Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 705 - 703
It was a woman.
Despite there being no rain on the Stone Bridge, she was holding an umbrella.
It was a Long-Handled Oil-paper Umbrella, with a bamboo handle, a red canopy, and a circle of white patterns in the middle, adorned with printed cherry blossoms.
The woman had long black hair and wore a kimono that wasn't particularly fancy.
Ghost of Hidden Eye held no expertise in kimonos and couldn't discern the specific type of clothing, providing only a rough description:
The kimono had a white base with purple patterns, adorned with a multitude of floral designs, a beige obi, and a floral-shaped woven ornament hanging on the left, with moderately long sleeves.
"..."
Ghost of Hidden Eye exhaled a puff of black smoke emotionlessly, the blade of the massive Naginata in his hand buzzing as if thirsty for blood.
He could see the young woman's umbrella, the kimono she wore, the hairstyle she maintained, and the wooden clogs she stepped on, but when he focused on her face, his mind went blank. He was unable to construct her visage in his brain no matter how hard he tried.
Ghost of Hidden Eye felt a tinge of regret in his heart.
During the day, the players had gathered to analyze the television video Wanli Fengdao had seen the previous night. Bai Haozheng had been the first to make a sacrifice, taking a certain risk to extract the memory fragment from Wanli Fengdao's mind.
At that time, Black Holy Son and Ghost of Hidden Eye, to avoid potential Meme contamination, had chosen to step back without a word. They refused to look at the dynamic comics drawn by Bai Haozheng. When the woman combing her hair in the dynamic comic ignored the hotel's rule of "safety during the day" and turned to smile at Bai Haozheng, Black Holy Son and Ghost of Hidden Eye felt a secret sense of relief.
They thought that if anything went wrong, the anomaly related to the dynamic comic would definitely target Bai Haozheng first, making them relatively safe.
But now, Ghost of Hidden Eye started to feel regret.
The river beneath the Stone Bridge was frothy, with a large number of dead fish floating on its surface, perfectly matching the scene Wanli Fengdao had described.
If Ghost of Hidden Eye had chosen to watch the dynamic comic back then, perhaps he could have recognized whether the young woman combing her hair in front of the mirror was the person with the umbrella in front of him now.
CRACK—
A dull sound came from behind. Ghost of Hidden Eye didn't turn around.
Relying on his player's exceptionally keen senses, he clearly sensed that it was the sound of a stone brick coming loose from the Stone Bridge behind him.
The Stone Bridge was on the brink of collapse.
"Who are you?" Ghost of Hidden Eye asked, his voice deep and robust, vibrating the air. "Where is this?"
The kimono-clad woman stopped in her tracks, silently watching Ghost of Hidden Eye. She didn't answer but slowly rotated the bamboo handle with her slender fingers.
She was like a girl experiencing the throes of first love, meeting the object of her affection on the Stone Bridge, hesitantly shy about how to greet him.
CRACK. CRACK—
The sound of the stone bricks loosening grew louder, and the entire Stone Bridge was quivering and shaking slightly.
Ghost of Hidden Eye's anxiety and unease intensified. He vaguely felt that if the Stone Bridge were to collapse and he failed to escape from the dream in time, something very, very bad would happen.
"What is your name!" Ghost of Hidden Eye roared at the kimono-clad woman, black Evil Qi swirling rapidly around his imposing figure and Naginata.
After a while, the kimono-clad woman slowly opened her mouth, her voice soft and gentle. "May I ask, have you also come to kill me?"
Ghost of Hidden Eye's eyes widened suddenly. "What?" he asked instinctively.
"Have you also come to kill me?"
The kimono-clad woman apologetically bowed slightly, as though apologizing for the trouble she had caused. "I haven't seen the hotel staff in a long time," she said with a full sense of remorse. "I thought they had an accident after the last incident...
"Ah, the bridge is about to collapse. If you don't kill me, you'll be trapped here forever."
Ghost of Hidden Eye's mind was filled with confusion, anxiety, fear, and unease. He faintly felt that he was touching upon some truths related to the hotel. 𝗳𝐫𝚎𝗲𝚠𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝘃𝚎𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝗺
Raising his Naginata, he growled, "What are you talking about? Who on earth are you?"
BOOM!
