Chapter 42

"I don't know." A rustling sound of clothing friction came from the darkness. Bai Zhi hugged her head with both hands, her thin body curled up in her mother's arms: "How would I know..."

Feng Yushu felt a pain in her heart and gently stroked her trembling shoulders. For a moment, she didn't know what to say.

"Ning Zhe, give her some time, okay?" Feng Yushu said softly: "She... is very scared."

Ning Zhe sighed: "Of course I can act reasonable here, play a warm man who understands people in front of you mother and daughter, take care of your emotions, but the ghost won't do that."

"Ghosts are not men who crave your bodies, nor are they public opinion in society. Ghosts are absolute rules of life or death, and death is the greatest fairness in this world."

"The rules won't stop killing just because you are so-called weak women, and crying and wailing together won't make the ghost stand at attention and reflect on where it went wrong. This will only make death closer to you."

Ning Zhe stood up, walked to the window, and pulled the curtain to cover the hole he had smashed: "Listen, Feng Yushu, I am not your husband, and even less your daughter's nanny. People who meet by chance have no obligation to help you. The reason I am here is because I think Bai Zhi can provide me with useful information under the current situation."

"If her answer is can't, don't know, don't understand, then I can only wish you good luck before I leave here."

That's it.

"Ning Zhe..." Feng Yushu's heart tightened, and she subconsciously hugged her daughter's shoulders tighter, just as helpless as when she was in He Family Village.

She had never realized a fact so clearly, that there was no chip on her that could move Ning Zhe — money, status, body, even everything she could give, Ning Zhe was unmoved. He had no desires, he was inhumane, he was an interest-first supremacist who was rational to the extreme, rational to the point that he didn't look like a human with flesh and blood at all.

Instead, he looked more like a... ghost.

"No wonder you could come out of He Family Village alive." Bai Zhi's voice drifted from Feng Yushu's arms: "The only people who can survive in this world are people like you."

"I'll take that as a compliment." Ning Zhe didn't care about her words: "If you've calmed down, don't cry anymore. Tell me what you know. Why do you dream of He Family Village? And why do you know the rules of the ghost in the manor?"

Only by knowing these, the heavy fog shrouding the town would begin to dissipate.

"Have you played rule horror games?" Bai Zhi asked faintly.

"I've been in contact with them, but haven't actually tried to solve them." Ning Zhe answered frankly: "What does this have to do with the current situation?"

"Yesterday, I dreamed of a rule horror game with this manor as the background." Bai Zhi said softly: "Just like dreaming of He Family Village before."

"Since I was in junior high, I have often had strange nightmares."

"Sometimes I dream of hiding from a crazy mental patient in a remote hospital, sometimes I dream that everyone from the manager to the waiter in the hotel I live in are dead people... These scenes are filled with strange atmosphere and horror elements, as if one wrong step will lead to the end of life."

"And the horror scenes in the dreams often correspond to the locations in reality. The hospital where the mental patient wanders is the Yongzhou General Hospital I often went to when I was a child, and the hotel run by dead people is the Xiangzilan Hotel opened by my father..."

"Whenever I enter a similar scene in a dream, fear and a sense of crisis will fill my subconscious, as if there are death threats everywhere."

"Seeing a freezer in the hospital, I will feel scared, subconsciously feeling that I absolutely cannot open it, otherwise I will die."

"Meeting a cleaner mopping the floor in the hotel, I will feel disgusted, subconsciously wanting to avoid the bloody water in her bucket, otherwise something terrible will happen."

"The nightmare-like scenes are so crowded, closed, and suffocating... there are death traps everywhere, and there are malicious ghosts seeking lives everywhere, but I always manage to avoid the death that is close at hand, curling up in a corner and surviving until the nightmare wakes up and the sun rises."

"Because every time before entering a nightmare, I will know in advance the different death taboos in these strange places in my subconscious in a way similar to dreaming or psychological suggestion." Bai Zhi's voice was still so weak and lacking in energy. She curled up in her mother's arms and said softly:

"It's like reading the survival manual written by the horror game author before entering the strange world constructed by rule horror games. Although those ambiguous precautions are vague, they are enough to support me in surviving in the nightmare."

I like solving puzzles in dreams? This is interesting.

"Do you think you are a horror game player?" Ning Zhe asked.

"I think I am." Bai Zhi answered seriously.

She then explained that since encountering nightmares, she had searched for many horror-themed electronic games and literary works on the internet, trying to find the origin of those nightmares, but never succeeded. Because the locations and people corresponding to those nightmare scenes were not virtual game works, but real locations and people.

So it wasn't nightmares caused by playing horror games, but finding horror games to play because of nightmares...

"I tried to search for news related to the psychiatry department of Yongzhou General Hospital and found that a mental patient sleepwalked in the middle of the night and injured people with a knife, stabbing 1 doctor and 3 nurses."

Bai Zhi continued: "And on the night this happened, the content of the nightmare I had was hiding from the wandering mental patient in this hospital."

The dream also had 1 doctor and 3 nurses die.

It's just that the real news said stabbing.

"Then you dreamed of He Family Village again... and last night you dreamed of Bishuiwan Manor being haunted, right?" Ning Zhe tried to understand her way of thinking: "Then what was the content of the 'survival manual' you got this time?"

Bai Zhi took a deep breath and said: 1, light means danger

2, darkness means safety

3, ghosts are afraid of light 4, ghosts like darkness "That's roughly it." Bai Zhi's soft voice sounded very light in the pitch-black room: "Ning Zhe, do you have any clues?"

Listening to her quickly calming down, Ning Zhe suddenly had a somewhat funny thought:

"Do you think you are dreaming now?"

Bai Zhi was silent and didn't answer his question.

"Okay, I said how come your strange attitude is like this. It turns out you treated both me and your mother as NPCs in your dream."

Ning Zhe shook his head helplessly, his thoughts lingering in his mind. He began to organize what he had seen and heard along the way using the 4 pieces of information provided by Bai Zhi.

"Ghosts need a light environment to find people and kill people. Once people hide in the dark, it's no different from being blind."

"Ghosts need light to kill people, but ghosts themselves are afraid of light, just like moths chasing fire circling around candles. If you get close, you are not respectful, if you stay away, you will be resentful."

How come it feels like there is a fairy flavor.

(End of chapter)