My Romance Game Updated – Chapter 89
by Little PandaThe Dungeon
Ren Chenxi shot a disgusted glance at the withered old man sleeping soundly on the bed, then turned and whispered to Mu Ning, “This old man is so despicable, and his underhanded methods are endless. The ordinary girls he and the Fan family have ravaged1 probably aren’t few in number. I might as well just use an Explosion Card and blow his head off!”
After all, this old man wasn’t even an esper. A single R-rank Explosion Card could easily finish him.
As Ren Chenxi turned her head, the breath from her words landed directly on Mu Ning’s lips. Both of them were invisible, so Mu Ning didn’t know exactly how close they were. But the warm breath brushed against her lips again and again—light, ticklish, making Mu Ning’s entire heart start to race.
“Hey! Why aren’t you saying anything? If you don’t speak, I’ll take that as agreement to blow this old man’s head off!”
Ren Chenxi’s suddenly raised voice finally pulled Mu Ning back from her wandering thoughts. Considering their current situation, Mu Ning could only steady herself and stop Ren Chenxi’s impulse to blow his head off.
“Don’t use your cards. This old man isn’t worth it. Besides, if your ‘headshot ability’ is seen by others in the future, it’ll easily raise suspicion.”
Hearing Mu Ning say this, Ren Chenxi also thought it made sense. After all, in the beginning, Jian Dan and the others had assumed her ability was “headshot.” If she encountered other survivor teams while out later and ran into sudden danger, she couldn’t exactly not use Explosion Cards to “headshot” enemies. In that case…
“Then I’ll use a blade to slaughter this old man.”
“Fine. Did you bring a dagger? I’ll just slit this old man’s throat directly.”
“I did bring one, but…” Ren Chenxi answered Mu Ning while hesitantly glancing at the girl with the drug addiction yellow dot, speaking softly, “If we slit the old man’s throat, will it implicate that innocent girl next to him?”
“Then… lend me the blade you used to cut the mutated octopus last time. I’ll just chop this old man’s head off directly. This girl is just an ordinary person—she’s probably addicted to drugs too, so she won’t have the strength to kill anyone. And when they can’t find the murder weapon, she won’t be suspected either. Besides… tonight we’re definitely not just chopping off this old man’s head, right?”
True enough. Since they’d come all this way, not doing anything more would be too wasteful of her two Invisibility Cards. Wasn’t she here tonight precisely to stir up trouble? On the mini-map, the other rooms were basically all red dots—so many enemies. If she created some trouble for them in advance, it would save them from causing her all kinds of trouble later. Only…
“Wouldn’t chopping off his head be too bloody? When that girl next to the old man wakes up tomorrow morning, won’t she be traumatized?”
Hearing such naive concern, Mu Ning looked deeply at the empty space beside her and said in a low voice, “You’re overthinking it. This is the apocalypse. This girl has probably even seen zombies eating people. A body with its head separated from its neck is nothing. And following the Fan family, she’s likely seen even more bloody and inhumane scenes!”
“…Then make it quick. Although letting this old man die so painlessly is letting him off easy, better to get it over with fast. Don’t wake that girl up.” Since Mu Ning had said so, Ren Chenxi retrieved that gaudy2 long blade worth 100,000 crystal stones from her inventory and handed it to Mu Ning beside her. She wasn’t some holy mother3 type, so naturally she wouldn’t try to persuade Mu Ning to change to a less bloody method of death for the old man. And Mu Ning was right—this was the apocalypse! A woman who could struggle through two years of the apocalypse and end up as the companion of the Fan family’s ruler wouldn’t be scared by a single corpse.
“Alright, don’t look for now. I’ll be quick!” Mu Ning took the long blade and gently pushed Ren Chenxi, motioning for her to move farther away.