The Stone Bridge behind him had begun to collapse. Large chunks of stone fell into the river, churning up white foam, and the spot where Ghost of Hidden Eye stood was also shaking violently.
"...You, are you not a hotel employee?"
The woman blinked her eyes, seemingly realizing something, her eyes filled with sadness. "Are they all dead..."
Who exactly was she referring to?
The Ghost of Hidden Eye wanted to interrogate her, but the Stone Bridge was collapsing too quickly.
Countless stones plummeted into the river below. With each stone's fall, a large number of dead fish would rise to the surface, emitting a pungent stench.
Seeing that the collapse of the Stone Bridge was about to reach the spot he was standing on, the Ghost of Hidden Eye kicked off the ground. With agility that belied his hefty frame, he swept lightly across the bridge and rushed in front of the woman in the kimono, extending his hand to reach for her neck.
As a protector for the Young Master of the Higan Organization, the Ghost of Hidden Eye's equipment was naturally top-notch. The Special Effect of the martial art he practiced included suppressing Spiritual Bodies and absorbing their power and memories.
The Ghost of Hidden Eye was very certain that she was not a normal human but some kind of aberration. However, he greatly underestimated her fragility.
He merely reached out his hand, his fingertips barely touching the skin of her neck, when the kimono woman's neck burst apart and broke into countless pieces, flying backward.
More fragile than paper…
The Ghost of Hidden Eye's pupils were full of shock and amazement. He opened his mouth to say something, but his entire body was propelled by an unstoppable force, sent flying into the air, higher and higher.
The sound of the wind whistled past his ears. The Stone Bridge, which had completely collapsed and fallen into the river below, grew smaller and eventually turned into a speck of grey.
The next second, the Ghost of Hidden Eye jolted awake in bed, taking deep, hurried breaths, his eyes bloodshot.
That wasn't a dream.
The Ghost of Hidden Eye leapt from the bed, grabbed the money from the bedside table, and rushed to the living room.
The characteristics of his demonic body still remained, and he held a Naginata in his hand.
The sound of the System notification rang in his ears, informing him that he had just killed a life, earning a reward of five hundred Game Coins and Experience Points.
What the Ghost of Hidden Eye had gone through was not an illusion; he had indeed killed the woman in the kimono, in a bizarre way that even he was unaware of.
The Ghost of Hidden Eye penned down furiously on the paper. He felt deep inside that the words spoken by the kimono woman and the video Wanli Fengdao saw last night were both revealing the hotel's true secrets. He had to record it, to show his Young Master, the Black Holy Son, to maximize the chances of his survival.
Now the time... is 03:28. I've been "asleep" for three hours...
The Ghost of Hidden Eye wrote hurriedly on the paper, but Wanli Fengdao's description from the day before unconsciously flickered through his mind.
In the scenes he saw, there was one that was a close-up of the corridor in the Dolphin Hotel. The corridor had no distinguishing features, making it impossible to discern which floor it was. The clock at the end of the corridor read 03:33.
Three-thirty in the morning... The time Danfei received a call last night, the time seen in the video by Wanli Fengdao, and the time the Ghost of Hidden Eye awoke. What does three-thirty mean in this Dolphin Hotel?
"Minus one..."
An abrupt and indistinct voice, ethereal and deep, neither male nor female, entered the ears of the Ghost of Hidden Eye.
The protector from the Higan Organization felt his hair stand on end. His right hand didn't even have time to put down the pen, while his left hand swung the massive Naginata backward with a slash.
The sharp blade traced a crescent arc. The wind flipped over carpets and chairs, which thudded against the wall.
"Minus one."
The ethereal, deep voice sounded again. The Ghost of Hidden Eye, astonished, looked around, swallowing hard.
The voice wasn't coming from room 1208; it wasn't even on the twelfth floor. That voice echoed throughout the entire hotel.
"Minus one!"
The deep voice suddenly rose in pitch. The hotel floor trembled slightly, as if something had broken in.
The Ghost of Hidden Eye took the pen and paper and ran to the door of room 1208. His large body bent down, pressed against the door, peeking outside through the Cat's Eye with one eye.
He saw the light at the top of the elevator area on the eleventh floor to the left light up.
Starting from the ground floor, it ascended gradually.
Someone or something had pressed the elevator button and was coming up.
