CNC: Chapter 87

Highway 404 (7)

The driver suddenly gave them instructions. Lu Baizhou and Pei Mo were a bit embarrassed, or rather, reluctant.

After all, no one wanted to carry a bloody corpse and no one wanted to take a car ride with a bloody corpse.

The two of them exchanged looks. Finally, Jiang Yu looked at them and said in a cold voice, “Let me come. The driver himself said this so it must be part of the rules.”

Pei Mo suddenly felt some shame as the only male among them and hesitantly said, “A dead person is heavy. I will help you as well…”

“I can carry 80 kg of heavy objects. There is no need.” Jiang Yu saw his reluctance and refused.

Pei Mo, “……” He was put on the cold bench and suddenly didn’t know how to answer.

Just as Jiang Yu walked into the bloody guest room and bent down to pick up Chi Nan’s already stiff body, a stranger stopped her. “Thank you but I will do the work of carrying the passenger.”

Jiang Yu looked over warily at the young man wearing hotel overalls who suddenly appeared in Chi Nan’s room. She asked in a reserved manner, “Who are you?”

It was strange. Even if she stared at the other person’s face, she still felt that this person’s facial features were blurred. It was as if she couldn’t see anything clearly.

She couldn’t see him clearly and she couldn’t remember him. Perhaps once she turned her head away, she would forget that he had appeared.

“A hard-working manual laborer.” The stranger seemed to smile. He took out white gauze from his pocket and carefully wrapped it around Chi Nan’s deeply injured neck. “Specifically, I’m here to clean up the mess.”

He looked like he was handling the most precious porcelain as he neatly wrapped the gauze around Chi Nan’s neck. Finally, he tied a beautiful bow.

“Why are you doing this? Chi Nan is already dead…”

“Shh.” The stranger intercepted Jiang Yu’s words and pressed his index finger to his lips. “Don’t disturb him. He likes the quiet.”

Jiang Yu, “……” She was speechless but she unknowingly relaxed her breathing at the stranger’s gesture and movement.

It was as if Chi Nan with closed eyes would really wake up.

Once the stranger confirmed that the wound was cleaned, he picked up Chi Nan and walked toward the parking lot downstairs.

During the whole process, he didn’t look at Lu Baizhou and Pei Mo, who were standing by the door with surprised expressions. It was as if these two insignificant people didn’t exist.

Everyone was at a loss as they watched the stranger’s back descend down the stairs.

“Is this the NPC the instance specially prepared for us?”

“Probably? After all, carrying corpses is a dirty and tiring job. We can save a lot of trouble with this corpse transporter.”

“……” Before Jiang Yu left, she looked at Chi Nan’s motel room number and found that there was suddenly a ‘213’ sign on the originally empty door. It was like the room number during Chi Nan’s first stay.

However, he obviously changed rooms. Why was the room number the same?

Jiang Yu noted down this clue that made her pay attention.

“Chi Nan is already dead. Why did the driver request this?” Lu Baizhou asked suspiciously.

“Maybe…” Jiang Yu’s brow furrowed. “This car has a numbers requirement? It can’t get on the road with less than four passengers?”

The female owner cleaning at the foot of the stairs heard their conversation and said without looking up, “The carload of people must reach the end in a neat and tidy manner. It can’t be missing even one.”

She said this in a strange manner so Jiang Yu stopped and looked over. “What do you mean?”

“Literally.” The female owner finished speaking and carried the bucket toward the bathroom while humming a song.

Jiang Yu frowned. Neat and tidy… was this in terms of the number of people or the status of the task? If it was the status of the task, how should it be calculated now that a teammate had died?

Chi Nan’s death made her feel completely unbalanced when it came to safety and everything became more difficult to control.

The group of people walked to the parking lot. The driver was already sitting in the driver’s seat and had started the engine.

Chi Nan’s body was placed in its original position and his head was leaning heavily against the window pane. The wound was tightly bandaged and made him look like he was asleep.

