IWBL: Chapter 220
Xiao Wu unlocked the bolt of the iron door from the inside. At the same time, she turned her body sideways to let the reincarnators enter. Xiao Li held the iron door before Ye Lingshi and he raised his volume a bit. It wasn’t on an annoying level but it wasn’t as mild as before. “What will happen if we really wake up your parents?”
Xiao Wu’s smile disappeared. “They will be angry. Don’t let them be angry.”
“Will they drive us out if they’re angry?”
Xiao Wu turned around in a noncommittal manner and pushed open the hidden wooden door.
The light ghost had hidden in Xiao Li’s pocket long before Ye Lingshi had even sent a message to Xiao Wu and it was replaced with the light from the mobile phone. At this moment, the light from the mobile phone shone into the room behind the girl and the old-fashioned floor could be seen. There were many scratches but no dust. Obviously, there were people living inside.
Ye Lingshi made eye contact with the two big shots and decided to go in.
The interior of this old, dilapidated house was very small. There were two bedrooms and one living room. The presence of the sofa and dining table meant that it was crowded with no place to stand.
The door of the master bedroom was closed tightly while a side door was ajar. A dim light shone from it and they could vaguely see the appearance of a girl’s room. A laptop was placed on the desk and quilts were randomly scattered on the bed. The floor was covered with carpet.
There were five people in the group. Xiao Li didn’t sit while the remaining four filled the sofa, with Wang Huai sitting on the outside.
Xiao Wu had turned on the night light in the living room. This night light was very dim and could only serve as a small illuminator. It wasn’t as bright as the light from the mobile phone screen She went to the kitchen and within minutes, she came out with a plate that had six glasses of water on it.
Xiao Wu handed the cups to the reincarnators one by one. Wang Huai took it first. By the time it reached the last cup, Xiao Wu didn’t leave it for herself. Instead, she placed it on the other side of the table.
Xiao Li was leaning against the table and he turned his head to look. The water in the transparent glass rippled before soon calming down. Wang Huai was holding his own glass of water. The skull ring on his finger flashed with a dark light. He pointed to the last glass of water and asked, “Miss Wu, that cup of water isn’t for you?”
“No,” Xiao Wu said. “It is for another person.”
Ye Lingshi asked tentatively, “Is someone else coming to your house?”
“No.”
She didn’t explain her intentions. She just glanced at the master bedroom and still lowered her voice. “What else do you want to ask?”
Neither Wang Huai nor Xiao Li spoke. Ye Lingshi was the first to open his mouth. “Do you know that author?”
“I have been added to his reader group,” Xiao Wu answered. “Zui Tian might reply to some comments but he basically doesn’t speak in the group and there is no other contact information. I haven’t talked to him and he never replied to my comment after he stopped updating.”
Ye Lingshi asked again, “You haven’t made contact in reality?”
“No.”
“Then after reading that novel, have you encountered anything strange?”
Xiao Wu really thought about it. Then she kept her head lowered and replied, “No.”
Wang Huai was sitting facing the door of the master bedroom and he suddenly interjected. “You let us in. Aren’t you afraid of waking up your parents?”
“It doesn’t matter as long as you don’t deliberately disturb them.”
This was reality, not an instance where they could use some special methods. Apart from the dust at the door and the so-called parents, everything here looked normal. Ye Lingshi couldn’t find any more questions to ask. It seemed that the only gain tonight was the author’s name.
Just then, Xiao Li looked at the glass of water once again. However, this time, the water in the glass disappeared without a trace. The water was gone while the cup was still there. It was like an invisible ‘person’ had just drunk this glass of water.
Xiao Li lowered his head and took a sip of water from his own glass. Then he placed it beside the empty glass, picked up the empty glass and handed it to Xiao Wu. “This glass of water has been drunk.”
It wasn’t known if Xiao Wu was pretending to be stupid or if she really was stupid. She stood up and took the empty glass. “Then I will go and pour some more water.”
The instant the girl went into the kitchen, Wang Huai understood what this person intended. The skull on his ring half opened its eyes and dark green vertical pupils scanned the living room with a grey light. It was fleeting. Wang Huai let go of the ring. “The power here is a bit strange. It isn’t like a simple ghost. It is like a mixture of something…”
He didn’t finish his words. He seemed a bit confused. If Wang Huai said it was strange then it was really strange.
