PFRG: Chapter 96

Yue Ren called Chi Ting’s name again but still got no response.

He looked around. Then he lowered his eyes thoughtfully in the darkness that swallowed everything.

The background music from the arcade was still continuing, and other areas were also bustling with activity. However, all the light was blocked outside as if not even a little bit could penetrate.

There was a faint, sickeningly sweet smell in the air. It was as if the dessert store was selling failed desserts made with expired ingredients.

All the details were instinctively magnified in such an environment. The people next to him should still be there, but they seemed to be blocked by an invisible force that shielded all communication. The feeling of discomfort was overwhelming and intended to penetrate every pore.

Judging from Yue Ren’s unilateral feeling, the current situation made him more inclined to believe that the place he was in now was no longer the original area.

As for where exactly this place was…

There was no way to sense any shadows in the darkness. This made Yue Ren shake his head regretfully.

In the end, he chose to sit down calmly in this extremely uncomfortable environment.

Yue Ren wasn’t worried at all about Chi Ting. The only thing he was unsure about was whether that pink-haired young man would do something wrong if no one reminded him.

He suddenly felt a bit worried when thinking about Ji Xingque. “…I hope he won’t really do anything stupid.”

At this moment, the other people in the claw machine area had naturally noticed the subtleties around them.

Ji Xingque’s instinctive premonition of crisis made him clearly feel the hairs all over his body standing up.

He called out a few times but received no response. He stretched out his hand in the direction where Chi Ting was supposed to be but found nothing. He paused for a moment. In the blink of an eye, he had drawn his gun very neatly with a posture of being ready to fire.

After trying hard to recall it, Ji Xingque vaguely remembered that rule 9 of the rules for using the claw machine stated that the circuits in this claw machine area were very stable. If a circuit failure occurred, one only needed to return to the entrance, cut off the power supply, and restart it to restore it to normal.

In this dark environment, the location of the entrance was very easy to identify due to the bright, flashing lights in the distance. If he wanted to follow the rules, he just needed to find the power source there.

However, Ji Xingque stood still without moving.

His brow was tightly furrowed and his mind quickly entered brainstorming mode. Finally, in such a strange environment, he gripped the handle of the gun tightly and slowly leaned forward on the spot.

If anyone was familiar with Ji Xingque, they would know that this was a posture for him to be ready to enter a fighting state at any time.

He didn’t take any action, but the tense nerves in his body were enough for him to respond as soon as he discovered a problem or if his team members gave a signal of need.

Time passed by minute and minute.

Ji Xingque maintained this posture and never moved again.

At this scene, the barrage in the live stream room scrolled rapidly.

[What’s going on? Is he just going to wait here?]

[I remember the rules said that they should restart the power in this situation, right?]

[I just came back from next door. Except for the mosaic brother of the Dawn team, whose situation is unknown, Chi Ting and Song Xuefeng have also stayed in place and aren’t moving. Do they think the 9th rule is wrong? But I don’t seem to have heard any specific analysis before. Did I miss any details?]

[It is true that they haven’t communicated with each other. Is this the legendary tacit understanding between teammates?]

[Speaking of the tacit understanding between teammates… The tacit understanding between the Blue Mountain team seems a bit poor this time. It seems like they are still stimulated by the experience just now. Someone has already headed for the exit.]

[Someone? Who? That Ma Pian? Is this going to get exciting again? I’ll go over and take a look!]

After the reminder from the barrage, many people jumped directly into the live stream room where Ma Pian was.

The moment they entered, they saw a figure running and crawling.

“The entrance. Why haven’t I reached it yet…?”

The trembling, tense words floated in the air.

With a somewhat crazy look on his face, the face in the night vision camera of the live stream room appeared a bit too distorted.

The feeling of countless threads intending to break through the skin of his body was still vaguely attached to his skin. The chain-triggered rules made Ma Pian feel a bit overwhelmed.

He ran toward the exit almost immediately after the power went out. However, the light that seemed so close to him was actually so far away that he couldn’t reach it for some reason.

Ma Pian could feel that the sweat all over his body was about to soak his clothes. As he breathed heavily, he stared at the light that could be caught right away. Since he was so tense, he didn’t notice that the skin all over his body was surging again.

Only the audience in the live stream room could clearly see what terrifying scene was happening.

