Chapter 76 - Escaping from Burial Grounds (VII)
Editor: Kitty
Every place he pa.s.sed by felt like an illusion to him.
The pure-white spider threads completely obscured his vision, he found it hard to breathe, and his whole body was tightly imprisoned in the threads that not even a gap was exposed. However, Feng YuLan still felt like he had seen something. In this state of unconsciousness, he felt as if he had dreamed. The dream was not very long, but it was very suffocating.
He dreamed of death.
He dreamed that he was on the verge of death. He was lying prostrate on the ground, and there seemed to be something terrible approaching him from behind. He did not want to die; he wanted to climb up and continue walking, run, and escape…… but his legs were so badly mutilated that he realized he could no longer run away.
Therefore, Ah Lan raised his head to look up in despair, and there seemed to be a man in front of him. Ah Lan did not know who he was. He reached out to the figure, and the man also reached out to help him.
The person in his dream appeared very vague, but Ah Lan knew that the other party would help him. His mystifying intuition was unquestionable to him.
So when the other party reached out, Ah Lan naturally reached out as well.
But…… when their hands were about to touch each other, the other party took back all hope. He withdrew his hand and abruptly terminated all the earnest pleas and extravagant hopes that Ah Lan had in his heart. This gave him a great shock…… yet he also felt that it was only reasonable.
The blurry figure stood up straight, turned around, and had his back toward Feng YuLan. In a trance, Ah Lan seemed to see a ray of light somewhere far away from him. The figure abandoned Ah Lan and walked toward the light, going further and further away. Ah Lan kept the posture of reaching his hands out. He opened his mouth but could not produce a sound. What did he want to retain……
Now, he was not afraid of betrayal or even death. However, he felt it was regretful, but what was he regretting? Ah Lan did not understand.
After that, Ah Lan gave up. He lowered his head and continued to crawl on the ground. The darkness behind him was getting closer and closer, but inwardly, he had never felt more calm than in the current moment.
Shortly following that, Ah Lan was woken up from the dream by someone. Shadow cried his name out in a frenzy into his ears and even pinched his face hard, forcing him to wake up.
“You brat, why did you only wake up now!” Shadow’s tone showed his fl.u.s.tered and exasperated feelings.
Ah Lan shook his body and replied, “I am awake.”
“You woke up too late! You slept for an hour and a half!” Shadow sounded even more fl.u.s.tered and exasperated now.
Shadow’s words caused Ah Lan’s entire body to quiver, and he completely awakened. He uttered in disbelief, “I slept for an hour and a half?!”
“You’ve been sleeping since I dragged you to follow after that bunch of spiders! No matter how I called you, you wouldn’t wake up! I almost thought you were going to die!”
“Thenk2026;” Feng YuLan was a little fl.u.s.tered: “How long do we have left now?”
“Half an hour! Thirty minutes!”
“Where are we now?”
Shadow was also very anxious: “I don’t know! I was carrying you as I trailed after the spiders, and I don’t know why or how but we were discovered. The big spider carried you for a distance, hung you on another tree, and wrapped several more layers of spider thread around you! I could not pull you down from here!”
I shouldn’t fret. Even if time is tight, I shouldn’t fret! Feng YuLan listened to Shadow, took a deep breath to slow down his racing heart, and said, “I can’t see anything now. Can you see what’s around us in the surroundings?”
“What else is there……? The patch of black forest that seems to stretch on endlessly and a few giant spider coc.o.o.ns hanging on the tree like you.” Shadow’s mood seemed to be terrible. “We have to find a way to break the spider threads.”
Feng YuLan could not even shake his head. He could only sigh, “We can’t break free from these spider threads. In this chamber at the edge of h.e.l.l, the secret chamber has prevented us from using any forms of abilities.”
“Then what should we do? Await our deaths?”
At that, Ah Lan smiled miserably: “Yes, we are going to await our deaths. We will wait here and do nothing.”
“But…… Why?” Shadow indicated that he did not understand.
