novelThe Cycle of Karma, What Goes Around Comes Around (9.1)
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Chapter Chapter 95.1 - The Cycle of Karma, What Goes Around Comes Around (9. 1) translator: baumkuchen (unedited)
Guan Qiaoqiao's strength slowly drained out of her. She went limp, her mouth gasping with silent sobs.
At around eight, Yuan Benshan finally returned to the third floor, accompanied by another young task-taker whose entire face was dotted with little freckles.
Chi Xiaochi and the rest gathered in an empty room.
This task required everyone to work together, so the task-takers had chosen to disperse to go investigate, and had mutually agreed to meet at nine o' clock in the evening to report the results of their investigations and draw up a topographic map of the castle together.
No one expected that this meeting time would be pushed up due to this kind of accident occurring.
Guan Qiaoqiao sat in between two girls, but she didn't seem to feel any comfort from this. Her eyes were red, her fingers nervously curled into chicken claws, scratching at her knees, her throat repeatedly sounding with startled, animal-like groans.
Upon seeing the still-alive Guan Qiaoqiao, Yuan Benshan's eyebrows furrowed slightly.
——She was actually still alive, he'd miscalculated.
He'd originally thought that that ghost would be able to kill Guan Qiaoqiao in one blow.
But he still took the initiative to walk over."Qiaoqiao, what's wrong?"
Guan Qiaoqiao sluggishly raised her head. After taking three seconds to recognise who he was, she immediately lunged at him without regard for anything else, both hands grabbing onto his collar. Her eyes were bloodshot, her lips trembling, full of indignant grief, suspicion, violent anger, filled with so many different emotions that she couldn't even say a word.
Yuan Benshan turned to look at Chi Xiaochi, confusion in his eyes. He reached out a hand to support her, as if he truly didn't know where Guan Qiaoqiao's anger was coming from."Chunyang, what happened? What's wrong with her?"
Chi Xiaochi, dutifully playing his role of the little bline man, felt his way over, then told him about everything that had happened.
Of course, since he was in front of a crowd, he chose to selectively skip over the the fact that he had Yin-Yang Eyes, only saying that the ghost had set its eyes on Guan Qiaoqiao, and lied about seeing an unknown woman turn into Guan Qiaoqiao's room.
He scolded, "Old Yuan, I told you to tell Qiaoqiao!"
Yuan Benshan knitted his brows. His voice held an unspeakable sadness, "I didn't see Qiaoqiao at all this afternoon, and when we went to go eat, he and I......" He pointed at the freckled task-taker, "were called over by the director to talk about the movie. I originally wanted to talk to her after the meeting this evening."
Freckles nodded, silently affirming Yuan Benshan's story.
Guan Qiaoqiao, "You——"
Yuan Benshan raised his eyebrows and accentuated his tone slightly, "Qiaoqiao, tell me, did we see each other this afternoon?"
Guan Qiaoqiao still wanted to say something, but when she spotted Chi Xiaochi, who was supporting her with his arm, out of the corner of her eye, she hesitated.
Even though she was on the verge of collapse, her rationality still remained.
If she admitted that the two of them had seen each other, Song Chunyang would inevitably want to get to the bottom of the matter. When that happened, if he managed to find out about their plan, would Song Chunyang still be willing to help her?
This life-saving straw had been very effective all this time. Guan Qiaoqiao was absolutely unwilling to give it up until the very last moment.
Guan Qiaoqiao didn't say anything else, just shivered.
"Think back carefully." Pigtail guy just saw Guan Qiaoqiao's hysterical questioning of Yuan Benshan as the mad scrabbling of someone nearing their demise."What did you do to get the ghost to set its eyes on you?"
Guan Qiaoqiao shrieked, "I didn't do anything!"
Pigtail guy replied rudely, "Then just blame your bad luck."
None of the other task-takers said anything, but they clearly agreed with Pigtail guy's assessment.
Gan Yu, who was leaning against the wall, spoke up, calmly giving his comments of the above opinion, "Utter nonsense."
Pigtail guy started. Just as he was about to flare up, he saw Gan Yu stroke his glasses chain and continue, "If everything in the task worlds just relies on 'luck', then we should all just sit down cross-legged and start praying to Buddha, and wait for the ghosts to pick us off one by one until they're sick of it. Besides, all of us here were selected to come into these task worlds. Whether your luck is good or not, don't you already know?"
Chi Xiaochi, "......" Oho.
These words were actually in line with Chi Xiaochi's own thoughts at this moment, just that he was still dressed in the sheep's skin of Song Chunyang, so he couldn't say them.
He didn't want to say it, but this person's mild, gentle manner as he showed his dislike for someone was really sexy.
Guan Qiaoqiao exclaimed incoherently, "I really didn't do anything! We haven't started filming, right?! Then why the fuck is it me? Why is it me?"
Next to her, Gan Tang thought for a moment, then spoke up in a soft voice, "I have an idea."
Her voice was very soft, but was unhurried and composed, and incredibly calm, "If Guan Qiaoqiao did something wrong, then why hasn't the ghost just directly killed her? I'm guessing, this ghost, at the very least for now, does not yet have the ability to directly kill people. It can only use methods like infecting the mind to affect people. None of us here know how this effect will continue to spread, nor what it will result in, so we need to protect...... or to be more specific, 'observe' Guan Qiaoqiao."
Immediately, someone retorted sharply, "You said that this is an 'infection', it's contagious. If this woman has already become the source of infection, what should we do then?"
