Chapter 13: A belly that breeds evil spirits?

Mao Ziyu also took in the decor of the house—identical to the one with the long orange tree—but he didn’t dwell on it. He was here for something else. “What happened to Hou Yingxin?”

Hou Yingxin was the elderly team leader the big guy had mentioned. But now that they were inside, they didn’t see a body, nor did they see any of his teammates.

“Our captain… he’s in that room,” the big guy said, pointing to the one at the end of the hallway.

There were three rooms in the corridor. The door to the furthest one had two dressers shoved up against it, and something that looked like tape sealing the door shut—tight enough that not even an ant could squeeze through.

Mao Ziyu paused, then let out a short laugh, his meaning unclear. “What, was your captain infected with the zombie virus or something?”

The rest of the team still hadn’t come out. Only the big, bald man stood awkwardly in front of them. “No, no, not a virus. But… it was terrifying. We did what we had to do to survive.”

Mao Ziyu wasn’t interested in more excuses. He grabbed Sang Chen’s wrist and strode straight to the door.

That cool, sharp-looking captain of his team had given him a small black token, which he had stuck on the back of his phone. Now, he pressed it against the door crack and opened his phone screen so he and Sang Chen could watch together.

Sang Chen had assumed the token was just a USB drive, but now he realized it was more than that—it also functioned as a wireless camera. The live feed from inside the room appeared on Mao Ziyu’s foldable phone.

As soon as Sang Chen saw what was inside, he was glad he didn’t have trypophobia.

On the bed against the wall lay an old man with graying hair, his body completely covered in writhing brown insects. There were so many of them that they cascaded down like a grotesque waterfall, spilling onto the floor. The ground was crawling with them, waves of tiny bodies scuttling toward the door, climbing up the walls.

Hou Yingxin’s deepest fear was having his body overrun by insects.

Mao Ziyu murmured to Sang Chen, “He was actually a pretty skilled player, from about the same era as Old Zhang. I heard he had two sons, both of whom moved to the big city. He stayed behind in his village, figuring he didn’t have much time left. He took the train to find them… and ended up in this game.”

He was much older than Zhang Guan, looking to be in his seventies.

In their generation, reaching seventy in a village was considered ancient. Most of his peers had probably already passed—some, likely in terrible ways. Sang Chen had heard stories of bedridden elders in the countryside, their bodies rotting away, maggots feeding on their decaying flesh.

Maybe Hou Yingxin had seen too many of his peers suffer that fate. Maybe that was why his greatest fear was his own body being consumed by insects.

When he had his sons, he was afraid of dying alone, his body left to rot. So, in his final days, he boarded a train to find them—and stumbled into this nightmare of a game.

Here, he must have gained some powerful ability, enough to become a team leader with followers.

But in the end, his body was still overrun by insects.

His sons hadn’t cared for him before. And now, in the game, his teammates had abandoned him too—sealing him in this room, leaving him to die. Who knew if he had still been alive when they did it?

“Let’s go,” Mao Ziyu said, tightening his grip on Sang Chen’s wrist.

The big guy followed them out, hesitating several times, clearly struggling to find the right words. The hulking man looked small for once, anxious and unsure.

Mao Ziyu decided to tell him about the death rules.

“A lot of people died today,” Gu Ziyan sighed after listening to Sang Chen’s account of what they saw inside the room.

Mao Ziyu said, “Tomorrow should be better. People will start figuring out the rules soon.”

Gu Ziyan didn’t seem comforted. She kept voicing her concerns. “But tomorrow… will we even be able to move?”

In just one day, the air had thinned drastically. That morning, they had moved around as usual. But by evening, even walking back had been a struggle. It felt like the fog of Xiangyang Town had seeped into their minds—dull, sluggish, unclear.

“Don’t worry. If you can’t move tomorrow, just stay in the room and rest.” Even now, Mao Ziyu remained completely composed, his eyes curving in that easygoing way of his.

If he were a leader, he’d be a good one, Sang Chen thought groggily. If only he’d let go of his wrist already.

By the time they finally got back, taking twice as long as before, all four of them collapsed onto their beds.

Sang Chen lay flat on his back, one hand resting on his stomach as he took deep, gasping breaths. When he finally caught his breath and his brain started working again, he heard the steady breathing from the other bed—Yan Mo had already fallen asleep.

“…”

In this state, falling asleep was all too easy. Gu Ziyan was fighting it, though, looking anxious. “Do you think more ghosts will come tonight?”

“How could they not?” Mao Ziyu said. “This time, I’m getting some answers out of them.”

“…”

Gu Ziyan didn’t quite understand his confidence, but somehow, it made her less afraid. She wanted to say something else, but her exhausted body gave in first. Her heavy eyelids fluttered shut, and fell asleep.

Sang Chen, just like the night before, didn’t fall asleep right away. His mind was both weary and hyperactive, jumping from one thought to the next—analyzing the town’s anomalies, the strange feeling in his own stomach, recalling Gu Ziyan’s odd reaction last night.

