Infinite spooky game

At midnight on May 5rd, or at midnight on May 3th, in the center of Jiangcheng City.

It was the darkest time of the day. The street lamps on the street corners cast a sparse yellow-white halo of light. The thick darkness swallowed up the scattered light sources as if physically, and the narrow shadows of people flickered on the ground.

Since the implementation of the curfew, the city's lively nightlife has completely become a thing of the past. The bustling streets turn into a forbidden area for ghosts at night. Occasionally, a few investigators who deal with ghosts pass by, as small as ants in the metropolis that is like a monster's nest.

"The A-11 area has been surveyed and has not been contaminated by any strange factors. There are no abnormal phenomena." Qin Liang took out the walkie-talkie to report the situation, then continued walking along the street with his companions.

Before joining the Investigation Bureau, he was a freelancer who stayed at home playing games and earning some extra money as a game host.

When humans cannot see the future, they will always consciously numb themselves with cheap pleasures. In an environment lacking hope, the entertainment industry will always flourish. With his talent in gaming, Qin Liang has enough money to maintain his basic needs and start a family.

Therefore, he is generally satisfied with the existence of the Federation, which is disliked and even hated by many people. Even if he occasionally encounters some dirty things that violate public order and morality, he can only make a few indignant remarks on the Internet.

After entering the weird game, he had good individual strength and acted prudently. As soon as he became a formal player, he was absorbed by the Jiuzhou Guild and then became a member of the Weird Investigation Bureau in reality.

As he experienced more and more horrific copies and struggled to survive in an environment without order and morality, he became more and more aware of the value of peace and naturally hoped that the Federation's rule would last forever.

Right now, he only hopes that the final copy can be completed as soon as possible, and that Fu Jue can win in the end like he did in countless copies in the past, and catch all the unstable elements like Bai Ya, Puppet Master, and Sichi, and bring peace to the world.

"It looks like there's nothing here... That's right, the strange outbreak points are mainly near the Ruidanshen Casino in the lower city area, which is tens of thousands of miles away from here. How could it spread here so quickly?" Qin Liang looked around and muttered softly, not knowing whether he was talking to himself or chatting with his teammates beside him.

"Well, I think we should concentrate our forces on the lower city area and send a lot of people to block the weirdness first. What is this called? Catch the leader first. When doing things, we should focus on the main contradiction."

Yes, although Qin Liang is not an outstanding and strong person, he is willing to take the lead in risking his life when encountering a disaster out of a simple sense of justice and responsibility.

This time he volunteered to participate in the action against the weirdness, and he was ready to sacrifice heroically. He even wrote a suicide note carefully and set a timer for its release.

Who would have thought that along the way, we didn't encounter a single ghost.

This is like deliberately going hungry for three days before walking into a buffet restaurant, only to find out there is no food. It is such a waste of emotions and life!
"Do you hope to encounter ghosts?" the teammate asked suddenly.

This teammate was a girl who had just graduated from college. In Qin Liang's impression, she was a person with severe social anxiety who could not speak a word for a long time. It was rare for her to take the initiative to ask him questions like this.

"I can't say it's hope..." Qin Liang narrowed his eyes and said, "I've made heroic preparations, but at this critical moment, I was sent to stroll in this godforsaken place. It's too embarrassing to tell others about it."

He was talking nonsense, and extremely realistic illusions appeared in front of his eyes for no reason.

He walked through the sea of ​​blood and mountains of corpses like an important character in the game. The evil spirits and monsters turned into bloody rain the moment they met him. He stood between heaven and earth, like a king in charge of killing. After he fell, countless people cried for him. He was no longer a good-for-nothing waste, an unlearned scumbag in people's eyes, but a real hero.

The rotten and moldy cubicle where he lived was given a new look; he was buried with his deceased parents, and large patches of white flowers bloomed on his grave...

"Is this what you wish for?" asked the teammate.

Qin Liang opened his mouth to answer, but alarm bells suddenly rang in his heart.

Why would he want to die? How could someone want to die?
No, something is wrong... Qin Liang reached his hand to his waist inconspicuously and was about to press the alarm bell behind the intercom, but his limbs suddenly lost strength.

The air was filled with a sweet floral scent, so strong that it almost made people faint. He seemed to be wandering in a sea of ​​flowers after the rain, with sparse petals blooming at the edge of his vision and his feet covered with fallen flowers.

Qin Liang felt an itchy sensation in his heart and lowered his head. He saw a rose growing out of his flesh and skin at the location of his heart, blooming at a speed visible to the naked eye.