“Hey! Don’t underestimate me! I’ve blown people’s heads off before, you know!” Ren Chenxi was a bit annoyed at being treated differently. Although when she first entered the game, she was a total rookie4 who wanted to vomit at the sight of zombies. But… having ground through all this time, she was now a “5th-order esper” with extremely high lethality!
“Yes, yes, you’re very powerful. It’s just… I don’t want you to see this kind of scene…”
“…” What could Ren Chenxi do? She wasn’t a pervert. Blowing people’s heads off before was out of necessity. When there was nothing going on, she didn’t like staring at bloody scenes endlessly either. Since Mu Ning had said so, Ren Chenxi took two steps back and quietly turned around.
Seeming to sense Ren Chenxi moving away from her side, Mu Ning gripped the long blade tightly, looked coldly at the withered old man sleeping deeply on the bed, and raised her hand. The blade fell.
“Done.” Ren Chenxi had only stood for a moment before Mu Ning’s voice came from behind her. At the same time, that gaudy long blade slowly “floated” toward her in the air. As Ren Chenxi took the long blade, her sleeve was pulled by Mu Ning again. She shook her head helplessly, put the long blade into her inventory, and led Mu Ning toward the door.
The pitch-black corridor. The door to the middle room was gently opened, then gently closed. Various sounds of debauchery continued from the other rooms, completely unaware that during their time of pleasure, the Fan family’s ruler had so quietly ceased to exist.
Having dealt with Old Fan, Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning crept along the row of rooms. Unfortunately, the people in the other rooms were all quite energetic and basically hadn’t gone to sleep yet. Using the same method to open the doors again, Ren Chenxi was afraid Mu Ning’s vines would expose her.
“How about we just break down the doors? They can’t see us anyway, and they won’t even know who killed them.”
“But there are other innocent people in the rooms… They’ll scream, call for help, attract more trouble… Don’t forget, we came tonight just to scout things out. One Old Fan dead is enough to keep them busy with trouble. No need to cause too big a disturbance and let them find out there’s an ‘invisibility’ ability, so they start strengthening their defenses.”
“So we’re going back now?” Mu Ning’s voice carried some reluctance.
“Go back? That would be letting these scum off too easy. Let’s go to the basement level and see what other trouble we can cause for the Fan family. It’ll also keep Fan Haotian from having the energy to deal with us.”
“How do you know there’s a basement level?”
“…” Why was this woman’s focus always so strange! Ren Chenxi rolled her eyes at the invisible Mu Ning beside her and casually made something up, “Don’t villas like this all have basement floors?”
Being told this by Ren Chenxi, Mu Ning remembered that her own home, which she hadn’t returned to in a long time, also had a basement—and not just one basement level, but two. Although she felt that Ren Chenxi knowing there was a basement level wasn’t because of the basic structure of villas, Mu Ning didn’t pursue the question further. She just tightened her grip on that thin layer of fabric between two fingers and took the initiative to pull Ren Chenxi downstairs.
When they reached the stairwell on the first floor, there were two espers guarding it, but both were already asleep against the wall. Ren Chenxi and Mu Ning didn’t wake them and continued downstairs. Then they saw that the stairwell to the basement level had been fitted with an iron door, and a large lock secured it.
The upstairs rooms where people lived didn’t even have doors installed, yet the basement level specifically had an iron door added? Definitely suspicious! This iron door was probably to prevent whoever was locked in the basement level from escaping.
As for what kind of people were locked inside, Ren Chenxi didn’t think too much about it. Their main problem right now was… how to open this lock?
“Can you use vine threads to pick locks?”
“No…”
“Oh…”
“How about we smash the lock?”
“That would make too much noise and wake those two espers.”
“Then kill those two espers too?”
“No need for that much trouble. Both are 3rd-order espers, and they have whistles around their necks—if we accidentally wake one, it’ll attract the patrol team. Let me try something.”
“How will you try…”
Just as Mu Ning was wondering, that gaudy long blade “floated” out in midair again, then the iron chain on the iron door was pulled out, and the lock “floated” in front of her.
