Ordinary Chapter 9: A Brief Account of the Sorrowful Ghost

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

“Clearance style playfield?” Ning Yang Ze was taken aback, he thought deeply for a moment, “Do you know the way to disengage this playfield?”

The man shook his head, “I don’t know, if I knew I wouldn’t have been injured so badly. It would make someone turn into ceramic every time he chased that person. After a minute, the person turned ceramic would automatically collapse. I was caught by it and was about to become a ceramic man when, in that instant, the unlimited flow world collapsed, and I was able to survive. But, if you don’t attack the paper man, or rather, don’t attack the paper man more than five times, there should be no problem.” The man bit his nails, with a little panic in his eyes, “But then, the paper man will come over frequently to harass you, asking you to help him make pottery. Even if you reach out and knock it down, it is considered an attack.”

Ning Yangze frowned slightly. To be honest, it was almost impossible not to subconsciously attack in such a situation.

Everyone had a stress reaction, most of them were caught off guard in a dangerous and fearful situation and had uncontrollable behavior: either tears or screaming, or even counterattacking subconsciously. This kind of reaction only had to be done once to be remembered by the paper man.

Time was running out.

Ning Yangze let people send this Survivor away, and then urgently notified the members of the Special Unit, so that Survivors who had experience in clearing playfields could go, then he opened the map to pinpoint the location of Zhongjia Mountain.

“The clearing type playfield usually appears only on the third layer, and is extremely dangerous. This time-sensitive playfield will usually open the clearing mode directly at a fixed time or condition, and almost everyone will die except the Survivor with special abilities.” The man, who was also known as Xia Leyu, reported next to him.

“How could I not know this? At the very least, I’m also an A-Rank Survivor.” Ning Yangze frowned slightly, “We must hurry up and break it.”

Xia Leyu pushed the black-framed glasses on the bridge of his nose, “According to the technical level, it will take at least three hours for us to open the playfield from the outside.”

“Not necessarily.” Ning Yangze got up with no expression, a hint of sternness flashing in his eyes, “Contact Sorrowful Ghost, ask him to take a trip and directly tear down this playfield with force!”

“Are you serious?” Xia Leyu looked at him with some surprise, “Sorrowful Ghost? With his temperament, are you sure he won’t blast the whole playfield into smithereens along with the ordinary people inside?”

“He won’t.” Ning Yangze printed out the information that had just been passed over and threw it to Xia Leyu, “Look at who this trapped guide is.”

Xia Leyu caught the piece of paper somewhat curiously, and his eyes snapped open wide when he saw the person on it.

“Shen Si?! The guy who was lucky enough to be related to all three S-Rank Survivors?!”

Not to mention the official B-Rank Survivor on the forum, all of the Special Unit knew of him. The moment the Survivors returned to the country, they had to set up a centralized database, especially on the three S-Rank Survivors, investigating their ancestry 18 generations back. Due to this, they found that these three people were surprisingly connected.

This connection was an ordinary person named Shen Si.

Shen Si was Bai JunYi’s neighbor, he was Xi Luo’s unknown cousin, and he was Jian Nian’s very good childhood friend and ex-boyfriend.

Yes, they even knew this part.

It was too much of a coincidence. A coincidence could just be found strange, but given that this man’s history was so ordinary that even being gay was considered a rather shocking event, they had no evidence to investigate him. In the beginning a man proposed that he come to work for the Special Unit, but was rejected.

No one knew whether these three S-Rank Survivors were still the same from three years ago, after all, three years had passed and a person would change, not to mention that they went to the world of unlimited flow. They could not let Shen Si, an ordinary person, get into such a dangerous situation, so they had to consider it a coincidence.

“I didn’t expect him to be the guide of Zhongjia Mountain, I’ll contact Sorrowful Ghost now,” Xia Leyu said as he hurried away with the piece of paper.

Given the relationship between Jian Nian and Shen Si, and that Jian Nian came back and went to see Shen Si three times, Xia Leyu and Ning Yangze were unanimous in their judgment that Jian Nian must still care!

… 

In the playfield, Shen Si and Jiang Yi were constantly moving and changing locations. Jiang Yi obediently followed Shen Si’s every move, never letting them rest for more than one step, but not moving too quickly either. She wasn’t sure if he was leading them out of here. Jiang Yi felt Shen Si didn’t even seem to take her to find a way to leave, it was more like he was wasting time.

But Shen Si must have had his reasons for doing so, and Jiang Yi believed that Shen Si would definitely get her out.

The two of them continued on for a while, then stopped for a bit, and Shen Si fished out his cellphone from his pocket. Two hours had passed, but there was no movement outside, the only sound being their footsteps in this dead space.

Jiang Yi was a little thirsty, she was not too comfortable licking the corners of the mouth. Since she had cried too much for too long before, she was now especially thirsty, but how could there be water here? She didn’t mention it to Shen Si, since she felt she was already bothering him too much, if she had to ask for his help even with this little thing… 

“Drink water?” Shen Si’s voice suddenly sounded.

“Huh?” Jiang Yi froze, she looked up at Shen Si with some confusion, Shen Si took out a bottle of mineral water from his backpack behind him, “You cried for a long time before, I guess you should be very thirsty now.”

Jiang Yi looked at the bottle of water, “No, I can’t keep bothering Mr. Shen like this, this is your stuff.”

