Lakeside Ghost Story 8

Zhuo Yu pulled himself out of those bizarre emotions. He forced himself to calm down, taking deep breaths for a full three minutes before finally suppressing his racing heart.

What mattered now was cracking the code.

Judging by the arrangement of numbers on the note, the cipher was not difficult to solve. Zhuo Yu copied down each string of numbers, turned Seven-Day Tales to the page indicated at the beginning of each string, then selected the letters in the corresponding positions. Put together, they formed a single word.

Curse.

Zhuo Yu smiled and murmured to himself, "After tormenting a god into this state, the Fountain of Youth was obviously a curse, not a blessing. What immortality? Becoming a drowned revenant counts as immortality, too."

He slipped the note back into the book and put it in his grid space, considering who might have left this information behind.

Unless something unexpected had happened, it was probably the Traveler from fifty years ago. After all, it was the character he was playing, and the handwriting matched his own.

Curled up on the sofa, Zhuo Yu began to sort through the plot at his leisure.

First, according to the timeline, after seven days of suffering, the god became the Fountain of Youth, which was now Golden Lake. Over the next thousand years, Springwater Town was built nearby. Then, fifty years ago, his character lived beside Golden Lake and endured a group of people's beatings and abuse. His legs were smashed, and the attackers apparently feared his cohabitant, the "freak."

An idea flashed through his mind, and Zhuo Yu suddenly remembered something Zhou Wu had told him.

Decades ago, an adoptive father and son lived in the mountains. The father had terrified people by practicing witchcraft, so the townspeople secretly executed him. The deformed adopted son drowned in the lake.

Everything fit!

Though he had not found any clues about witchcraft, wasn't Seven-Day Tales a book on religion? And judging by that cipher, the character must have studied the book closely. Perhaps this "unknown character" was the adoptive father Zhou Wu had mentioned, the one the townspeople killed decades ago.

[Character Puzzle Unlock Progress: 50%]

[Congratulations. You have triggered a side quest: Discover the Traveler's true identity. Accept?]

"Accept!" Zhuo Yu accepted the quest instantly.

On the other side of the screen, the audience members who had been waiting for blood and gore were also bewildered by the plot.

[A side quest! Out of all the movies showing today, he's the first person to uncover one!]

[Who said this was a gore flick? Step forward. I promise I won't hit you.]

[Hiss, I've seen this movie. I was obsessed with its bloody scenes, so I camped in the high-difficulty zone every day and watched all six broadcasts. But I swear, there was never a Traveler character before, and the film's style was pure hack-and-slash. There was no puzzle-solving at all. At most, the previous groups figured out what punishment they would face over the seven days.]

[I told you it wasn't that simple. Look, this time the Boss hasn't killed a single person. Fang Hao doesn't count. He's not dead yet. In the past, the Boss would wipe out the whole cast on the second day.]

[Newbie question: if all the actors die, doesn't that mean the movie can't keep going?!]

[Right, so the System automatically sends in replacement actors. But if it fills three waves and they all get wiped out, with no progress in the story, the System declares it a "botched movie with a botched ending," terminates the screening, and refunds the points the audience bet. Of course, there are exceptions for certain special films. You'll understand once you've watched enough.]

[I just want to know what the hell is happening.]

[Fuck, I'm curious too. I take back what I said. I don't want to see Zhuo Yu die. I want to see him dig up this movie's whole plot!]

[Seconded +1]

Some films had been screened so many times and performed by so many actors that the audiences knew their stories by heart. But Tales by the Lake was obscure to begin with and had only been shown six times. Since no one had ever cracked its plot, it was genuinely fresh for most viewers who had grown tired of the other movies.

The number of people in the screening room kept rising, and Tales by the Lake shot into the top three most-watched films in the high-difficulty zone.

Inside the screen, Zhuo Yu continued sorting through the clues he had obtained. Sure enough, his line of thought was correct. Otherwise, the System would not have issued the quest.

But if the adoptive father knew there was a curse near Golden Lake, why had he continued living there until he was killed?

Zhuo Yu had many questions. Just as he was about to think more deeply, faint footsteps sounded outside the window. A shadow flashed past, and all Zhuo Yu caught was the color of the person's clothes.

"...A floral dress?"

Zhuo Yu had skills to protect himself, so he took the initiative and got into his wheelchair, rolling toward the open door of the cabin.

