Chapter 21: Dead End

I knew it. My damn luck has always been terrible.

Whenever I played Dou Dizhu with my classmates, I was always the only one who ended up covered in paper slips.

So picking the wrong road right from the start is perfectly normal.

Zhou You took a deep breath and forcibly comforted himself.

Even so, he still wanted to put up one last struggle.

Keeping close to the edge of the road, he tried to slip around the woman the way one might avoid a Witch.

But what happened next completely exceeded his expectations.

She did not react to him at all.

She simply let him walk right past.

“...Has the system suddenly grown a conscience? It’s actually going to let me off this easily?”

Zhou You raised his head.

But before a smile could appear on his face, his expression froze.

Directly ahead of him was another woman in white crouching on the road.

He turned his neck and looked behind him.

There stood an identical woman in white.

Refusing to believe it, Zhou You tried circling around once more.

The result remained exactly the same.

The entire street seemed to have been folded into a special space.

No matter where he went, he would inevitably encounter this white-clad anomaly.

“...Fine. I knew it.”

Zhou You let out a helpless sigh.

Then, adopting an attitude of complete resignation, he walked forward and patted the woman on the shoulder.

“Um, excuse me, miss. Is there anything I can help you with?”

She did not move.

Instead, she spoke in a wet, strange voice that resembled the hiss of a snake.

“I’ve lost something. Can you help me find it?”

At this point, Zhou You was already mentally prepared to die at any moment.

So he simply followed along.

“Then may I ask what it is that you’ve lost, miss?”

Hearing this, the woman in white slowly raised her head.

And then...

She revealed a bloody face completely devoid of skin.

Opening her mouth, she softly said,

“My father lost my face. Could you help me find it?”

The next instant, Zhou You felt an intense pain across his own face.

Instinctively, he raised a hand and touched it.

What he felt was not the texture of skin.

Instead, it was something far stickier and rougher.

It felt like...

Blood and muscle.

Looking up, he discovered that at some unknown point, his own facial skin had somehow been placed upon the female ghost’s head.

His limbs gradually stiffened.

Darkness engulfed his vision.

“You have died.”

“You died somewhat meaningfully.”

“Remaining revivals: 13.”

“Your journey is already more than halfway complete. The light of victory is within sight. Please keep up your efforts and clear the scenario soon.”

Listening to the familiar female voice, Zhou You felt little sorrow over his bad luck.

Instead, he entered again immediately.

This time he chose the road on the right.

Unlike the left path, this road appeared far darker.

Nearly half of the already dim streetlights were broken.

The road itself was full of potholes, as though it had gone without maintenance for many years.

Naturally, Zhou You moved much more slowly under such conditions.

Fortunately, he encountered no terrifying ghosts.

Unfortunately, that did not reassure him in the slightest.

In fact, the farther he walked, the uglier his expression became.

The reason was simple.

This road...

Was far too long.

Judging from the route map he had seen earlier, even at a slower pace he should have exited this place within ten-odd minutes.

Yet he had already been walking for more than thirty minutes and still could not see the end.

Moreover, from beginning to end, he had constantly felt watched.

As though something had been following behind him the entire time, waiting to strike the instant he looked back.

The conclusion was already obvious.

He had guessed wrong again.

“I knew my luck was bad, but getting a one-in-three chance wrong twice in a row...”

Zhou You sighed.

Then, with complete resignation, he turned around.

And there, within the darkness, he suddenly saw an eye.

A bloody eye.

Then more and more eyes appeared.

Within a few short seconds, they filled the entire space.

The next moment, a sharp pain erupted from his own eyes.

Everything plunged into darkness.

“You have died.”

“You died without any value.”

“Remaining revivals: 12.”

“Your journey is already more than halfway complete. The light of victory is within sight. Please keep up your efforts and clear the scenario soon.”

Perhaps because he had died almost immediately after leaving, the system’s evaluation of him had become “without any value.”

Even the mechanical voice seemed to contain a trace of mockery.

Zhou You had no interest in arguing with it.

After all, he had already learned that getting angry at the system only made himself miserable.

So he merely rolled his eyes and entered once again.

This time he chose the middle road.

Unlike the paths on either side, the central route was surprisingly normal.

There was no faceless female ghost.

No eyes lurking in the shadows.

Everything proceeded smoothly.

But just as he was about to reach the end, he suddenly saw...

An unbelievably skinny old man squatting there.

The moment Zhou You saw it, it saw him as well.

Then it grinned.

At the same time, a slick and oily voice rang out.

“I’ve seen you, which means I can touch you.”

“If I can touch you, then I can kill you.”

“Your eyes can be thrown into the mist.”

“Your face can be given to the woman.”

“Your head can be built into the wall.”

“Your flesh can be boiled into a fine pot of soup.”

“Three roads, three seals. But no matter what you do, you can never get through!”

The instant those words fell, Zhou You’s vision suddenly flipped upside down.

The last thing he saw was his own headless body collapsing to the ground.

Huh?

Why does this scene feel strangely familiar?

“You have died.”

“You died without any value.”

“Remaining revivals: 11.”

“Your journey is already more than halfway complete. The light of victory is within sight. Please keep up your efforts and clear the scenario soon.”

Ignoring the mocking voice, Zhou You sat cross-legged directly in front of the page.

Contrary to his earlier assumption, this was not a one-out-of-three gamble.

All three roads were dead ends.

Each road contained a weird entity with an instant-death effect waiting for him.

More importantly, unlike the stall owner and the children in the alley, none of these three weird entities had provided a quest.

“Which means I can’t target any one of them specifically. Or, to put it another way, all three of them should theoretically be passable.”

“But there are no more clues during the night. So the solution to this puzzle should be the same as the stall owner. It must be found during the daytime.”

The light in Zhou You’s eyes gradually brightened.

“Four days and five nights. It looks like the nighttime sections are designed to obstruct me with various traps, while the daytime sections provide solutions whenever I reach a point where I can no longer progress.”

“And the story advances every time a day passes. If I enter daytime again, maybe I’ll finally find the key clue that links everything together.”

Thinking this, he immediately selected the other option without hesitation.

“The player has entered the daytime of Day Three.”

“Game progress will be automatically saved.”