Die drei Geistergeschichten von Jinzhong

Kapitel 19

The eldest brother said calmly, "The opinion of any one of us is my opinion."

Thank you.

"If you want to thank someone, thank yourself."

—She succeeded. And what about me?

In that instant, Wu Xiaohui and Zhou Lingli spoke in unison, "I—" They started speaking at the same time, then stopped, and glared at each other.

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [53]: "Are you not going to offer yourselves in unison? Do you need me to guarantee that my people and I will not molest you? And without any consequences?" The leader said calmly, then suddenly said coldly: "What good is it for a person to be too smart? A person who is too smart will only die young!" He turned to look at Xu Fangfang on the "safe island". "What about you? -- You are also a woman. If I don't touch them, I'll only touch you. Don't you want to think about it?"

Xu Fangfang lay motionless on her back, saying calmly, "If you have enough strength, you can do whatever you want to anyone, right? I'm not foolish enough to believe your promises. Besides, the word 'price' is actually quite subtle at this time. If I wanted to blackmail you, I would have to consider whether it would succeed and whether the timing was right." She sneered, "I'm not going to joke about everyone's lives! If a joke goes too far, it often becomes real!"

The eldest brother turned back to look at Wei Yiyi and An Yingying. "What about you? Why didn't you say something like, 'We're already standing on the edge of the cliff, we could fall against it at any moment. If... then... we'll all die?!'"

Wei Yiyi lowered her head silently and returned to Er Gou's side. An Yingying murmured, "I also have a husband..." Seeing Lao Dong's calm expression, she quickly added, "However, in this situation, he won't blame me. I wasn't willing to do this. I had no choice." She left the stone wall, lowered her head, and returned to Xiao Dao's side.

"Great!" Little Shovel clapped. "Since you all have the courage and determination to sacrifice yourselves, let's make our move. Let's see who dies."

Li Jun cried out in horror, "No! [The text abruptly ends here, likely due to an incomplete sentence or a formatting error.]

Zhu Qian, Zhou Lingli, and the five-woman group looked at each other, at a loss for what to do.

The water had been released. A Ding sighed, "They're just playing with us. These places are all connected, with different mechanisms. If anything happens, we'll be the ones who die."

"Finally, someone has figured it out?" the leader said calmly. "Of all you people, the only one we can't touch is Ding Dada."

If he moves, you'll all sink to the bottom. Don't even think about getting out until the trap is broken. Xu Fangfang really can't move. It's a pity she can't abandon Du Liu and doesn't dare to threaten us. —How ridiculous!

He was indeed smiling. A cold smile.

"How ridiculous! A person who could kill us all is afraid to act for the sake of just one person. A person who could kill you all would rather be drowned than move. Yet two people who could kill us are unwilling to sacrifice themselves. And these people who can do nothing are making baseless threats!"

Er Gou, Xiao Dao, and Xiao Chan all burst into laughter, "Haha! That's hilarious!"

The eldest brother was puzzled and asked Ding, "Ding, judging from your appearance, you've long since stopped caring about life and death. Why would you sacrifice yourself to save others? Can't you see that those guys don't even consider you a human being?"

A Ding was taken aback.

A trace of pain unconsciously welled up in his eyes.

But then he suddenly smiled.

"Boss, what's my name?"

"Isn't his name Ding Dada?"

"So, what is 'Da Da'?"

The eldest brother paused, then asked, "Big Brother—? What is that?"

“DaDa is a kind of bubble gum,” A Ding explained. “It has bubbles and sugar. People usually chew it first, then swallow all the sugar, leaving only the gum. That’s when they ‘blow’ it, continuing to ‘blow’ until the ‘bubbles’ get bigger and bigger and burst, before swallowing again and ‘blowing’ again. When people get tired of this game, they ‘spit’ it out, leaving it to coexist with dust. And then there will be environmentalists who frown and say: ‘Look! It’s so hard to clean up! How can these people be so inconsiderate?’—Do you understand?”

The eldest brother didn't understand.

Adin smiled wryly. "I'm like 'bubble gum.' I'm the kind of person who can be blown bigger and bigger until it finally bursts, and that's what we call a 'bubble.'"

The pain in his eyes intensified.

"Undoubtedly, there is something called 'sugar' in me. But when the 'sugar' is gone, I am only good for people to play with. And when people get tired of me—the problem is that I have no idea when people will get tired of me—I am completely useless. And at that time, I can only keep company with the dust."