"Aah! Don't come near me!" A woman's voice shrieked in utter terror. She staggered backward again and again before tripping hard over a stone and crashing to the ground, looking utterly disheveled.

Zhuo Yu had not been startled by the silhouette, but the sudden scream made him jump instead.

He looked closely. The person sitting on the ground was actually the girl Zhou Wu had turned away at the beginning of their entry into the Studios.

The girl's face was deathly pale. Her hair was full of dirt and blades of grass, and the branches in the dense forest had torn her dress to rags. She panted heavily. Anyone could see that her strength had reached its limit. She looked as though she had fled from a disaster.

"It's you?" Zhuo Yu was somewhat surprised. His warm smile returned. "Don't be afraid. I won't do anything to you. Besides, I'm in a wheelchair. I couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to."

Still shaken, the girl did not look at Zhuo Yu until she had caught her breath. Her guard visibly lowered.

Zhuo Yu led her into the cabin. The scene inside, as though a storm had swept through it, made her newly settled nerves jump again. Trembling, she sat down on the sofa.

"So the System didn't punish you?" Zhuo Yu asked.

She nodded. Her voice was dry as she said, "I did what the voice in my head told me to do. It told me to reach Golden Lake before dawn. I didn't know what else to do, and I can't drive, so I could only follow the highway. I walked for eight hours..."

They exchanged information, or rather, Zhuo Yu questioned her one-sidedly. After hearing her account, even Zhuo Yu could not help clicking his tongue.

The girl's name was Liu Jingyun. After power-walking more than thirty kilometers along the highway, she finally found the sign for Golden Lake Reservoir. At that point, dawn was less than ten minutes away. Liu Jingyun was lucky enough to escape with her life, but unfortunate enough to get lost in the forest around Golden Lake. Luckily, the System had counted the whole mountain as part of Golden Lake's range. Otherwise, she would have been the only actor among them to die from getting lost.

Liu Jingyun had wandered in circles through the forest. When thirsty, she broke open vines and moistened her lips with the sap inside. When hungry, she chewed raw edible mushrooms she recognized, along with the beetles that were everywhere. When exhaustion overwhelmed her, she climbed into a nest in a tree or rested inside a hollow. She had put on a Studios version of wilderness survival.

In the end, sheer willpower brought her out of the forest, but she had almost no strength left.

Liu Jingyun stood barely over five feet tall and had a frail build. She had truly suffered on this journey. If not for the force of her will, the day and two nights of running about would have exhausted her into unconsciousness long ago.

Zhuo Yu pushed all the remaining canned food over to her. Only then did she become lively again.

"Thank you so much." With tears in her eyes, Liu Jingyun finished the food, then tentatively asked in a somewhat timid voice, "What about the teammates you came with? I ate your food. Your Captain won't be angry, will he?"

Zhuo Yu smiled. "It's fine. They won't be eating it later anyway."

Liu Jingyun: ...

Liu Jingyun fell silent for a moment, then tested the waters again. "Judging by this cabin, did you run into danger?"

"Mm. The Boss cut one of them down, and the rest abandoned the vehicle and ran. I'm the only one left here."

"...That sounds dangerous." Liu Jingyun took a deep breath. "But since you dare sit in the living room with the door open, that means the danger is gone, right?"

Zhuo Yu considered it. The Boss probably would not come back for a second round, so he nodded.

"I need to recover my strength now. I don't dare ask anything of you, since I'm already grateful just to have food." Liu Jingyun's eyes were full of the will to survive, and her tone became firm. "So I want to sleep here for a while. We can keep watch for each other. Is that all right?"

Ordinarily, Zhuo Yu would certainly have agreed to her request. But he had something more important to do now, and he needed an assistant for it.

"There's no time to sleep. Pull yourself together. We're leaving the lakeshore."

Liu Jingyun was startled. "But the System told us to come here!"

Zhuo Yu glanced sideways at the RV and said flatly, "The task of reaching Golden Lake is complete, and the System never said we couldn't leave. The last task I received was to run as far as we could."

When she had first met Zhuo Yu, his exceptional reasoning had already impressed Liu Jingyun. So she chose to trust him.

"I'll go with you!"

Zhuo Yu nodded. "Then get in. You take the driver's seat."

"But I can't drive!"

"That's fine. You only need to work the gas and brake. I'll sit beside you and handle the steering wheel."

