Chapter 121.2
The car started and Xiao Tangqiu silently watched the scenery passing by outside the car window. Although he had watched the same scenery for more than 20 years, it felt like a lifetime ago.
At this moment, a few girls in cosplay suddenly passed by at the crossroads ahead. They were laughing and walking towards the City A gymnasium not far away. Xiao Tangqiu remembered that there were comic conventions often held in the City A gymnasium. He originally was just casually looking at the cosplayers who were obviously preparing to go to the comic exhibition. But then he saw two familiar figures in the group of girls — Yu Fuling and Sai Lulu!
Hand in hand, Yu Fuling and Sai Lulu blended into the group of young and beautiful cosplay hobbyists without any sense of wrongness. They all wore beautiful Lolita dresses, one was gorgeous and the other was cute.
“Yu Fuling… Sai Lulu…” Xiao Tangqiu looked at Yu Fuling and Sai Lulu through the window, he quickly turned his head and shouted at the driver, “Stop! Stop! Let me get off! I want to get off!”
The driver was put on the spot, “I can’t stop here!”
“Stop!” Xiao Tangqiu was very anxious, but when he turned around, he saw that the group of cosplayers had disappeared, as did Yu Fuling and Sai Lulu.
“Did you see an ‘acquaintance’ again?” Meng Xinghe on the side sighed, “In that group of cosplayers just now?”
Xiao Tangqiu murmured, “Yeah… I saw them! I saw them! Almost!”
“Since they are dressed like that, they should go to the gymnasium to participate in the Comic Con,” Meng Xinghe smiled helplessly. “We are just having a meal. If it’s not too late after, we can go to the Comic Con to have a look.”
Xiao Tangqiu fell silent. At this moment, he suddenly remembered something, and quickly found his phone and flipped through it.
Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows, “What are you searching for?”
“Xue Junli!” Xiao Tangqiu was very excited, “I heard that he is a genius hacker! The kind who became famous when he was young!” He couldn’t wait to search for Xue Junli’s name and he found hundreds of news at once, one of which was that Xue Junli won the championship of the International Hacking Competition.
“I knew it! Look! This is Xue Junli!” Xiao Tangqiu’s hand holding the phone trembled.
Meng Xinghe raised his eyebrows, “So? You want to use this to prove that it’s not a dream? Have you ever thought that… maybe you’ve seen these people in the real world and that’s why you saw them in your dream?”
Xiao Tangqiu was stunned for a moment, then calmed down… Yes, according to Meng Xinghe, it was indeed possible.
At this moment, the number of cars in front suddenly increased, and the driver couldn’t help complaining, “Darn it! There is a traffic jam! The bad thing about going to the city center is that there’s always traffic! I was here this morning. I received four or five orders and every one of them encountered a traffic jam! This morning was really unlucky!”
Xiao Tangqiu paused, vaguely feeling something.
“We’re going to be late,” Meng Xinghe looked down at the time then raised his head and said to the driver, “Anyway, it’s not far from the A City Hotel, we’ll walk there by ourselves, you can just turn around here.”
The driver readily agreed, “Alright then! See you next time!”
Xiao Tangqiu got out of the car with Meng Xinghe and the two started walking towards the A City Hotel. Soon, the two came to the entrance of the A City Hotel.
“We can go straight to the room, they are already waiting for us in the room.” Meng Xinghe smiled.
Xiao Tangqiu was about to nod his head but suddenly saw a very familiar figure in front of him. He immediately rushed up in a couple of steps and grabbed the man’s wrist, “Tang Mianmian!”
Tang Mianmian turned around and blurted out subconsciously, “Fuck, who are you?!”
Xiao Tangqiu was very excited, “You didn’t die!”
Tang Mianmian, “…What are you guys talking about? Do I know you?”
Xiao Tangqiu was stunned for a moment, “Don’t you know me?”
Tang Mianmian, “Do I know you?”
Xiao Tangqiu, “You really don’t know me?”
Tang Mianmian, “Enough is enough! Stop it! Who the hell are you!”
Xiao Tangqiu sighed, “I’m Xiao Tangqiu, no, LittleCandyBall.”
“LittleCandyBall? You’re LittleCandyBall?” Tang Mianmian paused for a moment, then reacted excitedly, he pushed Xiao Tangqiu abruptly, “What the! So it’s you! I thought you were a crazy fan of mine just now! Making me think for so long how I’d have a fan like you!”
Xiao Tangqiu smiled and said, “You’re still expecting to have fans as an eternal passerby cast?”
Tang Mianmian was very surprised, “How do you know that I’m a small actor? You can’t really be my fan, right?”
Xiao Tangqiu sighed, “…It seems that you really don’t remember me.”
“Remember you? Of course I remember you, didn’t we just chat online yesterday?” Tang Mianmian was obviously confused by Xiao Tangqiu, “I even gave you a game rec and wanted you to live stream with me, but you refused my recommendation!”
Xiao Tangqiu was stunned for a moment, “Game? Wait! What game?”
“An indie horror game, it was made by a solo Chinese, but it’s still a semi-finished product…” Tang Mianmian wondered, “Why do you seem to have lost your memory?”
Xiao Tangqiu immediately blurted out, “What game? Is it Abyss?”
Tang Mianmian nodded, “It’s Abyss, but aren’t you not interested?”
Xiao Tangqiu was instantly excited, but soon he calmed down again, “I want to play! I want to play now!”
“Hey, hey, hey, aren’t we going to the meetup now?” Tang Mianmian’s mouth twitched.
“What meetup! Let’s go to an internet cafe to play games!” Xiao Tangqiu couldn’t wait to grab Tang Mianmian’s hand, “Go! Let’s go to an internet cafe!”