Ye Lingshi suddenly became alert. Xiao Li took advantage of the moment when Xiao Wu turned around to move lightly to the door of the master bedroom. He pushed open the door of the master bedroom, looked inside and immediately shut the door again.
“What is it?” Sun Jiaming was impatient. “What did you see?”
Xiao Li told them, “There are two people lying side by side in bed.”
“There are really people…” Ye Lingshi sighed. He didn’t know if he should be happy or sad.
Xiao Li added, “However, their sheets are pulled over their heads and completely cover their heads. They are lying there motionless.”
His belated sentence caused Ye Lingshi, who had just relaxed, to become tense again. In a completely dark master bedroom, a couple pulled the sheets over their heads while they slept—
What was this joke? Only the dead in the morgue could ‘sleep’ like this. Were Xiao Wu’s parents’ dead? Xiao Wu hid them in the bedroom. In order to conceal the truth, Xiao Wu didn’t go out for a long time…
Ye Lingshi started speculating.
Xiao Li recalled the scene he had just glimpsed and exclaimed, “They are quite interesting.”
Ye Lingshi, “……”
What was interesting? Was it a post-mortem tradition? He was about to open his mouth to correct Sherlock’s three views when Xiao Wu came out of the kitchen with a glass of hot water. “Sorry, there is no cold water. I heated this up and it took a while.”
Xiao Wu was still the same. She placed the glass on the table and looked up at the clock hung on the wall. “It is late. Do you have anything else you want to ask?”
Ye Lingshi was hesitating to ask about Xiao Wu’s parents. At the very least, he had to explore this area. He was just considering his words when he heard Xiao Li speak. “Yes.”
Xiao Wu waited for his question.
Xiao Li went on to inquire, “This Zui Tian you’ve been talking about, is it actually yourself?”
Ye Lingshi, “……”
Too straightforward! Sherlock was too direct! How could he ask such a thing? It should be aimed at from the side! He decided that if he could live until the new year, he would give a copy of ‘The Art of Speaking’ as a gift to the other person in the new year.
Xiao Wu’s movements paused. Her original thoughts seemed to be interrupted by these words and she didn’t immediately answer.
Tick, tick, tick.
For a while, there was only the sound of the clock’s hands moving in the living room. Then the hand pointed to 1 o’clock in the morning. Xiao Wu suddenly pressed on her phone and called out excitedly, “It’s time, he updated!”
She clicked on the novel website in front of everyone and started chasing today’s update. What was this magical update?
The others also took out their phones. They searched for the novel website and the author before opening today’s update. This chapter was also written in the horror style following the previous chapter.
[The person who wrote Kou Tian’s novel has completely surpassed Kou Tian. Not only had he been recommended by the website but even Kou Tian’s editor told him that he had made great progress recently. He should continue like this.
Kou Tian originally wanted to ask the editor to help find out who had logged into his account but he couldn’t say it anymore.
Time passed. At first, Kou Tian was worried. He felt that this sudden continuation was very strange. He couldn’t find the existence of this person at all. He didn’t know who had hacked into his account and helped post for him. However, the praise of the novel still surpassed everything and he became complacent. He even became a fan of this sequel.
It could be seen that the worldview of this sequel was very grand. It didn’t only limit the story to what had happened in Kou Tian’s room. It also extended it to another world where there were ghosts, many strange creatures and even gods.
The person writing the sequel had written in the update:
Outside the well, there is a vast and chaotic world. One day, this world shattered and a part of the world fell into the well. This is the source of everything.
This was followed by a large number of worldviews that surpassed Kou Tian’s knowledge and he became a fan of the author. Today, Kou Tian was once again waiting for the update to the sequel. After the other person updated, he couldn’t wait to go in and read it.
***
The following was the story of the sequel. Kou Tian’s main character was called Xiao Wu, Kou Tian Wu. This was the first time that the name of Kou Tian’s protagonist had been written in Zui Tian’s update.
Xiao Wu hadn’t gone out for a long time. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go out. It was that she couldn’t go out. It was because outside the door was another world that she was completely unfamiliar with.
