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Published at 15th of September 2021 12:10:09 PM


Chapter 31

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Chapter 31 ~ Fourth Game Pt.2 ~

As a player who relied on deception to clear games, Brother Zhang was especially impressed with people who didn’t act like him.

He had tricked over a hundred people and only met his Waterloo three times.

Little Gu was the most beautiful player among those three Waterloo.

Brother Zhang would never forget her.

It was precisely because her impression was so deep and her temperament so prominent that, just by looking at the photo, Brother Zhang intuitively knew this person was one hundred percent Little Gu herself!

This intuition was trained out of countless junctures of life and death!

Brother Zhang was stunned.

He really was stunned.

What was going on with this game?

The key plot character of the mission was actually a player of God’s Game!

Brother Zhang couldn’t help but think on a tangent. Could it be that, in his world, he was also a key plot character in a certain God’s Game?

This guess made Brother Zhang’s entire body shudder.

The other five players saw that Brother Zhang was distracted and suddenly felt that this senior was a little unreliable.

A single photograph of a pretty girl was able to make him nervous.

The new players looked at each other. In this period of time, they were caught and lectured by the dormitory housekeeper and grabbed and lectured by the security guard of the security department. They weren’t too afraid of this unfamiliar world anymore.

The people and things here looked similar to their world and the language and words were also the same, apart from a slight difference of accent.

Their sense of fear subsided a little, their reasoning also returned, and they didn’t want to rely on the veteran player, Brother Zhang, for everything.

Brother Zhang already pointed the way for them and now they just needed to find the person directly related to the Spirit Pen incident and survive for seven days under the spirit’s pursuit.

Of course, whether or not the spirit would really appear was still unknown.

The new players mustered up their courage and stepped up.

One new player attempted to chat with the university student.

“If we wanted to find her, can we only go to the library to wait for her?”

The student took back his phone, flipped through the forum posts, and looked the six players up and down with suspicion.

There was clear distrust in his eyes.

The player could only repeat the made-up identity he and the others had just given themselves. “We’re really just journalists investigating strange stories. It’s broad daylight right now, so we can’t really do anything to a single girl, right? We also have three female coworkers.”

The three female players were not blocks and, at this time, they cooperatively smiled to show the innocence of themselves and the others.

The university student was even more skeptical.

The player said, “If you’re not busy and also curious about this Spirit Pen incident, then let’s go find this girl together.”

Young people always had a strong desire to explore the unknown.

The student scrolled through the forum posts, looking a little tempted.

“I’m not doing anything, so going with you guys…”

“Nah, we won’t trouble you.” Brother Zhang suddenly interrupted the university student.

He regained his calm and said to the student, “You’re still a student so, even if you don’t have classes, you still have to study more. I’ve gone through this and, listen to my advice, study more in university to enrich yourself.”

“Huh?”

The university student was confused by Brother Zhang’s sudden speech on learning.

He was about to say something, but then he saw the people in front of him, led by that person who just talked about studying, hurriedly walk to the crossroad up ahead and disappear around the corner in the blink of an eye.

Why did these people’s actions look so strange?

The student shook his head and sighed.

He walked a short distance in the opposite direction and wondered if he should give a call to the school security department?

Huh? Where was his phone?

The student was shocked to find that the phone he had been holding in his hand was gone!

He immediately turned around and gave chase.

Unfortunately, it was already too late. Brother Zhang took the others through a small path between two school buildings and turned into a new location.

The new players looked at the phone in Brother Zhang’s hand with shock on their faces.

He was able to take advantage of everyone not paying attention to snatch the student’s phone from his hand and bring them to escape smoothly.

They knew this behavior wasn’t too good, but they now had a channel for clues.

A female player carefully asked, “Brother Zhang, do you know the password for his lock screen?”

Brother Zhang replied, “I saw it when he was using his phone. Don’t blame me for my actions, it’s all for the purpose of surviving later.”

“I believe that we can’t go looking for that Gu girl for now.”

Brother Zhang spoke about his own decision.

He looked at the uncertain expressions of the five players and explained, “Did you guys hear it just now? He said she was full of evil air. What’ll we do if she’s a ghost? If we really did carelessly go to find her, we might be sheep entering a tiger’s mouth.”

