After Entering a Romance Reality Show Disguised as a Man to Win Over All the Female Leads - Chapter 4

Rong Yu hesitated, then decided to test her again.

She put the tissue she had used to wipe Mu Shuiqing’s face into her pocket, took Mu Shuiqing by the wrist, and led her through the ten-meter-long corridor.

The dim, deep corridor looked even longer beneath the flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder. In the corners, twisted skeletons, zombies, and drifting female ghosts bared their fangs and brandished their claws at the two of them.

As Rong Yu admired the ghosts and monsters’ heartfelt performance, she pulled Mu Shuiqing to the end of the corridor and stopped in front of the painting of the middle-aged woman.

The light had been too dim earlier, so she had not seen clearly. Now that she was standing here, Rong Yu realized that both sides at the end of the corridor were passable, but they led in two completely opposite directions.

Rong Yu secretly guessed that since this horror castle was so large, there might be a maze-like setting inside. If they chose the wrong path, they might waste a lot of time in the haunted house for nothing.

Just as she lowered her eyes in thought, an ethereal hum suddenly came from the painting of the middle-aged woman beside her. The sound seemed to drift over from somewhere far away, carrying the bone-piercing chill of a snowy mountain. It made one’s ears go numb.

Rong Yu endured it for a while, but in the end, she politely said, “Hello, could you please stop singing?”

It was honestly not pleasant to listen to.

The comments:

[66666]

[Pfft, I’m dying.]

[Are we really here to brave a haunted house????]

The livestream viewers laughed so hard they slapped the table. In front of Rong Yu, the woman in the painting twisted her face and screamed, splitting open her red lips. Maggots crawled and writhed beneath the woman’s pale skin, bulging her blue-gray flesh into countless disgusting, fat worm shapes. When she opened her mouth wide, beetles, rats, and ants continuously spewed out along with blood.

The woman shrieked and reached a bony hand out from the painting. Her bright red fingernails, more than ten centimeters long, pointed straight at Rong Yu’s face.

That hand was like a flower stem that had lost all nutrients. Wrinkled skin clung loosely to the bones, and the whole thing reeked of rot and death, carrying an intense fishy stench.

For a moment, Rong Yu felt as if she were in a graveyard where zombies were crawling out of their graves. While inwardly marveling that this haunted house was truly exquisitely made, she also felt waves of nausea in her stomach.

The discomfort in her abdomen affected her movements. Just before the woman in the painting could scratch her cheek, a slender, graceful hand reached out from the side, grabbed Rong Yu’s arm, and pulled her behind her.

The shriveled arm did not touch Rong Yu. It slammed straight into the wall outside the painting. Only after the arm passed through the wall did Rong Yu realize in amazement that it was actually a holographic projection too.

Amazing.

Lian Langsheng really knew how to dream.

Rong Yu could not help praising it inwardly.

Although she had discovered that the scene just now was only a holographic projection, Rong Yu still could not help thanking Mu Shuiqing. She looked sideways at the girl in front of her, her words sincere.

“Thank you. Good thing you were here, Shuiqing.”

The girl in front of her did not turn back, nor did she respond. She simply took Rong Yu’s hand in return and led her toward the fork on the right.

She looked as if she had no reaction at all, but the livestream viewers clearly saw Mu Shuiqing’s violently beating heart.

[Baby Qingqing, stop jumping. If you keep jumping, you’ll hit 141 and surpass Seven, hhhhh.]

[I’m dying. Don’t look at how some people have no expression on their faces. Their heart might already be about to leap out. not really]

[It’s over. Little Brother Rong Yu is going to be dragged down by his teammate. His heart rate of 44 would’ve absolutely been first, hhhhh.]

Rong Yu did not know Mu Shuiqing’s heart-rate data. Seeing that she had received no response, she lifted her eyes and looked at the back of Mu Shuiqing’s head. She increasingly felt that this quiet, gloomy air of hers was somewhat similar to Lian Langsheng when Rong Yu had first met her.

Aside from not being afraid of ghosts, Mu Shuiqing really was very much like Lian Langsheng when she was younger.

Rong Yu silently muttered to herself, reconstructing the image of young Lian Langsheng in her mind.

Lian Langsheng and Rong Yu had been childhood sweethearts and neighbors since they were little. However, Lian Langsheng’s family background was better. She was even a third-generation official’s descendant, and her family was much wealthier than Rong Yu’s. Even so, the two families had always had a good relationship.

When Lian Langsheng was fourteen, her parents died on the spot in a car accident. With no relatives or friends to take care of her, Rong Yu’s mother took the initiative to adopt her. From then on, the two were inseparable and grew up together.

