Chapter 56

Mo Yi took a few steps forward and stared at the half-closed door with a heavy gaze.

The faint light from the shabby candlestick couldn’t dispel the darkness in the room. Swaying shadows were casting strange silhouettes with the twisted tables and chairs on the room’s uneven walls, like living ghosts, alternately transforming all kinds of strange shapes. 

The strong smell of blood in the house had almost disappeared.

The rotten and dark smell of dust re-occupied people’s senses. It mixed with the faint smell of blood that lingered, which was almost imperceptible, and pressed heavily on people’s hearts like stones.

But on the uneven ground at the entrance, there was no trace of blood left.

Mo Yi’s eyes turned to the injured player who was placed on the chair before. 

That man was dead.

The cheeks that were still plump before were flattened, the lips widened in despair, revealing the dehydrated mouth and tongue. The eyeballs were protruding, staring blankly at the ceiling, as if he didn’t understand what happened before he died.

Mo Yi’s gaze slowly moved down and landed on his injured leg.

Between the broken cloth, the wound was white, the bones sticking out, which looked particularly shocking. Even more strangely, there was no trace of blood on the wound.

The floor under the chair was also too clean.

In some instances, depending on the specific situation, the corpse may disappear automatically… However, the bloodstains in each instance were like a mark or a sign, and it would be fixed in place where it was left, even if the corpse was collected by the system. If you die, blood will be left behind.

But this time, the body was still there, and all the blood was gone.

Even the bloody handprint left on the wooden door when the previous player came in was gone. 

The blood disappearing outside the house could still be explained by being absorbed into the ground or by the dead trees, but the disappearance from the wooden floor inside the house was extremely strange.

Under the dim light, Mo Yi’s face became paler and paler, his thin lips pursed tightly, almost bloodless.

–It was like the whole room sucked the blood out.

Just then, the Mist suddenly took a step forward and approached without warning. 

The distance between the two instantly shortened, and the clear and cold breath enveloped Mo Yi at once, like a pine forest in the mist after the rain.

His voice was deep and low, and seemed close to his ear:

“You don’t have to worry about this instance.”

As if he didn’t understand the hidden meaning in his words, Mo Yi was stunned and turned his head to look at the Mist. 

……no need to worry? What did he mean?

He saw the Mist narrowing his light gray eyes slightly, the neat profile of his face looked a little cold under the light, and his thin lips pursed into a shallow arc:

“In the last instance I entered as a player, which affected the progress of the game, which therefore led to a significant increase in difficulty.”

The Mist stared at him with a pair of penetrating light-colored eyes, and let out a slight smile: 

“This time, I didn’t enter the instance in any capacity, and… if you hadn’t sucked my blood, you wouldn’t have been able to see me.”

We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.

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Mo Yi pursed his lips and frowned with a shallow line between his eyebrows. He looked around the whole room inconspicuously, and when he saw that no one was paying attention to them, lowered his voice and asked:

“So, the reason you don’t want me to worry too much is… the difficulty of the game won’t increase because of you?”

Unexpectedly, the Mist shook his head.

His eyes softened a little, and the corners of his lips curled up slightly: 

“The membership test instance is for all players who have discovered the connection between reality and the game, and found props to complete the plot of the instance.”

Mo Yi narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, and subconsciously rubbed his knuckles with his fingers.

The hard bones were covered with thin skin, which was pale and had not seen the sun for a long time, so it turned a light red with the action.

The Mist’s gaze lingered on his hand for a moment, then swayed away unnoticed, and he continued: 

”The difficulty of the instances you have experienced since entering the game were not low. It can even be said… they were very high, and the other players… Although they have experienced a lot of instances, most of them came from c-level or b-level instances.”

So… what he meant…

This may be an insurmountable instance for those players, but it was actually not as terrible as imagined?

–Then why did he only now remember to say this? 

Mo Yi was slightly stunned.

In the next second, he seemed to understand something.

Perhaps due to Jiang Yuanrou’s extremely nervous attitude, Mo Yi was overly wary of the difficulty of this membership instance, so since he entered the instance, his nerves have been extremely tense.

And this kind of tension with a non-positive state of mind almost affected his judgment and reasoning ability, making him look forward and backward and worry about gains and losses. 

He thought his nervousness was well hidden, and didn’t expect it to be discovered.

Mo Yi’s lips formed a faint smile, his dark eyes showed a little real warmth, and the outline of his face softened a bit. He said sincerely:

“Thank you very much.”

–After all, it is rare to comfort people in such a roundabout way. 

Seeing this, the Mist froze for a moment, his eyes flickered, and he suddenly turned his head to the side, and coughed uncomfortably:

“‘Cough’… no thanks needed.”

