Chapter 572: Old Mansion (4K)

Anti-gravity waterfall continued plunging upward, and as altitude increased, water and air violently rubbed against each other, droplets shattering into hazy mist.

In the pitch-black sky, only the submarine, seemingly riding clouds and mist, remained, alongside thousands of silvery-white fish beside it.

Ada sat in the pilot's seat, eyes closed, her consciousness observing through the submarine's periscope those fish with flared fins, directly extracting oxygen from the air.

Extracting oxygen from air proved these fish had long evolved to adapt to the waterfall's anti-gravity environment; further, the majority were egg-carrying females, suggesting this was a spawning migratory species.

This indirectly confirmed that the other end of the anti-gravity waterfall was a safe place rich in aquatic vegetation and teeming with life.

Ada retracted her awareness; the cutting-edge artificial intelligence brain, forged by Whale Song Guild technology, reached a conclusion in less than a fraction of a second.

Seeing the subtle to infer the grand, knowing autumn from a single leaf—this trait was vital for players to survive in a perilous environment under the hostile Kill System, even more so than combat talent or escape instinct.

Uh... of course, if a transcendent was lucky enough or strong enough, they wouldn't need such sharp observation.

No matter what the script boss chattered, just draw your blade and charge—take down the damn world by yourself.

Talk to my million-horsepower Sea Tiger Explosive Fist / Heaven-Devouring Star-Sundering Slash / Great Wilderness Heavenly Prison Finger / Buddha's Wrath Tang Lotus.

The electronic brain's idle thought module drifted aimlessly until a dripping sound gradually came from above.

Looking up, it was a vast anti-gravity floating water body; hundreds of millions of plankton drifted within, glowing like starlight, illuminating the entire sky.

Ada immediately swept her hand across the submarine's control panel, adjusting ballast tank drainage to shift the submarine's center of gravity, allowing it to descend relatively steadily into the water body, then rotate 180° to restore its head-up, feet-down orientation relative to gravity.

The ship's rocking awakened Wu Quan and the others, still anesthetized; they hung from the submarine's walls, clad in restraints connected to numerous IV tubes and electrode patches.

Vital signs monitors tracked their bodily data in real time, automatically adjusting infusion rates of anesthetics, muscle relaxants, and more—including half-cyborg Alcy, whose brain, spine, and some organs remained original and thus susceptible to drugs.

"You piece of... scrap metal. I... curse... you..."

Abdul's eyelids drooped, saliva dripping from his lips; still, with blurred consciousness, he spat curses at Ada's betrayal.

Ada remained unmoved, checking the vital signs of her companions, then walked to Wu Quan's side and reapplied glue along the edge of his breathing mask.

Rumors said martial artists could control muscle, bone, organ, and even blood vessel contraction and dilation, and could expel toxins and anesthetics using internal energy.

So Ada had dosed Wu Quan with inhaled anesthetic gas—the kind that could knock out dinosaurs.

The submarine slowly rose through the water, displacing fish and duckweed, breaking the surface. As Ada clapped her hands, the submarine's dome automatically folded open, and damp, fishy air flooded the cabin.

The clamor of insects, the sound of small rodents drinking, distant low growls of unknown creatures—all were so familiar.

They had all returned to that swamp.

Abdul closed his eyes in despair; Alcy's mechanical joints sparked with electricity; Priya, who had remained unconscious, suddenly snapped her eyes wide open, staring fixedly into the thick fog of the swamp's depths.

Splash, splash.

Ripples spread across the water, dotted with duckweed and fallen leaves, as if countless oars were cutting through the current, carrying some colossal entity slowly closer.

Splash, splash.

The sound grew clearer; Ada and the four bound players saw it—those were not oars, but countless, layered, stacked corpses.

In the center were hundreds of pale, bloated drowned corpses; many lacked heads or limbs, their stumps—gnawed by fish, shrimp, and crabs—fitted together like lumps of dough, tightly embracing each other.

Around the floating corpses, even more emaciated bodies writhed; so thin they were mere skin over bone, barely recognizable as male, female, old, or young.

They swung their bony hands, mechanically pulling forward.

Above the pile of corpses stood a grand, elegant brick-built residence, its pillars upright, connecting to Roman-style arches, while its roof bore Chinese-style upturned eaves, roof tiles, and water spouts.

It was that old Republican-era mansion.

Splash!

The mansion, crushing countless corpses, slammed into and shattered several waterlogged logs thick as a man could embrace, then halted slowly before the submarine.

The front door stood wide open; the submarine's external lights were dimmed by gusts of eerie wind, barely illuminating the doorway.

Inside the hall, the shattered altar had not been restored; the ceiling, walls, and floor still bore thick patches of dark red mold. But before the altar, two rows of wooden chairs had appeared out of nowhere.