“Hold this lock. Let me see if I can cut through the iron chain directly.”
It was a long blade worth 100,000 crystal stones, after all. Ren Chenxi figured if it could cut through the flesh of an 8th-order mutated octopus, what effect would it have on this iron chain? As it turned out, a blade worth 100,000 crystal stones was very effective even on iron chains. The long blade in midair struck straight down at the iron chain that Mu Ning had pulled taut. With just a “Ding” sound, the entire iron chain broke apart.
“Impressive!” Mu Ning no longer dared to have any prejudice against this gaudy long blade.
Still without waking the sleeping guards upstairs, the two opened the iron door. Another flight of stairs down was the basement level. The entire basement level was even darker—not a single light. In the darkness, there was the smell of blood, the stench of urine, and the odor of rotting corpses. Various foul odors mixed together, making Ren Chenxi want to vomit.
“I can’t see anything here…” Mu Ning’s voice from beside her also sounded uncomfortable.
“Let’s look for a switch here at the stairwell. A basement this dark has to have lights—otherwise how would they put people in?”
Ren Chenxi spoke while feeling along the wall beside her. She’d only touched twice before finding a switch panel. Of course—in such a pitch-black place, if the switch were hidden any more covertly, how much time would be wasted looking for it?
Ren Chenxi gently flipped the switch on the wall. In an instant, the darkness before her lit up with a row of lights. Well, “lights”—but these old-fashioned light bulbs with low wattage didn’t actually provide much brightness. Dim and gloomy, barely illuminating the cells on both sides.
Yes, cells.
From the first room closest to Ren Chenxi, the cell with iron bars looked exactly like the cells Ren Chenxi had seen in TV shows or movies before. But what surprised Ren Chenxi was that with the corridor lights all on, why did the “prisoners” in the cells have no reaction at all?
But soon, Ren Chenxi understood why. Walking forward along this narrow, dark corridor, the “prisoners” locked in the “cells” on both sides were either lying down, curled up, or huddled into balls. Some of these “prisoners” were asleep, possibly unconscious, or… some were already dead.
Although the light from the corridor’s bulbs was dim, Ren Chenxi could still use the yellowish light to see the health bars above the “prisoners” in the cells, as well as the debuffs next to their health bars.
For example, in the two cells closest to the stairwell, there was a “prisoner” lying in each, their bodies bloody and mangled, their health bars nearly empty. In the next two cells, the two “prisoners” lying inside hadn’t bottomed out their health bars, but had been ravaged by the Fan family until only half remained. At the same time, both of them had the “drug addiction” debuff.
Continuing forward, the prisoners still alive in the cells on both sides basically all had the “drug addiction” debuff, and most had less than half their health remaining. On the mini-map, all these “prisoners” were yellow dots.
Walking forward like this, just as they were nearing the end, Mu Ning suddenly stopped.
“What’s wrong?” Ren Chenxi looked at the two cells where they’d stopped. “Are the people locked inside ones you know?”
“Mm, I know them. Met them once, but Qi Sheng knows them better.”
The author has something to say:
Wood: Tugged on her sleeve for so long, and still didn’t find a chance to hold hands!!! But~ almost got a kiss though~~~
Footnotes
- A Northern Chinese dialect word (huòhuo) meaning to squander, ruin, or use something up in a wasteful, destructive manner.
- A Chinese term (huālihúshào) for something that is overly ornate, flashy, or gaudy to the point of being impractical or tacky.
- A Chinese term (shèng mǔ) meaning 'holy mother' or 'Saint Mary.' In webnovel/gaming contexts, it refers to someone who is overly compassionate, saintly, or morally pure to a fault—often used mockingly to describe someone who refuses to kill or harm others even when pragmatically necessary.
- A Chinese internet slang term (cài jī, literally 'vegetable chicken') meaning rookie or noob—someone inexperienced or bad at something.
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