Zhuo Yu went over to the RV and tried to start it. But just as Zhou Wu had experienced, the vehicle predictably broke down at the critical moment, as vehicles did in horror movies. With a look of disgust, Zhuo Yu smashed open the panel beneath the steering wheel and reconnected the spark plugs. In an instant, the engine roared to life.

"What are you standing around for?" Zhuo Yu urged.

Liu Jingyun, who had been staring dumbfoundedly, finally came back to herself. She helped Zhuo Yu into the passenger seat, folded up the wheelchair, and climbed anxiously into the driver's seat.

After the two of them got used to it for a while, they actually managed to get the vehicle moving. The speed was anything but steady, but they slowly drove out of the brush and onto the open road.

Liu Jingyun felt a little thrill in her heart. It was her first time driving, and it did not seem that difficult.

"Where are we going? Are we getting off the highway and heading to the nearest airport?" Liu Jingyun thought her idea was very clever and joked, "Then we'll find an immigration officer and have them deport us back home!"

Zhuo Yu was infected by her optimism and smiled as well. "You're getting ahead of yourself. We're going to Springwater Town."

Truthfully, in this kind of horror movie, escaping the danger zone usually meant clearing the level. Ignorance was the real happiness. Perhaps Liu Jingyun was right: getting as far away from this place as possible would not be a bad solution.

But for the movie to continue, the System would definitely impose restrictions on them. Actors wanted to leave the camera's view?

What a fantasy.

Besides, as a perfectionist, Zhuo Yu would not allow himself to leave after gathering so many clues, still knowing nothing. He had already made up his mind to uncover the plot of this horror movie.

More importantly... he had only seen the Boss once. He wanted to get another look.

Compared with himself, he was more curious about the Boss.

"I know where Springwater Town is." Liu Jingyun pointed in a direction. "My character is from the town. It's not far from Golden Lake. We can get there in half an hour by car."

Another character from Springwater Town.

Zhuo Yu wanted to go to town for two main reasons. First, if the punishments followed Seven-Day Tales, a great fire would break out here tomorrow. In the forest, the only way to escape the flames would be to jump into Golden Lake. Every other idea was wishful thinking.

As a rational person, Zhuo Yu had no intention of getting into the water.

He believed the Studios would not truly present him with a certain-death scenario while also encouraging him to seek the truth. So Zhuo Yu planned to take refuge in Springwater Town, where there were surely clues that would pleasantly surprise him.

Since his character had adopted a child, and Zhou Wu's group of four were all students at Springwater High School, it was highly likely that the adopted son who had drowned fifty years ago had also attended that school.

Zhuo Yu was an excellent writer and had also studied screenwriting.

Chekhov once proposed a theory called "Chekhov's gun," now widely used by screenwriters: if a hunting rifle appears on a wall in a script, it must be fired.

Simply put, an excellent script would not include a useless detail unrelated to the story. Zhuo Yu remembered that when Zhou Wu had shared the character information, the synopsis had specifically mentioned "Springwater High School."

Zhuo Yu decided to search the school's archives. Perhaps he would uncover some hidden secrets.

Aside from the school, the people who had smashed the Traveler's legs were also townspeople from Springwater Town. Only fifty years had passed. There had to be people who had lived through those events and knew what had happened.

Zhuo Yu was invigorated, but strangely, his body was gradually growing tired. Before long, he no longer had enough strength to grip the steering wheel. His muscles suddenly went slack, and he let go. Liu Jingyun stomped on the brakes in fright, nearly crashing into the guardrail.

Zhuo Yu frowned. He could feel it: the farther they got from Golden Lake, the faster his strength drained away.

What was going on?

Before Zhuo Yu could think further, Liu Jingyun's voice interrupted him.

"We're here."

She pointed ahead. The enormous sign reading "Spring Spring" was rather absurd, but beneath the cold moonlight thick with mist, it was also exceptionally eerie. It fully captured the spirit of an eighties rural horror movie, down to the twisted, terrifying shadows cast by the treetops.

Zhuo Yu had a premonition that once he entered this place, he would face a situation more dangerous than the drowned revenant. But in return, he would gain more enticing clues and truths.

He knew what to choose.

Zhuo Yu steadied the steering wheel again, his voice carrying a measure of solemnity. "Are you ready?"

Liu Jingyun pressed the accelerator. The joking tone from earlier had likewise turned steady. "Actually, I understand. We don't have any other path left to take."

The two fell silent for a moment, then exchanged smiles and drove straight into Springwater Town.