Kaleidoscope of Death

The night grew darker, and because the room they’d stayed in before was now in a completely different spot, the three of them could only select a random room to sleep in on the second-story deck.

The good thing was that after the rooms began to change, they could only be locked from the inside, so there was no concern about getting in.

The bedroom they chose this time was also a triple, and there were some bags inside, left here by people the day before. Lin Qiushi said they’d bring the bags out tomorrow since if they left in the room, they might not be able to find them again.

Ruan Nanzhu nodded in demonstrated agreement with Lin Qiushi’s words.

Not long after they turned in, it began to rain outside again.

The howling sea wind lent more strength to the rain, and the ship felt so flimsy on the brinkless ocean. It seemed that they could be smothered underneath the black waters at any second.

The ship kept swaying, and even the beds became like hammocks, swinging to and fro. It was horribly uncomfortable, and even Lin Qiushi, who didn’t get motion-sick, had to sit up in bed to feel a bit better. It was easy to see that someone who did get seasick would be vomiting up everything in their stomachs right about now.

“Linlin, are you alright?” Ruan Nanzhu asked, seeing that Lin Qiushi didn’t look so good. The swaying beds didn’t seem to be impacting him any, however; he was still lying unaffected in bed.

Lin Qiushi shook his head, indicating that he was fine.

“I’m just a little dizzy. I’m going to sit up for a while.”

What he could see from his window was constantly changing as well. Sometimes he saw the cabin, sometimes he saw the keel. Right now, he just so happened to be looking out at the top deck with the rain water sloughing off the planks.

All the kerosene lamps outside had been extinguished, and only faint silhouettes could be seen on deck. Lin Qiushi watched for a while, and by the time the rain lessened, he decided to lie back down and go to sleep. But just as he got into bed, he noticed two blurry figures appear on deck.

One of the figures stood roughly two meters tall, while the other was collapsed on the floor. It was held and being dragged along the ground by the taller figure.

There was nobody in their group taller than two meters. Obviously, the thing appearing before Lin Qiushi now was not human. As for the thing in its grip…

Lin Qiushi turned and shot Ruan Nanzhu a look.

The two didn’t need words to understand each other. Ruan Nanzhu walked silently behind Lin Qiushi and followed Lin Qiushi’s line of sight.

When he saw that giant figure, his expression became instantly solemn.

Lin Qiushi didn’t dare speak; that thing was, at the moment, quite close to them. Any sound they made was likely to arouse its attention. As for what would happen then, they hardly knew.

That hulking figure halted in its steps on the deck. It bent over, burying its face in the body that it dragged along. The next moment, Lin Qiushi heard an immensely unfortunate sound—the sound of raw meat being chewed. Sharp teeth severed skin and tore off fresh flesh chunk by chunk. Then came the brusque chewing and swallowing. A gamy scent began to fill the air. It was the scent of blood.

Lin Qiushi understood everything that was happening. The rain outside gradually stopped; storms on the sea came and went quickly. Storm clouds dispersed, unveiling the raw white moon. Under the cool moonlight, he could finally see everything before him with clarity.

Before Lin Qiushi stood a towering monster. Its head was of a long-dead fish, and gills along its neck were pulsing in vigor; its entire body was a nauseating sheen of muted green. The most eye-catching thing was its pair of huge white eyeballs. They had no lids, and simply sat bulging in their sockets, staring intently down at their prey underneath.

And in front of the creature was a half-eaten human. The face was already gone, so it was impossible to determine its appearance. Only its clothing roughly announced that this had been a man.

Taking in the entire scene, Lin Qiushi held his breath. He recalled the Minotaur, that monster in the Labyrinth—when it ate humans, did it look the same as this monster before him?

The monster took its time consuming most of the flesh on the person’s body. With its face soaked in blood, a strange hissing sound came out of its mouth, a sound that seemed to have been squeezed out of its throat by force. Though they didn’t understand what it was saying, Lin Qiushi could still hear the sense of satisfaction in that sound.

It seemed quite contented; the food before it had been delicious, so it got to eat its fill.

After feasting, it turned and left, entering a room nearest to it. And after that, the scenery changed again, and both the rooms and deck disappeared from Lin Qiushi’s sight.

Lin Qiushi could finally speak. He asked, “what is that thing—”

Ruan Nanzhu’s brow furrowed. “Merperson?”

Lin Qiushi: “…” In some sense, it truly was a kind of merperson.

“It must be the Minotaur,” Lin Qiushi said. “Can we beat that thing?”

Ruan Nanzhu’s finger tapped at his chin.

“Give me a gun and I’ll try.”

