Hell App (Web Novel CN)

Chapter 69: Pinching Beans

After quickly reading through the game’s introduction, everyone immediately started looking around without saying anything.

Bai Yan’s eyes ran around his surroundings, despite him being outside. Among the mixed crowd of 11, the majority of them held their cellphones in their hands while wearing sneakers and clothes that were suited for physical activity, as if they were all prepared to run.

There was only one girl who looked like she was in junior high.

The young teen appeared to be empty-handed. Her feet sported a pair of cute cartoon slippers, while she wore a set of comfy pajamas on her body. It was clear as day that she was dressed differently from the rest.

When Bai Yan’s eyes first landed on this young girl, he came to realize that she must have been that Liu Xiyu.

As it should be, the moment he found out about Liu Xiyu’s identity, everyone had also come to the same conclusion. Well, people who managed to survive up to the seventh level weren’t blockheads.

While Bai Yan was standing in his original place, carefully observing her, there was already someone who had approached Liu Xiyu to talk to her.

A man who had a crew cut walked to Liu Xiyu’s side, appearing amiable and kind while doing this, and asked her in a friendly manner, “Little sister, do you know what this place is?”

However, he was yet to be discouraged. Rather, he kept on saying, “Then, do you know of a way to wake you up?”

“I know.” Liu Xiyu sheepishly recoiled one step back, and her expression swayed as if she didn’t like this idea, “If I can leave this building… Or, if I can walk further than before, I’ll be able to wake up.”

The weight of the information from Liu Xiyu’s words was heavy. She obviously knew a lot of things about this dream world.

When she heard this, a random woman couldn’t help but interrupt, “I heard that this place is a dreadful cellar, could you tell us more about what will happen next?”

Liu Xiyu was good at talking, and when facing two or more inquiries, she still wasn’t fed up with answering them, “Next, we’ll stroll below the building, and inside there are numerous rooms. Each room houses a game. If you finish the game successfully, you’ll be able to leave the room and continue down the stairs.

I always move like this every time. There are moments that when I walk for a long while, I’ll suddenly be able to wake up. There’s nothing special about it.”

“Game? What specific game is it?” Another middle-aged woman asked urgently.

“It’s… It’s a somewhat terrifying game.” Liu Xiyu’s eyes hovered over everyone, her eyes flashing dully as she lowered her head in a somewhat guilty manner, “I also don’t remember what specific game it is. I only know that it’s terrifying in there. I can only remember the items inside, but I can’t make sense of what I was looking at. Every time you clear the game… that is how you clear it…”

Liu Xiyu was obviously hiding something from them, but the many human spirits present there could naturally see that she was hiding something important.

A rather gloomy man dressed in a dark jacket walked closer and pinched a small chunk of Liu Xiyu’s arm all of a sudden. Liu Xiyu awkwardly bit her lip, and contrary to what one might expect, wasn’t mad, only saying, “I can’t feel pain because I’m in my dream…”

Liu Xiyu’s secrecy left the black-clothed man quite unsatisfied. But, the app already decided that whoever dies, Liu Xiyu still wouldn’t die. So, he didn’t dare treat her too excessively and could only resentfully go back.

“Do you people still have any questions left? If not, we should move out quickly. I can feel something chasing us from behind.” Liu Xiyu gazed behind them while her face instantly colored with fear.

After saying this, Bai Yan suddenly sensed that behind Liu Xiyu had transformed into incomparable darkness.

As they journeyed down the stairs, only a dark light illuminated their path, seeming to hint that they should move forward.

Liu Xiyu intentionally stayed at the back of the group while the looming darkness attacked forward little by little behind her.

This time, without the need for Liu Xiyu’s warning, everyone could also feel something in the darkness quietly going towards them.

They all sensed the same thing. If they let this darkness engulf them, they would completely sink into Liu Xiyu’s nightmare and change into a plaything for the ghost living in the darkness.

Along with Li Xiyu’s footsteps, the darkness also progressed as if it was vigorously pursuing the girl’s steps.

Looking back at this scene, Bai Yan had a sort of enlightenment. However, this was the girl’s dream and dreams naturally chased after its owner.

The stairs seemed to last forever.

Everyone was walking down the narrow stairs, counting their progress, step by step.

Along the way, the guy with a crew cut suddenly had a bright idea, so he asked the girl, “In your eyes, what do we look like?”

“You’re all lumps of black, but your bodies are different. I can recognize the differences.” Li Xiyu added, “Moreover… You all don’t have faces!”

Upon hearing this, the man with the crew cut felt a bit better about why the girl showed discomfort towards him earlier.

In Liu Xiyu’s eyes, they were some sort of faceless monsters. Frankly speaking, being able to stay with them meant that the girl’s mental tolerance was already quite strong.

On their journey down, Bai Yan, as well as the other players, went over Liu Xiyu’s words, attempting to find a way to survive with the information she had just divulged.

…

“We’re here.” Ye Shangyu, who was in front of the group, suddenly said.

When Ye Shangyu went down the stairs, everyone also went down one after another.

Bai Yan was right in the middle when everybody was going down and was hurriedly sweeping a glance at his surroundings.

The life-like darkness behind that was still slowly following them, and ahead of them appeared three rooms.

“Three… Taking into account Liu Xiyu, we are twelve, so four people should enter one room?”

Bai Yan cautiously observed the three rooms and saw that each room was tightly shut.

One simply couldn’t see through the thick sturdy iron doors.

However, the ice-cold iron doors still revealed a little something… At the bottom of the iron doors, there were bright lights that lit up the ground, and large bloodstains sprinkled on top of the floor. They had been there for a long time, evident from the blackish-red stains.