The eldest brother remained silent for a long while, then suddenly sighed and slowly said, "Actually, which one of us isn't like bubblegum? We're all the same."

"They're all just bubblegum in other people's mouths, all the same," he murmured, as if A Ding's ordinary words had triggered an overwhelming sadness.

Adin laughed again. His laugh was utterly disgusting.

“But ‘Da Da’ also has another meaning,” he said. “—that is, ‘baba’ in the dialect. It means biological father. So, my name has completely changed its meaning… How many children would like their strict father? But no matter how strict or misunderstood a father is, the essence of his ‘love’ will not change.” He coughed and asked, “Now you should understand, right?”

"I understand," the old man said. "I finally understand! There's no need for Ah Q anymore!"

“It’s no use, boss,” Adin said. “I understand what you mean. You want to anger me or provoke my death wish, to make me move and kill us all. But it’s no use. I will never move. If I really wanted to, I would have already done it.”

"I could have moved when the water first appeared and you didn't even notice. I could have made you all die with me. But I didn't move then. How could I possibly make a move now?"

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [54]: "Why?" the eldest brother asked sharply, pointing to the end of the corridor where Tong Rong and her body were placed: "Didn't you see that the person you love so deeply was about to fall and disappear?" He frowned and replied: "...I understand now. It turns out that you don't love her at all. You have never loved anyone."

A Ding laughed. A bitter laugh. "Yes. I have indeed never loved anyone. For people like you and me, there is no love in this world, there should be no love. It was so in life, and it will be so in death. Yours..." He didn't finish his sentence.

Because of an accident.

— Li Jun, who was most afraid of dying and least wanted to die, and who always told people not to move, suddenly died.

Listening to their rambling conversation, Li Jun was already impatient. His legs were almost numb from the cold and he desperately wanted to move. But he didn't want to die. He was afraid of dying. So he didn't dare to move, and he was also afraid that others would move.

But when he heard the boss and others say "ridiculous," he also found it quite ridiculous.

First: Those girls are ridiculous. Is virginity really that important?

Second: those facts are so ridiculous. So ridiculous that it's almost laughable.

Third: Believing the boss's scare tactics, saying that any movement would lead to death, is laughable. It's so ridiculous it's practically devoid of materialism. Where are these supposed mechanisms or information?

Fourth: A-Ding's self-description was utterly ridiculous. He wasn't wrong at all; he was exactly the kind of person who could be described as "bubblegum"—sticky, mysterious, and neurotic—it was laughable!

Fifth: He didn't know why, but he wanted to laugh. He found everything here extremely ridiculous, utterly ridiculous, ridiculously ridiculous.

That really cost him his life.

The water was icy cold, and all that seemed "ridiculous" ultimately drove him to act, driven only by the boss's words: "Someone who can't do anything is making threats." Since he couldn't do anything, and the key to the scheme was with A-Ding, who was neither able nor willing to move, of course he could "move," right?

If you can move around, then move around a bit.

There's a stone wall right behind me; what's wrong with being able to lean against it and rest for a while?

Thinking this, he leaned against the stone wall and whispered to Zhang Dawei and Yan Kaixin, "Come on, rest for a while, look..." He stopped abruptly. With three sharp "chirp" sounds, three arrowheads suddenly emerged from his chest, and sharp blades also appeared on the insteps of his feet.

“Strange…” he chuckled, looking at the arrowheads and sharp blades. “Where did these things come from?”

Then I felt the pain.

The pain was excruciating. He screamed and struggled, screaming and struggling desperately.

"—Don't move!" A-Ding shouted.

The people in the ceiling chamber froze instantly, no one daring to move, as if they had been frozen in place.

At the same time, Li Jun turned into a hedgehog.

Suddenly, his entire body was riddled with arrows. Then, all the arrows vanished in an instant. The stone wall he was leaning against suddenly cracked open, and he fell into the crevice.

He stopped screaming.

The sharp blade on his instep retracted, and with a "thud," he tumbled into the crevice. The split stone wall slowly closed, leaving behind only a stream-of-consciousness image—painted in blood.

Apart from this, there is no other evidence to prove that Li Jun ever existed here.

A-Ding stopped laughing. "Boss! You've achieved your true goal!"

The eldest brother sighed deeply, "I told you all not to move. But some of you just wouldn't believe me. And now look what happened?"

