Infinite Peculiar Games

In the guest room on the second floor, Ye’s lifeless body stared with unblinking eyes, slowly sliding to the ground.

Even in death, she could not fathom how Zou Yan had killed her, given the instance’s rule was that “only ghosts can kill humans.”

Zou Yan withdrew her right hand, revealing grotesque vine-like patterns that crawled over her once-fair arm. Plant tendrils occasionally emerged from her veins, blooming into tiny, bloody flower buds.

However, the transformation into a ghostly form halted only at her arm. At her shoulder, a metal ring encased the muscles, preventing further spread of the vines.

【Name: Ring of Barrier】

【Type: Prop】

【Effect: Slows down the spread of the Peculiar】

【Note: When faced with an inevitable outcome, what use is fear and hesitation?】

Compared to the other players, Zou Yan’s objective differed from the beginning—she was here to find something specific.

Now that her task was complete, it was time to conclude this instance.

With two deaths, only one more needs to be killed…

Zou Yan pushed open the door and headed towards the innermost room.

She remembered that Lin Chen, the newbie, was left inside.

…

In the room on the third floor, crimson threads of blood began to spread from fingertips, swiftly engulfing Qi Si.

He attempted to speak but found himself voiceless. Resigned, he allowed the threads to crawl across his body, weaving a scarlet web upon his skin.

Outside the door, vines grew wildly, surging through the cracks and filling every inch of the room.

Objective time seemed to freeze, and Chang Xu maintained a bent posture beside the bed. Dust hung in the air, casting faint shadows on the floor.

A faint pinkish hue veiled his sight, dimming the surroundings like an old photograph in a fire, curled and yellowed.

Amid the obscure light and shadows, phantom images appeared—their meanings almost instantly understood by Qi Si.

Strange cognitions flooded his mind, instantly familiar yet newly awakened at this moment…

…

Outside the ancient castle, rain poured heavily.

In the cluttered attic, a girl with a red birthmark on her face fell to the ground. The door closed before her eyes, and the last beam of light converged into a line, fading into darkness.

The girl neither cried nor protested, as if accustomed to such treatment long ago. She sat quietly in the corner, listening to the footsteps outside fade away.

After who knows how long, a faint light glimmered in the darkness. Like a startled shadow creature, she timidly gazed towards the source of light.

Among the dusty debris, she noticed a small, luminous statue placed in the corner, bathed in a misty morning glow.

Carved from stone, the statue had an exquisite face that captivated hearts.

Its hands clasped around its chest, and its lowered eyes gazed upon a blood-red rose made of gemstones, eerie yet serene and compassionate.

The girl, almost obsessively, picked up the statue and held it before her eyes, gazing with near devotion.

In a trance, she heard the voice of the deity.

The deity asked, “I can sense your pain. Do you wish to pray to me?”

Already despondent about the future, the girl felt no fear of the unknown.

She replied with a bitter smile, “What use is a prayer? I was born ugly; they say I am the reincarnation of a demon. Perhaps my existence was a mistake from the beginning.”

The deity said, “Beauty and ugliness, goodness and evil, all exist among living beings. If you desire beauty, plant roses throughout the attic, and henceforth everything will be as you wish.”

The girl agreed to the deity’s bargain. For countless days and nights, she secretly ventured out of the castle, taking rose branches from the manor to the attic, filling the floorboards’ gaps with soil and planting the cuttings.

Her hands were pierced by the thorns of the roses, scarred and worn, but the thought of soon gaining beauty made her forget all her fatigue and pain.

She remembered the candies her sister gave her when she was young and the stories she told. Those were her earliest understandings of familial affection, which had gradually bred more complex and incomprehensible emotions.

But now her sister busied herself daily with various banquets, never casting a glance her way. When she finally found her sister and dared to kiss her lips, her parents rushed in, alarmed, shouting and locking her in the attic.

She thought it must be because of her ugliness; people prefer beauty and detest ugliness.

