Chapter 183 - 169: Mom, Listen to Me

Guan Lan and Guan Xing entered the old theater for the second time, and the situation played out exactly as it had before.

Two people pinned Guan Lan’s arms behind her back, forcing her to her knees. She struggled to lift her head and saw Guan Xing bite hard into the wrist of the villager holding the girl’s arm. The villager cried out in pain and let go.

Seizing the opportunity to drop to the ground, Guan Xing’s tiny frame erupted with astonishing agility. She darted toward the audience seats like a gust of wind.

"Stop right there, you little brat!"

The villager roared and gave chase, but Guan Xing used the seatbacks as springboards. One moment, she vaulted over a row of seats; the next, she ducked through the gaps between them. Her movements were incredibly fluid, leading the villager on a dizzying wild goose chase.

The familiar sense of suffocation struck again. A rough rope violently tightened around Guan Lan’s neck. Two villagers pulled together, hoisting her into the air.

This time, Guan Lan didn’t panic. She drew her prepared dagger and slashed upward and backward with precision. The immense pulling force abruptly vanished, and Guan Lan crashed heavily onto the stage floor.

"Catch her!"

The villagers who had restrained her roared and lunged. Guan Lan rolled across the floor, frantically dodging their grasping hands while wildly swinging her dagger. One villager’s hand was slashed. He flinched back in pain. Seeing the blood, Guan Lan’s eyes lit up.

Guan Lan had learned some combat skills, and before the game started, Shen Qing had hired professionals to give her special training. While she certainly couldn’t take on professional killers, it was more than enough to deal with these villagers who only knew how to blindly swing wooden clubs.

Clenching her jaw, Guan Lan dodged and counterattacked amidst the flurry of fists, feet, and clubs. Every time a wooden club struck her, she let out a muffled groan and bore the brunt of it, her gaze growing increasingly ferocious. Her dagger plunged into a villager’s neck, drawing a string of blood beads as she pulled it out. The fight was chaotic and bloody. Guan Lan suffered countless bruises and scrapes, and blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.

After paying a heavy price, she finally killed the last villager charging at her.

"Xing! Come here, quick!"

Guan Lan shouted hoarsely toward the bottom of the stage. Hearing this, Guan Xing immediately abandoned teasing the breathless villager and dashed toward the stage. Guan Lan reached out a hand covered in blood and sweat, hauling the girl up. The villager who had chased Guan Xing had barely popped his head up when Guan Lan kicked him viciously in the face, sending him plummeting backward with a scream.

The mother and daughter stood on the ruined stage, panting heavily. The threat from the villagers was eliminated, but the system’s notification sound did not ring.

Suddenly, a bizarre anomaly occurred!

The curtains on both sides of the stage burst into roaring flames without warning, instantly swallowing the edges of the platform. Guan Lan grabbed Guan Xing and was about to jump off the stage when flames as tall as a person suddenly shot up in front of them, forcing the two back with scorching tongues of fire.

"Mom, what do we do? Are there firefighters here?" Guan Xing anxiously tugged at Guan Lan’s hem, only to find her mother frozen in place, unresponsive.

Guan Xing turned her head and saw Guan Lan’s limbs wrapped and pulled by several nearly transparent silk threads. She was forcibly hoisted up like a real marionette, with only her toes touching the ground. Guan Lan could no longer move or speak; she couldn’t even move her eyes. Amidst the roaring flames, she was manipulated into performing operatic movements.

YI—YA—

A shrill, melodious operatic voice echoed out of nowhere. Guan Lan took light, dainty steps, every movement carrying the stiffness of a wooden puppet. The voice began to sing, its tone high-pitched and desolate, every word bleeding with sorrow!

"Who says... a woman... cannot take the stage...

"Who claims... the rules... are as absolute as the sky...

"I insist on... holding the strings... to control the universe...

"I insist on... singing my heart out!

"Burn!

"Burn away this... shackle and cage...