Because of her family’s death, young Lian Langsheng was silent and somewhat gloomy. But only Rong Yu knew that she was actually very easy to get along with. She simply did not like to speak, which gave people the illusion that she rejected others from a thousand miles away.

Mu Shuiqing did not speak, and Rong Yu said nothing more either. She quietly followed behind her as they turned left and right, accurately taking every correct fork in the road and avoiding one bloody, violent NPC after another who held weapons and would chase players.

There was even a scene setting where fake blood would be poured down from above the players’ heads, yet Mu Shuiqing could actually predict it in advance. She pulled Rong Yu close to the wall and hid under the eaves two seconds early.

If Lin Mengxing’s reaction had not been there for comparison, Rong Yu would almost suspect that Mu Shuiqing had also read the original work in advance.

Mu Shuiqing’s pale, delicate face looked even more lustrous and jade-white in the dim space, setting off her crimson eyes like swirling red wine. She spoke softly, her clear voice seeming to carry the fragrance of wine.

“On chou days, do not travel south; on you days, do not go east. Dragon and tiger in the west signal great misfortune. Hai and zi divide in the east, causing great separation. On mao days, one must not travel northwest. When we entered the haunted house, it was three quarters into the si hour, so heading south is the safest choice.”

After saying this, Mu Shuiqing seemed afraid that Rong Yu would be suspicious. Perhaps she was also taking the program camera behind them into consideration. After two seconds of silence, she added, “I read this in the Book of Changes before. I’m not sure if it’s correct.”

Rong Yu: “……Alright.”

She blinked, nodded at Mu Shuiqing, and followed her without objection, continuing to choose the paths at the forks that extended toward due south.

The livestream viewers were all stunned.

[Holy crap, this works too??? Isn’t that too ridiculous?!]

[Although the ghosts’ appearances changed, the haunted house’s structure doesn’t. I can testify that they really do need to head this way. This haunted house maze is very amazing. It has a slight curve. You think you’re going due south, but as you keep walking, you’ll actually curve toward the west exit. But if you walk due west, it’s all dead ends.]

[666. She’s kind of awesome.]

[Facts prove you shouldn’t provoke a top student… Not only is her brain useful, she can even apply it instantly…]

The livestream viewers sighed that a top student was indeed a top student and knew a bit about everything.

But Rong Yu remembered that the method Mu Shuiqing had just recited for determining directions was not from the Book of Changes.

As for why Rong Yu knew that—

It was because after browsing all kinds of Daoist literature and materials before, she had made up those lines herself.

Chinese culture was vast and profound, and mystical books like these contained endless mysteries. Back when Rong Yu had written a metaphysics novel, she had deliberately researched domestic divination methods such as liuyao, xiaoliuyao, and plum-blossom numerology. Because the amount of work was too great, she had not been able to understand it thoroughly and eventually had to give up on deeper exploration.

However, because of that, she had barely managed to understand a few basic methods for determining direction. She had adapted those directional formulas, and that was how the content Mu Shuiqing had just spoken came into being.

So Rong Yu remembered the formula Mu Shuiqing had just said more clearly than anyone. Naturally, she would not remember it wrong.

That was content she had personally compiled before.

It was a special formula she had created specifically for the heroine of her own metaphysics novel.

Why had Mu Shuiqing learned it and used it?

Rong Yu looked at the girl walking quietly in front of her with her back straight, and a secret, unbelievable guess suddenly appeared in her heart.

Could it be that Lian Langsheng had not only used the setting of this dating-show novel, but had also evolved other novels Rong Yu had written inside it?

Mu Shuiqing’s character setting had indeed changed. But it was not a character collapse. Instead, she had been changed into the heroine of another novel, becoming a metaphysics master from a metaphysics novel.

If Mu Shuiqing’s character setting had been altered like this, then could the other female guests’ strange behavior also be because their settings had been changed according to other novels?

Then how was Rong Yu supposed to determine who the real Lian Langsheng consciousness body was?

While Rong Yu was still thinking, faint white light appeared at the end of the road ahead. Clearly, they had already arrived at the west entrance of the haunted house.

They had made it out!

Rong Yu narrowed her eyes and looked ahead.

Mu Shuiqing, who was in front of her, quickened her steps and led her toward the door.

The haunted house was too dim, making the white light outside the door seem even hotter and brighter by contrast. Rong Yu could not even see the scene outside clearly before she followed Mu Shuiqing and pushed open the wooden door, stepping into the white light.

The viewers in the comments also breathed a sigh of relief.

[Wah wah wah, they came out so quickly!]

[The other groups don’t seem to be out yet! Little Brother Rong Yu is so fast.]

[Wait, it seems like they haven’t come out…?]

Rong Yu looked at the dazzling white room around them. The faint smile that had yet to rise on her face slowly faded.