As Ma Pian ran, pieces of skin started to peel off one after another. He stepped on them on the ground without noticing.

Instead, it was replaced by a flesh-color linen cloth used to make the doll head covering.

There were threads with life moving on it, tightly stitching the linen to the flesh beneath the skin. Combine this with the extremely distorted expression of intense fear and everything seemed even stranger.

However, Ma Pian’s expression was still in a trance as if he was unaware of everything. His struggling and running posture was very much like a moth who was greedy for light and rushed into the fire without hesitation.

The shocking scene made the audience in Ma Pian’s live stream room feel a chill running down their spine.

A burst of comments almost covered the entire screen of the live stream room.

[Go back! Why are you running? Go back quickly!!!]

[It is over. Rule 9 of the user guide is the wrong rule!]

[Brother Wu is still standing in place. But in the current situation where they can only rely on themselves, he can’t help at all.]

[I said it isn’t appropriate to just randomly drag people into the group to make up numbers. This person has only played a few times.]

[People who stay where they are seem to have no problems. Is it that the further away from the claw machine they are, the worse it will get?]

[F*k, I’m getting goosebumps just from watching this. The threads are directly inserted into the flesh. Doesn’t he feel any pain?]

Ma Pian seemed unable to feel pain.

His eyes, which were gradually losing their luster, seemed to retain only the lights at the end of his field of view. This was until he finally saw the sign of the entrance appear in his eyes. There was finally a glimmer of hope in his already desperate expression.

He rushed over, crawling and rolling, until he saw the ‘power supply’ sign under the dim light from outside. It was as if he had finally found a life-saving straw in the midst of his despair. He turned off the power switch fiercely.

With a ‘click’, the power supply to the claw machine area was finally cut off from him.

After restarting, Ma Pian had no time to breathe a sigh of relief for surviving the disaster. The moment the surrounding lights came on again, he froze in place as if he had fallen into an ice cellar.

In a place he didn’t notice, there were a few words in front of the ‘power supply’ sign he had seen earlier.

Don’t touch.

—Don’t touch the power supply.

Ma Pian had already realized what was happening and wanted to turn back, but it was obviously too late.

He desperately felt that something in his body had completely come alive like a wriggling nematode, scrambling to break out of the blood vessels all over his body.

Crack, crack.

A strange sound entered his eyes. Ma Pian looked down in a trembling manner. He watched his bones being disassembled into several pieces. Under extreme fear, tears finally burst out of his eyes.

However, unbeknownst to him, the liquid that was supposed to be transparent had turned into scarlet blood. It wasn’t until he saw his face, which was almost unrecognizable after being stitched together, that Ma Pian realized his eyes had completely fallen out.

The moment his eyeballs fell to the ground, the blood inside it burst, and a pool of plasma exploded.

Ma Pian’s limbs had been completely torn off by an invisible force while the remaining skin and flesh were still connected. He was hanging in a very strange posture.

The moment when his entire body collapsed, countless pink threads seemed to have life, twisting and spreading out from his blood vessels like a celebration and connecting all parts together.

Ahhhhhhh!

Ma Pian instinctively wanted to scream, but his head fell off before he could make a sound.

As the scene of him scattering on the ground was transmitted to the camera, all the viewers watched helplessly as the entire live stream was completely cut off.

In the Strange Stories Arcade instance, another live stream room turned into a black screen.

On the other side, the lights came on, and the first thing Chi Ting did was to confirm that the two people he just ‘lost contact’ with were still there.

Since it had been confirmed that Rule 9 was wrong, he naturally had no intention of looking for the power source at the exit. Instead, he followed the previously confirmed Rule 2 and waited for 10 minutes in the event of a ‘failure.’

Yue Ren, who was sitting on the ground, was still in a comfortable position with his back against the claw machine. The moment he saw Chi Ting reappear in front of him, he glanced at the expression on his face with some surprise. “You don’t look worried about anything happening at all.”

Chi Ting counted the number of people and looked over after hearing this. “Didn’t you know it was a wrong rule?”

“Not me.” Yue Ren pointed at Ji Xingque next to him. “Aren’t you afraid of him messing around? Even I was a bit worried that this guy would get into trouble here.”

The surrounding environment had returned to normal. Ji Xingque was sighing with relief and putting away the gun in his hand when he caught the key point in Yue Ren’s words. “You actually care about me?”