At this moment, Yu Ran came out of the room next to him, and when she looked up, she happened to see Mo Yi standing at the entrance of the corridor.

“…Mo Yi?” 

She raised her eyebrows in surprise and stopped him: “You are out?”

Mo Yi was stunned, and followed her voice to look at Yu Ran.

Only to hear her ask with some concern:

“You didn’t encounter any danger inside, did you?” 

Mo Yi smiled politely and nodded with restraint at her: “Thank you for your concern, I’m fine.”

Yu Ran took a few steps closer, but before she got to Mo Yi’s side, she felt a bit of an inexplicable chill on her body. Although she didn’t know where this strange feeling came from, she subconsciously felt that it was dangerous.

Although she didn’t delve into it, Yu Ran unknowingly stopped.

Her eyes followed the direction Mo Yi had just looked at, and she also saw the dead body of the injured player. 

Yu Ran was startled, she couldn’t help but take a sharp breath, unable to control her volume. She stumbled and asked:

”He- he’s dead? How could it be? I didn’t hear anything at all!”

Mo Yi’s eyes sank, he nodded slowly, found his words and said:

“Yes, and he should have died of blood loss.” 

Yu Ran recovered from the shock and stared at the man’s corpse. She also noticed the different appearance of the wound on the corpse. She frowned and asked, “The blood?”

“Yes, it’s gone.”

Mo Yi nodded, his expression a little heavy:

“It seems like we must be careful not to get hurt in the future.” 

Yu Ran understood what he meant:

Once injured, they are likely to end up with the same fate as that player: being sucked out of blood by this instance and dying.

She took a deep breath and forced herself to look away from the corpse. She quickly calmed down, and asked:

“By the way, did you find any clues in the corridor?” 

Mo Yi briefly described the kitchen at the end of the corridor, and then gave Yu Ran a complete retelling of the third nursery rhyme he found in the there.

Yu Ran’s brows slowly wrinkled along with his narration, and she murmured, “There is a third nursery rhyme…?”

This nursery rhyme didn’t sound as straightforward as the other two, but for some reason, there was a vague sense of unease in her heart.

… It would be better to say that in such an environment, the appearance of this kind of childlike nursery rhyme seemed even more bizarre. 

Mo Yi’s face was a little solemn: ”Moreover, I think… this may not be the last one.”

Unlike the two instances he had experienced before, this instance seemed to be based on nursery rhymes, rather than any buildings that existed in reality.

Such a fictional space made finding side quests even harder.

It also made the entire instance extremely unpredictable. 

And since it was based on nursery rhymes, it must not be composed of only these few rhymes.

So what role did the nursery rhyme “The Life of Solomon Grundy” play in this instance?

These mysteries came one after another, shrouding Mo Yi’s heart tightly, and his forehead seemed to be covered with a shadow.

Suddenly, Yu Ran seemed to remember something, and looked up at Mo Yi: 

“By the way, I found this in the next room.”

As she spoke, she handed Mo Yi a piece of paper.

It was a crumpled, yellowed sheet of paper, with uneven tearing marks on the side edges, as if it had been torn from a book at random, covered with dust and oil, and brown handprints like dried blood.

Mo Yi was startled and reached out to take the paper. 

His fingers subconsciously slid across the rough and uneven edges of its sides, the feeling under his fingertips felt particularly distinct, almost painful.

It was strikingly similar to the piece of paper nailed to the wall in the kitchen, no matter its quality, size, or the marks on it.

Mo Yi lowered his eyes, pressed his doubts to the bottom of his heart, and began to try to identify the crooked handwriting on the paper.

The handwriting was more vague and uglier than the one in the kitchen, as if it had been written by a drunken and delirious person, crooked and incoherent. 

Mo Yi frowned, read the words on the paper with some difficulty, meditating silently about them:

“Don’t… cry, my little one?”

Next is a large stain, blurring all the handwriting on it, and it was completely unclear. At the bottom of the paper was a line of handwriting that looked clearer:

”nothing can harm you.” 

Recognizing these two sentences was the limit, the others were completely covered by dust, which made it impossible to read at all. And these few words that could be distinguished had no beginning or end, which was confusing.

Mo Yi handed the note back to Yu Ran and asked:

“Where did you find it?”

Yu Ran replied: 

“As soon as I entered the room, it was laying in a ball under the bed.”

While thinking about it, Mo Yi walked towards the room in the direction pointed out by Yu Ran.

As soon as he entered the door, a cold and depraved smell rushed over his face, as if something that had been left for a long time had become moldy.

Mo Yi’s attention was instantly attracted to the head of the bed. 

On top of the headboard was a dark mask.

The curved nose stretched out like a bird’s beak, the eyes made of gray glass, staring at the door like a human, looking extremely ominous.