He didn't exactly say what they should do, but everyone could think of the meaning behind his words.
Since she was the source of infection, then she of course needed to be annihilated.
Gan Tang said calmly, "Of course, that is also a possibility. But I'm still leaning towards observing and protecting her. After all, as of right now, other than knowing that the ghost has set its eyes on Guan Qiaoqiao, we have practically no other clues. Since you're choosing to give up so quickly, then we won't share the information we gain after our observation with you."
In just a few words, she made her stance known, demarcated her group and also vaguely threatened that person.
That person's confidence drained away. He obediently shut up.
After the group's emotions were stabilised, Yuan Benshan warmly pulled Guan Qiaoqiao over to the table and sat down.
Since he hadn't been able to kill Guan Qiaoqiao in one blow, the most urgent task at hand was to stabilise Guan Qiaoqiao, so as to avoid her revealing their secret in a moment of agitation.
While Gan Yu walked over to Chi Xiaochi, who had been abandoned, and like a gentleman, held his hand, found a soft chair, and helped him into it. He then sat down beside him.
Guan Qiaoqiao's currently mental state was very problematic. Under the torment of the omnipresent gaze, she couldn't sit still, fretfully using her nails to tear at the dry skin on her lips non-stop.
Once he sat down, Chi Xiaochi offered up a train of thought, "Let's first look at the script. After all, the key point of this mission isn't the photographs, it's the movie."
With one sentence, everyone woke up from their doubtful haze of "photographs killing people".
Something already happening before filming had even started had caused everyone's focus to shift, thinking that the photographs were the biggest danger, to the point that practically everyone was secretly thinking that they would have to cover up the picture in their room with a cloth, or simply throw it out.
But Chi Xiaochi's words directly pointed out a possible reason why the ghost had set its sights on Guan Qiaoqiao.
There were seven main characters in the cast, four men, two women and one ghost.
Pigtail guy was acting as the male lead, a dissolute slut who lived a life of debauchery.
The role of the female lead was played by a very beautiful ponytailed woman. She used to be a bad kid who thought that they could even fuck the heavens and the earth. Now, she had already washed her hands in a gold basin, but was still unwilling to remain lonely, so she hooked back up with her with her old paramour during their schoolmate reunion.
Yuan Benshan was acting as that very old paramour, so the other role he played was as the male lead's opponent. According to the setting, he was a very righteous man, but from his lines and how he actually acted, his ability to argue for the sake of arguing stood out more; if he wasn't arguing with someone, he wasn't talking.
A tall woman who had a height of around 1. 8 metres was responsible for playing the female lead's best friend. She inherited the glorious tradition of the female lead's best friend in almost all movies about the growing pains of youths: Sleeping with her good friend's man, while also sticking close to the male lead, her relationships hopelessly muddled.
Supporting male no. 1, the male lead's little lackey, was played by a college student with a face full of freckles. He was secretly in love with the female lead.
Supporting male no. 2 was Chi Xiaochi, or rather Song Chunyang. His character setting was as the son of the male lead's butler, who was constantly sticking himself to the male lead and trying to curry favour with him. He was the culprit behind all the haunted events.
After this round of inventory checks, the reason why Guan Qiaoqiao had been chosen by the female ghost became clear.
...... She was responsible for playing Song Chunyang's girlfriend, the "female ghost" who had committed suicide after being raped by the male lead.
She was the first one to die in the story, as well as the only one to die.
If she was chosen by the female ghost because of her role, then this disaster that had fallen on her could actually be completely avoided.
As long as she realised the strangeness of the picture in her room in time, it wouldn't be hard to think of perhaps it was her role that had a problem. When the time came, she just needed to come up with a plan to switch scripts with someone else, and would then be able to successfully lead the source of calamity to the east.
After all, her role was very simple. When all was said and done, she only took up three scenes in a flashback to her death.
Everyone wanted their role to be a little easier, and the chance of "going out of character" would be reduced accordingly.
If any unlucky person agreed to the exchange, then she would be able to easily extract herself from the danger.
But currently, the female ghost had already set her sights on Guan Qiaoqiao, and had begun to infiltrate her soul. Once the infiltration had begun, even if she was an immortal, it would still be hard for her to be saved.
...... But who was willing to just wait for death?
Guan Qiaoqiao started to become anxious once more. She gave the people present a pleading look."Any, anyone works, come find the director with me to exchange scripts, okay?"
No one spoke.
...... Who didn't want to live?
Guan Qiaoqiao immediately asked for help from her life-saving straw like usual, "Chunyang......"
Chi Xiaochi held her hand."Qiaoqiao, don't worry, Old Yuan and I will think of something for you."
But Guan Qiaoqiao clung to him like an octopus, grabbing him in a death grip and refusing to let go."Chunyang, swap roles with me, okay? If after that, she comes to find you again, we can swap back. Constantly swapping back and forth might even be the way to pass this world."
Her grip became even tighter. Her sharp nails dug into Chi Xiaochi's flesh, making him hiss out a breath.
But in the next second, Guan Qiaoqiao began to shriek.
Gan Yu had grabbed her right shoulder from behind. Just the cracking sound of her joints being squeezed together made Chi Xiaochi's teeth feel sore.
But his tone was still just like a gentle breeze blowing through a light drizzle, "Miss, please let go. Calm down and stop acting like this."
Chi Xiaochi: Not bad not bad, hardcore calm.
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