Infinite spooky game

Zhang Yiyu squatted in a corner of the tent, looking at Zhou Ke who was lying in the middle of the tent. It was not right to lie down, nor to continue sitting.

Even if Zhou Ke was a normal person, being alone with a man and a woman in a small space would be enough to make her uncomfortable, not to mention that Zhou Ke was a humanoid whose behavior was unpredictable...

Zhang Yiyu was afraid that once she closed her eyes, she would see some horrific scene when she opened them again, like the time in Jiang Cheng, with blood, flesh and body parts piled up around her.

Fortunately, as a ghost for many years, she has long been accustomed to sleeplessness. Although she has now regained her human physique, she can still go a night without sleep.

She stared at Zhou Ke's figure anxiously, but saw a cluster of scarlet light faintly lit up in the darkness, flickering, which was particularly bewitching.

Looking closely, where is the light? Zhou Ke opened his eyes and looked at her with a smile, his eyes were full of inquiry.

Zhang Yiyu stared at each other in a state of embarrassment. She made small talk and said, "Dong Xiwen is out."

As she said this, she remembered that Dong Xiwen had asked Zhou Ke before leaving the tent and had obtained Zhou Ke's permission. This was just nonsense, and it made her look guilty.

"I know." Zhou Ke said casually, and sat up with a rustle. "I'm going out for a walk too. If you're bored, you can come with me."

“Not boring, not boring!” Zhang Yiyu quickly pulled up the wool felt to cover her head and closed her eyes to pretend to be dead. “Boss, please do as you please. I won’t hold you back!”

Zhou Ke chuckled, opened the curtain and walked out of the tent, running into the snowstorm that covered the mountains. Zhaxi and the yaks were gone, and looking around, he could not see Dong Xiwen and Lin Jue either.

Zhou Ke raised his eyebrows slightly, knowing that the two of them were probably together.

An idealist with a messianic complex who is always ready to sacrifice himself and a self-righteous, indecisive fool are a perfect match.

Zhou Ke actually didn't have too much undue malice towards Lin Jue. He just thought it was strange that such a person had not yet become extinct from this world, and he also thought... he was quite useful.

Only moral people can be kidnapped by morality. Compared with those blatant egoists, good people are easier to use.

As for the extent to which Lin Jue and Dong Xiwen would collude, and what means they would use to deal with him, he didn't care much.

Those who stick to the bottom line are destined to find it difficult to gain an advantage in the second-hand game. The moment Lin Jue activated the effect of [Dark Judge], the outcome was already doomed - the evil side of human nature never disappoints anyone.

Zhou Ke fiddled with the tape recorder and walked forward aimlessly, as leisurely as if he was taking a walk, as if he was not in the final copy of the weird game, but as a tourist visiting the snow-capped mountains.

A goat was standing on a snow pile not far away. Its neck was pierced and blood was gushing out from the wound, wetting the hair on its chest and forming a small piece of light pink snow pile under its hooves.

Even so, it was still alive, and its eyes stared coldly at Zhou Ke with an emotionless look as if it was looking at a dead person.

Zhou Ke suddenly felt that the goat looked very much like a human, which made him wonder if it was the vengeful spirit of someone he had killed in the past coming to claim his life. Combining the known clues, it was possible that the goat was killed by him in another time and space.

He walked over there, but halfway through, he felt something was wrong, so he turned around. The tent and the Ark Guild camp behind him had disappeared, leaving only a blank expanse of white. There was no other figure in the world except him.

"Did this trigger some mechanism? Or... did we enter some different dimension?" Zhou Ke guessed with interest and continued walking towards the goat.

The goat always stood not far in front of him, looking at him from the side. When he came closer, it turned around and walked forward, then continued walking deeper into the snow-capped mountains, like a patient guide leading him to some hidden place.

A few gray shadows suddenly appeared on the ridge at the end of the field of vision. They looked like another group of travelers. Zhou Ke stopped and stood still. Those figures slowly approached. He saw a familiar face. It was someone he had killed before.

The villagers of Qijia Village and the dead in Jiangcheng crawled out from under the ice one after another, and stood all over the mountains and plains unknowingly. Each of the dead was covered in blood and had fatal wounds when they died, and they looked at him with resentment and hatred.

"Why do you kill us? We have no grudge against you, why do you want to kill us?" The dead asked in unison.