As a matter of fact, the new players were also worrying about this possibility.

Brother Zhang’s words magnified this worry at the bottom of their hearts and their faces became even more hesitant.

Brother Zhang looked at their expressions and inwardly felt satisfied.

Right now, it wasn’t time to find Little Gu yet. With Little Gu’s temperament, if she recognized him then she would definitely expose him.

Presently, Brother Zhang also had a suspicion. He felt that, since Little Gu was actually a key plot character in this game and she wasn’t a player with him, it was very likely she didn’t remember that she was a player in God’s Game.

Brother Zhang planned to sound out Little Gu from a distance.

If Little Gu didn’t remember, then he would bring these new players to question Little Gu about the Spirit Pen incident.

If she remembered then, after he figured out the difficulty of this game, he would judge again whether or not to find her.

Brother Zhang’s heart was filled entirely with calculations.

Brother Zhang said, “Listen to me, we’ll split into two groups and ask around for news again.”

Just as the group of six players were seriously inquiring about news, Gu Yian was in the library doing homework for her courses.

There were also people sitting beside her.

The school was so large and not everyone had heard the rumors around Gu Yian. They only heard the warnings circulated among classmates that a certain seat was reserved and must not be touched.

Since that seat couldn’t be touched, then the seats next to it could be sat on.

There was always a lot of bold people.

Thus, inside the library, Gu Yian’s surroundings were still full of people and most of them had their minds set on studying.

However, there were still some people who slacked off and browsed the internet in the library.

Right now, the boy sitting across from Gu Yian seemed unaware of Gu Yian’s history.

He held a book and occasionally turned two pages, but his gaze wasn’t on the book and was over the top of the book, secretly looking at Gu Yian who was sitting opposite of him.

Coursebooks were placed neatly on the table in front of Gu Yian and there was a notebook beside the coursebooks.

These didn’t block the male student’s eyes.

He could see the sight of Gu Yian looking down and doing homework. She was calm and unhurried and even when she encountered a hard problem she would just furrow her brows slightly before quickly relaxing.

Just sitting here and watching her, the boy could do that for a whole afternoon.

He struggled in his mind for a very long time before finally deciding to take action.

What if this goddess hadn’t been spoken for yet?

If he didn’t put in an effort, he would be treating himself wrong.

The male student tore off a page, wrote down a sentence, and attached his contact information.

He rolled this piece of paper into a small ball and hefted it. It had weight and could be thrown to the opposite side.

The boy was full of confidence. He moved his wrist and threw that paper ball.

His line of sight also followed the trajectory of the paper ball as it went up and then down and further down. It was a parabola and the paper ball was just about to hit the goddess’ notebook.

The paper ball suddenly seemed to receive another force and it bounced back at a faster speed, hitting him in the face!

The male student was dazed.

What happened here?

He looked at the notebook on the tabletop and then at the goddess who noticed nothing.

Could it be that he threw too hard just now?

Or was there another trick to that notebook cover and it was likely it was made out of a spring?

Whatever, getting the goddess’ contact was most important.

The boy picked up the paper ball from the desk again.

This time he especially stretched out his hand a little further, lightened his strength, and tossed it forward gently.

The paper ball flew lightly.

However, it was unknown whether it was because the force this time was too light, but the paper ball was about to land on that notebook again.

The male student had a premonition about the ending.

Sure enough, the paper ball was bounced back by the notebook and this time it landed squarely beside the boy’s hand.

This was truly strange.

The male student couldn’t figure it out.

He suddenly saw the goddess across from him move a little.

The boy became nervous.

But he only saw the goddess use the cap part of her pen to gently tap the notebook and she didn’t look in his direction.

He immediately felt discouraged.

Didn’t this mean the goddess actually saw what happened and she was tactfully using this move to reject him?

The male student felt that the goddess’ actions were all hints.

He sat in his seat for a while, still feeling unwilling.

He opened his computer that he hadn’t planned on using at all and came up with a new idea to create a post on the school forum.

The content of the post was that, on a certain floor of the library, he saw a goddess who moved his heart and she should be a frequent resident of the library. He even described her appearance and hoped to seek help from all the people in the forum because he wanted the goddess’ contact information.

