Chapter 592: The Old Mansion (4K)

The anti-gravity waterfall continued plummeting toward the sky; as altitude increased, water and air clashed violently, droplets shattering into a hazy mist.

In the pitch-black upper atmosphere, 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 the 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 predominance of egg-carrying females suggested they were 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; her AI brain, forged by the Whale Song Guild’s cutting-edge technology, reached a conclusion in less than a fraction of a second.

Seeing the subtle signs to infer the greater truth, sensing autumn from a single leaf—this trait was vital for players to survive in a perilous environment under the Killing Field System’s malice, even more so than combat talent or escape instinct.

Uh... of course, if a transcendent had enough luck or sheer fighting power, they wouldn’t need such sharp observation.

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

Talk to my Million Horsepower Sea Tiger Explosive Fist / Heaven-Opening Star of Cosmic Separation / Great Wilderness Heavenly Prison Finger / Buddha’s Wrath Tang Lotus.

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

Looking up, they saw a vast, anti-gravity floating body of water; 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 vessel’s center of gravity, allowing it to descend smoothly into the water, rotate 180°, and restore its upright, head-up-foot-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 lines and electrode patches.

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

“You piece of... scrap metal. I... curse... you...”

Abdullah, eyelids heavy, drool dripping from his lips, still slurred curses at Ada’s betrayal with a foggy mind.

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

Legends said martial masters could control muscle, bone, organ, and even blood vessel contraction and expansion, and expel toxins or anesthetics with internal energy.

So Ada had dosed Wu Quan with an inhaled anesthetic gas—one capable of knocking out dinosaurs.

The submarine slowly ascended through the water, displacing schools of 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 rodents drinking, distant low growls of unknown creatures—all were painfully familiar.

They had returned to the swamp.

Abdullah 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 something immense, slowly approaching.

Splash. Splash.

The sound grew clearer; Ada and the four bound players saw it: not oars, but layer upon layer of corpses, densely packed.

At the center were hundreds of pale, bloated drowned corpses; many lacked heads or limbs, their severed ends—gnawed by fish, shrimp, and crabs—fused together like lumps of dough, clinging tightly.

Surrounding the floating corpses were even more emaciated bodies, skin stretched taut over bone, barely recognizable as male, female, old, or young.

They swung their bony hands, mechanically paddling forward.

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

It was the Republican-era old 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 cold wind, barely illuminating the entrance.

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 Smell Fear Boots Deep, MacArthur, Big Dog Chew, 808bass, TeneT...

Six players, previously missing or declared dead, 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, still had faint drips of blood from their fingertips; the earliest missing, Radiant Addict and MacArthur, showed not a trace of color left on their 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 want are here! I’ve brought them!”

The Dream Demon 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 illusions during previous ghost attacks. This was the prearranged “deal.”

Amid Abdullah’s furious curses, Ada released a stream of green data, extracting the four bound players from the submarine.

Simultaneously, the floating corpses lifted their heads and straightened their spines, forming a sloping ramp; Wu Quan and the others slid along viscous tissue fluid into the mansion’s hall.

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

Overlapping the ceiling, walls, and floor into a single plane revealed a three-dimensional perspective of the mansion.

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

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

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

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

Everything unfolded as planned. For a curse driven solely by proliferation instinct, Earth was too dangerous.

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

The swaying mold suddenly froze. Into the copper basins fell not only blood and negligible anesthetic, but something else...

The mold drew near the basin, finally seeing: mixed within the blood, infinitesimal, nearly undetectable, were green data streams.

The next instant, a torrent 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 Mentos—utterly futile.

Ada gripped the air with both hands, yanking 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 Explosion】

【Type: Spiritual Energy】

【Effect: Explode explode explode explode. Disperse all energy and matter composing your body evenly into surrounding space, then detonate after a brief delay. Explosion power equals theoretical heat value. Single explosion must involve at least 80% of your body’s mass in normal state. After self-explosion, no method can heal, regenerate, or restore any lost part for a fixed duration.】

【Cost: Minimum 50 Spiritual Energy, 50 Physical Energy】

【Cooldown: 8 hours】

【Prerequisites: None】

【Note: Explosion material must be your own body. Criteria match the Killing Field’s definition of the chosen. Consuming a spoonful of enriched uranium won’t increase your theoretical heat value. Higher theoretical heat value requires longer preparation time.】

【Note: Explode! Final Edition! Can I say this? Haha, I’m already polishing it! At that moment, just like this moment, could it be so similar? Protect! Big guts! Ugh, Meituan! I can’t say. You’re not satisfied with steamed buns?

SUPER MASSIVE EXPLOSION!】

This 【Ego Explosion】 skill was Ada’s ultimate trump card as the Whale Song Guild’s most valued AI, originating from a perfect-quality learning scroll.