“……” Yue Ren chose to change the topic directly and this could be regarded as expressing the curiosity in his heart. “So how did you know that Rule 9 is the wrong rule?”

In response, Ji Xingque looked even more shocked. “So Rule 9 is really a wrong rule?!”

Yue Ren: “?”

Yue Ren had a questioning look on his face. “You didn’t know that this is the wrong rule. So why didn’t you go to the exit to find the switch?”

“Of course, it is because the captain taught me well.” Ji Xingque smiled. “Thinking has never been my strong point. In order to avoid causing unnecessary trouble, the captain always lets me do as little as possible. I don’t know whether Rule 9 is correct or not, but I know that if it is the correct rule, the captain will definitely handle the circuit failure. It won’t be my turn to worry about it. In this case, I usually just need to be prepared to deal with emergencies at any time and make sure that I can provide support!”

Yue Ren finally understood and looked at Chi Ting. “Is this why you weren’t worried? You knew he would choose to stay where he was?”

“I guess so.” Chi Ting nodded. “As for Old Song…”

Yue Ren glanced at the figure who was still sitting on the chair and hadn’t moved. This time, he understood without Chi Ting explaining anything to him. “I know this.”

It could be seen that as long as it was within the reasonable range where he could choose not to move, Song Xuefeng really didn’t want to move.

If it was Yue Ren, he definitely wouldn’t be willing to put his life or death in the hands of others, but Song Xuefeng was different. If his teammates gave up on survival and he had to die with them, this man might not even raise his eyelids to symbolically resist.

Yue Ren said sincerely, “This team really would have to disband without you.”

Chi Ting laughed. “That’s right.”

Yue Ren thought for a moment before saying, “Luckily, I am here now.”

Chi Ting nodded. “Yes, it is good to have you.”

Yue Ren was just being symbolically narcissistic. He didn’t expect Chi Ting to respond in a more natural manner than him. He was stunned for a moment. Just as he was about to say something, he heard Chi Ting’s tone suddenly sink. “We are all safe, but it seems that something happened over there…”

Yue Ren looked in the direction where Chi Ting was looking. He happened to catch a glimpse of the backs of Wu Ruici and one of his teammates hurrying away.

He exchanged looks with Chi Ting and immediately followed.

This time, even the sitting Song Xuefeng stood up.

In the situation just now, everyone was obviously in different spaces, and there was no way to convey information.

In this situation, problems could easily occur if the players didn’t find the correct logical chain.

In the claw machine area, Wu Ruici noticed Ma Pian’s disappearance the moment he looked around. He had a bad premonition and rushed toward the entrance immediately.

However, before he could get close, the scene he saw made him take a deep breath.

He stopped and even subconsciously took a few steps back.

Chi Ting arrived shortly afterward. His brow furrowed slightly when he saw the figure lying next to the power supply.

At this time, the only thing that could be used to identify his identity was probably the clothes that Ma Pian wore when he entered the instance.

All the peeled skin had been sewn up with thick pink threads. The two eyeballs had long fallen to an unknown place. The empty eye sockets were filled with huge buttons that were often used to make doll eyes.

The ears that were forcibly pulled off only had a bloody mark left. The top obviously had two doll ears forcibly sewn on. Combine this with the huge smile caused by the corners of the mouth being forcibly pulled up by thread and the whole scene looked even more chilling.

Pools of blood splattered on the ground, like a strong dye that spread all the way to the power switch.

All the bones of Ma Pian’s hands and feet were removed and he hung in one place with wool, forming a twisted and strange posture.

The way his skin was peeled off and stitched together subtly reminded people of the staff in this instance.

As Ma Pian’s captain, Wu Ruici’s expression was extremely ugly.

But at this moment, it didn’t matter how reluctant he was. He had to accept the reality before him. Ma Pian was finally made into a doll.

Just as he felt a bit weak all over, he heard someone behind him calmly say, “Shall we contact a staff member?”

“What?” Wu Ruici looked back in a daze.

“Rule 6 of the user guide says that if you catch a pink doll, please notify the staff for processing.” Chi Ting pointed to the shape of the chandelier above his head and asked, “Looking at the scene right now, doesn’t it look like a pink doll has been caught?”