Zhou Ke tilted his head and thought for a moment, then suddenly laughed: "The reason... I just wanted to kill you, and I happened to have the ability to kill you, so I killed you."

The corpses all over the mountain roared in anger, and pairs of bloody arms waved and grabbed at him, leaving more blood on his already bloodstained white shirt.

He walked forward unconsciously, even quickening his pace, until he reached the center of the zombie swarm, raised the recorder in his hand high, and turned it on.

The strange hymn resounded in the mountains: "Look at Luoda Pinxuehuci, the so-called altar is colorful, the so-called dancing beads are bone beads, the so-called messenger has a shiny body, wearing a mask of a god's face and dancing and singing..."

The sound was not loud, but it was extremely penetrating. It echoed recklessly among the mountains and fields, spreading far away, as if penetrating into the soul and affecting all the senses.

The dead put down their arms, turned their heads stiffly and urgently, searching for the source of the sound. The accusatory look in their eyes before turned to the recorder, and then turned into a kind of desire, as if it was the most beautiful Sanskrit sound in the world, a symbol of salvation and hope.

"It actually works on these ghosts too?" Zhou Ke smiled even more when he saw the scene in front of him. He bent down exaggeratedly as if performing a magic trick. At first glance, it looked like an exaggerated bow.

He placed the recorder on the snow and stepped back, clearly showing fear, yet appearing calm and elegant.

The ghosts who were watching him eagerly didn't notice his departure at all. In their world, the only thing left was the tape recorder playing the hymn. They gathered around the tape recorder, lowered their heads quietly and obediently, and listened attentively.

Zhou Ke pushed aside the bodies on both sides as if nothing had happened and continued to go deeper into the snow-capped mountains. The scale of time seemed to be stretched out and it became increasingly difficult to tell where he was.

Walls of ice rose up from the ground in front of him, standing tall between heaven and earth, blocking his way in a disorderly manner.

He saw his own shadow in the ice wall in front of him, or more precisely, it was Zis, himself in another world line.

"Hello, Zhou Ke." Qi Si said.

Zhou Ke tilted his head, and seeing that the man in the ice did not move with his movements, he smiled happily: "Hello, another me. I didn't expect that after the "Dialectical Game" copy, I would have a chance to talk to myself. It's quite interesting, isn't it?"

"I don't think so." Qi Si looked at him with pity, and when he came closer, he stretched out his hand to him. "I'm curious, do you know clearly who you are? If you do know, what do you think of the answer?"

"Know how? So what if I don't know? At least now, I have an independent way of thinking and behavior choices, and sometimes I can even replace you in the game." Zhou Ke said with a smile, "Each identity card corresponds to a choice at a fork in the road. Some people choose rationality, while others choose madness.

"At the last fork in the road, as a rational person, you decisively gave up the [Fool Trickster] after seeing its negative effects. But in another timeline, you - or rather, me, found the feeling of dancing on the blade particularly interesting, so I bound it. It's that simple." "Yes, you are my madness." Qi Si in the ice wall sighed, looking helpless, "I have also heard a little about what you have done. Destroying a city just because of your hobbies, and being hostile to Kyushu and even the Ark without any plan... Excuse me, you are destined to push things to an irreversible point.

"You are impulsive, arrogant, reckless, and unrepentant. Such a foolish person like you will eventually ruin my millions of years of planning. From the perspective of interests, you are a mistake and should not exist."

Zhou Ke sat on the ground in front of the ice wall, propped his chin with his palm, listened patiently for a while, and asked: "And then?"

Qi Si stared at him coldly and continued to talk to himself: "You have no desires, and people without desires should not exist in the world.

"Thirty-six years ago, I created this strange game. Twenty-two years ago, I released you into the world, all in order to give you desire and make you complete. But you failed.

“Only a god who has had desires can share desires with all living beings, can sleep in the end of the world and wake up in the new era, and can exist as the ancestral god who created all things in the world…

"You are now no different from those straw dogs destined to die at the end of the world. I am very disappointed."

Zhou Ke nodded seriously, following the familiar PUA routine: "What a coincidence. I don't have such a strong obsession with staying alive, and I don't think desire is a big deal. Knowing that your plan failed, I really want to laugh three times to celebrate."