What the male student didn’t expect was that someone replied to him very quickly and even attached a photo. “Is this her?”

The boy looked and wasn’t this precisely the goddess who was sitting across from him?

As expected, the eyes of the masses were sharp and everyone remembered pretty people.

The male student answered hurriedly, “Yes, it’s her. Is she single?”

“I advise you to leave now.” The person who had replied to the boy sent two messages in a row.

“Search the forum for Gu Yian. After you finish reading, I guarantee you won’t want her contact information again.”

The boy looked at the replies on his screen, completely puzzled.

What did this mean? Was the goddess’ way of rejecting people particularly savage?

He glanced at the person opposite to him.

That person was just sitting there, beautiful like a still portrait.

The male student tossed aside his guess and he tried to search for Gu Yian in the forum.

One minute later.

Gu Yian suddenly heard the shrill screech of a chair sliding rapidly over the ground.

She raised her eyes and saw the boy across from her quickly jump up with a pale face, cold sweat on his forehead, and looking at her in horror.

Gu Yian calmly withdrew her gaze.

The odds were ten to one that he just learned of her deeds.

She leisurely wrote the last line of answers in her workbook.

During this short period of time, the boy in front of her hurriedly closed his computer.

He stuffed his computer and books into his schoolbag.

Before even pulling up the zipper, the male student lifted his bag and ran away in a rush.

The other people at the study desk, intentionally or not, looked in Gu Yian’s direction.

When they discovered that the noise came from Gu Yian’s area, they unanimously retracted their line of sight.

It turned out to be Gu Yian, no wonder the boy just now wanted to run.

Her body was covered in evil air.

Some people who were afraid began to pack their books to switch their location and surf the internet.

Gu Yian could sense the movement around her and she put away her completed workbook to one side.

She grabbed the notebook that Lu Zize now possessed and casually flipped to a page.

The page was blank and there were no words on the horizontal lines.

Gu Yian picked up her pen and wrote a sentence on it.

“What did you do?”

In a place like the library, Gu Yian couldn’t directly talk to Lu Zize in the diary, so she simply used words to communicate.

Below the sentence Gu Yian had just written, a line of words that were completely different from Gu Yian’s writing gradually emerged.

“I helped you.”

Lu Zize’s letters were graceful and handsome, but a sharpness could be seen in the details.

Gu Yian looked at this line of words. She didn’t believe Lu Zize’s nonsense.

His help was definitely not a help in the sense of kindness.

It was extremely likely he terrorized that male student.

If it was just her rumors, then it wouldn’t scare the boy like that.

Outside the library, the male student who had just ran out the door was bathed in sunlight, but the shadows in his heart didn’t disperse at all.

He had just wanted to search Gu Yian when his computer screen abruptly turned black.

Before he could understand why his screen darkened, his computer turned on again.

There was a photograph of a corpse who committed suicide by cutting their wrist displayed on it.

The boy took a closer look and the face of the body was actually his face!

The sunlight couldn’t drive off the chill in his body.

He lowered his head and looked at the computer in his schoolbag.

He was going to sell this broken computer right now!

Gu Yian didn’t know what was happening on that male student’s side.

She closed the notebook again.

Gu Yian picked up her phone and checked to see if she missed any messages while she had been doing her homework.

Her phone showed that, more than forty minutes ago, her counselor asked her to come to her office for a chat through the messaging program.

At the university Gu Yian was at, because more and more families were worried about their children’s independent lives, the school specially arranged for the appropriate teachers to act as counselors and to be in charge of the family situation and studies of students in each of their respective courses.

For example, if there was a conflict between students, then it was usually the counselor who appeared to mediate.

If a student had no problem, then the counselor generally didn’t contact them.

Gu Yian’s counselor rarely sought her.

The last time her counselor sought her was because of the deaths of her roommate and the people in the dorm next door playing Spirit Pen.

At that time, Gu Yian told the counselor the entire course of events and that female counselor believed Gu Yian’s story and actively spoke for Gu Yian in front of the school management, immediately clearing Gu Yian of suspicion.

Generally speaking, the counselor was pretty good.

When Gu Yian saw the message, she replied right away and explained the reason for her late reply before promising to head over immediately.

