Salted Fish Zombie

Chapter 41.2: Manman (14)

June 08, 2023 by Wyrd

She didn’t understand why.

As a president of her level, Shi Tianzhu should make decisions based on a rational assessment of the pros and cons.

Wasn’t it highly beneficial for her to have three additional ghost friends on the sixth floor?

Then, the only person on the fifth floor who clearly welcomed her, Zhu Ji, died.

To make matters worse, she discovered the putrid flesh and blood oozing out of the balloon dolls.

Combined with Shi Tianzhu forbidding her to go back, and after completing several instances, her high intellect made her realize something.

If, last night, she threw her stone ghost friend out, there was still a hint of negligible guilt. But now, in a certain second, she even thought it would be fine if she was the one opening the door tonight and throwing another one out.

She sat beside her three ghost friends, her body stiff, the hairs on her body standing on end.

Thinking about the past few days when she slept with her ghost friend, she felt a nauseating disgust.

For the first time, she calmly waited for the monster children’s arrival. Having one more or one less ghost friend didn’t seem so important anymore.

[Mother’s womb is so warm, I want to tear it to hell to accompany.

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

Here it comes.

She waited for her door to be forcefully smashed.

With a “clang” sound, the sound of the door hitting the ground echoed.

Bai Shuang stood up in surprise.

***

Liu Liantian was the second player, following Chen Jinpeng, to demand luck points from a ghost friend.

He originally had 3 luck points and now received 2 points. That was already considered a lot for a player.

He should have been very happy, but after the consecutive deaths of Chen Jinpeng and Zhu Ji, he felt a vague uneasiness, especially today when he witnessed Zhu Ji’s death in the garden and smelled the strong stench of decay coming from the balloon ghost friend’s body.

“What am I afraid of?” He cheered himself on. “At least it won’t be me who dies tonight. It must be one of Bai Shuang’s ghost friends who gets thrown out.”

He glanced at the ghost friend sitting next to him.

His ghost friend was a plastic foam doll, the kind commonly used for preserving and shock absorption, with facial features carved out and painted with pigments, creating a face that would startle anyone awake from a dream and make them unable to sleep all night.

In addition to the hollowed-out facial features, there were pits on its arms where someone had dug into them.

Those were the pits Liu Liantian had dug into it when he wanted to extract luck.

The ghost friend noticed his gaze and shrank back.

Liu Liantian wondered if the things inside its body were also so foul and disgusting.

Noticing the ghost friend’s shrinking back, Liu Liantian’s gaze flickered.

After much struggle, when he heard the monster children’s singing voice, a forced smile appeared on his face. He stiffly reached out to embrace it and said, “Don’t be afraid. I will definitely protect you.”

Clang!

The door in front of them fell with a loud noise.

Liu Liantian widened his eyes in terror.

His earlier statement about protecting the ghost friend had some false elements, but at this moment, he sincerely wanted to protect it. There was no hesitation in his hand as he eagerly tried to hold the ghost friend in his arms.

Unfortunately, the densely packed insects were faster than him.

They lifted the foam doll and swiftly moved outward.

“Ziya—Ziya—!”

The foam doll cried and struggled frantically on the swarming insects, but it seemed to be stuck to them, unable to struggle at all.

“Momo!”

Li Liantian climbed up in panic, disregarding everything to save the doll. “Momo!”

The fear and worry in his eyes were genuine this time, not a pretense.

After Momo saw the insect, she suddenly gave up struggling, but its tears became even more intense. “Zi... ya...“

The insects crawled up to Li Liantian’s body, tightly wrapping around him.

He continued to struggle desperately, vigorously swinging his arms and stumbled towards the doll. A huge black worm followed.

“Momo, I... I will never dig your bubble again. You have to hold on.”

It felt like something had lodged in his throat.

The boy’s voice was hoarse and blurred. “I understand now. It turns out... you... are... the most important... person to me... my life...”

“Zi... ya...“ The tears of the plastic foam doll were white, as if tiny plastic particles were falling from it.

“Ziya!”

When the black worm finally caught up and reached out to grab the doll, the insects threw it downstairs.

He did not retract his hand, and the black worm followed them as they both tumbled down.

When the doll was captured by the monster children, it was held in Li Liantian’s embrace through a layer of black insects.

Regardless of selfishness, before its destruction, the foam doll finally felt the warmth of an embrace once again.

[Player Li Liantian’s ghost friend has been destroyed.]

[Player Li Liantian has died.]

Bai Shuang opened the door in astonishment and saw the Gu Witch standing at the entrance of room 507.

The other two players from the fifth floor also emerged from the door.

After Qian Dongfang, Zhu Ji, and Li Liantian had all died, only four players remained on the fifth floor.

Little Gu Witch looked at the surprised Bai Shuang and hoarsely spoke, “Welcome to join us. We, the fifth floor, must maintain the strongest fighting force.”

Her voice sounded as if it had been scraped against sandpaper, even her laughter was coarse and rough. “Last time, the Yongming Guild defeated Shi Tianzhu in a dark, species-infested dungeon.”

The other three people on the fifth floor raised their heads, their gazes burning. The dim corridor on the fifth floor fell silent.

Suddenly, the witch turned her head towards the door.