She had to hide on her bed alone, covering her head with a quilt as she listened to the sound of footsteps outside the bedroom door from time to time. However, there should be no one else in her home!
The footsteps stopped at the door of her room. Xiao Wu covered her face and shook nervously, waiting for the person at the door to enter. The sound of the door handle being twisted entered her ears. She had locked the door and the person outside the door didn’t open it. Instead, they let go.
Xiao Wu took two breaths. She put down the cup and wiped away the sweat on her forehead with her arms. Despite the cold autumn weather, she was sweating all over. According to past experience, after the person showed up, she could go out for a while without worrying about bumping into that person.
Xiao Wu opened the locked door and took a careful look at the living room. She made sure no one was there and walked into the kitchen, deciding to get herself some food first. She glanced at the trash can and found that the previous empty trash can had a lunch box covered with a plastic bag thrown inside.
Xiao Wu hadn’t thrown anything inside. There must be a second person in her home.
She definitely couldn’t cook any food and there wasn’t enough time to order takeout. She could only think about instant noodles or instant food such as hot pot. She took out instant noodles and ham from the cabinet and boiled a pot of water. After soaking the noodles, she gobbled it up.
Xiao Wu ate quickly and finished everything in five minutes. She threw the instant noodles box into the trash can, went to the toilet and ran all the way back to her bedroom. It was only after locking the door that Xiao Wu felt safe. She sighed with relief and waited for the fullness in her stomach to subside a bit before going to bed.
She had just taken two steps when she became stunned. The quilt that had been opened when she left was unexpectedly closed! Not only that, there was something similar to a long pillar hidden under the quilt. It looked like a person was on the bed and the quilt had been pulled over their head.
Was it… the one who had been invisible? It was hiding in her quilt? Meanwhile, she had just locked the door.
Xiao Wu was frightened. She immediately held her breath, turned and unlocked the door of the room. She didn’t have any thoughts of finding out who was under the quilt as she ran outside, found the key and locked the door from the outside.
Phew, it should be okay now. She had locked the other person in.
Xiao Wu sighed with relief. She felt that her life had returned to its original state, except that she could no longer enter the master bedroom. Still, she had the second bedroom.
Xiao Wu threw the key of the master bedroom into the trash can and smiled happily. After ordering takeout and following the updates she wanted to see, she covered her mouth and stretched tiredly. She walked into the second bedroom to lie down and get ready to sleep.
She was exhausted these days and Xiao Wu fell asleep quickly. In her half awake and half asleep state, Xiao Wu had a thought. Why was the quilt so stuffy today? It seemed to be smothering her to death…
Before she went to bed, she obviously lay on her side with the quilt in her arms. Now it seemed to be over her head. As she lost consciousness, she heard a loud locking sound from outside the door.]
Xiao Wu—
The moment Ye Lingshi saw this name, he looked up only to find that Xiao Wu had disappeared. It was just after this chapter was updated. In the blink of an eye, Xiao Wu disappeared from the world!
“She is a ghost? The protagonist of a Chinese web novel?” Suddenly, Ye Lingshi didn’t care about waking up Xiao Wu’s parents. He jumped up from the sofa, turned around the room and ran to the door. “Let’s leave here first.”
However, he opened the wooden door and found that the stairs outside the iron door had disappeared. The stairs they used to go up were originally facing the iron door. Now the location of the stairs had become a wall.
“We’re trapped here.” Wang Huai stood behind Ye Lingshi. He was very tall and gave people a strong sense of oppression. He didn’t panic and thought about it calmly. “The world in the novel? A domain?”
“Domain?” Ye Lingshi turned his head. The presence of Wang Huai and Sherlock kept him from panicking.
Wang Huai explained, “A certain powerful ghost or a special force can contaminate a corner and let it act according to a certain rule, just like an instance. It can be said that this is a prototype of an instance that has been weakened many times.”
“It is easy to go out. In addition to using powerful external forces to destroy it, you can also find the corresponding rule and way of life.”
“This type of domain has appeared in reality… we have to speed up the progress. Time is running out.”
Wang Huai took a few steps back, rare worry in his voice.