These seemed to make clear that these three doors weren’t that simple.

The three iron doors looked exactly the same as one another, so much so that a person with OCD could die by just choosing among them.

But, every single player who had reached the seventh floor kept their cool.

Some of them even studied the dried bloodstains on the floor, wanting to observe the patterns on the stains to decide which door they should go through after.

While some others stayed closeby to Liu Xiyu.

Altogether, there were three doors, so the group would be split into smaller groups of four, and only three players would be able to accompany Liu Xiyu.

Being with Liu Xiyu might be the way to survive, but it could also lead to a route to death.

In a short period, everyone had made up their own plans.

Bai Yan looked at Ye Shangyu. She left Liu Xiyu’s side and ventured off, squatting down to get a clearer view of the bloodstains in plain view, without any indication of going in.

Seeing what Ye Shangyu was doing, Bai Yan calmly strode to her side and pretended to not know her, acting as though he was merely looking at the bloodstain with her.

Ye Shangyu knew a lot of non-public information about the app. She could even beat the vague NPC who was secretive about many things. Bai Yan was willing to believe Ye Shangyu since she seemed to be more reliable than the NPC.

“Is she problematic?” Bai Yan whispered as he asked.

He saw Ye Shangyu shake her head and then began to slightly nod, immediately understanding what she meant.

It seemed that this NPC was a huge pit. Nevertheless, it was best to not get close with her so easily.

The people near Liu Xiyu hadn’t chatted with her for long when the brooding darkness emerged like a dark mist, slowly swallowing more than half of the stairs.

Seeing this scene, Liu Xiyu nervously bit her mouth and pulled a girl by her hand to enter the first door, two men promptly following after them.

After the four went in, the iron door creaked shut.

Bai Yan stepped forward and pulled as hard as he could, but the door didn’t move a single jot. It looked like the doors had a limit of four people going inside them.

“Let’s go in too.”

Seeing that the darkness tended to crush forward, he said this to Ye Shangyu and pushed open the second door before him.

Through the door, a pitch-black table made from real wood was displayed in the middle of the room with two transparent jars neatly arranged on top of it, which were especially eye-catching.

Bai Yan studied the image in front of him, taking in the scene of the items inside the jar at once.

The jar contained some sort of black and bloody items, which had small spheres as their shapes.

He drew in closer to take a better look and found out that these black and bloody things were unexpectedly small chopped off human heads!

The jar was about the size of a person’s head, but its insides were filled with rolled off heads.

The reason was simple, and it was because these human heads were miniature versions, only akin to the size of winter dates.

Yet, although these chopped off heads were small, the expressions on their faces were vivid and life-like.

Their faces were mixes of fright, rage, and bitter resentment.

Seeing that Bai Yan’s gaze was fixed onto them, they all simultaneously stared at him back harshly. Their mouths opened and closed as though they were noiselessly murmuring malicious curses at him.

“What’s on top of the table?”

When he heard this, Bai Yan immediately looked back.

And, behind him were Ye Shangyu and also two other people.

All four players were present.

The instant the iron door was closed, a woman nailed to a crucifix suddenly appeared from the blank space of the room.

The woman’s four limbs were viciously hammered onto the cross by long nails. Her body was secured into the cross that she could never struggle free.

Her head drooped low, as if her neck was twisted and snapped in two, and was firmly stuck to her chest, so everyone could only see the top of her head, which was painted in black.

Her hair was incredulously long, brushing past the tips of her toes and landing on the solid ground.

The woman’s, or possibly the female ghost’s, black hair was spreading across the floor, and in a flash, it bound the four people together, tying them up like zong zi(1).

1. Zong zi, which is also called ma chang, is a dish in Chinese culture eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival. It usually has a piece of pork in it and sometimes has beans mixed with the rice. The food is tightly wrapped with a bamboo leaf.

“Welcome to the dreadful cellar… Your game is pinching beans.”

The female ghost’s voice was full of malice, and after speaking, she then let out a burst of ear-piercing laughter.

“Pinching beans? You’re telling us to pinch the things inside the jar?” The peaked cap-wearing young man’s complexion changed for the worse, “Then where are the beans, these are clearly human heads!”

Faced with the young man’s disgruntlement, the female ghost didn’t answer him at all, only continuing to produce its cackling laughter.

Seeing the human heads inside the glass jar, a surge of ideas flashed through Bai Yan’s mind.

He knew about the game pinching beans, which was pinching beans from one jar and transferring them into another. It was something children play in their school days. But, the only thing he didn’t know was how different was this pinching human head beans from the real pinching beans game.

Bai Yan’s eyes swept a glance onto the pair of black chopsticks that were in front of the jar. These chopsticks were long and extremely slender, especially the chopsticks’ tips. These tips looked like they were even capable of stabbing a person to death.

By just looking at its outer appearance, the chopsticks appeared extremely smooth, and they weren’t sure if they could really pinch and pick up the human heads with them.

Bai Yan repeatedly tried to figure out how he would pinch the beans when he’ll try in a moment, but as he was thinking it over, the binding hair around the peaked cap-wearing man suddenly released its grip.

The man wearing the peaked cap became startled and looked at the female ghost, whose face concealed a nasty smile, squawking in laughter, “It’s you! You go first!”

“Pinch the beans in this jar and transfer them inside this one!”

The female ghost’s voice fell, and the human heads inside the jar turned their eyes in unison, using their sinister looks to survey the man, their glares could seep under a person’s skin.