]

[2. Characters may be afraid, resist, or cry, but must not act in ways that clearly contradict their identities.]

[3. Before each act begins, actors will receive their current identities and the basic plot.]

[4. When dialogue prompts appear onstage, please do your best to follow them. When no dialogue prompts appear, you may improvise.]

[5. After an actor dies, please do not immediately stop performing.]

When everyone saw the fifth rule.

They all fell silent for a moment.

"We can't stop even after an actor dies?"

Someone couldn't help asking.

Ye Qinglan frowned.

"Don't interpret that yourselves for now. We'll see once the first act begins."

Just then.

A second set of bloody words appeared.

[Act 1: "Delivering the Sacrifice"]

[Plot summary: The Chen family's youngest daughter has been frail since childhood and has been chosen as tonight's sacrifice. Before the hour of the pig, the family must deliver the sacrifice to the ancestral hall.]

[Act 1 completion condition: The sacrifice enters the ancestral hall.]

Shen Niannian's eyes lit up slightly.

Wait.

Just-

Enter the ancestral hall?

It didn't say she had to die!

The livestream had clearly noticed too.

"Being the sacrifice doesn't mean she has to die!"

"The only condition for ending the first act is entering the ancestral hall!"

"That's important!"

But before everyone could breathe a sigh of relief.

The side door backstage suddenly clicked.

And opened by itself.

Beyond the door.

Was a long corridor hung with white lanterns.

At the same time.

All fifteen theater tickets changed at once.

Shen Niannian looked down.

[Youngest daughter's current task: Go to the ancestral hall under your family's escort.]

[Note: The sacrifice must not deliberately leave the sacrificial procession.]

Shen Niannian: "..."

(｡ŏ_ŏ)

Great.

Even the option of running away had been blocked in advance.

Ye Qinglan walked over.

"What's your task?"

Shen Niannian didn't hide anything.

"I can't deliberately leave the procession, and the only condition for ending the first act is for me to enter the ancestral hall."

Ye Qinglan nodded.

"Then at least during the first act, we can't let you get separated from the group."

As soon as she finished speaking.

Someone beside them suddenly spoke up:

"Why should we?"

The speaker was a man in his thirties.

His role was [household guard].

His expression was grim.

"We have no idea what'll happen after we enter the ancestral hall. Since she's the sacrifice, wouldn't the safest thing be to hide her right now? As long as they can't find the sacrifice, the play can't go on."

Ye Qinglan glanced at him.

"If the play can't go on, that might not be a good thing for us."

The man was clearly unconvinced.

"Are we really going to send her to her death?"

Shen Niannian was just about to speak.

A line cue suddenly appeared on the wall.

[House Servant A: Young Miss, forgive the offense. The master ordered us to make sure you are taken to the ancestral hall.]

The man's face stiffened.

On his theater ticket,

his role was-

[House Servant A]

Everyone backstage looked at him.

The man gritted his teeth.

In the end, he read the line:

"Young Miss, forgive the offense. The master ordered us to make sure you are taken to the ancestral hall."

When his voice faded,

nothing happened.

But the next second,

a second cue appeared.

[House Servant A steps forward and ties the sacrificial red cord around the sacrifice.]

The man looked down.

A blood-red cord had appeared on the floor at some point.

His expression grew even uglier.

"There's obviously something wrong with that thing."

Ye Qinglan immediately warned him:

"That's an explicit plot action. You'd better not refuse it."

The man glanced at Shen Niannian.

Then he looked at the red cord.

In the end, he shook his head.

"No, I can't touch it. In a dungeon like this, who knows if tying a cord around the sacrifice myself will trigger a death condition outright?"

With that,

he took a step back.

"I refuse to do this part."

The next second,

throughout the backstage area,

the applause stopped abruptly.

The audience's clapping, which had been coming from outside the whole time,

vanished completely.

Everyone's hearts sank at once.

The blood-red writing on the wall slowly turned black.

[An actor has been detected refusing to perform an explicit character action.]

[Character error.]

The man's face went deathly pale.

"Wait, I only-"

Smack!

A hemp rope dropped abruptly from the ceiling backstage.

It looped around his neck in an instant.

His entire body was hoisted into the air.

"Help... help me!"

Ye Qinglan drew her blade almost immediately.

A dark-red blade light flashed!

Clang!

A shower of sparks erupted from the hemp rope.

It didn't budge.

Ye Qinglan's gaze darkened.

She couldn't cut through it!

In just a few seconds,

the man's legs stopped struggling altogether.

[Player Wu Lei has died.]

But strangely enough-

the corpse didn't disappear.

It remained hanging there instead.

The next second,

a paper effigy in the corner that had been hanging its head

slowly raised its face.

On its deathly pale paper face,

its features gradually took on Wu Lei's appearance.

It walked over to the red cord

and bent down to pick it up.

Then it looked at Shen Niannian

and gave a stiff smile.

"Young Miss, forgive the offense. The master ordered us to make sure you are taken to the ancestral hall."

The entire backstage area fell silent.

The livestream chat erupted.

"Holy shit!"

"After the actor died, a paper effigy took over his role!"

"So that's what it meant by 'actors can die, but characters can't make mistakes'!"

"The theater doesn't care whether the players live or die. It just wants the play to go on!"

Shen Niannian understood completely now, too.

When a player died,

the character wouldn't disappear.

Dead Men's Theater would find something else-

to keep playing the part.

The paper effigy servant approached step by step, holding the red cord.

Shen Niannian looked at the obviously ominous cord.

She was actually panicking inside,

but she didn't dodge.

She was the [Sacrifice] now.

The sacrifice could be afraid.

She could resist.

She could even cry.

But she couldn't leave the sacrificial procession of her own accord.

So she had to keep playing the role for now.

Just as the paper effigy servant was about to approach,

a thought suddenly occurred to Shen Niannian.

[Nightfall Lolita]

Equip.

Swish-!

Black and red light flashed.

Her ordinary clothes instantly transformed into a magnificent black-and-red Lolita outfit.

Silver hair fell to her waist.

Her red eyes glowed faintly.

The cold aura of an A-rank eerie entity

slowly spread.

The paper effigy servant froze instantly.

[Current status: afraid]

[Current status: too afraid to act]

Shen Niannian: "..."

(⊙▽⊙)

It worked!

The other players all turned to look at her.

Even Ye Qinglan's expression visibly changed.

This silver-haired girl, who had looked petite and harmless just moments ago-

how did she suddenly seem like an A-rank eerie entity after changing clothes?

But the next second,

blood-red writing lit up again above the backstage area.

[House Servant A, please continue Delivering the Sacrifice.]

The paper effigy servant trembled all over.

It looked at the blood-red writing,

then at Shen Niannian.

On its deathly pale paper face,

an expression that looked like it wanted to die somehow appeared.

Shen Niannian understood.

The outfit could make it afraid,

but it still had to act out

the core plot.

She sighed softly

and held out both her little hands.

"Go ahead and tie me up."

Paper effigy: "..."

The hand holding the red cord

was shaking even harder than Shen Niannian was.

The corner of Shen Niannian's mouth twitched.

(￣ー￣)

Wait.

Who was the sacrifice here, anyway?