Ye Lingshi gave up on the idea of leaving and returned to the house. “We have to get out of here first before thinking about other things.”
Xiao Li turned on the incandescent light of the living room. Its power was countless times stronger than the night light and everyone’s eyes hurt.
“Are we now in the world of a novel?” Ye Ziye walked back and forth. He checked the trash can in the kitchen and finally stopped at the door of the master bedroom. “Is this… Xiao Wu, who is covered?”
It was like a closed Mobius ring. Xiao Wu suffocated herself, forgot this memory and locked the door. Then she went back to the room and ended up suffocated again.
Sun Jiaming came out of the side room and placed Xiao Wu’s laptop on the table in the living room. “Look at this laptop. Is it Zui Tian’s laptop?”
The computer was open to the standby interface and a password was required. Sun Jiaming looked up at the others. “There is a password.”
Wang Huai took the laptop and entered a few lines of code on it. The computer turned on automatically without needing the password to be entered. Before the others could ask, he explained absent-mindedly, “I studied in the Department of Computer Science at university.”
“However, it shouldn’t be an important clue if I can enter so easily.”
It was as Wang Huai said. He searched through the files, documents and web pages on the laptop and found nothing. There were only some ordinary novels that Xiao Wu usually liked to read and no clues about the novel.
The laptop was randomly set aside.
***
The wall clock showed it was 1:30.
Xiao Li suddenly raised his head. “The author has updated again.”
During the time when the others had stood up and searched, he sat down and kept reading this Zui Tian’s novel. As he turned to the last chapter, he suddenly discovered that Zui Tian had posted another chapter a few minutes ago. Today was a double update.
[In recent days, Xiao Wu has become more frightened. It is because she discovered that the people with their heads covered on the bed had become two people, not one.
She didn’t dare lift the sheet to show the faces of the two people. She could only desperately press the quilt tighter on them and lock the door.
After these days of understanding, she knew that the two people lying on the master bed wouldn’t wake up and act. Therefore, she didn’t think of a way to remove these two people. She just locked them in the master bedroom.
The appearance of this second person meant that another person had appeared in her home when she didn’t know it. Did this mean there would be a third or a fourth person? In the end, would her home be full of such ‘people’?
Xiao Wu was going crazy because of her own imagination. She was helpless but she couldn’t go out. Her door was blocked by some force. Only outsiders could come in. She couldn’t get out at all.
After detecting movement from the master bedroom again, Xiao Wu hid under the bed of the second bedroom. She turned on her phone, searched for a supernatural forum on the Internet and sent out her own help post.
Soon, the forum administrator replied to her and asked her for the details. Xiao Wu didn’t dare say any more for fear that the other person wouldn’t come if they knew about it. She could only speak vaguely before the meeting. She would lead the people over first, preferably today and at a late time.
She had this idea and set it for midnight in the middle of the night. She said she was only free at this time. Soon, the administrator of the forum brought people in. Xiao Wu couldn’t wait. She stood at the door and waited a long time. She wanted to lead the administrators in and tell them what happened.
The administrators who entered didn’t know what type of house they had entered. They naturally didn’t know their future fate. They were about to be trapped here, replacing Xiao Wu and becoming a new group of residents.
The story here would never stop.
—Kou Tian looked at his automatically written chapter, tapped the keyboard with satisfaction and scrolled down. He clicked on the comments section of this novel to reply.]
Everyone finished reading Zui Tian’s second update and Ye Lingshi said, “Apart from some small details that aren’t correct, shouldn’t these administrators be referring to us? This chapter implies that we will become the next Xiao Wu?”
Xiao Li thought about it. “I think a bed might not fit the five of us.”
Wang Huai replied, “There is still the floor. I will say it in advance. I won’t sleep on the floor.”
Xiao Li agreed. “I don’t want to either.”
Ye Lingshi, “……”
“I will sleep, I will sleep, okay.” Ye Lingshi compromised for these two people before continuing in a helpless voice. “Still, let’s solve the immediate problem first so that no one has to sleep on the floor.”
“That’s right.” Xiao Li nodded. “I think the focus here should be the novel instead of Xiao Wu.”
As he spoke, Xiao Li registered an account to make things easier and entered the comments section of Zui Tian’s novel.
