novelraw Chapter 448: What Exactly Is the Pinnacle of Jealousy?
Chapter 448: What Exactly Is the Pinnacle of Jealousy?
The player whom Xie Antong had cornered took a few steps back, his expression flickering as he looked at the woman in front of him.
What did this mean?
“What’s the matter? Why aren’t you answering?” Xie Antong’s expression instantly snapped back to the calm demeanor from before, as if the previous act had been nothing but an illusion.
“Not—?” The shapeshifting player suddenly couldn’t hold himself together, swallowing and still looking a little dazed.
“How does this game work, exactly? What did they tell you?” Xie Antong repeated the question she’d asked earlier.
The player across from her looked a little dumbfounded. After steadying his thoughts, he replied in a low voice:
“They just told us the traits of this haunted house, that if we appear beside the visitors we don’t need to worry about being discovered, and that our appearances will change.”
“Also, the game’s voice said, ‘This is the last chance for you to win!’”
“You… aren’t you the tour guide? Didn’t they tell you any of this?”
Xie Antong waved her hand casually and said:“What last chance…? That kind of ambiguous line is basically just to let people fill in the blanks themselves.”
It was clear enough: this was Joy’s doing.
The strange part was, that line really hadn’t been told to her. Why had someone from the Playground faction like her been skipped over?
And…
She lifted her head and stared intently at the player opposite, as though she was engraving every detail of him into her memory.
“Just now, why did you suddenly look scared for a moment?”
The player across: ?
You tell me.
He was about to say something when the tour guide in front of him suddenly shifted into an even stranger mood, smiling as she said to him:
“Joy seeks amusement, so when It gives a game, there are never concrete rules.”
“It uses this kind of faction split to make people guess and attack one another.”
“It revels in the sensation of doing nothing and yet making two sides begin their own clever slaughter—like a god toying with subjects it completely controls.”
The player across from her saw this change in temperament and broke into a sweat on his forehead, instinctively wanting to step back and escape.
Snap!
A crisp finger snap echoed in the pitch-black haunted house, sounding unusually sharp.
It startled him so badly he trembled and was rooted to the spot.
The snap had come from Xie Antong; her gaze returned to its previous state, the lenses before her eyes reflecting a cold light like an ice surface.
He dared not face such a look. If the earlier sickly Blank was like a tiger ready to devour, this instant felt like a venomous snake hiding in the shadows.
“Frame skip…”
Xie Antong stared hard at the man before her, frowning, muttering to herself.
That was also why she had been watching him with her All-Seeing Eye.
If the world were a continuous film with a fixed frame rate, the feeling she’d just had was that a few frames had been pulled out.
Because the skin texture, the folds and angles of his clothes, even the shape of his muscles—all underwent a transient change.
Such a transient shift either meant the haunted house’s spacetime had just glitched, or she had overlooked something.
“What happened just now?”
Xie Antong asked the player across, each word deliberate and slow.
“Did I… turn into something else just now?”
In the quiet haunted house, with darkness enveloping everything and reflective surfaces around, combined with Blank’s words, the shapeshifting player felt as if his entire back had been drenched in sweat.
Was he truly part of the Playground faction, representing staff?
Wasn’t this supposed to be entering a haunted house?! This was terrifying!
“No, sis… don’t scare me…”
Although he stammered and hadn’t answered directly, judging by his appearance, Xie Antong roughly knew the answer.
She slowly closed her eyes. If her mind had been somewhat muddled before, it now snapped into razor-sharp clarity.
“What—jealousy?”
“What is the pinnacle of jealousy?”
“Why am I the tour guide this time?”
She muttered to herself while rhythmically snapping her fingers every three seconds, as if anchoring herself to a steady beat.
Her odd behavior genuinely terrified the nearby player.
He hurriedly spoke from the side:
“Just now, the way you spoke and your expression suddenly changed a lot.”
“It was like you turned into a different person…”
He said it cautiously, but the careful tone made Xie Antong, who had been standing with her eyes shut, suddenly open them wide.
“A different person?”
“Only ‘a’ different person?!”
The other player: ?
Could you not jump like that, sister? A little casting wind-up would be nice.
I’m drenched in cold sweat here—I’m about to catch a cold, okay?
“Heh.”
Xie Antong’s gaze burned into his eyes, stars of iciness in her stare.
Under that cold look, however, a faint, almost imperceptible smile slowly appeared.
“This is lively…”
She said, then produced a syringe.
Holding it beside her head, she seemed about to inject herself, but then hesitated as if considering something and set it back down.
She did not inject it.
“Well… I didn’t expect this.”
Saying that, Xie Antong put down all her defenses and weapons, then stretched her body.
In this darkness where no one could see clearly, she flexed and displayed her graceful form.
“Our game has begun.”
“Who are we?”
“Is it you, is it me, or is It?”
“It’s me!”
Seeing her relapse again, the player who’d been beside her was truly frightened now.
He didn’t know why he had to come out and provoke this person—he must be out of his mind!
That chilled, fearful feeling made him think his side was the real haunted house.
Their tour guide here clearly had gone mad.
Seeing that she wasn’t looking at him, he took the chance to flee, his silhouette swallowed by the darkness.
Once more, only Xie Antong remained in the dark, as if living in her own world.
......
On the other side, Lu Ce was still staring at Xie Antong’s face, growing even crazier.
Since entering the haunted house, no one had dared approach him. In this space, only his own mad laughter and eerie soliloquies could be heard.
Now, at last, he quieted and looked toward a dark corner.
“Isn’t it about time for someone to appear?”