Gu Yian had a feeling that the counselor looking for her this time might have to do with how, several days ago, her brother, Gu Tianjing, mentioned that people at her school played Spirit Pen again and died.

She arrived at her counselor’s office with the notebook in one hand and her bag on her back.

She really wasn’t at ease with putting the notebook in her backpack and always felt that, if she weren’t watching Lu Zize, he would definitely make a mess.

When Gu Yian came, perhaps the other counselors in the same office as her counselor had business because none of them were present.

Only Gu Yian’s counselor was sitting in front of her desk, working on her computer.

Gu Yian knocked on the open door and called out, “Professor Huang.”

Hearing this voice, the counselor looked away from her computer and saw Gu Yian.

“You came. Move a stool over here and take a seat. Today, I just wanted to come over and ask you some questions.”

The counselor swept her eyes over Gu Yian and, seeing her act of carrying a notebook in one hand, she felt it was somewhat strange.

That notebook could clearly be put in the backpack, so why was it in her hand?

However, the counselor didn’t ask either and just assumed Gu Yian came in a hurry.

Gu Yian found a stool and sat next to the counselor’s desk.

The counselor asked her warmly, “How are your studies recently? Still easy?”

Gu Yian replied, “It’s alright.”

The counselor was in no rush to get straight to the point and, instead, talked about small life matters with Gu Yian and asked her if she had been affected by the gossip or not.

Following this, the counselor pretended to ask casually, “So much time has passed already? I remember when school started last year everyone seemed to arrive on the same day and I was the one who brought you, Zhou Yaling, and the others to the dormitory.”

She suddenly brought up Zhou Yaling.

That person was Gu Yian’s former roommate. She was the one who first suggested playing Spirit Pen, and now she was dead.

Gu Yian pretended to be ignorant of the counselor’s intention and said, “Ever since I started university, I’ve really troubled you.”

The counselor replied, “This is what I should do as your counselor. Everyone just entered university so, as far as I’m concerned, you’re all still children and need to be taken care of. Zhou Yaling, I remember she had been lively, loved to laugh, and it was just that her grades weren’t too good. The others too, I remember Yi Feifei was as quiet as you.”

She took the initiative to talk about the personalities of Gu Yian’s former roommates.

Gu Yian listened quietly and, when the counselor stopped talking, she nodded and said, “Professor, after hearing you talk about them today, I realized that actually it hasn’t been that long, and yet I feel as if they’ve left us for a very long time.”

The counselor smiled and said, “It’s all like this.”

She seemed to say, as if from personal experience, “You think it’s been a long time but, in fact, she will always live in our memories.”

For a moment, the counselor sunk into her own memories but, soon, she returned to normal and said, “I won’t hide this from you. I called you here today because I wanted to ask about their personalities. The school management asked for these materials.”

The counselor pointed at her computer screen.

Gu Yian could see the spreadsheet on the screen. The first column was the names of Gu Yian’s former roommate and the people in the dorm next door, the second column was their personalities, and the third column was their friend situation and other information.

The counselor stood up and left her seat.

She said, “Yian, come here and help me add some more to their personalities, as well as other information like if they had boyfriends or anything. Fill in whatever you know.”

“Okay, Professor.”

Gu Yian nodded and moved her stool to the computer. She set the notebook to one side and then began to type on the keyboard to fill in the table.

The counselor stared at Gu Yian’s back and then said, “It hasn’t been peaceful these days. Yian, you have to be more careful too.”

Gu Yian replied, “Okay, thank you for the reminder.”

The counselor looked at Gu Yian some more and a hint of nostalgia flashed through her eyes.

She hesitated for a second and then took out a yellow talisman, folded into a triangle, from the pocket of her clothes and placed it in front of Gu Yian.

“This is a protective talisman. I asked for two when I was free and only spent a few dollars. It’s a little thing that isn’t worth much and I don’t know if it’s any use either, but one is enough for me so you can take this one.”

Gu Yian turned her head to look at the counselor and declined, “Professor Huang, I can’t take this.”

The counselor smiled at her. “Seeing you reminds me of my younger sister. Oh she… This sort of thing is just a kind intention and I hope good-looking and nice children like you and her can be safe and sound.”

