Chapter 261: [Rotten Bones and Resurrected Flesh] Cutting Through the Crowd
Silence descended upon the room.
Refraining from pressing them with further questions, Bai Cha kept her head lowered, letting out occasional coughs while staring at the umbrella in her hand with eyes that betrayed a subtle thread of panic.
As things stood now, this umbrella appeared to have transformed completely into an ordinary, run-of-the-mill umbrella.
Yet the moment Bai Cha attempted to set it down, a wave of dizziness would instantly consume her head.
Left with no alternative, she kept a firm grip on the umbrella and flipped open the box holding the puppet.
The puppet lay inside motionless, yet facial features and hair had sprouted across its frame.
He currently bore the appearance of a living human.
Because she had sensed something amiss earlier, Bai Cha had refrained from asking many of the questions she had originally intended to voice after extracting the heart.
For instance, matters regarding puppet masters.
Perhaps owing to that puppet guild from before, Bai Cha had kept a mindful eye on the puppet master skill back then.
She simply didn’t know what Wen Zhao’s situation was.
The game hadn’t issued a prompt indicating the completion of the restoration either; it likely awaited subsequent developments.
Closing the box, her gaze fell onto the umbrella in her hand once more.
This umbrella…
Casting a vigilant glance at the group over there, Bai Cha drew out a mirror.
In truth, she had brought this mirror out long ago.
She had been carrying it on her person right from the start.
Housing the mirror, naturally, was none other than Zhao Xiaoai.
Zhao Xiaoai felt profoundly dissatisfied and enraged by Bai Cha’s control over her, yet she was forced to obey Bai Cha’s commands nonetheless.
Because the present Bai Cha exerted absolute suppressive power over her, unless she was willing to step into the mirror to face her one-on-one.
“Mirror, mirror, tell me: who framed me?”
Bai Cha fixated her stare onto the mirror, her voice barely audible above a whisper.
Yet quiet as it was, calculating eyes wouldn’t miss it either.
The three players over there stole glances in her direction with casual subtlety.
The mirror appeared rather cheap—a plastic rim adorned with black, gothic-style patterns, a handle attached at the bottom, and a small oval mirror in the center.
Of course, viewed from the angles of those players, the mirror’s reflective surface remained hidden.
And right now, Bai Cha’s face was absent from the mirror.
Only after Bai Cha posed the question did a face surface inside the mirror with reluctant unwillingness.
Shen Xiao-luo.
Bai Cha raised her eyes instantly to steal a glance at Shen Xiao-luo, only to retract her vision with lightning speed, putting on a facade of attempting to pretend she didn’t care.
Yet that single glance proved far too blatant.
Knitting her brows without making a sound, Shen Xiao-luo cast another glance at the prop held in her hands.
Meanwhile, Bai Cha had already stowed the mirror away inside her pocket, her thoughts impossible to parse from her expression.
Holding the pale pink umbrella, she appeared intent on popping the umbrella open.
Sprawling red, bloody characters surged across the canopy—dense, packed, flashing past in a single instant before disappearing, rendering it impossible to read what they said clearly.
Yet holding the umbrella at close range, Bai Cha caught a portion of the text regardless.
So disgusting.
Slept her way up, didn’t she?
Malice surged straight toward her face in those few short phrases.
It seemed as though these exact words bound the umbrella, forcing its canopy to retract even tighter inward.
Simultaneously, a new prompt reached Bai Cha.
[System Notice: May I ask if you wish to restore the item: Protective Umbrella [Liu Ruyi]?]
[System Notice: You have agreed by default.]
Bai Cha held zero right to choose to begin with; her entire person was pulled straight into the world belonging to Liu Ruyi.
As she plunged into a deep slumber once more, Chen Mi and Shen Xiao-luo turned their eyes over at the exact same moment.
The two exchanged glances afterward, each putting on a fake, hollow smile before retracting their vision.
With Bai Cha choosing to restore an item again just like that, there was no way she hadn’t left behind some protective props like last time.
In truth, she hadn’t necessarily lacked protective measures during the previous run either.
All in all, they needed to seize the time to restore items themselves now as well.
Regardless of whether Bai Cha acted voluntarily or involuntarily, she had already initiated her second item.