[NO. 1 Netizen Sherlock’s message: Author, are you human?]
The comments area was very active and some readers soon replied to Xiao Li: [?? Zui Tian is great. You are cursing him for not being human?]
[This should be a praise, he is praising Zui Tian for the double update today. Doesn’t this mean that he is a writing machine?]
Xiao Li refreshed a few times but Zui Tian didn’t reply to him. He stood up and opened the door of the master bedroom again. This time, there was no one on the bed in the master bedroom. The quilt was neatly stacked without any traces of being slept in.
“Xiao Wu disappeared?” Wang Huai’s voice came from behind him. “It is estimated that it is our turn now.”
Sun Jiaming and Ye Ziye were looking for possible clues in the second bedroom. They turned the second bedroom upside down without letting go of anything.
This might’ve been a waste of time in the past but this space was small. Their progress was very fast. Xiao Li closed the door of the master bedroom. At this moment, there was the sound of typing on the keyboard from the living room.
Xiao Li immediately turned around. He saw that the laptop they randomly placed aside had been set upright. The computer screen’s interface had become the author’s backend interface. From both sides of the laptop, two arms stretched out and were tapping on the keyboard at a rapid pace. The others also heard the sound and were taken aback when they saw this scene.
Xiao Li instinctively lowered his head and opened the comments area of Zui Tian’s novel on his phone. He found that the other person was enthusiastically replying to reader’s comments.
[NO. 2 Netizen Love Zui Tian Love Life’s comment: Zui Tian is very diligent today. You turned into a typing machine. Did you take Viagra?]
[Author’s reply: I’m all hands now and my typing speed is fast.]
Xiao Li raised his head from the mobile comment interface and glanced at the ‘writer’ in front of him. Well, he was indeed all hands.
[Netizens’ reply: Hey, I love such a typing machine. Jiayou, I also want to see a double update tomorrow.]
Under this comment, Zui Tian replied to many people but he completely ignored Xiao Li’s comment. Ye Lingshi was afraid of disturbing the ‘writer’ and whispered, “Is it the author? How did it suddenly appear?”
“This is a hint, the only hint…” Xiao Li lowered his head and thought about it for a few seconds.
Ye Lingshi wondered, “Hint? In other words, we weren’t completely drawn into the world of the novel but… the world of the writer?”
Xiao Li didn’t reply because he didn’t intend to let this ‘writer’ continue to reply. He came up to the laptop and knocked on the laptop screen. “Zui Tian, is it you?”
The busy ‘writer’ didn’t pay attention to him.
Xiao Li persisted. “Can you lend me the computer?”
The ‘writing hands’ vacated the hand closest to Xiao Li. It bent the other four fingers, leaving only the middle finger. Then it arrogantly raised the middle finger to Xiao Li. It seemed to be afraid that Xiao Li wouldn’t see it and it shook the middle finger back and forth.
Ye Lingshi, “……”
Xiao Li, “……”
He took out the little yellow book and wrote a sentence in it. Then he put it away and waited for the other person’s arrival. The next second, a pair of giant scissors appeared, opened and grabbed the fingers of the writer ghost. The writer ghost’s hands that were typing immediately froze in mid-air, motionless against the sharp blade of the scissors.
Sharp scissors sparkled in the incandescent light of the living room.
The owner of the scissors was the split-mouthed woman wearing a scarf. She held the scissors with one hand and used her other hand to pull down the scarf slightly, exposing her split mouth. “Take a look. Am I beautiful?”
The writer ghost: ???
What could it look at? It had no eyes?!
Seeing that it didn’t answer, the scissors pressed down a bit. “Am I beautiful?”
The writer ghost immediately swayed its right hand back and forth.
Shake head.
The split mouthed woman, “?”
The writer ghost immediately made a fist with one hand and nodded up and down.
‘Beautiful, you are so beautiful.’
Xiao Li pressed down on the scissors of the split-mouthed woman so the top of the blade faced the writer’s long nails. Then he said kindly, “If you let me borrow your laptop, these scissors will cut your nails for you.”
The writer ghost, “……”
What the hell was this human suffering?
Proofreader: Tofu