Now you believe it? Sigh… Why are there people in this world who won't give up until they're absolutely certain of death? Those who deserve to die still refuse to die. Those who don't deserve to die, those who could easily escape alive, insist on courting their own demise. It's a pity. It's pathetic.”

He spoke slowly. As he spoke, Xiao Chan and Xiao Dao each took out a bunch of various tools. The two carefully moved to opposite sides of the rock face, using a fluorescent light to carefully illuminate the rock surface. Xiao Chan first used a leather bag—a water bag—to sprinkle water on one part of the rock face. The water immediately seeped in, and when illuminated by the fluorescent light, he discovered a cross-shaped crack. He took out a cross-shaped spike, and after slightly inserting it, he gently tapped it in with a wooden mallet.

After the cross-shaped spikes and cracks were completely smoothed and leveled, he used a water bag to sprinkle water slightly above the cross-shaped spikes at a slight angle. He found three small holes, took out a wooden box, took out three wooden nails of different sizes from the box, hammered them in with a wooden mallet, and continued searching.

On the other side, Xiao Dao found a circular crack, took out a ball of wire, carefully embedded the wire into the crack, and then found a small hole in the center of the ring; first, he used a probing probe to test the depth, and then he felt out a pyramid and embedded it according to the depth.

They were busy, and Er Gou wasn't idle either.

Although he was injured in the fight with Du Liu, it was only an external wound, and with the protection of the netted clothing, the injury was not serious. While the two were talking, he had already applied medicine to stop the bleeding; when breaking the mechanism with a knife and shovel, he took out the "Thousand-Mile Fire", and a streak of cold light shone on the top of the "safety island" in the center. With his other hand, he quickly took out a blowpipe, installed a flare, and blew out a fluorescent light.

The fluorescent light flickered like green flames, disappearing into the road where Tong Rong's body lay.

—It's a dead end. A precipice.

—The cliff is more than ten feet wide and its depth is unknown; at the other end of the cliff, there is still a road that leads diagonally to what seems to be a bend, but its direction is unknown.

*** *** ***

At this moment, Wang Jia and Wang Mu once again witnessed "the flames of hell".

An endless passageway. Stone ceilings, stone walls, stone floor.

Smooth, clean, and cool.

There was no wind. Everything seemed frozen. There was no sound. Even footsteps were as faint as if they were on a thick carpet.

The view is deep blue and far-reaching; walking on such a road feels like embarking on a mysterious journey to another world.

The road goes down, always down.

The "fireworks of hell" appeared from the distant "below".

“We have seen the light of fireworks more than once,” Wang Jia said.

Wang Mu was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed. "Hey! Wang Jia!" he asked excitedly, "Don't you think—that's the underworld welcoming us?"

---Magpie Bridge Fairy

Reply [55]: *** *** ***

The disciples were busy, while the eldest brother stood with his hands behind his back, seemingly relaxed.

“Zhu Qian, you still have the option to die.” He said, as if persuading someone to buy a lottery ticket. “However, once the traps are dismantled, it will be difficult for you to die.” He then looked at Wu Xiaohui and Zhou Lingli, saying, “The same applies to you two. The method of death is actually very simple. Just move your feet or any part of your body to touch the stone wall. As for the state of death, there are roughly three possibilities. One you’ve already seen, it’s very cruel. Another is being cut in half or having your head chopped off. The last one is being trapped in a hole. There are countless sharp blades waiting below. Personally, I would choose the third one. After all—it still offers a way out.”

Zhou Lingli and Wu Xiaohui certainly didn't want to die.

Zhu Qian, however, remained hesitant.

Life is hard, and death is the only option. To die here is the worst of misfortunes. But if I don't die now, I will surely face gang rape and then murder. For a woman, that would be the cruelest way to die.

But what if they didn't actually intend to kill? What if they just wanted to satisfy their lust? In that case, should they die?

Why must I die? Why does everyone want me dead? No. I refuse. Every extra moment I live is a glimmer of hope.

“Zhu Qian, you’re hesitating. Why? If you don’t die now, you can probably guess what kind of death you’ll face later. Actually, everyone will die eventually. What’s the difference between dying early and dying late? Commit suicide and clear your name…” The eldest brother passionately persuaded her, but the more he urged her, the more hesitant Zhu Qian became. She stared blankly, then suddenly paused.

—Huang Zilan, hiding behind the eldest sister, quietly shook her head at her.

—Wei Yiyi was blinking repeatedly, unnoticed.

In that instant, Zhu Qian made a decision: