Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 34.1: Manman (7)

May 07, 2023 by Wyrd

After the green clay doll was smashed to death, the anger of those monster children was finally released.

One by one, they climbed up and stared at the remaining four ghost friends for a while, then climbed from the wall to the hole in the ceiling and left from the arched window on the fifth floor.

After smashing a ghost friend tonight, they sang all the way and left with satisfaction.

[My mother’s belly is so warm, I want to drag it to hell to accompany me.

When I died, it trembled, but its attachment to me?]

There was no more anger in the singing, only the cool and lonely immaturity.

They weren’t sure if there was a difference with the previous anger, but listening to it now, a twisted pleasure could be heard.

The four players on the fourth floor stared silently at the circular hole in the ceiling, obviously a man-made hole.

The ghost friends ran to them and cried softly as they stuck to them.

They were essentially newborn babies who had just developed consciousness. After seeing the monster children leave, they were no longer so afraid, but only sobbed quietly, unable to understand the weight and coldness of the players at this moment.

Zhu Shuangshuang touched Zhizhi’s head and said hoarsely, “Let’s put out the fire quickly.”

They didn’t know what oil Ning Su tinkered with. The flames kept burning on the door and windows, but did not spread. Even so, they couldn’t let the fire burn down the whole fourth floor.

Ji Mingrui and Meng Jiang nodded silently.

The three of them passed by Ning Su, and saw the six-year-old boy still staring at the circular opening.

Zhu Shuangshuang asked, “What’s wrong, Su Su?”

Ning Su lowered his eyes and said, “I have looked at it a lot, but still don’t understand, and can’t guess.”

Zhu Shuangshuang asked, “What don’t you understand?

Ning Su remained silent.

Zhu Shuangshuang didn’t ask anything further either.

After they had extinguished the fire together, they slumped in the corridor.

Zhu Shuangshuang said, “I finally understand why they went crazy to grab floors at the beginning.”

Shi Tianzhu chose the sixth floor first, and the players went crazy to grab the sixth floor. This was easy to understand. After all, Shi Tianzhu was the powerful goddess of the base.

The Little Gu Witch chose the fifth floor, and the remaining players also went crazy to grab it. At that time, Zhu Shuangshuang was still puzzled. Didn’t they avoid Little Gu Witch on the road and at the dining table?

Now she understood deeply.

Here, nothing else matters except survival.

For the sake of survival, anything could be done and endured.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth floors not only had levels for the players inside but also for the floors themselves.

Meng Jiang stared at Ban Zhong’s corpse and said in a hoarse voice with a red eye full of hatred, “If we can’t stop the monster children with fire tomorrow night, let’s make the fire bigger and burn this castle to the ground.”

There were obvious bloodshot eyes in his eyeballs, and tears were in his eye sockets. His words were full of hatred, wanting to pull everyone down.

After what had just happened, no one felt that this hatred was twisted.

Meng Jiang continued, “Or we can also smash the roof. They can throw the monster children down. Why can’t we lure the monster children up?”

Ji Mingrui said wearily, “Maybe they can break it, but we can’t. They were already prepared, and we might not survive even if we smash it tomorrow.”

The powerful ruled the game base, with obvious levels. It’s no different inside the dungeon.

In the game base and in the dungeon, the strong were idolized, and the weak were treated like weeds.

Meng Jiang rubbed his face and buried his head in his palms for a long time. “So, are we just going to wait here to die?”

Ji Mingrui said, “Why don’t we try to leave?”

Zhu Shuangshuang said, “But the system told us to enter the castle. Would leaving without permission violate the system’s rules?”

Meng Jiang said, “There are monsters everywhere outside, so it may not be safer than staying in the castle, right?”

Ning Su, who had been lost in thought, suddenly looked up at his own room and said, “I’m not leaving.”

Zhu Shuangshuang was speechless. She knew that he came to this instance just to stay in a beautiful room.

Just as they were about to continue discussing the matter, they suddenly heard a commotion upstairs.

People had gathered around the circular hole in the fourth floor’s ceiling.

Players from the sixth floor had come down to the fifth floor.

Shi Tianzhu was still barefoot and said coldly to the players on the fifth floor, “I’ll say it again. No one can destroy this castle. If I catch anyone breaking this hole again tomorrow night, I’ll throw them down.”

When they first entered the game, almost all players had shown her respect. However, after they divided into floors, conflicts of interest arose between the sixth and fifth floors, and the players under the protection of Little Gu Witch on the fifth floor started to change.

In the morning, some people had been saying bad things about Shi Tianzhu in the bathroom, and after another wave of monster attacks, they dared to express their dissatisfaction in front of her.

“The president now prohibits breaking the floor because she’s afraid we’ll attract monsters to the sixth floor. After all, they don’t know where you are, but we do.”

The speaker was a very fat boy whose adult body was likely to weigh a ton.

As soon as the players from the fourth floor heard him say this, they saw a white silk rope flying towards him. The next second, the white silk pierced his shoulder, and the white silk rope threw him out of the window.

They hadn’t had time to hear the person’s screams clearly, but they heard the heavy impact of the body hitting the ground first.

The white silk rope was held in the hand of a petite six-year-old girl.

There was no trace of anger on her pale face, but for some reason, it made people feel chilled. With a downward motion of her hand, the white silk rope flung the boy up from under the castle.

Blood splattered on the fifth-floor.

He didn’t die, but the white silk rope pierced and pulled through his shoulder, shattering bones all over his body, covered in blood and wriggling like a worm at Shi Tianzhu’s feet.

This was more intimidating than directly killing him. Many players took a step back.

The white silk rope that could stretch indefinitely floated around each player’s feet on the fifth floor, resembling the kind of white rope used for hanging, a rope of death.

Shi Tianzhu asked, “Did you hear it clearly?”

The players on the fifth floor all had unpleasant expressions.

The light white silk rope floated around their necks with a cold and bloody aura.

Except for Little Gu Witch, all the players on the fifth floor lowered their heads and said, “Yes, President Shi.”

Shi Tianzhu glanced at Little Gu Witch, and the white silk rope disappeared into thin air.

She looked down and said to the four players on the fourth floor who were looking up at her, “You can’t use fire on the fourth floor either.”

Meng Jiang and Ji Mingrui almost couldn’t control their expressions.

They really wanted to say that it was easy for her to say that.

Shi Tianzhu said, “Protect the castle and don’t destroy it.”

“Okay!”

At this moment, this “okay” sounded particularly distinct.

Many players looked at Ning Su and cursed him for being a bootlicker.

Only Zhu Shuangshuang knew that Ning Su was so enthusiastic because he and Shi Tianzhu shared the same goal of protecting the castle.

He didn’t want to destroy this satisfactory place.

Of course, he did want to curry favor.

Looking at his expression as he looked up, the cold-blooded killer from before softened slightly, and Shi Tianzhu nodded to him before leaving with her team.

Her intimidating presence was still felt, and without her needing to say anything, the players on the fifth floor immediately sprang into action to fill the gap.

The players on the fourth floor just stood there and watched, not trying to help and showing a bit of a spectator mentality.

The players who were repairing the gap were the same ones who had laughed at them when they reinforced their doors and windows during the daytime.

Moreover, now the fourth and fifth floors were already enemies.

Even Zhu Shuangshuang thought so.

On the first night when the monster children attacked, the players on the fifth and sixth floors closed their doors and windows tightly, which was understandable in terms of survival. But it was disgusting to smash a hole and lure the monster children down to the fourth floor.

As long as one wasn’t foolish, it was clear that they were already prepared for this.

The monster children couldn’t have broken into the fifth floor’s windows so quickly. It was very likely that the players on the fifth floor intentionally let the monster children into the corridor, then took advantage of their lack of preparation to let them fall down to the fourth floor, and finally let the monster children kill one ghost friend and leave.

Now they all knew that the monster children appeared every night to destroy a ghost friend, and if they couldn’t destroy one, they would go crazy and do something unknown.

When the players on the fifth floor finished repairing the gap and were about to go up, Ning Su pointed to the pile of broken tiles on the ground and said, “Clean it up before you go up.”

The players on the fifth floor, who had always thought they were superior, suddenly couldn’t speak. “Who do you think you are?”

“Um?” Ning Su turned to Gui Sheng and said, “Gui Sheng, go quickly and tell President Shi about this.”

“Um!” Gui Sheng immediately ran diagonally towards the staircase.

“...”

“Come back! Let’s clean up!”

After the people on the fifth floor cleaned up and left, Ning Su said, “It feels so good to bully others with power and status.”

“...”

Ji Mingrui said, “You still have the mood to fool around. Now we can’t even use the only method to resist the monster children. Do you even know?”

Zhu Shuangshuang couldn’t bear it and said, “Why do you always bring him down? If it weren’t for Ning Su tonight, maybe someone’s ghost friend would have been destroyed. You should thank him.”