As long as she could become beautiful, her parents would not despise her anymore, and she could continue to follow her sister as she did in her childhood, right?

As the rose branches climbed the attic, the birthmark on the girl’s face faded, her appearance increasingly resembling her sister’s. Yet she gradually noticed her parents’ gaze growing more fearful.

On a rainy night, the girl overheard her parents talking.

The father said, “Annie’s behaviour is becoming more and more strange. I’m afraid she might hurt Anna… Should we call the priest?”

The mother hesitated. “We can’t let the priest come; Annie will be executed. We’ll watch over her carefully; nothing will happen.”

The father sighed: “Tomorrow, let’s send Anna to the countryside. We should arrange a marriage for her soon and separate the two of them…”

The girl listened calmly, her face devoid of joy or anger. She knew exactly what she needed to do, just as she had tirelessly planted roses night after night.

Once again, she climbed to the attic and kneeled before the statue, praying devoutly.

She said, “I want two people to die in a way that arouses no suspicion. For this, I am willing to pay any price.”

The deity then instructed her on how to kill a living creature and use fresh blood to draw the incantation.

The girl killed the family cat. The moment the warm blood stained her fingertips, she knew there was no turning back.

…

When Qi Si regained consciousness, he found himself leaning against the wall. The two skeletons on the large bed had vanished, leaving only a pile of bone fragments.

Beside them, Chang Xu was trying to break the bone fragments into even smaller pieces.

Seeing Qi Si awake, Chang Xu explained, “You were haunted just now. I speculated the skeletons were involved, so I smashed them.”

“…”

Though he understood that everyone had different talents, in a fair game where intelligence could navigate through crises, there must also exist a solution where sheer strength could overcome all obstacles…

…But wasn’t this just too absurd?

Qi Si fell silent, lowering his head to look at his hands.

The red dress he had been holding was nowhere to be seen, evidently consumed as a plot item after the event was triggered.

The paper he had found under the pillow had also disappeared, leaving no trace, as if it had never existed.

Qi Si looked towards Chang Xu. “If I’m not mistaken, there was a paper with clues under the pillow.”

Chang Xu, with his proactive nature, immediately reached under the pillow as he spoke, retrieving a paper filled with writing.

Qi Si stepped forward, scanning the words on the paper:

【Anna and Annie were born at the same time…】

The contents of the paper were identical to the previous one.

Was time rewinding again?

If the previous time rewind had been deduced indirectly by the movement of the watch’s hands, then this time it was a direct, tangible experience.

Qi Si felt as though he had just woken from an incredibly long dream, where each blink spanned a thousand years. Countless thoughts flowed through his consciousness, leaving faint traces and impressions that seemed both real and illusory.

This sensation was peculiar, as if it originated from the mechanism of the instance, yet it also felt like an inherent talent buried deep within his memory.

After Chang Xu finished reading the contents of the paper, he handed it to Zisi and asked, “How did you know there was a paper under the pillow?”

“I saw it,” Qi Si replied. “It seems there was another time rewind just now, or perhaps I had a hallucination.”

He briefly recounted his experience and feelings.

Chang Xu raised his left hand to the back of his neck, his gaze slightly narrowed. “I feel like time at Rose Manor is starting to become chaotic. The time rewind at around one o’clock in the afternoon seemed like a trigger. Once activated, its subsequent effects are uncontrollable.”

Qi Si did not correct Chang Xu’s speculation.

He tapped his temple and thoroughly scanned the system interface’s rules from top to bottom.

The anomaly at 1 p.m. was undoubtedly the key to breaking the game. Understanding the trigger mechanism behind the time rewind was now paramount.

But there were too few clues.

The only certainty was that the trigger for the time rewind was linked to either Zou Yan or Ye.

One of them used an item to obtain the four-line poem clue from Chang Xu’s room and immediately conducted an experiment.

The experiment was successful.

(End of Chapter)

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