He turned his head with difficulty and looked in the direction of his teammates. Where was the person? It was clearly a rose half a person's height, emitting stamens and making strange human voices...

Similar scenes are happening in every corner of Jiangcheng. The roots of roses are spreading silently to every corner of the city, breaking out of the ground without anyone noticing, looking for prey.

The tiny wishes of mankind were magnified in a distorted form, becoming a beacon marking the target in the darkness. Hundreds of investigators had roses pierced through their chests at the same time, standing still in every corner of the city, turning into cruel and terrifying statues.

The flesh became the nourishment of the rose, and the blood dripped into lines, flowing in all directions like the blood vessels of the earth. A thin red blood film gradually covered the sky and the earth. The newly dead ghosts and the old dead ghosts were stacked and crowded together, with strange smiles on their faces, as if their long-cherished wishes had been fulfilled.

In the blood-red sky that stretched for thousands of miles, a god in a red suit descended from the sky and put his index finger between his lips: "Believe in me, recite my name, and perhaps I will fulfill your wishes."

……

Xiacheng District, where the Redan Casino is located.

Bright red roses bloomed all over the street. The ground that was once covered with dirty sputum and smelly rotten water was completely covered, leaving only a sea of ​​flowers in full bloom.

Large flower buds popped up one after another and fully blossomed in just a few seconds. Zhang Yiyu originally thought that using the sea to describe the flowers was just an exaggeration, until she saw the scene before her, she realized that such a description was actually realistic.

When the flowers flourish to a certain extent, they take on the texture of flowing water, filling every gap like a cold, invisible substance, and flowing in all unobstructed directions.

Faced with such a spectacular sight, humans will inevitably develop a fear of being placed in the infinite, just like lower-level creatures facing higher-dimensional existences, the latter's every move is an unknown disaster.

"Zhang Yiyu, can you deal with these roses?" Mu Dongxu asked.

Zhang Yiyu woke up as if from a dream and swallowed her saliva: "I... I'll try."

After the "Red Maple Leaf Boarding School" copy ended, she was taken in for a while. The despair after her hopes were dashed almost drove her crazy, but fortunately she finally survived to this day.

Ning Xu, who was in charge of supervising her, died outside. All departments of the Weird Investigation Bureau were overwhelmed by the matter of the final copy. Unknown weirdness broke out in Jiangcheng without warning. Just when people were needed, some of the lower-danger levels of the contained objects were temporarily released to fight poison with poison.

Zhang Yiyu kept in mind the promise Mu Dongxu made to her that as long as she could do her best to participate in handling this incident temporarily named "Rose Disaster", she would be able to regain her freedom.

She has been imprisoned for four years. She wonders how anxious her mother, who once depended on her for survival, will be. She must seize this opportunity...

Zhang Yiyu walked cautiously into the alley full of roses. The intoxicating fragrance of the flowers filled her nose, making her suffocate and vomit. She suppressed her fear, silently said "I am a ghost, I am not afraid of death", and reached out to grab the stem of a rose.

It was as if a sleeping monster was awakened. Countless thorny branches entangled her body and dragged her towards the center of the sea of ​​flowers. She was about to scream, but a rose bloomed in her mouth at the right time, blocking all the noise.

Zhang Yiyu was dragged by Rose through the alley and into the Ruidanshen Casino.

This two-story building has completely become a field of roses, and there is no trace of its original appearance. Huge roses are scattered in the corners and beside the tables, and through the thin red fascia-like petals, you can vaguely see human faces embedded in the stamens.

Everyone was smiling contentedly, as if they were trapped in a beautiful dream from which they would never wake up. Zhang Yiyu approached step by step, her low whispers rising and falling in their ears.

"I won again! Take the money, take the money!"

"Hehe... I live in a big house and I have a wife..."

"My leg is healed! What a miracle, what a miracle!"

They realized their wishes in their dreams, they lived a happy life in their dreams, and they no longer wanted to wake up and return to this painful reality...

"Tick-tick...tick-tick..." is the sound of water drops falling.

Zhang Yiyu looked up and saw a man hanging upside down from the ceiling. The vines had dug into his flesh, leaving deep wounds visible to the bone. Blood was dripping like a waterfall, making a sound like a leak.

Zhang Yiyu saw the man's face. It was Shao Qingmin. She had met him once at the brief oath-taking ceremony before the operation. She knew that he was the director of the Beidu headquarters and the core figure of this operation.

Actually... even someone of this level failed?
“Run…” The man hanging upside down, his eyes blurred by blood, shouted breathlessly when he heard footsteps.