“I have another bottle, this is supposed to be water for travelers who can’t make it down.” Shen Si shoved the water at her, “I’ve actually encountered this many times, someone gasping for breath after not being able to walk, and not bringing water. So we bring a few extra bottles before each departure.”

Clutching the mineral water bottle with one hand, Jiang Yi slightly lowered his head, her heart surging with warmth. Mr. Shen had seen her crying and knew that she would be thirsty later and treated her like someone who could not climb the mountain, when she was just a crying petulant girl. He was so proficient… 

“By the way, your hand is injured, I’ll help you unscrew the lid.” Shen Si reached for the mineral water, unscrewed it and handed the bottle to Jiang Yi. Jiang Yi took the water and kept thanking Shen Si. Just as she was about to drink the water, she suddenly saw a little black thing slowly peeking out from Shen Si’s shoulder.

Jiang Yi’s face instantly turned pale, “Mr. Shen! Behind you!”

Accompanying Jiang Yi’s cry was the familiar voice next to his ear, the paper man lying on Shen Si’s shoulder, talking in the same tone as always, “Can you help me make pottery?”

Shen Si quickly turned around and smashed out with the backpack on his shoulder, but the moment he threw the backpack, an explosion rang out. Shen Si took two steps back and the paper man was crushed under the backpack. The paper man slowly crawled out from under the backpack, which now had a hole blown in it, compressed cookies rolling out from inside.

There were beads of blood on his fingers, converging into one stream, then falling to the ground. Shen Si wasn’t even concerned that the explosion just now hurt his hand.

“Are you okay, Mr. Shen?” Jiang Yi hurriedly ran over, “Your hand?!”

“A small scratch, it’s not a problem.” Shen Si asked Jiang Yi to step back, he looked at the paper man and muttered, “After being burned by fire it became a blackened paper man, the lighter made it explosive. Is this thing turning his attacks into whatever it’s hit by?”

The paper man stood still, then walked forward, and with each step, they could feel the ceramic room tremble.

“Will it have super strength after being smashed with force?” Shen Si’s movement froze. He looked at the paper man with some wonder.

Jiang Yi leaned against the wall, still a little scared, “Mr. Shen, what now?”

“It’s okay, if it really wanted to kill us at this time, it wouldn’t have waited until now.” The paper man took a step forward and Shen Si took a step back, “Try to distance yourself from it, we need to buy time; unlike in the unlimited flow world, the longer we drag it out, the more likely we are to be saved. All the Survivor’s out there are our back up.”

“Mm!” Jiang Yi mechanically clutched the mineral water in her hand and followed Shen Si’s movements. She stared closely at the paper man and didn’t even notice that had spilled most of the water.

The paper man didn’t seem to have any motive, it constantly asked Shen Si and Jiang Yi to help it make pottery and the longer the two were silent, the more shrill it sounded. Until Jiang Yi’s feet slipped, she dazedly held up the water bottle the whole fall, the mineral water bottle in her hand thumped on the ground.

The puddle of water on the ground was the reason for Jiang Yi’s fall.

The moment her head hit the ground, Jiang Yi’s eyes went black instantly. She could hardly see anything, and when she slowly regained her sight she seemed to hear Shen Si shouting her name. She felt something pressed against her abdomen, and the moment she lifted her head, she saw the charred black paper man standing on her abdomen, sparking as if it was about to explode.

Jiang Yi screamed, she used her hand that had turned into ceramic to smash the paper man directly. The paper man fell into the water on the ground, the charred black body gradually being penetrated by moisture. Shen Si rushed over to pull up Jiang Yi, pulling her back to move away. The paper man came out of the puddle of water, its body slowly getting discolored.

Until it changed back to the color it was at the beginning, and then the thing that looked like a burial paper man turned into a ceramic man at a speed visible to the naked eye.

“This is bad.” Shen Si muttered.

The ceramic man raised its head, looking in the direction of Shen Si and Jiang Yi, its hollow eyes akin to a black pit.

“Survivors, obliterate.”

Shen Si blocked in front of Jiang Yi. Jiang Yi’s face was pale, although she didn’t know what was happening, after Shen Si said the three words ‘this is bad’, Jiang Yi understood that things had now developed to a very terrible level.

“Mr. Shen? What do we do?!”

“Don’t worry, hold on a little longer. The Survivors outside should be coming over soon.”

Just when the ceramic man was ready to attack, the entire ceramic wall trembled, as if it was continuously shaken by an earthquake. The ceramic man paid it no heed, it lunged towards Shen Si and Jiang Yi, but in that instant, a broken ceramic piece viciously smashed into the ceramic man.

That was the fragment flying out after the wall was forcibly smashed.

Jiang Yi’s eyes widened as she looked at the shattered wall and the real world beyond it, and she felt her eyes glaze over.

Someone was really here, was she saved?!

She was so thankful to Shen Si!

“Someone really came?” Shen Si looked at the broken wall and muttered, “…Jian Nian?”

The fragments of the ceramic wall made a strange crunching sound when stepped on, and a black-haired, black-eyed youth walked in, waving away the non-existent dust in the air. His face, which could be described as pretty, was full of sickly pallor, pale as if he had just come off the hospital operating table.

S-Rank Survivor, Sorrowful Ghost Jian Nian.

“Cough, cough, I didn’t expect to see such a hellish place.” Jian Nian coughed as if he was about to cough up a mouthful of blood. He put his hand down and his dark eyes overflowed with a terrifying glint, actually looking more like a monster than the ceramic man. “And, what did you just try to do to Shen Si?”