"Burn away this... thousand-year-old... man-eating path!"

Two trails of bloody tears streamed uncontrollably from Guan Lan’s eyes, a shocking sight to behold. At this moment, she seemed possessed by Chunhua from the past, singing out her accusations against an unjust fate. The flames burned fiercer around her, and the wooden beams at the top of the stage CRACKLED in the fire, tottering on the verge of collapse.

The operatic monologue flowed like a weeping lament.

"Chunmiao, do you see? They are afraid! They are so afraid that they had to hang me on this stage just to uphold their crumbling ’reasoning’!

"Chunmiao, you must sing! No matter how difficult this world is, no matter how others gossip, you must stand firm and sing loud. Sing until they are afraid! Sing until they cry! Sing until this damned heaven can no longer sever your path!"

Watching her mother’s eerie appearance and the flowing tears of blood, Guan Xing’s little face turned deathly pale from fright. Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Mom! Mom, what’s wrong?"

Guan Lan was laughing and crying maniacally. Guan Xing stared at the growing fire around them. Instead of paralyzing her, the intense fear made her little mind race.

"Paper tigers... Mom said fears are just paper tigers..." she muttered.

Guan Xing repeated what Guan Lan had taught her over and over again. Suddenly, she remembered the horror movies she had watched in the hotel room before the game started; the ghosts in them loved to scare people with illusions.

"It’s all fake! It’s an illusion!" Guan Xing squeezed her eyes shut and shouted with all her might. "Mom, listen to me! These are all fake! It’s an illusion! Don’t believe it! They are paper tigers!"

The childish shout pierced through the eerie operatic singing and the POPPING of the flames, clearly reaching the ears of the possessed Guan Lan. It was like a sudden crack of thunder in the darkness, jolting her awake.

She realized nothing made sense. Flames wouldn’t spontaneously burn to this extent without an accelerant, and there were no combustibles at the front of the stage. How could a normal person’s facial features twist like a vortex? Xing was telling the truth! All of this was fake! It was a hallucination!

The moment the massive burning beam from the ceiling came crashing down on their heads, time seemed to freeze for a split second. The mother and daughter both squeezed their eyes shut tightly. Suddenly, everything vanished. A deathly silence fell around them.

Guan Lan opened her eyes. There were no flames, no thick smoke, no collapsed beams, no villagers with contorted faces, and no silk threads controlling her. Panting heavily, Guan Lan tightly hugged Guan Xing, who had thrown herself into her arms. Guan Xing hugged her mother back with equal force, her small body still trembling violently.

[Beginner Tutorial Event ’The Protagonist’s Trial’ has been completed!]

[Special Item "It’s Time to End" has been issued to the shared inventory of you and your guardian. Please use it before the Sanmen Town old theater plot concludes.]

***

In the attic, Yin Zhen finished the resonance with Chunhua’s memories. In the blink of an eye, the two puppets before her vanished, leaving only a trunk filled with miscellaneous junk.

AHHH—

A scream came from the direction of the backyard. Yin Zhen phased directly through the attic and headed for the yard. By the time she leaped from the roof into the courtyard, she saw Zhang Hai choking a woman by the neck. He stood beside Liu Hua, confronting another woman opposite them.

That woman was astonishingly Jiang Ying, the hitchhiker from earlier. The woman Zhang Hai was choking was Jiang Ying’s teammate. At Zhang Hai and Liu Hua’s feet lay the corpse of a man, his head like a smashed watermelon—a gruesome sight to behold.

"If you don’t want her to die here too, hand it over!" Zhang Hai bellowed at Jiang Ying, his face twisted in malice.

Liu Hua took a half step forward, stepping aside in disgust to avoid the red and white matter on the ground. Her eyes remained locked on the object cradled in Jiang Ying’s arms. It was wrapped in yellow talisman cloth and bound tightly with red threads. From its silhouette alone, anyone could tell it was a puppet.

"Little girl, it’s best not to take things that don’t belong to you," Liu Hua said.