Zhang Yiyu didn't run, because there was no road behind her. In the sea of ​​roses in front of her, a scarlet figure walked out from the shadows and smiled at her: "We meet again."

It was a young man in a red suit and trousers, with bloodstains on his ghostly face and the image of roses blooming in his scarlet eyes, gorgeous and evil.

He climbed up to the second floor on the rose bushes, reached out and plucked a rose from Shao Qingmin's bloody body, and smiled with thick malice: "A fool who tries to tame wild beasts and create gods, the most appropriate ending is to raise a tiger to eat itself... I can feel your hatred, do you want to kill him?"

The more Zhang Yiyu listened, the more familiar the young man's voice sounded. He was the one who had deceived and controlled her in "Red Maple Leaf Boarding School", but later turned a deaf ear to her pleas and was indifferent.

But she felt strange. The "Siqi" in her memory was not as ostentatious as he is now, and his malice was not so hideous and exposed.

"Do you want to kill him?" the young man asked, tilting his head, like a curious child.

Zhang Yiyu breathed rapidly, and her past experience of being imprisoned in the holding cell flashed before her eyes: the dark environment, the lack of food, the painful experiments...

The specific hatred became macroscopic through the erosion of time. She hated everyone in the Weird Investigation Bureau, hated them for treating her like a ghost, hated their indifference... If she had the chance, she would really want to kill them.

The blood condensed into a long knife in front of Zhang Yiyu. She seemed to lose the ability to be afraid in an instant. She reached out to grasp the handle of the knife and walked up to the second floor along the steps covered with vines.

Shao Qingmin had lost the ability to resist, but he was still alive. He stared at Zhang Yiyu with unwilling eyes, and spoke intermittently: "No... don't believe him... he is lying to you..."

Zhang Yiyu walked to the railing on the second floor platform, half a step away from Shao Qingmin, and whispered: "I don't believe him. I've been fooled by him once... But I want to kill you more."

The next second, she raised the long knife and stabbed it into the man's heart. Her trembling hands crushed the flesh and blood in his chest, and blood gushed out in an instant.

Blood slid down the blade onto her palm. Zhang Yiyu seemed to realize what had just happened. Her shoulders trembled and she began to sob softly.

But her hands were like machines that had been programmed to repeat themselves. She numbly pulled out the knife, stabbed it in again, and pulled it out again...

She cried and stabbed the corpse with a knife. All her past depression and fear seemed to flow away with the blood at this moment.

She had never realized so clearly before: she was a ghost and could kill people, so there was no need to be afraid of them.

The young man watched this farce with a smile from beginning to end, and at this moment he suddenly took out a card with a black background and red patterns from his pocket as if by magic.

On the card, a figure in a red leather jacket was holding magic props such as playing cards and small balls, and holding a cage containing pigeons, and hurriedly ran from the back of the stage. He seemed to be tripped by the uneven ground, and he stumbled, the small balls fell to the ground, and the pigeons flew out of the cage.

[The innocent bait is manipulated by the string, and the lamb becomes an accomplice of the crime]

[Dance, a puppet show that weaves the threads of fate in the shadows]

[After all, every body is just a container for lies]

[Congratulations on unlocking the ID card "Assistant" (belonging to the "Fool Trickster" set)]

Zhang Yiyu subconsciously took the card, and then heard the young man declare with a smile: "You will have a place in the final copy, but before entering the final stage, I need you to clear out those boring insects..."

In an instant, countless ghosts controlled by Rose raised their knives and stabbed at the investigators who were still struggling beside them.

Corpses were scattered all over the ground, blood flowed like a river, and everything happened in silence.

……

Jiangcheng Branch of the Weird Investigation Bureau, fifth underground floor.

The bright red color of the "Life Book" filled with the names of the investigators faded away one by one, and the remaining black names marked the deaths of living people one by one.

"Something happened to Qin Liang's group. Didn't they say there was nothing unusual?"

"Director Shao is dead, how could that happen?"

"Director Mu and Lao Liao also..."

At first, some people expressed their surprise aloud, but gradually they became speechless, and the only sound left in the space was the rising and falling breathing.

Lives were abstracted into names, and the passing of life was visualized as the passing of colors. They intuitively saw the death of their companions, as if they were attending a funeral that was always ongoing, and they couldn't help but observe a moment of silence.

When the last trace of bright red was replaced by black, all intercoms were disconnected at the same moment, and every investigator who watched this scene made the same conclusion in their hearts:
"Jiangcheng has fallen."

(End of this chapter)