Players, Please Board the Train

He pointed at the wall beside the front door and said, “See that?”

Xu Huo and Xie Ling looked where he was pointing, only to find that the wall of the Wax Figure Hall had tiny ripples that looked like wax melting and then solidifying again, appearing at first glance to be a continuous decorative pattern.

“No wonder I kept feeling something was off,” Xie Ling said at that moment. “We’ve been running around breaking quite a few wax figures, and the broken ones are still here, yet new wax figures keep appearing out of nowhere. They can’t just materialize from thin air. Could they be generated from this wax on the walls?”

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

The three of them exchanged glances. Right now, the Wax Figure Hall was a sealed space. If the wax on the walls kept melting, they would eventually be sealed in here for good!

Bai Wenxian instinctively charged toward the main entrance, but the doorway was already blocked by a giant wax figure. He bombarded it with items, which not only had no effect but actually caused the giant wax figure to start melting as well.

Xie Ling quickly stopped him. “We should go find Xu Ruosi and Long Aotian instead. Maybe if we find them, we can get out of here.”

“Haven’t you figured it out yet? Finding the corpses is completely useless!” Bai Wenxian glanced at Xu Huo. “If it were useful, those two from the Horror Room would have been enough.”

Xu Huo ignored him and tried using the Eye of the Dead, but he couldn’t manage to break through the venue either.

“Strange Tales at Night—it’s not like they want us to spend the whole night here, is it?” he said half-jokingly. “Anyway, it’s already dark outside. Why don’t we just rest for the night? Maybe by tomorrow morning, the venue will open on its own.”Xie Ling and Bai Wenxian stared at him in disbelief.

Xu Huo paid no attention to their looks and continued, “Don’t be so pessimistic. At least we’ve figured out three things by now.”

“First, monsters from horror stories where we didn’t successfully obtain clues won’t appear.”

“Second, when the Wax Figure Hall returns to ground level, monsters from horror stories won’t appear either.”

“Third, when the Wax Figure Hall is underground, the venue absolutely cannot be opened.”

“What do you mean?” Bai Wenxian frowned.

“The monsters we’ve been seeing are actually wax figures,” Xu Huo said. “The ones walking around the room, the ones following us—every single one of them, without exception.”

“Wax figures can’t make human sounds.”

“But we all heard a child’s laughter,” Xie Ling said, looking between him and Bai Wenxian. “And didn’t you both say earlier that you heard a woman in a red dress laughing?”

“That’s true too, but there’s one prerequisite missing: the woman in the red dress shouldn’t appear in the Wax Figure Hall,” Xu Huo said. “To verify this, I just told a story about a Human Skin Ghost. That character didn’t show up in the venue.”

Xie Ling immediately stepped away from Bai Wenxian, also keeping her distance from Xu Huo.

“Don’t you think your reasoning is a bit too presumptuous?” Bai Wenxian sneered. “What makes you think the Wax Figure Hall has to follow whatever rules you claim? Can’t things just happen randomly?”

“Of course, that’s also a possibility,” Xu Huo said flatly. “But since this is a game, it’s no fun to play without following the rules.”

Bai Wenxian mocked him, “Talking about rules in a killing game?”

Xu Huo gave a slight smile. “Just because you don’t follow the rules doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”

“Telling a story gives you a fifty percent chance of obtaining a clue. Breaking the rules means no clue. These two points match our five people’s situations.”

But Bai Wenxian retorted, “Xie Ling said she saw two wax figures. If there were really two clues, and the first wax figure waited until she came out, then we should have seen a wax figure when we came out too. Her claim doesn’t hold up, and neither does yours.”

“Don’t rush. Let me finish,” Xu Huo interrupted, returning to the previous topic. “Earlier, when the Wax Figure Hall was underground, aside from the woman in the red dress, the other wax figures could at most make stomping sounds. But when we returned to ground level to look for Xu Ruosi and the other, aside from the laughter, no wax figures followed us.”

“That does seem to be the case,” Xie Ling said, thinking it over. “So when we came across wax figures again just now after leaving the Horror Room, does that mean we’ve gone back underground?”

“The Wax Figure Hall hasn’t moved,” Bai Wenxian said.

“When we climbed out from above the Horror Room, we didn’t feel the Wax Figure Hall move either,” Xu Huo said.

Bai Wenxian couldn’t refute that point, because the Wax Figure Hall itself was already a very special existence. After a moment, he let out a cold laugh, his fingers twitching slightly. “Are you suggesting that I did something in between…”

Before he could finish his sentence, Xu Huo closed the distance between them in an instant, simultaneously using Extreme Fatigue and Progress Bar Disappearance. The former weakened his opponent’s combat effectiveness, while the latter guarded against any item effects or characteristics that might be used against him. Then, the Murmuring Sphere appeared, and the Mental World opened instantly!

Bai Wenxian’s face showed shock. As he retreated, a pair of earplugs and a blindfold appeared on him, and he simultaneously flung out over a dozen bright white, glowing orbs. The light instantly turned the entire front hall a blinding white, and the overwhelmingly harsh glare almost forced a reflexive closing of the eyelids!

Xu Huo closed his eyes too.

Bai Wenxian seized this opening to attack. A long whip studded with blades swept through the air!

The Severing Ties Door immediately blocked it, but no one expected the whip to be so powerful. It left several gashes on the door, and the tip even curved around it, lashing out at Xu Huo!

Even with his eyes closed, Xu Huo could still pinpoint the weapon’s position. He stepped back slightly, raised his sword, and swept it across, cleanly cutting the long whip in two. Then, he twisted his hand to the side, instantly reappearing behind Bai Wenxian!

“Distance of an Enemy!” Bai Wenxian spun around and thrust both hands forward. Xu Huo was immediately pushed and slammed into the wall beside him, knocked back and away from him.

“Judgment of the People!” Bai Wenxian raised a cross. Xu Huo, still pressed against the wall, found his entire body forced onto the wall’s surface. Seeing him pull out another nail-like item, Xu Huo moved his hand. The air in front of him instantly compressed into a three-foot-wide shield. Compressing the air by several times effectively extended the distance, so when the shield formed, he also broke free from the cross’s influence.

Bai Wenxian’s expression shifted slightly. Just then, the effect of the blinding light item was about to wear off. He was about to turn and run back into the Wax Figure Hall when, unexpectedly, a door suddenly appeared behind him. Unable to stop his momentum, he crashed straight into it, and then his foot found no ground. He plummeted into a bottomless abyss!

To avoid being interfered with by items, he had deliberately sealed his hearing. But as he fell, Bai Wenxian gradually felt the earplugs fail. The darkness was filled with all kinds of sounds, frantically forcing their way into his ears!

“This is an illusion!” He steadied his mind, pulled out a glow stick, and threw it onto the ground. “Careless You!”

In the darkness, a faint green light seemed to respond to the glow stick. Bai Wenxian grabbed an axe and hurled it straight at the light!

The sensation of falling vanished. Bai Wenxian then took out a firework. As sparks shot up, he himself charged toward the location of the green light!