WTNL Chapter 54

Antai Community
Chapter 54: Here is Jonny

Even before the paper doll appeared, Wen Jianyan had already made preparations.

The moment it revealed itself carrying the axe, he immediately activated an item. The next second, with a bang, the paper doll was sent flying by an invisible force, tumbling backwards into the dark room.

Wen Jianyan sprang up, dashed over to shut the bedroom door, skillfully locked it, and pulled a chair over to wedge the door shut.

“…”

Su Cheng stared at the other party’s smooth and flowing series of actions, unable to help but be dumbfounded.

“What are you spacing out for? Search!” Wen Jianyan turned his head and shouted at Su Cheng, “Search for the corpse, hurry, hurry!”

Monsters in this kind of hidden route could not be eliminated. At most, items could be used to block their actions or stall for time. Completing the quest was the only way to survive.

Su Cheng suddenly snapped back to his senses: “Oh, oh!”

He placed his phone, which was still recording, on the TV cabinet to the side, and began rummaging through chests and cupboards together with Wen Jianyan, searching the room for the hidden body parts of the child.

Chop—!

Chop—!

A monotonous and ear-piercing sound rang out from the door panel. The male host seemed to be chopping at the door blocking his way with the axe, strike by strike, making the thin wooden door creak.

The sharp axe blade pierced through the door panel and was quickly yanked back out.

An irregular split was left on the wooden door. Through the gap, the male host’s ghastly pale, stiffly smiling face could faintly be seen: “Wife, where is our child?”

Wen Jianyan: “…”

You’re just one “Here’s Johnny” away from directly making a cameo on the set of a classic horror movie.

Through the door panel, the paper doll’s muffled voice came through:

“Where is the child!”

Crack!

Another axe swing.

“Wife, where did you hide our child?” the paper doll asked aloud with a stiff smile.

Su Cheng’s dry heaving came from the bathroom.

“What’s wrong?” Wen Jianyan asked loudly while rummaging through the TV cabinet.

“…I think I found the female host.”

Su Cheng stared at the messy bathroom before his eyes and said weakly.

On the floor, on the walls, there were spattered bloodstains everywhere. The strong foul stench was so overwhelming it was hard to open one’s eyes. The bathtub was full of thick, bloody water, with ghastly pale body parts that had been hacked by an axe floating inside.

Inside the toilet bowl, a woman’s head was placed squarely and upright.

The long black hair was soaked in blood and knotted into clumps. The terrified expression on her ghastly pale face was slightly frozen, and her eyelids drooped loosely, covering her dead-gray eyes.

“She was probably dismembered,” Su Cheng said slowly, forcing down his discomfort.

Wen Jianyan’s voice came from outside the bathroom: “Rummage through the body parts and see! It didn’t say the child’s corpse couldn’t be mixed in!”

Su Cheng: “…”

You sure make it sound easy!

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, forcefully suppressing his nausea, and began reaching into the bloody water, body parts, and internal organ fragments in the bathtub to search.

The sticky splashing sounds echoed in the narrow room, making Su Cheng’s stomach churn in waves.

Among those corpse fragments clearly belonging to an adult, Su Cheng dug out a broken leg that belonged to a doll. Before he could feel confused, the familiar system notification sound rang in his ear the next second.

[Found child’s body part * 1]
[1/5]

…It’s actually a doll’s?

He paused: “Found one, four left!”

The sound of the axe chopping became more pronounced than before. The paper doll wielding the axe was clearly about to chop through the bedroom door.

As Wen Jianyan tore off the blood-stained sofa cover, he activated another item—the chopping sound of the axe briefly fell into silence.

He yanked out a torn doll’s arm: “I found one too.”

[Found child’s body part * 1]
[2/5]

Su Cheng continued to rummage in the pool of bloody water. Suddenly, a ghastly pale hand submerged in the blood pool moved abruptly, tightly gripping his wrist.

“!!!”

The eyelids of the head in the toilet bowl fluttered, and a pair of dead-gray eyes slowly looked towards Su Cheng.

“Ahhhhhh!”