He rubbed his temples, trying to organize his thoughts.

Ever since boarding the time-traveling train, he had known that players came from different time periods. He had guessed that a game built on fairness would compensate for those differences somehow—most likely through supernatural abilities or weapons.

Hou Yingxin, the old man they had just seen, had been physically frail, yet he had become a team captain. He must have had an ability. Zhang Guan was from a distant past and wielded a formidable white blade that no one else could see—another ability.

And last night, when the ghosts appeared, Gu Ziyan had given off a bright white light that repelled them. That, too, had to be an ability.

As for his own ability…

Sang Chen took slow, steady breaths, shifting his focus back to his own body. His bloated stomach. What kind of ability was that?

He started analyzing when exactly it had changed.

The first time was when he first noticed it—one glance down, and suddenly, it looked five months pregnant. That time, he had no clue how it had happened.

The second time was at the town gate, when the other players noticed his belly. It seemed to have grown right after he joked about looking for his kid’s father.

Why did it keep getting bigger? And what did it mean?

The most crucial moment was the third time—this morning at the mall. When he saw that female player die on the escalator, he clearly felt his stomach expand. This time, he was sure of it.

It happened at the exact moment someone died—when she died with her eyes wide open, unable to rest in peace.

Back then, he hadn’t realized that both Mao Ziyu and Zhang Guan probably had the ability to save her. When she first got stuck in the escalator, they could have acted. But among all the players in the mall, even her boyfriend, not a single person tried.

Did she die holding a grudge?

Were her unclosed eyes filled only with terror?

In many ghost stories Sang Chen had heard, people often died with lingering resentment. And if that resentment was strong enough, they could become vengeful spirits.

The fourth time he felt his belly grow wasn’t in a single moment but could be connected to two strange occurrences.

Chang Ting and Mao Ziyu were acting unusually close to him. Coincidentally, both of them had undergone some kind of emotional shift—Chang Ting, known for his bad temper, suddenly seemed a lot more agreeable, and Mao Ziyu, who was in a mind-warping game of psychological warfare, somehow managed to stay in a surprisingly good mood.

His stomach had grown, yet he didn’t feel any heavier. Could it be that he was absorbing resentment and hostility?

That female player died, filled with grievances, and all of it got sucked into his belly. That’s why it grew so noticeably.

Chang Ting, with his usual temper, and Mao Ziyu, who should’ve been on the verge of a breakdown from the game’s mind games—both of them had their hostility drained, leaving them unusually calm and affectionate toward him, as if drawn to him.

So, was his ability something like Gu Ziyan’s purification power, or was it something else entirely?

His belly couldn’t just keep expanding forever. What would happen when it reached its limit and couldn’t hold any more resentment and hostility?

And if this was the case, why the belly? Why did it grow like a pregnancy?

The more Sang Chen thought about it, the paler he became. In every ghost story, resentment and hostility were never good things. They were tied to darkness, to the supernatural. If his belly was absorbing all this negative energy, was it… incubating something? Something sinister? Something terrifying?

Weren’t evil spirits drawn to resentment?

If that were true, then wasn’t he basically a walking ghost magnet? In a horror game?

Like ink spreading layer by layer, the night in Xiangyang Town grew darker and heavier. In the suffocating blackness, lights flickered out one by one, swallowing voices along with them.

In a room on the left side of town, Zhang Guan warned Chang Ting and Bei Tongyu, “The ghosts should be back tonight. Be extra careful when standing watch.”

Not far away, in another room, a group of players had just finished collecting Xu Feng’s broken remains. Someone turned to their captain and asked, “Do you think that ghost will crawl out of the bathroom again tonight?”

Meanwhile, in a different house, the burly man who had just learned the game’s death rules turned to a veteran player. “That ghost under the bed… a lot of people have seen it. It’s not part of the death rules, right? What if it shows up again?”

They were all on edge, preparing for the worst. But the night stretched on, and nothing came.

At the same time, Sang Chen suddenly felt a chill creep over him.

He wasn’t sure if it was just his imagination. After all, he’d just been thinking about his supposed ‘ghost magnet’ ability and then immediately thought about the thing that had crawled out from under the bed last night.

It made sense to feel cold when thinking about something so terrifying.

Sang Chen tried to reassure himself, but then he caught sight of Mao Ziyu. Mao Ziyu, who had been waiting eagerly for the ghosts to return, was staring at him—no, not at him. At the space beneath his bed.

Sang Chen: “……”

If he could go back in time, when they had asked him about his fears and whether he was afraid of ghosts under the bed, he would answer differently. Yes. He was afraid—just not as much as he feared being broke and unemployed.

He didn’t want to think about what kind of horrifying sight had made someone as seasoned as Mao Ziyu widen his eyes like that.

He didn’t have to wonder. He didn’t have to resist. He didn’t even have to think.

Because he had already seen it.

Multiple ghostly hands had crept out from under his bed, stretching from his head to his feet, nearly surrounding him entirely.