Feng YuLan did not answer him immediately. After remaining silent for a long time, he suddenly said, “I just thought of this…… There are no living creatures on the edge of h.e.l.l. This is a world that souls live in, right?”
Shadow seemed to have guessed Ah Lan’s idea. In a hesitant tone, he replied, “What you want to say is…”
“Shadow, are you a soul?”
Shadow frowned and deliberated, “This…… I guess I am considered one? But I am not a complete soul, so I am in a state of nihility. Generally speaking, no one in this place can see or touch me except you.”
Feng YuLan said, “Yes, because we are all souls, we don’t have our abilities. Our strength and abilities have been stripped away. We have no weapons and possess nothing, so in this ‘edge of h.e.l.l’ chamber, we are all as weak as kittens and are indistinct souls. We can’t resist anything that we face in here, even if we are wrapped up by a disgusting spider into a bizarre coc.o.o.n of threads. We won’t be able to escape from this place based on our abilities.”
“But what does this indicate?” Shadow still did not understand why Ah Lan said such things at this critical moment.
“Duan Li told me that the secret chamber will never force the players into an absolute dead end.”
This sentence made Shadow suddenly realize, “You mean that in this secret chamber that deprived us of all abilities, we can’t get out of this forest solely based on our capabilities, so we have to rely on something else, right?”
“What can we rely on?” Feng YuLan said slowly, and he found it hard to speak. Although he could breathe in the coc.o.o.n, he still found it difficult. This made Ah Lan speak at a speed that couldn’t be any slower. He said slowly, “That spider wraps souls into coc.o.o.ns and then hangs the souls on the trees. I don’t know the purpose of this, but if the spider is the thing leading the way, it will surely take us to the ‘door.’ Therefore, we just have to wait.”
But Shadow still thought that this whole situation was incorrect. He refuted Ah Lan’s thoughts: “But we also have to take into account the time limit. We don’t know when the spider will come. What if it doesn’t come before the time limit? Even if the secret chamber won’t leave players with an absolute dead end, the possibility that it allows you to live is not 100%!”
“Do one"s level best and leave the rest to Heaven’s will.” Feng YuLan only replied with such a sentence and did not seem to want to say any more. No matter what Shadow said, he did not reply anymore, as if he had fallen asleep again.
Shadow drifted around him. After a while, the crow cawed again. This represented that the two of them only had 15 minutes left. Shadow felt at a loss and as if his actions had been in vain. He realized that this was actually what Ah Lan felt inwardly. The feeling had just transferred to him.
But at this moment, things finally changed for the better.
With the accompaniment of sounds coming from here and there, a huge spider appeared again. This time, it commanded its subordinates, the tiny spiders, to remove the coc.o.o.ns hanging on the trees one by one, and this naturally included Ah Lan. Ah Lan could not see what was happening outside. He only felt the big spider threads wrapped around him sway and fall from the tree with a bam. Ah Lan felt dizzy. After that, he felt a lot of tiny spiders crawl around him. They lifted him up like ants, and shortly after, they rapidly moved forward.
After moving for about five minutes, Feng YuLan calculated inwardly and found that he had only about ten minutes left. It would be a lie to say he was not worried. He was so nervous that he could not help but try to struggle in the coc.o.o.n, but soon, he felt that he had been lowered down and placed on the ground. The dense pack of spiders crawled onto him again, and Feng YuLan heard the quiet sounds of biting. He found that these small spiders were gnawing on the coc.o.o.n that he was wrapped in.
They chewed very fast. After a while, the spiders crawled down from the coc.o.o.n one after another, and Ah Lan heard the sound of them dispersing. He hesitated for a while and couldn’t help struggle again. This time, Ah Lan found that the tightly wrapped threads soon scattered from his movements.
After breaking the thread bindings, Feng YuLan was presented with a magnificent scene that was beyond his imagination.
It was two gigantic doors!
There was one on the left and one on the right, and the two appeared exactly the same; it was almost impossible to differentiate between them. They were more than 20 meters high and five or six meters wide. The two huge doors had seemingly broken free of the surrounding trees, and it seemed as if the doors could reach the heavens.