Meng Jiang said, “Shuangshuang is right. We should thank Ning Su for protecting our ghost friends.”

Ji Mingrui frowned and didn’t want to speak.

When he was in a state of panic and anxiety, in an environment where everyone should be as panicked as he was, there was someone who didn’t take things seriously and made jokes, which always made him particularly anxious.

Especially when he felt particularly helpless.

In the past, whether in school or in the company, he was a person who called the shots and was used to controlling the situation.

When he appeared on the bus, he didn’t even spare a glance at the big star Fang Enke, let alone Ning Su, who looked foolish, a fake Taoist priest, and a female college student who only knew how to cry.

But the female college student got a weapon as soon as she entered the base, and in this terrifying situation, she was more able to stabilize people’s hearts and control the situation than he was.

And that person who seemed useless and lazy at ordinary times was able to turn the situation around at a critical moment.

Facing the fear of death time and time again, repeatedly experiencing the gap between his powerlessness, and constantly challenging Ji Mingrui’s rationality, he became increasingly irritable and panicked.

They were all at the end of their rope, so why was he still carelessly enjoying himself?

“We can’t go on like this,” Ji Mingrui said, changing his tone. “We can’t use fire. We’re completely unable to resist the monster children.”

“Oh,” Ning Su replied. “You don’t plan to apologize to me?”

“I’m not your subordinate, and you can’t hug my thigh or speak to me like that,” Ning Su said. “I have dignity.”

“...”

Ning Su was arguing like a child, which was very fitting for his age at the moment. “I won’t talk to you or your ghost friend anymore.”

Ji Mingrui gritted his teeth and said, “We can’t just wait here to die. We have to take this opportunity while the monster children retreat and try to leave this place.”

He grabbed his ghost friend’s hand and asked Meng Jiang, “Do you want to leave?”

Meng Jiang thought about it and said, “I can try with you.”

But he left his own ghost friend here and asked Ning Su and Zhu Shuangshuang to take care of it.

Obviously, he was just trying this method with Ji Mingrui to see if it was possible. At this moment, he couldn’t give up any possibility. Regardless of whether it worked or not, he would come back here again.

Ji Mingrui didn’t say anything and went to the room to get something, then took his ghost friend with him.

Ning Su and Zhu Shuangshuang removed the broken and unusable coverings from the arched window and stood at the window watching them.

There was someone watching them from the sixth-floor window too.

A female player said to Shi Tianzhu, “The players on the fourth floor wants to leave here.”

Another male player said, “They definitely won’t be able to get out of the door. If they could, President Shi would have already set fire outside the door to block the monster children.”

Shi Tianzhu nodded and asked the male player, “Do you know why we can’t get out?”

The male player thought for a moment, shook his head honestly, and didn’t mention the superficial answer that the system didn’t allow them to leave.

Shi Tianzhu turned back and continued to look down at the castle. The bleak moonlight fell on her fair face, adding a sharp and cold white layer that was not appropriate for her six-year-old face.

The male player stared at her blankly, also feeling like Shi Tianzhu had already seen through this instance.

She had already seen through everything, with many truths that others couldn’t understand hidden in her heart, but she didn’t reveal them.

With a cold and indifferent face, she watched others struggle like they were in a game, only acting when it didn’t involve her safety and interests.

“Knock, knock, knock.“

Someone knocked on the wall.

It was a soft knock, but players with PTSD from the “bang, bang, bang” sound immediately turned their heads, and even Shi Tianzhu turned to look.

On the wall was Gui Sheng with a face that had different colors on each side. He had big, round eyes and complained while his hair was covered in wood splinters from breaking through the boards. “Fifth floor, not working.”

“...”

***

Ji Mingrui and Meng Jiang still couldn’t get out.

They couldn’t open the door and when they tried to break it down, they were bounced back into the garden.

Both of them weren’t stupid, it was obvious that the system was telling them they couldn’t leave.

If they continued to try to break out, it would be a blatant violation of the system’s rules, and players who experienced the bus ride knew what the consequences would be.

“As expected,” Zhu Shuangshuang said, “This instance can’t go against the system missions at any time. It made sure we couldn’t leave when we came in, so we have to resist the monster children here.”

“Um,” Ning Su nodded.

His gaze shifted from the two players and toward the wall next to the arched window.

The window had caught fire just now and the monster children had been forced back. They frantically pounded on the walls around the window, shaking the entire castle with their strength.