Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 30.2: Manman (3)

April 26, 2023 by Wyrd

Looking inside, Ning Su quickly returned to the doorway. At this point, a white, tender child appeared in the red corridor, followed by one after another.

The crying of the glass mirror ghost friend grew louder and more sorrowful, mixed with clear panic, like the sound of intense knocking echoing shrilly down the dim hallway.

Some players realized what was happening and shouted towards the door, “Sun Xing, open the door! Quick, open it for him!”

When Ning Su was choosing a room, he noticed that the person who had taken the innermost room in the corridor was the snot-nosed boy he had been paying attention to even before entering the castle.

This was the ‘Sun Xing’ that the player from the opposite room of the other was calling.

Even Zhu Shuangshuang poked her head out, shouting loudly towards this person named Sun Xing. “Hurry up and open the door! He’s in danger!”

“He can’t be in danger!” Zhu Shuangshuang shouted sternly towards the end of the corridor, referring to the little mirror doll.

The crying drowned their shouts out and the knocking of the glass mirror doll. They could only shout one or two more times because more and more monster children appeared in the corridor.

These monster children did not look normal at all. Their ghost friends inside the room had already started crying. Blood trickled down from Blood Doll’s eyes behind Ning Su.

“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!”

Doors on the fourth floor were quickly shut.

Whether they wanted to be alone with their ghost friends or not before, they no longer had a choice in the face of these oily, eerie children. The fear brought on by these monsters overwhelmed the fear they had of the ghost friends.

Before closing the door, the person opposite Sun Xing shouted at him again, “You coward, open the damn door!”

Sun Xing was lying on the ground inside the room, crying silently, with tears streaming down his face.

Among the remaining 19 players, the two strongest players first chose their floors, then the other strong players chose the floors next.

Those who remained on the fourth floor were mostly relatively weak players.

Many players saw Shi Tianzhu choose this instance and hastily followed suit, choosing this instance where weapons could drop for the first time. There was a bit of impulsiveness involved.

But since they dared to choose a Level 3 instance, they must have some ability or skill.

Sun Xing was such a relatively weak player, but he had a skill called “perspective,” which allowed him to see through things inside the instance.

He saw the complete situation in the corridor before anyone else, and of course, he also saw the glass mirror doll outside his door in its entirety.

Everyone had something they feared, especially those who had experienced horror instances. Some items and scenes were a nightmare every night.

Sun Xing’s biggest fear was mirrors, which was related to the previous instance he experienced, “Mirror Soul.”

When he gained the skill of perspective, he did not expect that mirrors could become even more terrifying.

The glass mirror doll standing in front of his room had been knocking on the door, with different images reflected on its face in different mirrors, looking like eerie and creeping ghosts, which tormented him in his nightmares every night.

What pushed his fear to another level was what he saw inside the glass mirror.

Six-year-old Sun Xing cried silently while biting his fingers, his snot running into his open mouth.

Amidst the increasingly loud and sad crying and knocking on the door, Sun Xing finally reached for the door handle.

Just then, he saw on the arched window at the end of the corridor, very close to his room, a densely packed group of strange monster children.

Sun Xing let out a piercing scream and withdrew his hand like an electric shock.

In his final glance, he saw countless monster children rushing towards that glass mirror doll.

He cowardly buried his head in his knees and did not listen or look.

Some cracking sounds entered his ears.

As if possessed, he lifted his head and pressed his eyes against the crack in the door.

Six-year-old Sun Xing always had snot stuck to his nose, which was a bit disgusting, and his hair was messy, making him look unpleasant. But he had a pair of round, litchi-shaped eyes.

In those round and big eyes, there was a reflection of the glass mirror doll being torn apart and smashed by the monster children.

It was first pulled by the neck and torn apart, then smashed to the ground into more than a dozen pieces, each piece then shattered into even more fragments, and finally crushed into powder-like pieces.

The doll’s pitiful cries echoed throughout every corner of the castle.

“Wuwawuwa--“

It was a heart-wrenching cry that seemed to come from one of the broken fragments.

Those glass pieces turned into flesh scraps, with white and red colors scattered throughout the hallway.

A drop of red splattered onto that round eye, turning the previously translucent eye into a deep, rich red color.

Then, the scene in his eyes turned into black and white, with black coloring for the children and the white coloring the mirror fragments, each piece being a scene of his own explosion.