Meanwhile, the corpse carrier had long disappeared without a trace.

“This… why isn’t the body in the trunk…?” Lu Baizhou’s hand pulling open the car door paused. The driver immediately glared at her coldly.

Jiang Yu sensed Lu Baizhou’s hesitation and took the initiative to say, “Let me sit in the back row.”

She could see that the little girl was very concerned about sitting in the same row with a corpse.

Lu Baizhou hesitated for a moment before nodding. “Thank you.”

The three people fastened their seat belts and the driver looked at Jiang Yu in the rearview mirror. “Please help the passenger with limited mobility fasten his seat belt, thank you.”

Jiang Yu wasn’t afraid of corpses. She followed the driver’s words and did the seat belt for Chi Nan. Then she thought of the corpse carrier’s careful actions just now and unknowingly relaxed her strength.

Looking closer, she found that the blood stains on Chi Nan’s face had been wiped clean. Was it the corpse carrier who cleaned it up? This service was too thoughtful.

Looking back now, she couldn’t remember the corpse carrier’s face but he felt very familiar… it was as if she knew him before but the familiarity was like a layered glass. It was useless no matter how hard she looked in. She couldn’t see clearly.

Moreover, things like ‘feeling’ were too subjective and ambiguous. Jiang Yu couldn’t convince herself to use this ‘feeling’ as evidence for inference.

Slow music played from the car radio. The driver hummed the song and set off again.

The SVU might be a closed environment but there was no unpleasant smell of blood in the air. There was just the smell of dry sunlight and industrial leather, just like when they first hit the road.

It stood to reason that Chi Nan’s clothes were covered with blood stains so the smell of blood should be very strong. Why couldn’t she notice the smell at all?

Jiang Yu looked at Chi Nan doubtfully. She didn’t know if it was an illusion but under the strong sunlight, Chi Nan’s body didn’t even decay. It was more like the grayness and dead energy on his face were much lighter. His lips also had a bit more color.

Her eyelids twitched and a bold inference sprouted in her heart. She was cautious and didn’t rush to a conclusion. She could only wait for time to give her an answer.

[Listeners and friends having a good trip, this is the weather broadcast. It is expected that for the next two hours, the entire section of Highway 404 will usher in a heavy rain and the road will be slippery. Your field of view will be greatly affected…]

The disturbing rain forecast sounded again. Lu Baizhou and Pei Mo in the second row looked at each other with ugly expressions.

In the rainstorm, one of them was destined to meet their character’s ‘waiting person.’

Heavy rain soon poured down against the glass window. The restless noise kept scratching at the tense nerves of the two people.

Lu Baizhou stared out the window. Her hand holding the seat belt suddenly tightened and her breathing changed rhythm immediately.

On the gray road in the rain, a girl with long, waist-length hair in a white dress beckoned at them.

“Whose girl is this?” Jiang Yu had already lit a cigarette to ease her mood. She saw Lu Baizhou’s expression reflected on the window glass and asked deliberately.

The corners of Lu Baizhou’s lips trembled nervously. There was a bit of sadness on her face in addition to horror. She shouted at the driver, “Stop.”

The road was slippery on a rainy day but the driver stopped very steadily. He handed the red umbrella from yesterday to Lu Baizhou.

However, Lu Baizhou didn’t make the next move. She sat on her seat and the hand holding the umbrella gradually tightened. Through the gray woman, Lu Baizhou and the woman waiting for the car looked at each other.

“Are you going to get off?” Jiang Yu asked.

Lu Baizhou wiped the water mist on the window glass with her sleeve. “Get out of the car and be killed by an evil spirit like Chi Nan?”

No one could refute this. Lu Baizhou didn’t tell the driver to drive immediately.

Lu Baizhou in the car and the woman outside the car faced each other for a long time. Neither of them took a step forward. In the middle of the night, Lu Baizhou seemed to have made up her mind. She turned and looked at the rearview mirror. “Driver, please drive.”

