Chapter 20: Statue Party (12)

Source: https://www.gongzicp.com/novel-1388844.html
This translation was originally posted on https://love4baihe.blogspot.com

Shu Yushuang had not eaten for a long time. Now that she was already this hungry, could she really last seven days?  

Maybe there was food in the room where she met the mother and son, but she had stumbled into it by accident before. How could she get in now?  

After thinking for a long time, Shu Yushuang finally made a decision.  

She rubbed her slightly numb legs and, with slow but determined steps, walked down the stairs once again.

If she was really going to suffer and die from hunger and thirst, she might as well take a risk.  

Step by step, she walked toward the female ghost's stone statue.  

The statue still had its eyes tightly shut, making it impossible to tell that it could move freely like a living person.  

Shu Yushuang asked, "Can you let me enter that room again?"  

The statue said nothing and did not move.  

Shu Yushuang quietly stared at it, but the statue showed no sign of coming back to life, and no more blood flowed from its lower half.  

Shu Yushuang frowned.

Under what conditions could she enter that room again? Or rather, under what conditions could she safely survive the remaining seven days?  

The female ghost probably no longer can let her enter that room again.

If this really was a game, then the female ghost's story should have already ended, and the remaining part of the game would be extreme survival.  

Shu Yushuang shifted her gaze away from the statue and walked to the wall behind it again.  

The wall was smooth and undisturbed. She knocked on it lightly and could tell that it was solid.  

Breaking through it directly? That was completely unrealistic.  

Smearing blood? But she had already tried that before—only that woman's blood could open the exit.  

Still, Shu Yushuang did not want to overlook any possibilities. She cut her finger again and smeared her blood on the wall.  

As expected... it still did not work.  

Leaning against the wall, she closed her eyes. She looked as if she had given up struggling, but in reality, she was still thinking hard.  

She kept feeling around the surface of the wall, trying to find any flaws.  

Suddenly, she touched a crack about a finger's width wide. It was located roughly at her waist level.

Shu Yushuang's spirit lifted. She immediately opened her eyes and examined the crack.  

It seemed that the crack had formed because her blood had touched the wall. A ring of bloodstains surrounded it, and as the fresh blood spread, the crack continued to widen.  

She stared at the crack without blinking.  

But to her disappointment, it stopped expanding once it reached the size of a palm. Even when she dripped more blood onto it, it did not grow any larger.  

A hole this small definitely was not meant for someone to crawl through.  

Shu Yushuang did not lose heart. She bent down and carefully examined the hole in the wall.  

She believed that its appearance was not without reason.  

The inside of the hole was pitch black, and she could not see anything.  

She had no idea if the hole had pierced through the wall, nor what was inside.

She carefully poked the stone knife into the hole.  

The next moment, she immediately felt a powerful suction coming from inside.  

Shu Yushuang instinctively let go, and the stone knife was sucked in at once.  

Her heart sank. But before she could react, the stone knife fell back out of the hole.  

Shu Yushuang reacted quickly, dodging to the side. Otherwise, the stone knife would have pierced through the top of her foot.  

A stone knife that was "swallowed" and then "spat out"…  

What was this supposed to mean? Was it implying that the stone knife was not to the wall’s "taste"?  

Then what would be?  

Shu Yushuang sat cross-legged on the ground, quietly staring at the pitch-black hole.

Source: https://www.gongzicp.com/novel-1388844.html
This translation was originally posted on https://love4baihe.blogspot.com

After thinking for a few minutes, she picked up the white wallet and pulled out a piece of "money," then stuffed it into the small hole.  

The "money" was quickly swallowed. A few seconds later, something was ejected from the hole. This time, it was not simply returned as it was.  

What fell to the ground was a neatly packaged loaf of bread.  

Shu Yushuang picked it up and confirmed that it was just an ordinary loaf of bread.  

It seemed she had guessed correctly again.  

Seven days later, Shu Yushuang returned to her room.  

She was still lying on her bed as if everything that had happened was just a dream.  

But Shu Yushuang knew clearly that everything she had experienced was real.

But Shu Yushuang did not know whether that small town truly existed somewhere in the world, nor did she know if a woman had really suffered such a terrible fate.  

She had initially thought that the old woman had also participated in the murder of the female ghost and that the ghost was unwilling to move on because she could not find the last culprit.  

But after leading the old woman out of the room to face the ghost directly, Shu Yushuang overturned all her previous assumptions.  

The murderer was her son.  

As for what she had said about "three men working together to kill that woman," perhaps it was only half true.

Maybe the old woman’s son had not completely killed the woman at first but had only rendered her immobile. Then, those three men took advantage of the situation and directly or indirectly caused her death.  

Considering what the little girl had said, the entire town’s residents were likely accomplices.  

Shu Yushuang gently shook her head.  

What exactly had that woman done to make the whole town hate her?  

But now that the dungeon had ended, Shu Yushuang did not want to dwell on the question any further.  

She had successfully cleared the dungeon and had nothing more to do with it.  

After clearing this dungeon, Shu Yushuang gained quite a lot.  

Not to mention the 50,000 yuan cash reward, just the stone knife she brought out from the dungeon was already a pleasant surprise.

The description of this stone knife stated that it could cut through anything in future dungeons, including space and time.  

Although Shu Yushuang did not fully understand what "cutting through space and time" meant, she knew that this item was definitely extraordinary.  

After completing her first dungeon, Shu Yushuang had a good sleep before returning to work.  