***

In the second that the witch left her room and the door to room 507 closed, a young boy quietly revealed his head on the glass.

All the insects in the window uniformly turned to face him.

A continuous flow of black energy was inputted onto the window, and each insect, as if intoxicated, turned its head and looked at him.

With his tender little hands, he pushed the insects to the side and crawled in through the window.

The window he climbed into belonged to a child’s room, where a painted wooden puppet doll sat quietly.

Among all the players, the Gu Witch was the only one who never played with her ghost friend. They lived in separate rooms, and sometimes the Gu Witch wouldn’t even take it along when she went to eat.

The painted wooden puppet had been sitting on the child’s bed, motionless for who knew how long. When it heard the sound at the window, it turned its head stiffly, emitting a creak from its wooden joints.

There was a delicate and beautiful boy with moonlight on his back looking at him, waving his hand.

He agilely jumped over from the window, crouching in front of the puppet, blinking his clear peach blossom eyes. “You’re so cute.”

The cramped child’s room was not lit, and the painted wooden puppet had oil paint on its face, with circles of red and green, and an exaggerated upturned mouth, which looked extremely eerie in the dim light.

It stared blankly at Ning Su.

Ning Su leaned forward and embraced its stiff body, his slender white hands pressed against its wooden, aged, and rough back, as the black substance continuously flowed into the puppet.

He leaned in close to its ear and whispered something softly.

When the Gu Witch opened the door to the ghost friend’s room, everything was normal.

The window of the room was covered in densely packed black insects, making it completely opaque.

In the dark room, the oil-painted wooden puppet sat motionless as usual.

She stood at the door for a while, then closed the door to the room.

Inside and outside the door, both rooms were equally dark.

It was midnight.

None of the four people on the fourth floor had obtained any luck.

It was two in the morning.

When all the players were asleep, in Room 403, the paper doll got up from the bed and sat by the pillow, staring at Zhu Shuangshuang for a while.

It didn’t make any sound as it got off the bed, opened the door, hesitated for a moment, and quietly left while holding the skeletal night light hanging on the rattan strip on the door.

Two o’clock in the deep night was the quietest time in the castle and also the safest time in the entire fairytale town. The monster children outside the castle seemed to be asleep too.

The paper doll, squeaking, carried the skull-shaped night light and arrived at the far left side of the castle garden.

This place was different from other parts of the garden. There were no flowers, no playground, only freshly turned black soil.

This was where the players buried the bodies.

Not all deceased players turned into corpse water and blood. Some turned into meat patties, some turned into white bones, and there were also some players whose flesh had to be dealt with. Those alive buried them all here.

The paper doll placed the skull night light on a stone in front to illuminate it and began to dig into the soil.

The stench of death in the air grew stronger, and the decaying flesh emitted a reddish glow under the pale moonlight.

Zhizhi dug out a piece of decaying flesh stained with dried blood and stuffed it into its mouth.

After consuming that bloody piece of flesh, there was a faint red liquid flowing within its red paper body.

It dug out another piece.

Suddenly, it heard a sound and immediately stood up.

[Daddy gets taller, mommy becomes wider.

Daddy makes big fortunes, mommy’s heart gets shorter.]

The moonlight was bleak, not illuminating the castle but casting a gloomy white layer over the castle and garden plants, suppressing other colors and revealing a dark tone reminiscent of a black-and-white movie.

A little girl dressed in a white fluffy skirt with black long hair stood there quietly, holding a skull in her arms.

Her straight and dense black hair was swept behind her right ear, revealing a small three-petal blood flower earring.

Moonlight touched her thick and straight eyelashes, and her beautiful eyes emitted a mysterious and eerie glow.

She stared straight at the skull night light beside the paper doll.

Ning Su himself made the night light.

The ink-dot eyes of the paper doll met her gaze, and a bloody mist surrounded it from behind.

The little girl tilted her head slightly.

Behind her, small skulls emerged from the soil wall, and under the guardianship of numerous skeleton figures, she took steps towards the stone in front of the paper doll.

She bent down and picked up the skull night light, then stuffed the original skull head from her arms into the paper doll’s embrace.

She tilted her head slightly and looked at the paper doll, her soft black hair falling onto her pale face, revealing faint blood vessels and slightly parted deep red cherry lips.

“Don’t get close to my mommy and little brother.”

Leaving behind these chilling words, she disappeared.

In the first place, she was a phantom.

After she disappeared, the mummy doll behind the wall quickly ran over and, together with the paper doll, swiftly stuffed their mouths with blood-stained, decaying flesh.

Before three o’clock, the ghost friends returned to their beds.

On the 405 terrace, there was an additional skull night lamp, inconspicuous among the numerous skull night lamps hanging on the vines and placed on the ground.

The Blood Doll in the swaddling clothes opened its eyes, glanced at the two little boys on the bed, and then truly closed its eyes.

At three o’clock in the night, one of the boys on the bed got up, gently opened the bedroom door.

He stood outside the door, quietly peering through the crack at the Blood Doll in the swaddling clothes. Seeing the doll peacefully sleeping, cradling a skull head, with long lashes naturally resting on its fair cheek, he made a soft sound and sneaked away with quick steps.