IWBL: Chapter 237

In the first few minutes after the lights were turned off, Xiao Li remained motionless. He leaned his back against the wall on the left side of the passage in a pensive posture. Wang Huai stood next to him. 30 seconds passed before he opened his mouth. “Are we just going to stand like this?”

“Yes,” Xiao Li replied simply. “Have you found the Moss duo?”

Previously, he had informed Wang Huai and the others about what he and Zhou Yin saw. He had different views from Zhou Yin but he wasn’t sure about the specific meaning of the painting. Later, he simply handed this important task to Wang Huai.

Wang Huai shook his head. “No, I used a tracking item but it failed.”

“There are three possibilities. One, they are using an anti-tracking item. Two, they have left here. Three, there is another type of power sheltering them.”

Xiao Li heard this and asked an irrelevant question. “What tracking item did you use?”

“…A whistle.” Wang Huai explained, “There is a dog spirit inside it. It was a police dog before it died. After death, it has an enhanced sense of smell. It can smell anything and bite the other person.”

His knowledge of items had increased. Xiao Li listened with relish and nodded.

“I have a bad feeling. Sherlock, you don’t know Moss…” Wang Huai returned to the subject and frowned. “He is very expressive. His current actions are completely different from his normal self. Combined with the painting, I think they are planning to do something big.”

The first time Wang Huai entered the prison, he could still see the Moss duo in the cafeteria. Lately, they didn’t even come to the cafeteria so Wang Huai completely stopped having contact with them.

Xiao Li thought for a moment. “If you think he has a problem then you should’ve directly imprisoned them in the cafeteria.”

“Moss might be acting strangely but he isn’t a believer of an evil god. He isn’t hostile to the night so I can’t easily be rough with him. Of course, the most important thing is that I might not be able to beat him.” Wang Huai calmly faced this reality. “The reasons weren’t enough at that time to let you act directly.”

Xiao Li was about to speak when he caught the approaching footsteps of the jailer and made a shh gesture to Wang Huai beside him. Obviously, the jailer had already patrolled the first floor and was approaching the floor where the reincarnators were. It would soon patrol the two empty rooms and find two prisoners missing.

Xiao Li first pointed to himself and then the floor above him, mouthing, “I will go to the top, you go to the bottom. We will separate.”

“What am I going to do down there?” Wang Huai inquired.

“Experiment.”

“What experiment?”

Xiao Li pretended to be dead and didn’t answer. Wang Huai had a bad feeling and couldn’t help asking, “Why did you promise to let me come with you?”

Xiao Li replied, “As an experiment.”

Wang Huai, “???”

“Don’t talk nonsense. Go down and do whatever you want. You can just stand still. Then come back and tell me how long you have slept.” Xiao Li reached out and pushed him.

The footsteps in the distance were getting closer. Wang Huai had to swallow the words in his throat. He separated from Xiao Li and headed to the next floor alone. Xiao Li slowly followed the passage to the upper level.

The jailer had already patrolled here and the rooms on both sides were mostly empty. Only a few rooms had prisoners sleeping. The entire corridor only had the sound of their breathing plus Xiao Li’s walking.

Xiao Li originally wanted to go to the end and take a look at the platform. However, the moment he walked through a small part of the passage, his consciousness suddenly swayed and sleepiness filled his mind. He immediately tried to banish his sleepiness with his thoughts but failed.

A dark shadow appeared in front of Xiao Li like a flash. ‘It’ didn’t come up by the stairs but was transmitted through the coordinates. The jailer looked at the coordinate marks on Xiao Li’s wrist and then a voice resembling the broadcast came from the entire floor. “This is a notice that prisoner No. 23024 went out after lights out time, violating Rule 92941 of the prison code. He will be imprisoned in the thinking room for 24 hours.”

“Repeating it again…”

Xiao Li lost consciousness in the midst of the broadcast. Once he woke up again, he found himself in a completely enclosed, dark room on the ground. Xiao Li sat up and found that the so-called ‘thinking room’ had no lights. The structure was roughly the same as the other rooms but there was no furniture, no bed, no mirrors and other things.

He touched the wall and moved forward while silently calculating the size of the entire room in his heart. The walls were very hard with a bit of a burr to them. It was a type of rough room that perhaps hadn’t been used for a long time. It was a bit damp when Xiao Li touched it and he guessed that moss might’ve grown.

He explored the entire room once. It was around 17 square metres in size. There was no door, only one iron window that couldn’t be opened. It would be quite torturous to stay in here for 24 hours.

However, Xiao Li had been prepared a long time ago. He naturally wouldn’t want to sleep here all day. He placed his hands together expectantly, took out the little yellow book that never left his side and wrote a few words blindly in the dark with a pen.

In the next second, several familiar figures appeared in the dark room.

There was the black-haired beauty with a teardrop mole at the corner of her eye who wore a fitting sailor suit. Just standing there was a beautiful scene. Next to her, a woman covered her face. The moment she appeared, the sound of weeping filled the thinking room. The ghost in red lowered her head and blood dropped from a corner of her dress. In addition, there was a pair of trembling legs that took two instinctive steps back when they saw Xiao Li.