She had taken too many days off. If she did not go back soon, she would definitely lose her job.  

After returning to work, Shu Yushuang enjoyed a rare few days of peace. During this time, she temporarily put aside thoughts about instance dungeons and the game.

However, peaceful days never lasted long. Before much time had passed, Tang Yin came looking for her again. 

Tang Yin looked extremely haggard. Shu Yushuang had never seen her like this before. In her impression, Tang Yin was always that strong and composed police officer.  

Tang Yin sat in front of Shu Yushuang, her eyes filled with unease.  

Shu Yushuang got up and made her a cup of hot tea.  

"Thank you."  

Tang Yin took the cup and drank a sip immediately. She drank so fast that Shu Yushuang did not even have time to remind her that it was freshly brewed with boiling water.  

However, after getting burned, Tang Yin seemed to regain her composure.  

"Yushuang, have you entered an official instance before?"  

"Mm, I just cleared my first instance a few days ago."  

"How did it feel? For you, it should have been pretty easy, right?"  

"It was okay, not too difficult."

"What do you think," Tang Yin spoke with difficulty, slowing down her speech, "is that really just a game?"  

Shu Yushuang looked at Tang Yin and asked in return, "What do you think?"  

Tang Yin gave a bitter smile. She shook her head and put down the teacup.  

"Yushuang, I wish this were just a game, but ever since I got trapped in it, things have gone beyond my understanding."  

Shu Yushuang quietly waited for Tang Yin to continue, but Tang Yin stopped speaking. Instead, she picked up the teacup and took small sips.  

Shu Yushuang was not someone who talked much. Since Tang Yin did not speak first, she did not know what to say either.  

When Tang Yin finally put down the teacup, Shu Yushuang saw that the tea inside was already gone.  

"Do you want another cup?"

"No need. I... I'm sorry, it was my fault that you entered this game. If I hadn't told you about it, you wouldn't have..."  

"It's not your fault. I was chosen a long time ago."  

That was right—Shu Yushuang had been chosen long ago.  

Her memory drifted back to when she was very young. It was a distant memory, even further back than when she'd seen that charred female ghost.  

Back when Shu Yushuang was in Anle Village, she'd already seen ghosts.  

Those ghosts, with all kinds of tragic deaths, wandered day and night around her.  

Their deaths were all different, but they had one thing in common—they were all men.  

Without exception, every single one of them was male.  

Just like her father and brothers, who were only alive in name, every strange death in Anle Village had been a man.  

After they died, they turned into vengeful ghosts, roaming the village endlessly.  

But Shu Yushuang was the only one who could see them.

Even though they didn’t hurt anyone, young Shu Yushuang was still terrified.  

She was so scared that she kept brainwashing herself, convincing herself that ghosts and gods didn’t exist.  

But now, it was time to stop lying to herself.  

Shu Yushuang looked at Tang Yin again and said, "It's not your fault. I was destined to enter this game."  

But even after hearing that, the fear and guilt on Tang Yin's face didn’t lessen one bit.  

She asked, "Are you scared?"  

"Does being scared help?"  

Tang Yin finally smiled.  

"Yushuang, after passing the first mandatory instance, the team system unlocks. I hope we both make it to that point."  

"Let's hope so."

"You’re still the same. Alright, I should go."  

Tang Yin’s desolate figure made a sense of sorrow rise in Shu Yushuang’s heart.  

For some reason, she felt like this would be the last time she will see Tang Yin.  

Shu Yushuang planned to enter her second instance six months later. During this time, she wanted to live well. Though without Shu Ya, life wouldn’t be that great.  

She wasn’t someone who enjoyed playing around. Her past struggles with poverty had made her develop a habit of saving money—she could even be called stingy.  

Shu Yushuang never spent money on unnecessary entertainment. At most, she would go jogging near her home or practice martial arts in a martial arts hall.  

After leaving the instance, her life revolved around three things: work, training, and studying “Comprehensive Guide To Ghost Hunting”.

Whenever she had free time, she would pick up that strange book and read.  

Shu Yushuang had already grasped its basic contents. Now, she needed to study it thoroughly.  

Although the book hadn't been useful in the previous instance, she firmly believed that it contained a way to stay alive. 

But what she hadn’t considered was—if there really was a survival method hidden within, then why had Shu Ya gone missing?  

She had no other options now. Her only choice was to place all her hopes on this book.  

At night, Shu Yushuang once again began looking through Shu Ya’s phone.  

She knew that doing this wasn’t exactly ethical, but she felt certain that she could find some clue related to Shu Ya’s disappearance.  

Shu Ya’s phone interface was very simple. Besides some essential apps, there was only that eerie skull-iconed app.  

Shu Yushuang had tried many times, but she still couldn’t open it.

It seemed that only the phone’s owner could open it.  

There were many notes Shu Ya had casually recorded on her phone, but almost none of them directly mentioned the instances.  

It looked like Shu Ya had firmly kept the rule of "not revealing the death game to unrelated people" in mind. She was afraid that if she wrote about the instances directly, someone might accidentally see them.  

A small portion of the notes were about Shu Ya’s daily life, but most of them were about Shu Yushuang.  

"This round was really hard. I don’t know if I’ll be able to clear the next one smoothly. But even if I’m not around anymore, Shuang’er will definitely be able to take care of herself. She’s a university student now. She’s doing much better than me."

Author's Note: 

Let Qin Su and Shu Yushuang meet in the next chapter.