Radiant Addict, Foot Odor Fears Boots Too Deep, MacArthur, Big Dog Chews, 808bass, TeneT...

Six players who had previously vanished or been declared dead now sat on the chairs; their arms hung limp, fingertips cut open, copper basins filled with blood at their feet.

The last to vanish, 808bass and TeneT, were still somewhat better—their fingertips still dripped a little blood. The earliest ones, Radiant Addict and MacArthur, showed no trace of color left in their entire bodies.

Yet their hearts still beat, their mouths curled into unconscious, idiotic grins.

?

Why wasn't REX here?

No time to dwell, Ada leapt onto the upper deck and shouted down at the mansion: "All the players you wanted are here! I brought them!"

The Dream Curse could infect Ada, a silicon-based lifeform, but could not fully control her. This transaction, here and now, was the source of the curse—revealed to Ada through illusion during previous ghost attacks. This was the prearranged "deal."

Amid Abdul's furious curses, Ada released a stream of green data, extracting the four bound players from their restraints and out of the submarine.

At the same moment, the floating corpses lifted their heads and straightened their spines, forming a sloping ramp, allowing Wu Quan and the others to slide along viscous tissue fluid into the mansion's hall.

Lying on his back, Wu Quan suddenly noticed that from this angle, the dark red mold on the ceiling seemed arranged in a pattern.

Overlapping the ceiling, walls, and floor—three different planes—revealed a three-dimensional perspective of the mansion.

The altar and statue were mere illusions; the mansion was not a vessel for the curse's source—the mansion itself was the curse's source!

The cold, eerie wind seeped everywhere; Wu Quan felt himself growing colder, helplessly lifted into the air by invisible force.

As if thrilled by the scheme's success, mold across the mansion sprouted hyphae, crawling from brick seams, swaying like seaweed in the wind.

The invisible force peeled open the restraints like peeling a banana, sliced open the fingertips of Wu Quan, Abdul, and Priya; for the half-cyborg Alcy, it cut her earlobe to draw blood.

Everything unfolded as planned; for a curse that followed only the instinct to proliferate, Earth was too dangerous.

Far better were those unguarded script worlds, where transcendent power was barely known—natural breeding grounds and petri dishes...

The swaying mold suddenly froze; into the copper basins, besides blood and negligible anesthetic, something else had fallen...

The mold drew near the basin, finally seeing—the blood mixed with extremely tiny, nearly imperceptible green data.

In the next instant, a flood of data erupted, sweeping through the entire ancient mansion.

The mold tried to suppress it, but it was like trying to block a Coke bottle after dropping in a Mentos—utterly futile.

Ada gripped the air with both hands and yanked backward with all her strength; Wu Quan and the other three, along with the six previously controlled players, were all engulfed in data and flung out of the mansion.

【Skill Name: Ego Burst】

【Type: Psionic】

【Effect: Boom boom boom boom. Uniformly disperse all energy and matter composing your body into the surrounding space, then detonate after a brief delay. Explosion power equals theoretical heat value. A single detonation must not involve less than 80% of your body's mass in normal state. After self-explosion, no method can heal, regenerate, or restore the lost parts for a fixed duration.】

【Cost: Minimum 50 Psionic Points, Physical Energy Points】

【Cooldown: 8 hours】

【Prerequisites: None】

【Note: Explosion material is limited to your own body. Judgment criteria match the Selection Criteria for the Killing Field. Consuming a spoon of enriched uranium does not increase your theoretical heat value. The higher the theoretical heat value, the longer the preparation time for detonation.】

【Note: Boom! Final Edition! Can this be said? Haha, I'm already polishing it! At that moment, just like this moment, could it be so similar? Protect! Big guts! Ah, Meituan! I can't say it. Steamed bun, you're not satisfied?】

Super Massive Explosion!

This 【Ego Burst】 skill was precisely the trump card of Ada, the most valued artificial intelligence of the Whale Song Guild. It originated from a Perfect-Quality Learning Scroll.

At first glance, it appears merely an ordinary self-explosion skill, no different from typical suicide tactics. But upon closer inspection of the effect, there is a note: "Explosion power equals theoretical heat value."

Purely from energy density, gasoline and diesel far exceed TNT explosives; their combustion in engines is a relatively slow, controllable chemical process.

Yet under the control of the 【Ego Burst】 skill, the normally slow energy release is compressed into a single instant, making the explosion power vastly exceed ordinary combustion.

Just as now, Ada converted 90% of her total energy and mass into data, dispersed it evenly through Wu Quan and others' blood throughout the entire old mansion, then—BOOM!

In the swamp, perpetually shrouded in eternal night, illuminated only by floating bioluminescent organisms, a sun blazed into existence.

As if ten thousand thunderclaps exploded simultaneously, Xiong Xiong flames tore through every glass window, turning the ancient mansion into a colossal fireball.