"Is that so?" Qi Si restrained his compassionate expression and laughed almost crazily, "Since you don't want to live, why don't you die?"

……

On the other side, Qi Si opened his eyes and saw the tarpaulin above his head.

He was lying in the tent, as if he had slept peacefully here from beginning to end and had never left. But he knew clearly that everything that happened last night was not an illusion.

That was probably the mechanism of the copy. He fell asleep unknowingly and saw the person he had killed before.

My cousin, my uncle and my aunt, Liu Yuhan, Chang Xu... plus those unlucky guys in "The Sacred City", they are all here. Well, these people may also be blamed on Fu Jue.

What concerned Qi Si the most was what Zhou Ke said to him at the end of the dream.

The Zhou Ke facing him was far crazier than he remembered himself to be. It was as if all the veneer and disguise had been stripped off, revealing his inner desires.

Zhou Ke said that he had desires and wanted to live, and he was not worthy of being a "Qisi". He thought about it seriously and felt that this was most likely a trap set by the ancestor god. After all, he had just tested it in Bai Ma's mirror not long ago and was sure that he was still missing a part.

It doesn't matter if he has desires, people will change. Maybe he will become more complete because of this and be able to open the temple of Sunset Ruins?

Rather than the conceptual problem of empty words, he paid more attention to the information behind Zhou Ke's message: Zhou Ke had great ill will towards him and was able to locate him across time and space. This was indeed a bit troublesome.

It was already bright outside the tent, and the milky morning light shone through the cracks onto Qisi's face, making his complexion half bright and half dark. He sat up, put on his Tibetan robe and walked out of the tent, and saw Baima sitting among the sheep.

"Have you found your sheep?" Qi Si counted the number of goats in the flock and asked knowingly.

Bai Ma shook his head: "I didn't find it, but I know where it is. I don't need to look for it today."

"Oh? Where is it?"

"In a place that will never be reached without a mirror." Bai Ma said vaguely, "It has its own mission. Each of us has our own mission when we come to this world."

Mirror, mirror again...

Qi Si noticed that the sheep carcass that he had stabbed in the throat and threw to the ground last night was gone, and there was no trace of its presence in the snow.

The newly fallen snow buried the evidence of the past, including footprints and bloodstains. Or maybe those things never existed in the first place and had long disappeared in some strange time and space.

Bai Ma suddenly took out a mirror from the package, held it in both hands and handed it to Qi Si: "It's a new day, please look at your destiny again."

Qi Si didn't reach out to take it. He just stared at the woman with a half-smile: "I already watched it yesterday. I don't think it's necessary to watch fate over and over again."

Bai Ma smiled and said, "People change. You may be very different today than you were yesterday. You may grow up or get smaller, and your destiny may change."

Is it different? Like someone who has no desires suddenly develops desires?
Qi Si thought of his dream last night, raised his eyebrows slightly, raised his hand to take the mirror, and looked at the mirror obediently.

Just like the first day, the fog spread from the edge, covered the entire mirror surface and then gradually dissipated. The scene at the foot of the mountain was presented in the picture, and the colorful prayer flags were as bright and beautiful as the colors in oil paintings.

Qis saw himself in a red suit, holding Poseidon's scepter, standing in the crowd with a sincere smile on his lips, seeming very satisfied with the result.

What does this mean? Does it mean that he managed to get out of the snowy mountains?
"Qisi, admit it, you want to live." Zhou Ke's voice sounded in his ears, not sure whether it was the rumination of memory or the reappearance of hallucination.

Qi Si returned the mirror to Bai Ma calmly and said calmly: "I have finished looking at it, and nothing has changed."

Hearing the rustling sound of boots stepping into the snow behind him, Lin Chen finally woke up and walked out of the tent.

After seeing Qis, he seemed to have discovered an incomprehensible phenomenon. He widened his eyes in horror, pointed his finger at the ground, and was speechless for a long time.

"Lin Chen, what's wrong?" Qi Si asked casually, looking in the direction he pointed.

"I...I..." Lin Chen took a breath and uttered a complete sentence intermittently, "Brother Qi, I saw you... have two shadows."

Qi Si also saw it clearly: on the white snow, two figures stretched out from under his feet. One of them matched his image, and the other was twisting wildly, as if it wanted to devour the other...

(End of this chapter)