But they couldn’t bring a gun inside the door—neither did the doors support such recklessness. There must be a way to easily kill the monster before them without having to go head-to-head with it.

Lin Qiushi recalled that the myth of the Minotaur mentioned a ball of string.

Ruan Nanzhu seemed to have remembered the same thing. As the two pondered the issue, Gu Longming, who’d been sleeping soundly beside them, woke up.

“Why aren’t you two sleeping?” he asked. “I’ve already gotten a whole nap in…”

Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Lin Qiushi.

“Does he always sleep so well?”

Lin Qiushi: “He said he’s only ever like this when he’s with me.”

“Oh,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “Don’t go into any more doors together then.”

Gu Longming wore a face of befuddlement, clearly confused about what was going on.

“Let’s rest first,” Ruan Nanzhu said, “and gather more information tomorrow. We know too little about this ship.”

Lin Qiushi nodded and agreed with Ruan Nanzhu’s suggestion.

The two got back in bed and this time, without the intrusion of the rain and waves, they quickly fell asleep.

The next morning, the three got up early and headed for the top deck.

There was already a good number of people there, looking at the body from yesterday that was gnawed to only bones. Everyone was raucous with discussion.

“How could this happen, how—” a woman’s voice cried from the crowd. “There’s a monster. There’s a monster on this ship!!”

“What in the world happened last night?” Song Yongning asked.

“We heard noises inside our room yesterday,” the woman replied dully. “He went out to take a look, and then he never came back.”

“I think I saw the monster yesterday.” It was a woman, looking quite young, who spoke. She kept her voice quiet. “It had the head of a fish, and it dragged this person to the deck and ate…and ate him.”

“Then why didn’t you save him!!” The woman heard what the girl had to say and seemed to have found an outlet for her anger. She began to shout, furious, even lunging for the girl: “So you just watched him get killed like this?!”

The girl got scared and began to cry.

“I was also afraid.”

“Enough,” a bystander said in annoyance, stopping the woman with a grip. “What are you blaming someone else for? If you were really worried, you couldn’t have come out yourself? The deck never switched places, you know.”

The woman glowered at the person speaking, jumping to say more, until the person announced coldly: “Don’t blame others for your own incompetence.”

The woman began to wail loudly.

Lin Qiushi kept silent, simply observing the corpse before them.

He could tell that the monster had really liked the food it’d been presented with; not only did it eat all the soft innards, but it also chewed off most of the meat from the bones, leaving only the unwieldy skull and the relatively meatless bits of the limbs.

“What do we do about the body?”

This place was hot, and after a single night on deck, the corpse had already started to rot. There were even insects circling above it, making for an uncomfortable sight.

“Toss it in the ocean,” someone spoke up languidly. “We can’t just leave it here.”

Surprisingly, the wailing woman did not interject. She only continued to sniffle, afraid to take a second look at the wretched body.

And so a couple of men found a ragged cloth, wrapped the corpse up in it, and tossed it into the nearby ocean.

The moment the corpse hit water, it began to bob and turn. Lin Qiushi took a closer look and discovered the ocean filled with small, sharp-toothed fish—how fortunate that these fish hadn’t been present when Xiao Mo fell in.

It would appear that to the newbies who were trying to escape from their very first door, the doors were quite generous; it would at least give them a chance to improve themselves.

The corpse was gone, leaving only conspicuous bloodstains on the deck boards.

Song Yongning fetched a mop from the side and cleaned the blood off the deck. And so the last traces of that person’s existence disappeared.

The group stood on deck and began discussing the matter of the monster.

“It’s a merperson,” the girl who’d seen the monster said. “It’s really tall—at least two meters—and really muscular…It dragged that person to the deck and after gobbling him up, went into a random room.”

“And then?” Song Yongning asked.

“And then the rooms changed,” the girl replied. “I don’t know where it’s gone either.”

The rooms were now ever-changing; finding the monster among the infinite number of rooms was practically impossible. Plus, even if they did find it, they were hardly sure they could take it down.

Ruan Nanzhu seemed to be contemplating something, and stayed quiet.

Lin Qiushi’s gaze fell on the insects still circling the deck. He got close to one before reaching out and snagging it—and when he saw the bug in his hand he frowned.

“What is it?” Ruan Nanzhu had seen Lin Qiushi’s odd expression.

“Have you ever seen mosquitoes like this?” Lin Qiushi opened his palm and showed him the insect he’d caught.

When Ruan Nanzhu saw the thing in Lin Qiushi’s hand, he startled.