The tasks required by this instance still had to be executed, after all.
Simply eliminating all competitors and leaving oneself behind wouldn’t guarantee being accepted as an apprentice either.
The game wouldn’t make things that easy; otherwise, everyone would spend their time figuring out how to slaughter everyone else without violating rules—why bother completing tasks at all?
Case in point: someone like Bai Cha had been shoved into that locked room, yet she emerged completely unharmed regardless.
Precisely because they could rely only on borrowing a knife to commit murder.
Yet those borrowed knives didn’t necessarily obey their commands.
Thus, working on both fronts served as the safest bet.
Over on Bai Cha’s end.
Standing amidst a bustling, crowded throng, she observed her surroundings with a touch of vigilance.
The environment felt extraordinarily realistic—a city draped under the cloak of night.
Sure enough, the power across her frame had vanished entirely.
Yet she could sense the location of the Dodder Vines.
This proved completely different from Wen Zhao’s situation. Naturally, Liu Ruyi and Wen Zhao didn’t belong to the same tier of specters to begin with.
Bai Cha walked in the direction of the sensory connection.
Yet the crowd grew increasingly dense, and she alone moved in a direction opposite to the flow of the people.
Much like a fish swimming upstream against the current.
Bai Cha’s current body condition was frail to the extreme—far worse than her real-world frame.
Jostled and squeezed by the crowd, she found it virtually impossible to move forward.
Inspecting them closely, one would discover that not a single individual possessed facial features—bearing merely blank, canvas-like faces instead.
Pushed backward by the crowd, Bai Cha was forced to retreat.
This clearly wouldn’t do; with the crowd swelling continuously, she might be squeezed to death.
Dying by suffocation inside a specter’s world held the genuine possibility of resulting in real death.
Observing the surrounding environment, Bai Cha caught sight of roadside stalls behind her, with someone selling street barbecue.
Swerving along the crowd, she cut diagonally across the flow, arriving before the barbecue stall.
Then, she kicked the burning charcoal straight into the crowd with a single blow.
Screams erupted from the throng, clearing out a open patch of space indeed.
Seizing the window, Bai Cha snatched the butcher knife resting on the cutting board, swinging it toward the crowd while screaming alongside them.
Perhaps existing merely to follow a set script, faced with a lunatic like her, the crowd chose to yield.
Yet the sheer volume of people caused those behind to push against those in front, blocking her path forward regardless.
Bai Cha raised her knife and brought it down without a shred of hesitation or mercy.
She held little clarity regarding the intrinsic significance of this crowd, yet blocking her path implied that failing to reach Liu Ruyi’s side quickly would likely yield grim consequences.
At any rate, these individuals lacked even facial features; hacking away at them carried no significant psychological burden.
Yet the blood was hot, and the shrieks of the crowd grated harshly against the ears.
Hacking at people continuously, Bai Cha shouted at the top of her lungs: “Murder! Get out of the way! Someone’s committing murder!”
Sure enough, the crowd dispersed at a far more rapid pace.
The edge of the kitchen knife in Bai Cha’s hand turned completely nicked and dull in the end, yet she finally burst through the crowd.
Or rather, the moment she broke through to a certain location, the entire crowd vanished into thin air.
Gasping for air in heavy, ragged breaths, Bai Cha raised her head to look at the building up ahead.
It appeared to be a hotel.
Her arms were so exhausted she could barely lift them.
Thus, she chose to crouch down, catching her breath while whetting the blade in her hand against the ground.
Refurbishing the knife on the fly offered a bit of utility after all.
Once she confirmed the knife had recovered a portion of its lethality, she dragged her heavy, staggering steps toward the hotel.
Liu Ruyi was inside.
Catching sight of her drenched in blood and approaching with a knife in hand, the hotel receptionist let out a piercing screech.
Sweeping a cold, icy stare across her, Bai Cha raised the knife toward her.
“Have you seen a woman?”
“A woman? Which woman?!” the receptionist asked with a tremble. The question was thoroughly ridiculous—anyone coming into a hotel was either male or female.
“Just…” How could Bai Cha know what Liu Ruyi looked like? Yet she could guess blindly.
“One who came over not long ago—exceedingly pretty.”
