Chapter 438: Playing Life?

Ying Duo slowly followed Fang Zhiyan's steps, walking out of the solitary confinement room that had locked him up for a day and a night. He had just entered the wide corridor, was about to say something, when his body suddenly felt light.

It wasn't weightlessness; his consciousness felt as if someone had pulled it out of his body.

The light before his eyes shattered at that moment, turning into countless tiny specks of light.

The world fell silent, leaving only emptiness.

Then the light returned.

It wasn't a blinding white cold light, but a very faint glow that his eyes could instantly adapt to.

Yang Yixie opened his eyes to see the ceiling of his own room.

He lay on that bed he knew so well and found comfortable, his whole body curled up.

There were no shackles, no restraint garments, no rune circuits at all.

He immediately sat up, looked down at himself, and was still wearing the pajamas he usually slept in; his whole appearance was that of someone who had just gone to bed.

It seemed as if he had always been sleeping here, and everything that had happened before was an abnormal, fantastical, quite unreal dream.

Who would transmigrate into a holographic game and still be stuck with the lowest-quality pixel art style?

He raised his head and looked at the clock on the opposite wall.

00:01.

It had just passed midnight; he reached out to grab the communicator on the bedside table...

Not the Dome's one; more accurately, it should be his real-world phone.

There was no red dot notification, as if nothing had happened.

Yang Yixie put down his phone, got up, and walked to the window.

Outside the window was the residential complex's night scene; the cordon that had been pulled up below had already been taken down—had they already found a way to eliminate the mutation?

Yang Yixie rubbed his somewhat dizzy, swollen head, looked at the ground of the residential complex, and saw that the official personnel who should have been stationed there were all gone.

A breeze blew over, clearing his muddled head a little.

Over there, at every moment, Ying Duo had to keep himself tense, and because Ying Duo's body never knew fatigue, Yang Yixie had almost squeezed his own spirit to the limit.

Something felt off...

There were far too many things that felt off—why had the official personnel withdrawn so quickly? Why did he feel, upon waking, that the room had some special sense of wrongness?

Yang Yixie lowered the hand he had been holding over his head, and his gaze slowly swept across his room.

Suddenly, his hand froze in midair.

He finally realized something was missing from his room.

"... Playing Life?"

Just like in the game, he lifted his finger and slid it down slightly, and his backpack opened before him.

The only difference was probably that his own body was much more agile.

His goal was clear; he took out a playing card from his backpack.

Because the game judged this playing card's level to be very low, he could take it out almost effortlessly.

The playing card lay face up, depicting a crooked little clown troupe; the corners of its mouth were crooked, a star sat beneath its left eye, and a teardrop beneath its right eye.

He placed the playing card on the windowsill; the clown's eyes flickered in the night light, as if winking at him.

Playing Life should now be asleep, completely unaware of how the world outside the playing card had changed.

He turned around to look at his room and still noticed many things that felt off.

The position of his water cup had shifted from left to right, and the bedding he had taken out to make a floor mat for Playing Life had been neatly folded back into the wardrobe.

This could no longer be dismissed with just a feeling of something being off.

If we say that Playing Life's in-game body was twisted by his own Aberrant Arts and then turned into a playing-card prop hidden in Ying Duo's game backpack,

then his real-world body shouldn't have disappeared so suddenly either.

Moreover, he even tidied up the bedding before vanishing—is this person the Snail Maiden?

Given the circumstances, the best approach is to shout for Playing Life to come out and confront him face to face.

"Pa."

A crisp sound rang out especially clearly in the quiet bedroom; the card face trembled slightly at Yang Yixie's fingertips, and the clown's smile showed no change.

Yang Yixie waited quietly for a moment, but there was no movement or sound.

"Playing Life." He called out to the card face, but there was no response.

He called again, this time a bit louder and with a hint of impatience.

"Playing Life, get up."

The clown on the card face was still smiling, but his smile was a little stiff; Yang Yixie narrowed his eyes and stared at the card for two seconds.

He put the playing card on the table, turned, and walked into the kitchen with a cup in hand.

Soon he returned holding a cup full of water; Yang Yixie didn't hesitate, placed a trash can underneath, and poured the water directly onto the playing card.

"Pa." Pink smoke surged from the playing card; within the smoke something twisted and writhed, growing larger and clearer.

A hand reached out from the smoke, and the jingling of the bell on the clown's hat directly shattered the bedroom's silence.

"Partner...... woc!"

Playing Life stepped one foot into the trash can below, then rolled straight out of the smoke and slammed headfirst into the bedpost.

All we can say is, fortunately it was the game body—tough as nails.

Playing Life covered his head and lay on the ground for a few seconds, then opened his eyes, looking a bit dazed from the impact.

Playing Life had originally thought that the issue on Ying Duo's side had finally been resolved, which was why Yang Yixie was willing to let him out.

He had originally intended to give his partner a loving hug as soon as he appeared, but who would have thought the landing spot would be problematic—the trash can gave him a "loving hug" instead.

Moreover, it also gave him a straight shoulder throw.

Xi Ren Sheng looked up; not to mention his partner had abandoned that dashing Ying Guang Lu for such an ordinary black, and his expression now was frighteningly serious.

He glanced around and discovered the trash scattered on the ground because he had just fallen.

"Partner, I'm wrong, I'll go sweep now."

Xi Ren Sheng's apology was downright straightforward, mainly because he's used to being dealt with by Hua Jian Lei.

He dares to offend Hua Jian Lei, but he truly doesn't want to wear his partner's little shoes.

"You go back first."

Yang Yixie temporarily ignored the trash on the ground and just stared at the current Xi Ren Sheng.

Clown hat, black‑and‑white mask, all of this is the outfit in the game.

Yang Yixie had never seen Xi Ren Sheng's appearance in the game, but he thought it should be exactly the same as the real‑world Xi Ren Sheng.

So the question arises: using his Game Backpack as a conduit, which Xi Ren Sheng is the one now appearing before him?

If the Xi Ren Sheng before him is the one from the game, then what about the real‑world Xi Ren Sheng? He can't possibly have truly turned into a snail girl, can he?