Finally, the eye couldn’t see anything anymore.

[Player Sun Xing’s ghost friend was destroyed.]

[Player Sun Xing died.]

It was unclear how long it had been until all the monster children in the hallway disappeared, and the doors of the fourth-floor rooms opened one by one as players walked out.

There were small candles burning on the ceiling of the dark hallway, producing a dim light. There were deep and shallow marks on the red floor, some of which were bloodstains and some were unidentifiable pieces of flesh.

There were these pieces of minced meat at every player’s doorstep on the fourth floor, giving a feeling of being spread throughout the corridor.

There were a few pieces at the door of Ning Su’s room, and he could easily recognize that they were minced lungs. He turned his head to see that they were not only in the corridor but also in the walls and doors.

Zhu Shuangshuang, who was next to him, covered her mouth and started to vomit.

Ning Su took out a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. He saw that the players in every room on the fourth floor had an unpleasant expression on their faces.

Sun Xing’s room was opposite to the player named Meng Jiang.

Meng Jiang stared at Sun Xing’s door for a while, then walked stiffly to Sun Xing’s door and called out in a hoarse voice, “Sun Xing?”

“Sun Xing, are you still there?”

His voice echoed through the empty corridor, but there was no response.

Other players also walked towards this side, some of them followed by their ghost friends.

Sun Xing’s room was 407, Ning Su’s room was 405, and Zhu Shuang was in 403. She followed Ning Su and saw his ghost friend coming out of room 405.

It’s a bloody doll.

And blood was oozing out of its eyes.

To be honest, in such a dark and bloody corridor, this doll, with big eyes constantly shedding blood tears on its pale face, was very terrifying.

However, when she saw Gui Sheng next to her, who was holding a big bowl and following step by step to collect blood, it’s hard to describe the feeling.

Zhu Shuangshuang instinctively calls out, “Gui Sheng.”

“Uh?” The little ghost murmured softly, turned to look at Zhu Shuangshuang, and remembered that Ning Su told him to be polite and talk more. He added, “Sister.”

The soft word “sister” suddenly soothed Zhu Shuangshuang’s heart, which had been ravaged by fear."

In “Ghost Animal” the little ghost boy she was terrified of at first had now become a heart-warming little mascot.

Zhu Shuangshuang’s fear seemed to have subsided. Even the sight of Gui Sheng holding a bowl to collect blood from the blood doll didn’t seem as scary anymore.

She steadied her heart and followed Ning Su forward.

When the players from the fourth floor arrived near the door of room 407, Meng Jiang used his finger to apply force on the door and pushed it open with great effort.

They heard a crisp sound, similar to the shattering of glass.

After the door was pushed open, they saw the floor inside covered in shattered glass mirrors, as fine as powder.

The remaining six players on the fourth floor looked a bit uneasy.

Outside the door, there was a small glass mirror doll that was shattered by the monster children’s attack. Inside the room, there were shattered glass pieces on the floor, and in the corridor, there were scattered fine meat and blood.

Whose flesh and blood was it?

Even if the shattered pieces of the glass mirror doll turned into meat and blood, could there be this much? The corridor was so long; the walls were so wide, and there were so many doors.

At this time, several players from the fifth and sixth floors also came down.

Leading the way was Shi Tianzhu.

She had changed out of her riding outfit, and her slightly curled hair fell down. She was wearing a lantern-sleeved cotton and linen palace shirt, like a noble young lady who had just woken up from bed in the castle and came out barefoot to enjoy the moon.

She was holding a wax figure of a little boy in her hand.

Ning Su glanced at the wax figure of the little boy in her hand, apparently her ghost friend.

As he looked up, she saw that Shi Tianzhu was also looking at him.

Shi Tianzhu moved her gaze away and asked, “What’s the situation here, exactly?”

Immediately, a player from the fourth floor stepped forward and enthusiastically explained the situation in detail to her.

“It seems that the protective relationship is mutual. The system says that ghost friends will protect us, and at the same time, we must also protect our ghost friends. If they die, we will also die, and we will die in the same way as them.”

Shi Tianzhu remained silent.

She walked to the arched window at the end of the corridor and looked outside.

The corridor was wide, and the window was large enough for more than one person to view.

Two players from the sixth floor also walked over to look, and the tall player behind them could also see the general situation below the window.