They had been tricked.

This was not an exit at all. It was a pure white room covered in white velvet floor tiles. Milky-white incandescent light seeped out from between the seams of the tiles. It looked like a sealed chamber.

The walls were soft and fluffy. Especially the wall directly facing them. It was even rising and falling, as if an animal were breathing.

There was an eerie calm, like the moment before a storm.

Mu Shuiqing immediately tried to pull Rong Yu back along the path they had come from, but before the two of them could step out the door, the corridor they had just rushed in from suddenly began flashing red light. A piercing alarm followed.

Along with cries like cold blades and the sound of saliva being swallowed, hordes of zombies in ragged clothes and covered in rotting flesh staggered onto the path they had come from.

There were no fewer than a hundred zombies. Their limbs twisted as they slowly moved forward. Their protruding eyeballs stared fixedly at the two people in the room. Their rotting mouths, full of cracked teeth connected by drool, gaped open as they surged toward the white room in postures that no normal human could possibly achieve.

The zombies’ figures were projected by the red light onto the walls on both sides, like twisted, eerie ghost shadows, or bizarre, contorted branches. A chilling wind stabbed into the white room like knives. The sobbing wind mixed with a woman’s screams. The zombies’ bones struck the floor, bursting with foul-smelling dark green pus.

The audience in the comments was stunned with fear.

[Holy crap?!]

[Ahhhhhhh, the other groups didn’t have this ahhhhh!]

[Why does Little Brother Rong Yu’s group keep encountering such terrifying things?]

[Is it because they went the right way? Usually for smarter players, haunted house designers will deliberately put more scare points on the correct route to ensure players experience greater sensory stimulation in a shorter amount of time…]

[I don’t know whether Qingqing and the others are stimulated, but I’m about to be scared to death!]

[Help, damn it, save me. The immersion is too strong. I already want to slam my head against the wall.]

Mu Shuiqing frowned as she looked at the horde of zombies at the end of the corridor.

The zombies moved extremely slowly. It would take about a minute for them to reach the two of them. But they had no other escape route. Looking around the entire white room, the only exit was the path back.

But now, the road was full of zombies…

Mu Shuiqing lowered her head and calculated the bagua directions. Her face carried a trace of confusion.

“The position wasn’t wrong.”

Then why was there no exit here?

The girl, whose delicate and pretty features resembled a puppet doll’s, had a rare hint of doubt in her crimson eyes. The paper figures in her arms stirred restlessly and were just about to climb out of her pocket when Rong Yu suddenly spoke beside her.

“It’s okay. I’ll take you out.”

Rong Yu glanced at the cameraman who was closely following beside them, then took a few steps closer to the camera. She curved her lips and smiled lightly at the lens.

The unpredictable pure white room magnified everything within it to the human eye. Rong Yu’s slight expression was also infinitely enlarged in the eyes of the livestream viewers.

For some reason, if judging solely by facial features, Rong Yu’s appearance was definitely more impactful than Mu Shuiqing’s. Her exquisite, genderless beauty was so stunning it could leave one’s mind blank. But when Mu Shuiqing was expressionless, she made people’s backs go cold.

Rong Yu, however, smiled in such an eerie scene, standing in a pure white space with a horde of writhing zombies approaching behind her, yet somehow made people forget their fear.

The screaming comments in the individual livestream room immediately paused. The netizens could not help leaning closer to their screens to look at the girl on the screen up close.

Those blue-crystal-like eyes seemed to meet theirs in that instant. Rong Yu pressed her palms together and winked at the camera.

“If we can get out smoothly, could the adult viewer sisters vote for us? One vote each is enough. Please, please.”

This was blatantly canvassing for votes, and at such a critical moment too.

But her expression was too sincere, and her vote-canvassing was so confident and justified that for a while, no one in the comments opposed it. Not even haters or keyboard warriors attacked her.

No one knew who sent the first comment:

[Sure!]

A screen full of agreement immediately followed.

[Of course, no problem!]

[A little flower? Big sister can still handle that. puffs chest]

[Wuwuwu, I didn’t want to vote either, but he called me big sister. bites handkerchief, twists and crawls. Sss, sss, Little Brother Rong Yu called me big sister. screams wildly]

Someone even directly sent a Super Chat worth 100 RMB, posting a colorful, eye-catching message that would stay pinned at the top of the livestream room for one minute:

[Damn, are you looking down on big sister too much? Only one vote??? Big sister has money. As long as you two clear the challenge first, I’ll give you ten thousand votes!]

Because she was currently in the middle of the task, Rong Yu could not see the livestream comments. After saying that, she turned and returned to Mu Shuiqing’s side. Together with her, she raised her head and looked at the breathing white wall directly opposite the room’s door.