A visible shockwave, like an invisible wall, violently pushed aside the water below, lifting up millions of years of thick sediment.

The submarine was also flung away by the towering waves; with a clanging sound, Ada's last remaining head fell onto the cabin floor, rolling along the slope to the corner.

Her neck stump flickered with electric sparks; the few remaining psionic energies were insufficient to reconstruct her body via data manipulation. Instead, she used a relatively "primitive" Bluetooth transmission function to lift herself with a mechanical arm. Her electronic eyeballs rapidly zoomed and switched lenses, observing the violently burning Republican-era mansion.

The crimson mold embedded in the walls writhed violently in the flames, emitting a hissing sound nearly like a shriek.

A pure physical explosion might not fully kill the curse's source, so Ada additionally implanted a destructive virus into her original code as a backup.

The Whale Song Guild's exclusive data control ability could blur the boundary between reality and virtuality, parsing the material world into streams of data, altering reality by modifying code.

The data flood, combined with 【Ego Burst】 and layered with the destructive virus, produced an effect no less than a 【Year 2000】 bomb.

The mansion's structure twisted chaotically; ceiling, windows, and floor seemed fused together. One moment flames erupted from wall cracks, the next they retracted as if time reversed.

The only certainty was that the mansion was disintegrating.

The clustered corpses in the water gradually decomposed over time. The entire brick-and-stone structure slowly sank into the water, continuing to burn silently beneath the surface.

Resolved. Finally.

Ada's expression remained impassive; only by close observation could one detect a faint hint of relief in the angle of her eyebrows and lips.

"You..."

Wu Quan, who had also crashed onto the cabin floor, gradually regained bodily control as the anesthetic in his system diminished.

He shifted his numb arm to prop himself against the wall, his expression complex as he asked Ada: "Why didn't you tell us the plan?"

Ada never truly intended to betray these companions; instead, she used herself as fuel, risking annihilation of her soul and spirit, to detonate with the Dream Demon Curse.

"If I told you, would you agree?"

Ada countered, met with Wu Quan's silence.

Indeed, no player present wished to return to this mold-infested mansion. Had they known Ada intended to use them as bait, they would have chosen to withdraw voluntarily, return to the real world, spend their final moments with family, then carry out the punishment mission—or simply slit their throats. In some scripted worlds—like Sword Wind Legend, All Tomorrows, Silent Roar—life was drier than a latrine, filthier than a cesspool. Upon entry, the first act was suicide; at least then you'd keep your full corpse.

Wu Quan said nothing. With his barely functional arm, he took the Ten-Eye Communicator earpiece Ada had bitten and tossed over, then connected to Customer Service Yuan.

Abdul's face shifted between gratitude and rage, but he chose silence. After a pause, he rasped: "Now we only need to wait a few more hours—until the time limit ends, and then..."

"Aaaaaaah!"

Abdul's words were cut off by a scream. Priya's eyes widened to their limits, tears and snot streaming, as she convulsed on the floor, her fingers scraping the ground, nails torn off, leaving bloody trails.

The blood trails, straight and horizontal, redrawn the outline of the old mansion.

A terror beyond description descended upon the players' hearts. Wu Quan felt his neck rusted shut, struggling to turn his head toward the swamp.

Gloop. Gloop.

Bubbles broke the water's surface with increasing frequency. A charred piece of wood surfaced, then a second, then a third.

More and more building materials rose again. In Abdul and others' despairing gazes, fungal threads burst forth from within the charred wood, intertwining and gripping, reconstructing a crude, five-sided embryonic house.

As the house's outline completed, intense stinging and itching erupted on the players' backs. Beneath the dermis of their red blotches, fine strands of mold were growing.

Players had already checked: under the microscope, skin samples of the red blotches showed only ordinary rashes, containing no fungal threads. This change proved only one thing—perhaps at the moment they shattered the altar statue, the curse had already parasitically implanted itself into their player essence.

Despair spread wildly. Worse still, within the outline of the emerging house, grotesque spirits slowly surfaced—gnashing teeth, sucking blood, poised to strike.

Shhh—

The first to move was a colossal ghostly infant head. It wailed as it floated upward, jaws stretched to their limit, biting down on the submarine.

Ada had no strength left. Wu Quan and others were far from recovered. As for the Radiance Warriors and others, they remained oblivious to the outside world.

At the eleventh hour, a tremendous force struck the submarine's side, slamming it sideways, churning waves—and causing the ghostly infant head to bite empty air.

"Huh..."

A figure stepped upon the water's surface like Jesus, exhaling a long, foul breath. Clad in heavy plate armor, bearing a two-handed greatsword, taller than two and a half meters, two red lights glowed in the hollow eye sockets of his skull.

"Ignorant brats, do you think this place is yours to trespass?"

The skeleton knight—or rather, Li Cheng, cosplaying as a skeleton knight—spoke coldly without turning his head.