Tang Mianmian, “…Are you serious?”
Meng Xinghe frowned slightly, “Xiao Tangqiu? What are you doing? We still have to go to the meetup…”
“Meet what meet! I want to play games! I want to play games!” Xiao Tangqiu pursed his lips, “I want to go to the Internet cafe with him to play games!”
Meng Xinghe frowned, obviously disapproving of Xiao Tangqiu’s behavior, but he just sighed in the end, “Okay, I’ll go with you…I texted them that we can’t go.”
Tang Mianmian looked at Xiao Tangqiu, then looked at Meng Xinghe, and shrugged helplessly, “Well, since you suddenly want to play that game, LittleCandyBall, let’s go to the internet cafe to play the game together.”
Soon, the three of them turned to the nearest Internet cafe and opened a booth.
“The dev posted the game on his personal website, let me find his personal website… Found it! I’ll send it to you!”
Xiao Tangqiu opened the website and saw that it was the simple and plain personal website he had opened before. Not only did the interface look exactly the same, but even the game download icons were in the same place.
He downloaded the game shortly, as before, in just 13 seconds.
Xiao Tangqiu continued to register the game and still used his usual “LittleCandyBall”… The system did not prompt that this ID has been registered, and the registration was successful.
Everything was exactly the same as before, but at this moment, he suddenly realized that the game background introduction on the official website of the game seemed to be a little longer than before. He immediately focused his attention. But after reading just a few lines of the introduction, his entire body felt unwell. The beginning of the game introduction was the same as before. The protagonist who was the host of the horror game crossed into a horror game he had played and then experienced a series of events. But the introduction of the instances later made a chill go down his back.
The first instance, Fishing Village Haunted House.
The second instance, Demon Castle.
The third instance, Death Playground.
The fourth instance, Hundred Ghost Night Parade.
The fifth instance, The Lost Treasure.
The sixth instance, Revival Island.
The seventh instance, God of Light’s Labyrinth.
Xiao Tangqiu shivered all over, weren’t these the instances he experienced?
He couldn’t wait to enter the game. He saw that the protagonist had no name, so he called him Protagonist A. It was very simple and crude. At the beginning of the game, the protagonist woke up on a bus and met his buddy, Friend B.
The Protagonist A and Friend B teamed up to escape this instance and enter the City of the Abyss.
Later, inside the City of the Abyss, Protagonist A met Childhood Friend C, who should have died in a car accident long ago… After that, he also met several of Childhood Friend C’s teammates: Teammate D, Teammate E, Teammate F, and Teammate G.
“Fuck, how are you playing so fast?” Tang Mianmian leaned over from beside him, saw Xiao Tangqiu’s quick progress, and immediately called out, “Did you peek at a game guide?”
Xiao Tangqiu’s hands were cold because everything in the game was what he had experienced. Once a branch option appeared, he would not hesitate to choose the one in his memory, so the progress was fast… This also proved that the experiences in the game really were the exact same as his memory.
At this moment, Meng Xinghe suddenly said, “It’s very late now, should we go have dinner first?” Because Xiao Tangqiu wanted to play games in the internet cafe on a whim, they not only didn’t eat dinner, they didn’t even eat lunch.
Xiao Tangqiu looked up to the sky outside the window, only now realizing that it was already night. He had been so absorbed in playing this game he actually played directly from noon to night… His stomach suddenly growled, but he still gritted his teeth, “No! I’m going to keep playing! I have to know the ending!”
He was about to hit the fourth instance now, and there were still three instances before the ending!
Meng Xinghe sighed, “Can’t you come back after dinner and continue playing?”
“No!” Xiao Tangqiu insisted, “I want to know the ending now!”
Tang Mianmian hesitated for a while, and couldn’t help but said, “Actually, this game has not yet ended, and the game dev hasn’t finished making it. How can there be an ending?”
Xiao Tangqiu shook his head, “I want to know the ending!”
Meng Xinghe and Tang Mianmian looked at each other, sighed, and had to go along with Xiao Tangqiu.
Xiao Tangqiu continued to play the game and finally reached the end in the early hours of the morning. In the seventh instance, almost all the teammates of Protagonist A were killed. Not only did Teammates D, E, F, and G all got finished off, but even Friend B was dead. In the end, only Childhood Friend C was left… Just as he was looking forward to the next plot point, he realized that the game ended here.
He almost wanted to smash the keyboard in anger, “Why is it stopped here?!”
Tang Mianmian said quietly from beside him, “Like I said, this game is not finished yet. The creator just made it up to here… If you want to know the next storyline, you can only wait for the next update of the game.”
Xiao Tangqiu was depressed and could only ask, “When will the next update be?”
Tang Mianmian’s mouth twitched, “I don’t know the creator of this game, how would I know?”
“…Creator? Right! Find the creator!” Xiao Tangqiu’s eyes suddenly lit up, he slapped the keyboard and stood up, “I’m going to find the maker of this game! Let’s go! We’ll find the creator of this game now!”
T/N: PLEASE READ:
2 things.
Hey guys, like many of the other translation projects on CG, this novel will also be password locked due to the changes brought forth by JJ’s update regarding English translations. Hopefully, it is a temporary lock but it will depend on how things play out on the official side. I currently do not plan to drop the project or delete it in any way (we’re so close to done!) so this is just a small bump in the road to the finish line. Thanks for sticking with me!
Secondly! Because we’re so close to the finishing line and I refuse to allow JJ space to take me down before I’m done, I’ll be speeding up the posting rate and doing my best to post the last arc plus all extras before February 28th. Fingers crossed my scheduling works out, especially in the face of the uncertainties brought forth by JJ.