Mu Shuiqing looked at her profile, then turned to glance at the camera.

“Do you really want to get first place?”

Rong Yu shook her head. “I just want to occupy the top spot in this environment.”

To occupy the top spot in Lian Langsheng’s heart.

Rong Yu placed her hand on the wall and gently stroked the velvet-covered wall tiles.

Her hand was very beautiful. Her fingers were long and slender, her palm thin. Her pink fingertips were like flower buds about to bloom. As her fingertips slid over the velvet surface, they left behind a long, thin indentation.

Beside her, Mu Shuiqing inexplicably felt her face heat up.

The heart-rate display on the livestream went up by another three points.

But this time, the livestream viewers did not notice her abnormal heart rate. Everyone was holding their breath, watching how Rong Yu would lead Mu Shuiqing out of the room.

Rong Yu quietly explored the wall, touching every inch of the velvet-wrapped surface in front of her.

Suddenly, Rong Yu’s movements paused. Then she slowly reached her hand into the velvet. The wall, which originally had no crack at all, actually allowed her to insert one hand. When Rong Yu pulled her hand back out, the tip of her fair, lustrous index finger was hooked around a milky-white pull ring.

She exerted a little force. From the middle of the lowest part of the wall, a golden key suddenly popped out. The key bounced twice on the velvet floor and quietly landed by Rong Yu’s foot.

Rong Yu crouched down and picked it up, then began feeling around the wall again. When she once again found a recessed spot where she could insert her hand, Rong Yu held the key and pushed it in.

There was a click.

The velvet wall in front of them, which had been breathing up and down, suddenly stopped moving. A cheerful celebratory chime rang out like bursting sparks, echoing back and forth in the empty pure white room.

The white wall slowly rose from bottom to top, revealing the hot spring sunlight outside, as well as the host and the few staff members standing beyond the door.

This time, they had really walked out of the haunted house.

The horde of zombies in the corridor had vanished at some unknown point. Host Zhang Yong’an widened his eyes, his face full of disbelief.

“You actually came out from this door?! Although this really is the proper west exit, because the difficulty is too high, it was set as a hidden passage.”

Zhang Yong’an glanced at the location on his phone screen. “I thought earlier that no guests would come out from this door, so I sent everyone else to the other exits to wait for people. You two can wait here for a moment. Once the other guests come out and we’ve all gathered, we’ll begin the next stage.”

Rong Yu had no objections. She led Mu Shuiqing across the white room’s floor tiles and out of the haunted house.

Mu Shuiqing looked back at the pure white room, then followed her out. But after coming out, she stared at Rong Yu without saying a word. The confusion in her crimson eyes was undisguised.

“You want to know how I solved the locked room?” Rong Yu raised a brow and looked at her.

Mu Shuiqing stared straight at her and slowly nodded. Whether her expression or her movements, they were exactly the same as Lian Langsheng when she was little.

Rong Yu felt an itch in her heart from looking at her and frankly revealed the truth. The words she originally did not dare say were now secretly exposed in a corner of her close friend’s sleeping dream.

“That wall’s tiles were like coordinates. There were twenty-six tiles both horizontally and vertically.”

As expected of a top student, Mu Shuiqing reacted almost immediately. “The twenty-six English letters?”

Rong Yu nodded. “As long as you figure out the code and find the corresponding positions, you can open that wall.”

Mu Shuiqing’s indifferent expression changed. She furrowed her brows slightly and began carefully recalling which wall tiles Rong Yu had touched earlier.

But that wall had been completely white everywhere. She really could not remember the exact positions.

Suddenly, something pushed against the pocket at her chest. Mu Shuiqing lowered her head woodenly and saw the little pure-white paper figure in her pocket avoiding the camera as it gestured to her the coordinates of the three tiles from earlier.

[23, 15], [1, 9], [14, 9]

[W, O], [A, I], [N, I]

Mu Shuiqing read aloud stiffly, “Wo… ai… ni?”

I… love… you?

Rong Yu abruptly lifted her head to look at her. Her fingertips trembled all at once. Just before the pulse oximeter’s numbers were about to change, she immediately took it off, took a deep breath, and slowly revealed a smile.

“We’ve only known each other for half an hour. Isn’t confessing your feelings now a little too early?”

Mu Shuiqing stared at her blankly. The little paper figure in her chest pocket also froze there.

Her gaze traced Rong Yu’s expression. She pressed her lips together and said nothing.

But in the next moment, a sharp alarm sliced through the sky.

The staff member beside them immediately rushed over to check the pulse oximeter on her wrist.

Mu Shuiqing took off the device that had soared to a heart rate of 152 and expressionlessly withdrew her gaze from Rong Yu.