Thus, the SVU continued to drive forward in the torrential rain. Perhaps it was because they had stopped for a long time but the woman didn’t stop the car in a violent manner like Qu Yijun.

She just stood there and watched the car drive away.

Jiang Yu looked back at the woman who had been standing for a long time. “Doctor He?”

Lu Baizhou answered, “No.”

Jiang Yu raised an eyebrow. “You really know each other, but even now, you refuse to tell us the actual situation?”

Lu Baizhou was silent for around 10 minutes before pursing her lips. “She is my…”

She paused before changing her words. “Her name is Xu Lantian and I am her sub-personality in reality.”

Jiang Yu and Pei Mo were a bit surprised. “Then this body…?”

“Our common property? This character probably got plastic surgery from Dr He. This body is very different from the Xu Lantian I’m familiar with.” Lu Baizhou touched her face. “However, it is very similar to the appearance I have fantasized about countless times. To be honest, I am very satisfied.”

As she spoke, she smiled at the reflection in the glass with a complicated expression.

Jiang Yu frowned. “So the ‘victim’ of this nightmare isn’t entirely a virtual situation…”

Look at herself. She might not know Qu Yijun but the other person was indeed her ideal type in various aspects.

Lu Baizhou said, “Therefore, I think Chi Nan is in a similar situation and he was bewitched into committing suicide.”

Jiang Yu handed her a cigarette. “According to our previous deduction, everyone in the car is a murderer. In other words, your character killed the owner of this body and then contacted Doctor He for plastic surgery.”

Lu Baizhou smiled bitterly. “So she wants to come back and kill me to get revenge? Killing me is also killing herself…”

“Your situation is indeed special…”

Lu Baizhou looked at the wet wasteland outside the window. “Perhaps after this instance, one of us will really be the only one left.”

The two hours of rain were particularly long and the bruises on Jiang Yu’s body spread quickly. Now she could feel the pain drilling into her heart as she was sitting and her skeletal muscles felt like they would fall apart with a few slight movements.

The instance world was becoming more and more dangerous. She didn’t know if she could survive in this state until they cleared the dream… if they could clear it.

[Listeners, it is the weather forecast time: It is expected that in the next hour, the stormy weather within the entire range of Highway 404 will end. The ultraviolet rays are stronger on sunny days. Please pay attention to sun protection while enjoying the sunshine…]

The sun broke through the clouds again. Lu Baizhou had given her coat to Chi Nan before and now there were no extra clothes to cover her from the sun. She had to try and hide in the shade of the car as much as possible.

However, even if she wasn’t directly hit by the sun, there were still crisscrossed bloody marks on her body, as if she had been cut by countless knives. It appeared on her skin and looked very terrifying.

“Are these the knife marks from your plastic surgery?” Pei Mo looked at her and wondered.

Lu Baizhou’s expression stiffened. “I hope not.”

“Based on our previous inferences, the wounds that appear after the character is irradiated by the ultraviolet rays should be the wounds of the deceased.”

“Have you forgotten that they share a body? Who knows if this rule counts?”

“No matter how you calculate it, plastic surgery is a matter that happened after the death of the victim. It is strange for it to appear now, unless our previous reasoning is wrong.”

“……”

Just as everyone was arguing, the head of Chi Nan’s corpse banged against the glass and it seemed like his eyelashes trembled from the pain.

Everyone heard the movement and fell silent. The air in the car suddenly stopped flowing.

Pei Mo turned his head in horror. “Who made that sound just now…”

He couldn’t finish his words because he was very shocked by the scene in front of him.

“Sorry, it was me.”

The too strong sunlight poured down on his eyelids. Chi Nan’s eyelashes trembled again and his voice was somewhat hoarse due to dryness.

He raised his hand and consciously or unconsciously tore off the bandage tied around his neck. Then he touched the bow that had been deliberately made and his brain froze.

You Yu’s aesthetics didn’t seem to be very good…

Not proofread