At first glance, it seemed like a standard self-destruct ability, no different from typical suicide tactics. But examine the effect: one line reads “explosion power equals theoretical heat value.”

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

But under 【Ego Explosion】’s control, the normally slow energy release is compressed into a single instant, yielding explosive power far exceeding combustion.

Just as now: Ada converted 90% of her energy and mass into data, evenly dispersing it through the blood of Wu Quan and the others, then... detonated!

In the perpetually dark swamp, where only bioluminescent plankton provided light, a sun blazed forth.

As if ten thousand thunderbolts exploded at once, roaring flames tore through every window, turning the ancient mansion into a colossal fireball.

A visible shockwave, like an invisible wall, violently displaced the water below, ripping up millions of years of thick silt.

The submarine was thrown back by the colossal wave; with a clang, Ada’s last remaining head tumbled onto the cabin floor, rolling along the slope until it lodged in the corner.

Her neck stump flickered with electricity; her dwindling spiritual energy was insufficient to reconstruct her body via data manipulation. Instead, she used relatively “primitive” Bluetooth transmission to command her mechanical arm to lift her up, her electronic eyes rapidly zooming and switching lenses to observe the violently burning Republican-era mansion.

The dark red mold embedded in the walls writhed violently in the flames, emitting a near-screaming hiss.

A pure physical explosion might not fully kill the curse’s source, so Ada had added a failsafe: she’d implanted a destructive virus directly into her own source code.

The Whale Song Guild’s unique data control ability blurred the boundary between reality and virtuality, parsing the material world into data streams and altering reality by rewriting code.

The data torrent, combined with 【Ego Explosion】, then layered with the destructive virus, produced an effect comparable to a “Y2K” bomb.

The mansion’s structure twisted chaotically; ceiling, windows, and floor fused together; one moment flames erupted from wall cracks, the next they seemed to reverse time and retract into them.

The only certainty: the mansion was disintegrating.

The clustered floating corpses gradually decomposed over time; the entire brick structure slowly sank into the water, continuing to burn silently beneath the surface.

Done. Finally.

Ada’s expression remained impassive; only careful observation revealed a faint easing in the corners of her brows and lips.

“You...”

Wu Quan, also lying on the cabin floor, regained bodily control as the anesthetic in his system faded.

He shifted his numb arms, propping himself against the wall, and asked Ada with a complex expression: “Why didn’t you tell us the plan?”

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

“If I told you, would you have agreed?”

Ada countered, met with Wu Quan’s silence.

Indeed, none of the players here wanted to return to this mold-infested mansion. Had they known Ada planned to use them as bait, they’d have chosen to exit voluntarily, return to reality, spend their final moments with family, then accept punishment missions—or simply slit their throats. Some script worlds, like Blade Legend, All Tomorrows, Silent Roar, were drier than outhouses, filthier than cesspits. Entering them, the first act was suicide—better to die whole than be devoured.

Wu Quan said nothing, using his barely functional arm to take the ten-eye communicator earpiece Ada bit and tossed to him, then dialed Customer Service Yuan.

Abdullah’s face flickered between gratitude and rage, but he chose silence. After a pause, he rasped: “Now we just wait a few more hours—until the timer ends, we can...”

“Aaaahhhhh!”

A scream cut off Abdullah’s words. Priya’s eyes widened to their limits, tears and snot streaming, writhing on the floor, her fingers clawing at the ground, nails torn off, leaving bloody trails.

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

An indescribable, immense terror descended upon the players’ hearts; Wu Quan felt his neck rusted shut, struggling to turn his head toward the swamp.

Gloop. Gloop.

Increasingly dense bubbles shattered the water’s stillness. A charred piece of coal surfaced, then a second, then a third.

More and more building materials rose to the surface; from deep within the charred coal, mycelium surged forth again, intertwining and gripping, reconstructing a crude, five-sided house shape.

As the house’s outline took shape, a sharp, searing itch erupted on everyone’s backs—beneath the dermis of their red blotches, fine strands of mold had begun to grow.

Players had already checked: under the microscope, skin samples of the red blotches showed only ordinary rashes, with no trace of mycelium. This change proved only one thing—perhaps at the very moment they shattered the altar’s idol, the curse had already parasitically implanted itself into their player essence.

Despair spread unchecked; worse still, within the outline of the house shape, grotesque spirits slowly emerged—gnashing teeth, sucking blood, poised to strike.

Shhh—

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

Ai Da had no strength left; Wu Quan and the others had not yet recovered; as for the Rad-Addict Warriors and the rest, they remained utterly unaware of the outside world.

At the last possible moment, a tremendous force slammed into the vessel’s side, hurling it violently sideways, churning up 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, over two and a half meters tall, two red lights glowed within the hollow 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 around.