The flying insect had a person’s face, and though the face was quite contorted, it was definitely one of a human—it had eyes and a nose, as well as a needle-shaped mouth that looked like some sort of weapon.

The insect was no bigger than a grain of rice. They had to look closely to see its appearance.

Seeing this bug reminded Ruan Nanzhu of something. He said, “remember the NPC who first appeared before us?”

Lin Qiushi gave it a thought, and understood what Ruan Nanzhu was getting at.

“You mean the insects on his body?”

That NPC had indeed been covered in a dense mass of bugs. They just hadn’t taken a closer look back then. Seeing the frightening appearance of these insects now, they were linking it back to the ones on his body.

“Mh,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “I think he’s in the dining room.”

Lin Qiushi glanced at his watch. It was about lunchtime.

“Come on, let’s go take a look.”

All the food they ate was brought over every day by this insect-covered NPC. Quite honestly it wasn’t anything to cheer about, because seeing the crawl of bugs covering his body, it was hard not to wonder if some of them would fall into their plates.

Ruan Nanzhu had an idea. He got a heat pack out of his bag and took the sheet off the adhesive back. Then he took a spin with it around the NPC, and not long after, the heat pack was covered with a layer of those black insects.

After some scrutiny, they confirmed that these bugs on the NPC were the same sort they saw on deck—insects that had grown a human face.

“Nasty.” Gu Longming expressed tremendous disgust regarding the matter. “No way all the bugs on the ship are these things, right? I killed a few just last night.”

“They most likely are.” Lin Qiushi observed these insects in contemplation. “Say…do you think these insects have anything to do with the labyrinth?”

“You mean…” Ruan Nanzhu glanced at Lin Qiushi.

Lin Qiushi nodded, and spoke a single word: “String.”

Evidently, the labyrinth that they were in was very different from the Minotaur’s. All the rooms were continuously changing, so a plain cotton string would not be able to find the monster hidden in the maze. Could that string exist in some other way, however, for instance as the insects before their very eyes…?

Gu Longming’s eyes lit up. “It could be!”

These human-faced insects seemed to react particularly well to blood, and after the monster ate a human, there must be blood all over its body; maybe these insects really could help them trace the monster’s footsteps.

“As for where to source the insects…” Gu Longming’s glance shifted to that impassive NPC, looking pained himself. “It’s not from him, is it?”

“Most likely is,” Ruan Nanzhu said.

Gu Longming: “…” The honest truth was, he felt disgusted even just looking at that NPC for too long.

“If the insects are the string, then what’s the aperitif?” Lin Qiushi had his chin in a hand, and was poking at the utterly unappetizing dead fish in front of him. “I feel like that’s more important.”

In the myth, after Theseus used the ball of string to enter the maze and find the Minotaur, he killed the Minotaur while it was consuming an aperitif.

Clearly, the drink represented something else here as well. They just didn’t know what yet.

But an aperitif? There wasn’t a single drop of alcohol on this ship; Gu Longming had even complained about it yesterday, saying how abnormal it was that a ship like this didn’t have any alcohol on it.

The three of them didn’t touch the dead fish on the table, instead kept eating the food they’d brought. They had enough to last for ten days at least, which was plenty for them the leave the door on.

The time limit the NPC had given them was ten days, which meant that if they didn’t find the door and get out in ten days, a terrible change would definitely take place aboard the ship.

“Will the ship really reach shore in ten days?” Gu Longming asked.

“Impossible,” Ruan Nanzhu said. “What’s most likely to happen is that once the time limit’s up, the monster goes on a rampage and slaughters a group of people. Then everything cycles back again.”

They would experience another ten days, and then another, over and over again until only a single person was left on the ship—that person, under the protection of the law of the doors, would be invincible. They’d be able to do whatever they wanted, and finding the key and door would become only a matter of time.

“But…” Gu Longming thought there was a problem here. “But for normal people, there’s no way they can easily link these things together right? These insects for example.” He tapped at the human-faced insects that Lin Qiushi had placed on the table. “Could normal people notice that?”

“There’s plenty of time inside the door, you can be slow about it,” Ruan Nanzhu spoke faintly. “As long as you get out before you go insane.”

Gu Longming: “…”

At Ruan Nanzhu’s words, Lin Qiushi remembered a newbie that Obsidian had once brought back—Qin Budai. He seemed to have gotten stuck inside a door for too long, and so even after exiting, he hadn’t been able to recover. In the end, they’d gotten rid of him.

As they were speaking, the NPC finished distributing food and turned to leave.

Lin Qiushi tried to follow, but once the NPC entered one of the doors, he disappeared before their eyes.