She abruptly changed the topic and placed the protective talisman beside Gu Yian’s hand.

On the basis of these words, Gu Yian thanked her again before she accepted the protective talisman, putting it inside her clothing pocket and next to her body.

When the counselor saw this action, her eyes became absentminded for a moment as if she was remembering someone.

But when Gu Yian looked at her again, the counselor returned to how she was before.

Gu Yian filled out the electronic table, grabbed her notebook, and put the stool back to its original place.

The counselor told her, “Yian, if the rumors increase again in these days, you can give me a call to let me know and ask for leave. Go out to travel for ten days or half a month and then come back. If you have something on your mind, you can tell us counselors.”

“Thank you, Professor Huang.”

Gu Yian responded politely, thanked her counselor again, and then left the office.

In the office, the counselor returned to her own seat but she suddenly saw an extra notebook on her desk.

This appeared to be Gu Yian’s notebook. She remembered that Gu Yian took it, so why wasn’t it taken away in the end?

The counselor thought that she should send Gu Yian a message right now to ask her to come back and grab it.

Abruptly, the notebook automatically opened to a page and, in the middle of that page, a line of black words appeared.

“I know your secret.”

The counselor was startled.

Under her shocked expression, the notebook gradually faded and then completely disappeared in the end.

Was it Gu Yian? No, that wasn’t right, she was smart and she would deliberately avoid these sort of things. The protective talisman warded off evil and just now Gu Yian hadn’t rejected it and directly accepted it without the talisman having a reaction.

It seemed that Gu Yian herself wasn’t aware of this notebook and the notebook came over on its own.

While the counselor was thinking this, four or five people who were also counselors came into the office, one after another.

“Sister Huang, that student of yours won’t come back, right? Why is there a cold sweat on your head?”

One person asked Gu Yian’s counselor.

Gu Yian’s counselor was stunned and she reached out to touch her own forehead. Sure enough, it was sweaty.

She smiled to conceal this. “Really? She won’t come again today. Next time I call her over again, I’ll warn everyone just like today.”

“Sister Huang, thank you. Your student really doesn’t have a normal evil air. Four more people died yesterday, including Zhou Yaling’s cheating boyfriend and his current girlfriend. But not a single thing has happened to Gu Yian when she was envied by her roommates.”

Everyone’s discussion made the office a little more lively, but only Gu Yian’s counselor stared absently at the place where that notebook had disappeared.

~~~

In the evening, Gu Yian was at the place she rented.

Today was a day without incident and Gu Yian almost forgot she was actually going through the fourth game.

She still continued to work and rest as usual.

After Gu Yian took a shower, she prepared to wash her coat by hand.

She took out the things inside her coat and, as a result, when she was grabbing the protective talisman she touched a handful of black ash.

Gu Yian opened her clothes pocket on purpose to check inside.

She saw a yellow triangle protective talisman.

But, as long as she reached in, her hand would pass through the talisman and she would touch the black ash of the burned talisman.

Meaning, the talisman that she saw was just an illusion!

No matter how Gu Yian thought about it there was only one existence beside her that could achieve this effect and it was Lu Zize.

She washed her hand, wiped off the water with a paper towel, and then opened the notebook.

Gu Yian looked at the blank notebook pages and suddenly realized that it didn’t seem like she needed to ask anything.

Lu Zize’s current state was a ghost, enough to make a protective talisman combust. It was quite logical and coherent for him to use some means to cover up this action.

Gu Yian didn’t say anything, but a line of words gradually emerged on the notebook page.

“Missed me?”

Not at all.

Gu Yian closed the notebook.

After she had done this action which could be considered to be childish, she looked at the book and suddenly realized that her life was a little more lively.

Her usual life consisted of reading and studying and, occasionally on Saturdays and Sundays, she would go out to work as a home tutor. It appeared to be a routine, but she was always alone.

Sometimes, even if it was just an extra ghost in someone’s life, it was better than living alone because it was too lonely being solitary, without even a single person who they could speak to without worries.

Although Gu Yian still felt that Lu Zize would cause trouble every day, and maybe bring her trouble secretly one day, she had to admit that because of Lu Zize’s existence she felt a lot less sense of loneliness in this world.

Gu Yian cleaned out the black ash inside her coat, washed her coat by hand, and then threw it inside the washing machine.

By the time Gu Yian hung up her clothes, it was already ten o’clock at night.

Gu Yian set the notebook, her phone with the small coffin charm, and the gambler card next to her pillow.

“Good night.”

The notebook opened on its own and fluorescent white letters appeared in the dark.

“Have a nice dream.”

Gu Yian smiled for a second and replied, “I wish you a nice dream too.”

She didn’t know if it was because this notebook, the villain of her previous game, was right beside her pillow, but these days she slept very peacefully.

Gu Yian closed her eyes and fell asleep.

In the middle of the night, the moonlight brought a faint light into the room as usual.

A black shadow arrived as expected.

It seeped down from the ceiling.

The little girl in the coffin slammed open the coffin lid and she quickly jumped into the air. The two centimeter figure suddenly expanded into a huge balloon floating in the air and she opened her mouth to bite the black shadow.

“Hsss!”

The black shadow was in pain and struggled hard, but the bite force of the balloon was shocking.

It could only cut a section of itself off and fled in panic.

Gu Yian’s eyelashes trembled in her sleep.

She didn’t hear any more noise and fell asleep again.