Gray mist scattered from around the castle, and the monster children were faintly visible in the mist. When the wind blew, one could see a dense crowd of children in one place.

“Are these the children who attacked our ghost friends? Didn’t we see them on the way to the Fairy Tale Town this afternoon?”

“What kind of monsters are they?”

The male player standing on the right side of Shi Tianzhu looked at her and said, “They are hiding in the mist. Could they be water baby spirits?”

Ji Mingrui, next to Ning Su, asked Zhu Shuangshuang in a low voice, “What are water baby spirits?”

Since he found out that Zhu Shuangshuang was a scriptwriter specializing in the supernatural, he assumed that she often consulted these materials when writing scripts and was more knowledgeable about ghosts and monsters.

Zhu Shuangshuang did know and said, “They are children who died in the womb. In some places, they specifically refer to aborted fetuses that died.”

Ji Mingrui asked again, “They saw the mist and inferred that they were water baby spirits. Does calling them water baby spirits mean that they live in the mist?”

“No,” Zhu Shuangshuang said, “Water refers to amniotic fluid.”

Ji Mingrui understood.

That was the resting place for water baby spirits.

Zhu Shuangshuang said, “There’s a saying that the mist is formed by the resentment of the water baby spirits.”

Hearing this, the players were chilled to the bone. How much resentment must there be?

As common knowledge in this game, the heavier the ghost’s resentment and malevolence, the more terrifying their power.

Shi Tianzhu turned to Zhu Shuangshuang and asked, “Little girl, do you think the so-called water baby spirits are the focus of this dungeon?”

Shi Tianzhu asked Zhu Shuangshuang directly, and the other players looked at Zhu Shuangshuang with envy and jealousy.

It was well known that there were many skilled players in the Yinhua Guild, and this was due to Shi Tianzhu’s skill of discovering talents in dungeons.

While others had to go through rounds of assessments to join the Yinhua Guild, those chosen by the president to join were members of the top echelon as soon as they entered.

Shi Tianzhu’s question to her indicated her interest, and if she answered well, it could mean that she would be taken into the Yinhua Guild.

It inevitably made people envious and jealous.

Zhu Shuangshuang looked at the legendary player in the game base.

She had heard a lot about her from Chen Qing and could not have been more admiring of her.

She said, “I don’t think so. I think the luck value that the system prompts us and specifically gives an example of is the focus of this dungeon.”

In the previous dungeon, they had suffered a painful lesson for not taking the system’s prompt seriously. The system had lightly said “all beings are equal,” but they had not thought about it seriously, resulting in the deaths of three players.

This time, the system gave an example, so it must be of utmost importance.

“There are also little ghost friends that can increase a person’s luck value.”

At this point, players that played a horror dungeon couldn’t help but think about something.

The beautiful packaging of a guardian angel given by the system could not hide the essence of their ghost friends.

Guman Tong.

Or, it could be said that the system created ghost friends based on the folklore of Guman Tong.

Zhu Shuangshuang said, “The widespread belief is that they are called ‘Guman Tong’, but there is another saying that boys are called ‘Guman Tong’ and girls are called ‘Guman Li’. This may be the origin of the name of this copy.”

There was silence in the hallway.

Many players looked at the ghost friends in the hallway and felt uneasy.

When the ghost friends first knocked on their doors, they were already terrified. But when the glass mirror doll was smashed by the monster children, their fear was somewhat reduced.

It seemed that these ghost friends were not as frightening and invincible as they appeared to be, and their binding with the ghost friends meant that they were there to protect them. This made them subconsciously feel that the ghost friends were not as scary anymore.

Now, knowing that these ghost friends were created by the system based on the folklore of Guman Tong, the feeling of fear once again swept over their bodies.

What kind of harmonious coexistence with ghost friends was this?

Was the system trying to make them raise Guman Tong in this eerie and creepy castle?

And since this was a newly created instance, what was it trying to test?

***

T/N: "Guman Tong" is a term that originated in Thai folklore. It refers to a type of spirit or ghost that is believed to have been created from a stillborn fetus or an aborted baby. The spirit is said to be able to protect its owner and bring good luck, but it can also bring harm if not properly appeased. The spirit is often depicted as a small child or baby figurine, and it is believed that by taking care of the figurine, the owner can receive the spirit's protection and blessings. The belief in Guman Tong is still popular in Thailand today and is often associated with black magic and supernatural practices.