The NPC ought to appear at set times, however, so they didn’t have to worry about him disappearing. As for how they were going to harvest the insects from his body…that was a bit more annoying.

With a bottle? With fresh blood? But where would they get the blood? While they were debating this matter, argument once again broke out in the dining room. This time, the ones arguing were the seasick-to-the-point-of-dying Shen Juexin and that woman who’d lost her companion that morning, named Jian Qianyuan.

After witnessing the half-eaten corpse of her partner, she seemed to have suffered a serious emotional shock, and had kept up a highly irritable attitude.

But it wasn’t her attitude that struck people the strangest—it was the terrifying way she ate.

While everybody expressed disgust for the stale dead fish in front of them, she seemed to have fallen in love with the stuff. She vigorously stuffed that pallid, fetid flesh into her mouth with a look of contentment, looking wholly satisfied.

Shen Juexin, already present, had already been seasick, and seeing Jian Qianyuan chowing down on the fish meat, he couldn’t take it anymore, stumbling outside and vomiting up everything in his stomach right onto the deck.

This seemed to provoke those brittle nerves of Jian Qianyuan, and she began to shout, even slamming her hands hard against the table as she roared, “the hell are you throwing up for? You think I’m disgusting, don’t you!!”

Mystified by the shouting, Shen Juexin explained that he was only seasick.

“Then why didn’t you throw up earlier?” Jian Qianyuan replied coldly. “Why did you wait until I was eating to throw up—”

Shen Juexin: “I didn’t do it on purpose. I was holding it back the whole time, and just now, I couldn’t hold it in anymore.”

Jian Qianyuan threw the fish head in her hand at Shen Juexin’s feet, a suppressed scream tearing out of her throat. This throw also pissed Shen Juexin off, and so he began to argue with Jian Qianyuan. The two shouted back and forth and back and forth endlessly, and after that, Shen Juexin almost threw up in front of Jian Qianyuan once more.

And when things didn’t look so good, everybody else quickly pulled the two apart.

Jian Qianyuan was still incredibly aggressive, clawing up streaks of blood on the arms of the people holding her back. With no other choice, the group could only grab something to tie her down with and then shoo Shen Juexin quickly out of the dining room.

“Forget it, you know her friend just died. She’s all by herself, don’t hold it against her,” they coaxed Shen Juexin, trying to calm him down.

“She’s ridiculous,” Shen Juexin said, wronged. “It’s not like I wanted to throw up. And how could she eat that fish anyways…”

Nobody replied, because Shen Juexin had a point. The taste of the fish really wasn’t meant for human consumption: the texture of the meat was powdery, crumbling at a pinch. And it wasn’t salted, but seemed to have been left out for a while; there was even a faint whiff of rot to be smelled. Jian Qianyuan had complained about the fish meat herself in the past few days, but now was suddenly eating it with so much gusto. She had even picked the fish heads clean, leaving the spectators around her with increasingly complicated feelings.

Jian Qianyuan, currently tied to a chair, had managed to calm down. She said, “you guys can release me now. I won’t keep fighting with him.”

“Qianyuan, you have to cool down. We know you’re upset,” someone was still trying to speak earnestly with her. “You have to stay strong.”

Jian Qianyuan didn’t speak, only nodded.

The others undid the ropes and released her. They’d thought she would leave once released, but instead she sat down once more at the dining room table, continuing to chow down on that disgusting fish meat.

When everybody saw this, their expressions changed for the worse.

Gu Longming couldn’t hold back, asking in a hushed voice, “is it good?”

Jian Qianyuan shot him a cold look.

“And what if it’s not? Would you have something else to feed me?”

Gu Longming: “…”

Though this was the answer he’d gotten, it was clear from how Jian Qianyuan was eating that she thoroughly enjoyed the process. She seemed to find the taste of rotted fish particularly delicious, and her movements had no hesitation at all, stuffing her mouth with endless quantities of fish.

Faced with such a quandary, everybody tacitly left the dining room and headed outside without speaking. They were all obviously disgusted, and if they watched any longer, someone might end up vomiting like Shen Juexin. And if Jian Qianyuan saw that, another kerfuffle might start up.

“How can she keep eating that?” Gu Longming asked, his face green.

“Do you think Jian Qianyuan lied to us?” Ruan Nanzhu suddenly spoke.

“What?” Gu Longming startled.

“You mean what happened last night—if Jian Qianyuan is hiding something?”

As Lin Qiushi said this, he looked off in the direction of the dining room.

Names in this chapter:

• Jiǎn Qiānyuàn / Jian(3) Qian(1) Yuan(4) / 簡千媛