Chapter 6: New Flyer
Bai Cha was indeed doing it on purpose.
After all, although she felt like throwing up, it wasn’t as if she absolutely had to vomit into the pot.
Ever since entering the game, deep down she hadn’t felt any fear, and even had a kind of secret excitement.
Her desire to live and her desire to court death weren’t contradictory.
In her short twenty years of life, due to her health, she had always been confined to one place.
She was like a dodder vine that couldn’t grow independently and could only parasitize others.
She had put on a perfect facade for herself: gentle and quiet, obedient and sensible, pure and kind.
But she had always known that she was actually dark, sensitive, selfish, and craved excitement inside. She performed, observed, and passed each day bored.
So, being drawn into this game, the surging joy deep within her heart was so clear.
Especially this rule-based instance.
Guilt appeared in her eyes as she looked at Xiao Xiao, at a loss.
Xiao Xiao didn’t know either. She looked at the flyer.
“It only says here that the food is clean and safe to eat, it doesn’t say what happens if you dirty it…”
Anyway, Xiao Xiao wouldn’t want to eat it anymore. Although she still found the smell of meat very fragrant, she felt even more disgusted psychologically. This aversion directly offset the strange attraction.
“Let’s go, let’s leave here first,” Xiao Xiao said.
If something was really going to happen, half a minute had passed, it should have happened by now.
“If you feel uncomfortable in any way, you must tell me.”
Bai Cha nodded lightly, one hand rubbing her stomach, her eyes inadvertently sweeping across the slab of meat on the table.
The meat, which had originally looked fresh and well-marbled, was now highly decomposed, and the originally thick layer of pigskin had now become a thin… human skin.
It was really not surprising at all.
Bai Cha withdrew her gaze, as if she hadn’t noticed these changes from beginning to end.
The comments were complaining about her.
[I’ve watched this instance several times, this is the first time I’ve seen someone fucking vomit into the pot]
[I just want to know if these people will still be able to eat when it’s time for breakfast tomorrow morning]
[Thanks, already throwing up]
[The little girl looks decent, why does she keep doing this?]
Bai Cha finally confirmed that the comments indeed provided very little useful information.
Most of them were just watching the show.
It made sense. If the comments could provide a lot of information, why wouldn’t these veteran players ask the audience?
Bai Cha then closed the comments.
They walked out of the dining hall and returned to the front desk.
Xiao Xiao looked at the Buddha statue with some apprehension.
To be honest, they didn’t yet understand the significance of this Buddha statue.
But everyone was aware of the eerie nature of this statue.
Bai Cha had already picked up the folder on the front desk.
Inside were registration records.
On the first page of the check-in information were the names of all eight of them.
Bai Cha and Xiao Xiao were in a double room, 306. The check-in time was 3:03 PM on June 5, 2022, and the expected departure time was before 11:59 AM on June 8, 2022.
Bai Cha seemed thoughtful.
It seemed this was the final deadline.
“Is the time in the real world the same as the time in the instance?” Bai Cha asked.
Xiao Xiao, who was also looking at the list, was taken aback.
“Not necessarily. Sometimes you might spend three to five months in the instance, but when you go out, you find that only two or three days have passed. Other times, it is indeed synchronized.”
Bai Cha asked curiously, “Then if it’s synchronized, where did I go in the real world while I was in the instance for three days?”
Xiao Xiao shrugged.
“Don’t worry about that. The game will find you a good enough reason, and no one around you will suspect where you went.”
“I see…”
As Bai Cha spoke, she opened the first page of the registration form.
The second page was blank, and several pages after that were also blank, which seemed normal. But when she flipped to the third-to-last page, new information appeared.
It was a group of registration information where the names had been blacked out with a pen.
The times were different, but they were all three-day stays, with the most recent check-in date being in March.
However, in the settlement column, some were marked as “settled,” and others as “extended stay.”
Adding them all up, there were fourteen rooms in total. It was hard to say how many guests there were; they might have been like them, two people per room.
Flipping to the next page,
a flyer fell out.
Bai Cha picked it up. The picture printed on the front of the flyer was still the same.
No, it couldn’t be said to be exactly the same. Looking closely, the hand gesture of the Buddha statue was different.
“Sister Xiao, look.” She pointed out the difference to Xiao Xiao.
Xiao Xiao picked up the previous flyer and compared them.
The Buddha statue on the flyer in the room had its thumb and index finger touching, with the other fingers naturally spread out, forming the teaching mudra.
The Buddha statue on the flyer that fell out at the front desk had its middle finger touching its thumb, with the index finger raised, forming the tarjani mudra.
The meanings represented by the two gestures were different.
Bai Cha’s health wasn’t good. Besides frequently going to the hospital, she also often went to temples to burn incense and worship Buddha.
For no other reason than that some of her illnesses couldn’t be diagnosed by Western medicine, reliable traditional Chinese medicine doctors couldn’t be found, and her constant illnesses didn’t improve, so she had to resort to superstition and seek the blessings of metaphysics.
Although she didn’t know much about this, she had indeed curiously asked in her childhood why the hand gestures of Buddha statues were different.
Taking the two pictures as examples, the teaching mudra, as the name suggests, is for preaching and teaching the Dharma, while the tarjani mudra is a demon-subduing mudra in Esoteric Buddhism. The demon-subduing mudra in the Buddhism that spread to the Central Plains is different from this.
Of course, the Buddha statues on these two flyers weren’t proper Buddha statues at all.
They were just similar, but she didn’t know what they actually were.
Xiao Xiao looked at the pictures for a while before flipping the flyer over and comparing the words on the back.
Sure enough, the rules on the back were also different.
The rules on the flyer from the front desk were as follows:
[1. The front desk of the guest-house is open from 9:00 AM to 10:00 AM and from 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM. If you find that the front desk is unattended during business hours, please call the front desk phone to contact the guest-house.
- The guest-house has three floors. If you find an extra floor, please walk backwards down to the first floor and contact the front desk for assistance.
- The nights at the guest-house are very quiet. If you hear strange noises disturbing you, please come to the front desk to contact the front desk for assistance.
- The guest-house does not provide catering. The freshness of the food in the dining hall cannot be guaranteed. Guests are advised to consider carefully before eating.
- The guest-house does not have a public bathroom, only private bathrooms in each room.
- If you find that the water in the bathroom has turned red, do not panic. Immediately come to the front desk to make a call and contact the front desk for assistance.
- The key to the guest-house’s main door is at the front desk. However, if you want to open the door, please contact the front desk to apply for its use first, otherwise, we will not be responsible for the consequences.]
Similar, yet almost completely different rules.
Xiao Xiao’s brows furrowed tightly.
No wonder the survival rate of this instance was low. Which rules were real, and which were fake?
“One side says to contact the guest-house, the other says to contact the front desk…”
Which one was the truth?
Bai Cha didn’t make a sound. She scanned her surroundings and, not finding a clock, asked, “What time is it now?”
Since there were front desk business hours and a final departure time, there had to be something to tell them the current time, right?
