Chapter 36: The True Rules

When Ji Linmo first entered the room, he immediately noticed it. Although Old Man Ma’s house was filled with all sorts of things, none of them seemed like items he or his wife would actually use in their daily lives.

Miniskirts, leg bands, oversized drop-crotch pants, sunglasses, battered cigarette boxes...

Rather than believe that Old Man Ma and Granny Gu were fond of such styles, Ji Linmo was far more inclined to conclude that these disorderly odds and ends had been stripped from other players. Like the remains of lost souls, the piles of relics strewn across the room whispered to Ji Linmo that this household, even without the constraints of rules, was not as simple as it seemed on the surface.

“You’re quite observant, young man.”

“If I’d known, I wouldn’t have wasted my energy steaming you a basket of buns,” Granny Gu said, grinning, her lips parting to reveal a mouthful of yellow, gapped teeth.

“After all, the sedative in my buns is strong enough to knock out an elephant. By now, you should be sprawled out cold on the floor, your skin peeled and hung up on the balcony.”

Sedative in the buns...

Ji Linmo arched an eyebrow, remembering that Old Man Ma had eaten the buns as well. Why, then, was Old Man Ma completely unaffected?

“Why are you telling me all this? Granny Gu, are you revealing your hand because you intend to kill me?”

Ji Linmo gazed at her calmly, his expression unruffled. After careful consideration, he had already ruled out the possibility that he had broken any rules. At present, he was on the rooftop; the cleaning required inside the room had no time limit. He had done nothing wrong—there was no reason for Granny Gu to kill him.

But after he spoke, Granny Gu covered her face and burst out laughing, as if she had heard the most preposterous joke in the world, her shoulders shaking with mirth.

“Young man, didn’t my old man tell you? In our house, there’s no need to be so uptight. There aren’t so many rules.”

“Because I am the rules here.”

Her body trembling, the old woman stood before Ji Linmo, lifted her chin, and let her hands fall away from her face. The thin, translucent layer of human skin, as delicate as a cicada’s wing, slipped from her face like a silk glove sliding off, exposing her true visage.

The real appearance of “Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan” was a face burnt and scarred by fire, so red and raw it resembled a skinned monkey, no trace of humanity left to it.

“Young man, you’re quite good-looking. Would you like to try becoming one of the many bloody handprints on my windows...?”

Crash!

Beneath the floor-to-ceiling window, the old woman’s hunched form began to crack and pop, her limbs lengthening grotesquely, her silhouette growing tall and gaunt. Sharp talons sprouted from her bony, withered fingers.

“Give it to me! Like all the others, leave all your skin for me to use!”

“Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan” stared at Ji Linmo with a crazed expression, advancing slowly, as though to force him out onto the balcony.

But faced with her twisted smile, Ji Linmo stood still, unflinching, showing no intent to dodge.

“Granny Gu, stop trying to scare me. You can’t hurt me at all.”

“If you truly were the rules, why waste your breath? You could have killed me from the very start.”

The next moment, Ji Linmo walked straight through the glass door onto the balcony right in front of “Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan.”

Mountains of corpses—rows of blood-red bodies, specially treated, hung in midair, filling the air with a bizarre stench.

“Young man, I told you not to step onto the balcony!”

“Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan” trembled all over, her voice cold and gleeful.

But Ji Linmo ignored her, instead calmly surveying the balcony.

“Ghost Granny, stop wasting your effort. If I’m not mistaken, the true rule of Room 202 is this: if you believe everything you say is a rule, then it becomes reality, isn’t that right?”

“You... I don’t understand what you’re saying. Your only fate now is death.”

Her gaze flickered, and she bit her lip, staring at Ji Linmo in silence. But Ji Linmo’s eyes were sharp as an eagle’s, and in that brief moment of guilt, he seized upon her hesitation.

He was right.

Ji Linmo once again confirmed his earlier deduction.

The rule of Room 202 was—never believe a word Granny Gu says!

“The buns... Granny Gu, there was no sedative in them at all, was there?”

Ji Linmo stared impassively at “Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan,” raising his voice.

“You said that on purpose, to make me believe your words, so your lie would become real.”

In this world of terror, rules are absolute. So long as you are inside the game, no matter who you are, you must obey them.

The same is true of items.

There can be no ignoring the conditions—an item cannot affect one party but not the other. Inside the game, whether used on a player or an NPC, an item acts the same way; there is no difference between the living or the dead.

Because, in this game, everyone is a resident of Ruolan Community.

Thus, there could never exist a sedative strong enough to fell an elephant, yet leave someone eating buns and strolling out the door unharmed.

The only explanation is that Granny Gu deliberately said it so that you’d think, “The buns really were poisoned—I narrowly escaped.” In that way, Ji Linmo would naturally trust her words and start to believe that whatever Granny Gu said constituted the rules.

Thus, the balcony would become a forbidden zone—if you entered, you would truly be breaking the rule and be skinned and killed by Ghost Granny.

And anything else Granny Gu claimed would also be subconsciously taken as truth.

“What’s wrong, did I scare you?”

Ji Linmo fixed his gaze upon her.

“In truth, I nearly fell for it myself—if you hadn’t mentioned the buns.”

“Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan” fell silent, now glaring at him with undisguised hatred, her trick exposed.

Now that Ji Linmo had uncovered the truth, she could do nothing more to him.

Why? Why?

“Ghost Granny—Gu Yulan” clutched her face, her whole body trembling with rage.

All this time, not a single person who entered this scenario had ever discovered the truth.

Yet in mere minutes, this man, Ji Linmo, had seen straight through it.

How could he have grasped it so quickly, from just a few words?

“Ghost Granny, let’s make a deal.”

Ji Linmo shook his hand, pulling from his inventory the item he’d acquired from Liu Bi the day before.