~~~

In the same world, but a different location.

Brother Zhang and the four players who had arrived in this world were, at this moment, curled up in the school gymnasium. They originally had six people, but now there were only five left.

The school gymnasium didn’t require a student card to enter and exit, so Brother Zhang and the others climbed over the wall to go in.

They didn’t dare to turn on the gym lights and just shrank into a corner of the basketball court, using a flashlight for illumination.

Brother Zhang held the flashlight and said, “Everyone, make do with this. Right now, we need to find a quiet place without anyone to summon the spirit and there’s no other place. Our money is from selling the phone and there’s not a lot, so we need to use it sparingly. We already spent more than a hundred on our meals today.”

He comforted the new players who were frightened of being in the enormous gymnasium before getting to the point, “When precisely did this pen start to follow us? Think hard on this.”

He was holding a cute cartoon ink pen in his hand.

Brother Zhang and the others had not planned on summoning the spirit tonight.

Their courage wasn’t as large as those people who sought death, clearly knowing there were ghosts yet still summoning them.

But just as Brother Zhang was planning on going to an internet cafe to make do for one night, a female player who always kept her head down noticed that they passed an ink pen lying on the ground with a cartoon design several times.

They tried throwing that pen into a trash can, but after walking a dozen or so meters that very same pen would appear on the path in front of them again.

Later, around ten o’clock at night, when the players were not on guard, that pen directly passed through a male player’s head, causing him to die on the spot.

Brother Zhang took the other players to speedily leave the scene of murder and then, later, that pen appeared again on the path in front of them.

They had no choice. Brother Zhang could only pick up the pen and keep holding it.

Since then, Brother Zhang’s prestige in the team reached its peak.

Brother Zhang said that the spirit had been eyeing them from the beginning and now it was proved that the spirit was indeed eyeing them. The price of that proof was a life.

Moreover, Brother Zhang was the only person courageous enough to keep holding onto that pen. This made the other players admire him a lot, because they all knew there was a ghost in there.

Brother Zhang said, “In my memories, there seemed to be a lot of pens in the room where we were at the very beginning. This might be one of them.”

One female player heard this and said with some hesitation, “I also seem to remember seeing this pen in that room.”

This pen persistently followed them, as if wanting to seize a chance to kill them.

Brother Zhang found that he was about to lose control of this pen and so he also had no choice but to discuss with everyone about summoning the spirit and asking this pen what exactly it wanted to do.

They came to the gymnasium, spread a piece of paper on the ground, and wrote the word “Yes” on one side and the word “No” on the other side.

Brother Zhang and another male player sat cross-legged on the ground and, according to the steps they saw on the forum, the two of them held the pen together and read out loud, “Spirit Pen, Spirit Pen, I am your present, you are my past, and if you wish to continue with me then please draw a circle on the paper.” ¹

They repeated this continuously. The other players at the side watched them nervously.

An ill wind rose from the flat ground.

The flashlight, the only source of light, flickered.

A gloomy chill seeped into the surroundings of the players bit by bit.

It came.





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