Xiao Li opened his hands to welcome them. “Let’s do some team building.”

“Team building?” Fujiang spoke first. She glanced at this place that could be called ‘very poor’ with disgust and asked, “How are you going to build it?”

Xiao Li told her, “The facilities might be a bit simple but there are many games we can play.”

Fujiang spoke suspiciously, “Games? With you? Let me first tell you, I don’t want to be a toy.”

“Why would I use you as a toy?” Xiao Li looked innocent. “Look at the barrage and let’s see what games are suitable for team building.’

[Weeping sister, weeping sister, your hair is growing back.]

[Team building with a human, these strange stories are really shameful.]

[These ghosts, get lost, get lost. It is Moriarty time.]

[As a Sherlock fan, I’m dissatisfied!]

[I am thinking about it. The four corners game, the dish fairy, corpse mud, eating ghost food?]

[Above, these things are really suitable for team building.]

[It isn’t bad.]

[I also want to be a colleague with Hercule.]

Xiao Li watched for a bit before quickly picking a game. “The four corners game.”

He asked the other strange stories, “Do you know how to play?”

The weeping woman covered her face. “No, wu, I don’t know.”

“Choose four people or ghosts. We will stand in four corners, close our eyes and face the corner. Never look back. Once the game starts, the person in one corner will go to the next corner and pat the shoulder of the person in front of you lightly. Stay in that corner while the person moves onto the next corner and so on. Once you go to a corner with no one, you will cough.”

Xiao Li explained.

The legs suddenly kicked the ground, indicating that it didn’t have an upper body to cough. Xiao Li looked at it and added, “…Or stomp in place.”

“It is said that once you get to the end, there will be an extra person in the room.”

Fujiang stood aside and took the initiative to withdraw from the first game. She stretched lazily and said, “I just grew into a full body yesterday and I won’t come first.”

Xiao Li, the crying woman, the ghost in red and the legs each took one corner.

“Clockwise,” Xiao Li said.

He closed his eyes. He felt that since the ghosts came, the temperature of the entire room had dropped a lot but it was quite lively to some extent. Xiao Li walked forward along the wall. Once he reached the next corner, he patted the shoulder of the ghost in front of him.

Judging from the touch of the hair, it was the crying woman. The crying woman covered her face and walked forward.

***

On the third lap, Xiao Li clearly felt an extra person. It didn’t matter if it was the ghost in red, the crying woman or the legs. There was no longer any coughing or stomping. People were always walking but there were constantly four full corners.

Even so, Xiao Li didn’t open his eyes. It wasn’t until he touched a strange, smooth shoulder that didn’t belong to any of the strange stories.

The ghost touched by Xiao Li was a lonely wild ghost attracted by the four corners game. It kept its eyes closed and smiled coldly when it was touched on the shoulder by the human. Then it headed forward.

This wasn’t the first time it had been attracted by this type of game. Human beings were always so keen to die. They attracted creatures that didn’t belong to this world but were afraid to see them. It waited quietly, waiting for the four humans to discover it and then it would enjoy their screams of fear.

The game ghost walked forward and quickly reached the next corner. It stretched out its hand. A woman’s shoulder was touched. Very good, the screams it was waiting for would surely break the sky.

The game ghost fantasized about it triumphantly. It took back its hand and felt the woman in the corner walking forward. It was just… why was the touch on its hand not right? The game ghost rubbed its thumb and index finger together. It seemed to be sticky and wasn’t like nervous sweat. the smell and viscosity was more like a liquid that it was quite familiar with…

Blood.

Was it an illusion? It could be that the woman’s clothes were of poor quality or that she deliberately drenched herself with blood in order to prank another game player. Oh, it was a pity they didn’t know that a real ghost had been called by them.

The game ghost had this thought. It stood in place, waiting for the person behind it to touch it. Then it was another round. The game ghost continued to move forward. This time, the person standing at the corner in front of it had changed. It reached out and patted toward the shoulder.

Huh? It was empty. There didn’t seem to be anyone ahead. Could it be that this person noticed something was wrong and hid while crying? Indeed, there did seem to be a woman who was constantly crying. It was a type of low, scared sob.

The game ghost waved its arm low through the air in a strange manner and then touched something close to his crotch. It wasn’t human hair as he imagined. It was a strangely flat section, very elastic. The game ghost touched along the line of the flat section and its hand inserted into a gap.

Bang—!

The next second, it was kicked and forced backwards. What the hell was this?!

The game ghost was no longer concerned about the rules. It opened its eyes and spent some time adjusting to the dark room to see clearly. The ‘game participant’ it was facing was a pair of legs. A pair of legs without an upper body. The place where its hand had inserted just now was the gap between the thighs of these legs.

At this moment, the legs facing it were very angry. The legs raised a foot and kicked it again.

Go to hell, stinky rascal!

The game ghost, “???”

What four corners game was played with a pair of legs?!

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The author has something to say:

Legs: I am participating in team building! Ask Moriarty if you have any questions!

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Proofreader: Tofu