Amazingly, Feng YuLan could not make out what materials these two doors were made of. They were black in colour, but the material did not seem to be stone. There were no patterns carved on the doors; their surface was smooth, and they stood on the ground where they had appeared out of thin air. The doors formed an ineffable and magnificent landscape.
“Something’s coming.” Shadow did not appear. He was hidden in a place that Ah Lan could not see, but he could speak to Ah Lan in a low voice. Ah Lan raised his head and found that there was a relatively wide and open s.p.a.ce in front of the two giant doors. It seemed that there was a figure standing in this open s.p.a.ce.
Ah Lan got up, brushed the thin spider threads off his body, and walked towards the blurry figure step by step. When he approached, he saw the man’s black clothes. It was a huge black cloak, and the hood on it completely covered his face. He seemed to have no feet; the whole man was floating. He was about ten centimeters off the ground and held a two-meter-long sickle in his hand.
Obviously, he was what some movies depicted the ‘G.o.d of Death’ to be.
“My child, you must make your choice.”
When Ah Lan walked to where the ‘G.o.d of Death’ was, the G.o.d of Death suddenly opened his mouth. It was hard to differentiate whether his voice was male or female. It sounded dull, monotonous, and so ear-piercing that Ah Lan trembled.
“There are two doors behind me,” the G.o.d of Death said, “One leads to the land of the living, one leads to h.e.l.l, and you can only make one choice here. If you make the wrong choice, you will not get another chance.”
Once again, Ah Lan could not help but raise his head to gaze at the two huge doors. They appeared exactly the same, and Ah Lan could not tell the difference. He asked, “How do I know which door leads to the land of the living and which door leads to h.e.l.l?”
“It’s very simple.” The G.o.d of Death seemed to be laughing. He made a creaky sound, as if there was a skeleton under the cloak. He waved his sickle and said, “You only need to answer three questions of mine. Your answer will determine which way you should head.”
Ah Lan bit his lips. His time is running out; there was no chance to think about it. He did not know which door would lead him to the way out. Only the fellow standing in front of him, who seemed to be the ‘G.o.d of Death,’ could tell him the answer.
“Alright, I choose to answer your questions.”
G.o.d of Death waved his sickle as if he was thinking and asked, “Question one: what are you most afraid of?”
Most afraid of? Ah Lan’s mind was blank. The other party suddenly threw out such a question. For a while, he was unable to think of an answer because he was afraid of many things. He was afraid of the deaths of his relatives and friends, of betrayal, of death, of the terrifying secret chamber…… of many, many more things. It was almost impossible for him to express these in words.
Ah Lan could not answer, so he remained silent for a very long time. He thought he should say something, but unexpectedly, the G.o.d of Death spoke again: “Question two: would you kill someone?”
Kill…… someone? Ah Lan felt that it was even harder to answer this. He had not killed anyone before, but he was not sure whether he would do so in the future. There were too many uncertain factors in the secret chambers, and he could not always uphold his sense of justice. However, he also did not want to break this principle of his easily. Whether or not he would kill was something that Ah Lan was not sure of.
Again, he answered the second question with silence. The G.o.d of Death did not repeat the question and straightforwardly asked the third question: “Do you want to continue living?”
This time, without thinking, Ah Lan answered, “I do.”
The will to survive was what all living creatures possessed.
The G.o.d of Death waved his sickle once again, and of the two doors behind him, the one on the left opened. The opening of the huge door made a loud noise, but the gap was only large enough for one person to pa.s.s through. The G.o.d of Death pointed to the open door with his sickle and said, “The answer you made is your choice.”
Ah Lan’s face was pale white. He did not understand what the choice entailed. He only answered one of the questions posed by the G.o.d of Death, but he did not know what kind of fate he was about to face.
The words of the G.o.d of Death seemed to hold some mystifying power, and Ah Lan walked to the door slowly. His feet fell on the ground as he moved step by step. Shadow had not spoken since many moments ago. He did not continue to give him suggestions even though Ah Lan knew that he had always been by his side.
The only thing he could do now was to move forward.