Nan Yue rubbed her temples, “I have a thought. As I said before, these adventures won’t be too difficult, so Amy shouldn’t be too hard to find.”
“Amy might appear at any moment, everyone be careful.”
Nan Yue walked downstairs. Joseph lived in the lower hold, and it was likely where Amy went missing.
She also had an idea.
Unlike Jessica, Jessica might have been using some of Devil’s Bay’s effects to kill people.
But Jessica was alive.
However, Amy hadn’t been seen by anyone for a very long time; few even knew she existed.
A child couldn’t possibly live that long.
She thought Amy might… already be dead.
Dead for a long time.
How could one find someone who was dead?
One way was to find her body, but Joseph hadn’t found his daughter despite being on the ship for so long. Even considering some rigid thinking, Nan Yue felt this approach would be very difficult.
There was another possibility…
Nan Yue walked to the crew lounge. The lights weren’t on, as everyone was busy outside preparing dinner.
She closed the door and turned on the lounge lights.
The lounge was clean, odorless, and had no hiding places.
Nan Yue bent down. She had learned many things in school, including folk methods for seeing ghosts.
If no one could find Amy, perhaps they were using the wrong method.
To find a ghost, one always needed different methods.
Nan Yue’s waist curved flexibly. She braced her hands against her calves, her upper and lower body folded together.
She looked out from between her legs.
Suddenly, a little girl’s badly mutilated face appeared before her, so close that Nan Yue could even smell the stench of seawater mixed with decaying flesh.
The little girl hung upside down, bloody, tilting her head to meet Nan Yue’s gaze from between her legs.
Nan Yue’s expression didn’t change in the slightest. She made no sound, only her lips moved.
—I found you.
...
Gao Geng had no knack for hide-and-seek; it was safe to say he detested the game.
This was normal; no scavenger would enjoy it.
After all, for the NPCs of the mission world, games might be part of their upbringing, but scavengers had no leisure time; they wouldn’t encounter such games.
No, that wasn’t right. They did, in their training.
Thus, games represented death, gore, and the supernatural.
But he wanted to survive, so he searched with exceptional diligence.
The target was a child no one had ever seen. Damn it, how was he supposed to find her?
Gao Geng walked through the stairwell. Although there were elevators on the ship, the stairwell was an easier place to hide people.
The ship’s staircases were winding and dark. Because few people used them, the lightbulbs hadn’t been replaced, and broken ones appeared every so often.
Even the working lights were dim and dusty from neglect.
As Gao Geng walked, he thought that this mission, as the high-level players had analyzed earlier, wasn’t very difficult.
It was just that because of the mental attacks, they hadn’t rested well for several days, making it difficult to remain calm even in situations they’d normally handle with composure.
He sighed. In truth, no mission was truly simple.
These individual adventures weren’t hard, and they weren’t particularly terrifying for battle-hardened scavengers.
But the problem was that the first two adventures had pushed the scavengers’ mental stability to a very volatile state. He himself hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep in four or five days.
Last night, the little girl sang nursery rhymes all night, and he and his roommate were awake until dawn.
If this continued, let alone stabilizing their mental stability and focusing on the mission, he worried he’d die of sudden exhaustion first.
The staircase was long, and as Gao Geng walked, he inexplicably remembered a legend mentioned during his school days.
The legend said that if an extra thirteenth step appeared in a stairwell, it meant something was following you.
Don’t count, don’t count, don’t count!!
In a mission, courting death would truly summon something.
But Gao Geng’s mouth wouldn’t obey.
“1… 2… 3…”
To his horror, he found himself slowly, numbly counting. His body began to tremble, and he could feel the surroundings grow cold.
Damn it! Stop!
“…13.”
Gao Geng’s steps halted, and his mouth stopped counting.
He stood at the bottom of the last step, feeling a bit ridiculous.
The staircases were clearly built differently, but damn it, how was there really a thirteenth step here?
“Daddy?”
A small voice whispered against Gao Geng’s back.
“Are you looking for me?”
Gao Geng’s heart pounded. He trembled, not just from fear, but from excitement.
He actually found Amy!
Of course, why hadn’t he thought of it? Amy was already dead, so the legendary methods for seeing ghosts could help them find the girl.
At this point, Gao Geng no longer had the mental energy to realize that it wasn’t his idea to use a ghost-seeing method.
It was more like…
That thing was guiding them to use this method to see it.
The ghost longed to be found.
“Yes, Amy! I found you!”
After saying that, Gao Geng suddenly felt an terrifying cold behind him; half his body was numb with frost.
“You’re not my daddy.”
The previously sweet child’s voice behind him suddenly turned sinister.
“You’re not my daddy!”
“You’re not my daddy!”
“You’re not my daddy!”
Gao Geng’s mind went blank from the relentless questioning, until he felt something crawl onto his shoulder.
A chilling face pressed against his ear, and the flickering, dim light suddenly went out.
“You… are dead.”
...
Wen Xiang Yuan sat alone in her room. She didn’t really want to go out; she hadn’t rested well lately. If Amy could be found anywhere, she could be found in the room too.
She went to the bathroom. She had intended to wash her hands, but after turning on the water, she hesitated.
Her gaze unconsciously lingered on the small, yellowed mirror opposite her.
She kept looking at herself in the mirror.
Wen Xiang Yuan didn’t know when it started, but she felt like the person in the mirror was somewhat unfamiliar.
It was as if… she knew what she looked like, that face she had seen for many years, it was the most familiar countenance.
But after staring for a long time, a thought suddenly arose.
The person in the mirror…
Is that really me?
The Wen Xiang Yuan in the mirror raised a strange smile.
Wen Xiang Yuan’s eyes widened instantly. The reflection began to move.
Meanwhile, she, outside the mirror, was as rigid as a stone statue.
The Wen Xiang Yuan in the mirror slowly approached the mirror, and soon her face seemed to press against the inside of it.
Soon… she would come out.
As Wen Xiang Yuan realized this, she found that her own body had also leaned forward at some point, and her face was pressed against the mirror.
Rate on N.U.