Su Cheng screamed and dashed out of the bathroom, pulling the bathroom door tightly shut behind him.

Wen Jianyan was currently lifting the lid of a pot, pulling out the torn half of the doll’s body from inside.

He was badly startled by Su Cheng: “What’s wrong?”

“The female host, the female host’s corpse moved!” Su Cheng panted heavily, looking with lingering terror at the bathroom door he had just shut tightly.

The door handle turned rattle, rattle, as if something inside was trying to run out.

On the floor, scarlet, bloody water seeped out little by little from under the door gap, looking exceptionally shocking under the dim light.

Su Cheng forced himself to look away: “I found two body parts. What about you?”

As he spoke, he handed the doll parts he had found in the bathroom to Wen Jianyan:

“What about you?”

“Two.”

Wen Jianyan pointed to the two doll parts placed on the coffee table nearby: the body and a leg.

They were still missing the head.

They had basically rummaged through the entire room, except for…

Wen Jianyan and Su Cheng slowly raised their heads, their gazes simultaneously falling on the heavily scarred, axed bedroom door.

Chop—

Chop—

The chopping sound that had stopped for a moment rang out again. The door was already tottering, hacked to pieces. Inside the pitch-black room, the paper doll’s figure was already clearly visible.

It repeated one sentence incoherently:

“Wife, our child was eaten by it. I can’t find him. If we cut open its stomach, we can find our child…”

Chop!

Another sound.

“Wife…”

The paper doll stiffly bent down and slowly walked out from the doorway. That ghastly pale face wore a smile: “Where is our child?”

Wen Jianyan paused, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

The quest description was [Find all the body parts of the child hidden by the male host], but the male host insisted that his child was eaten by “it” and that cutting open the stomach was the only way to find the child.

Connecting this with the paper dolls lying on the bed in the bedroom, their stomachs stuffed with human internal organs…

“Husband.”

Wen Jianyan suddenly spoke, startling Su Cheng. He subconsciously turned his head and looked at the young man standing beside him.

He saw the other looking calmly and fixedly at the paper doll in the distance. Although his voice was still a pure male voice, the trailing note sounded exceptionally soft, carrying an unexpected touch of femininity:

“Have you forgotten?”

As Wen Jianyan slowly backed away, getting ready to throw out an item, he said in an affectionate and honeyed tone:

“You ate it.”

The paper doll’s figure froze stiffly and stopped walking forward.

A heavy smell of blood drifted in the air. The pitch-black room was dead silent, making one’s heart pound wildly.

Wen Jianyan stared intently at the axe-wielding paper doll not far away, speaking in a low, gentle voice:

“Our child is right in your stomach.”

The paper doll’s ghastly pale face still wore a chilling smile, but it seemed exceptionally confused:

“In my… stomach?”

Wen Jianyan said slowly in a tone that was half-inducing and half-bewitching:

“Cut open your stomach, and you will be able to find it.”

The young man spoke such bizarre and terrifying words in a normal, almost gentle tone, making Su Cheng feel a layer of goosebumps break out all over his body.

…Friend, do you know how perverted you are right now?

The paper doll stiffly raised the axe, turned the blade around, and slowly drew a slash across its own blood-stained stomach. The human organs stuffed inside instantly spilled out with a splash.

Roll.

A bloodstained doll’s head rolled out from the internal organs and stopped in front of Wen Jianyan’s feet.

[Found child’s body part * 1]
[5/5]

As if it had lost its life, the paper doll slowly fell backward on its back, the axe in its hand dropping to the floor with a clang.

[Ding! Hidden side quest completed!]

The mechanical voice rang in their ears.

Wen Jianyan and Su Cheng slowly let out sighs of relief.

[Ding! Live broadcast special quest: Find all the body parts of the child hidden by the male host.
Special route unlocked, Reward points: 5000]

[Live broadcast quest rewards are being calculated for you:
Instance Exploration Progress: 71%. Reward points: 5000
Current Plot Modification Degree: 56%. Reward points: 10000]

…It’s over.

Wen Jianyan breathed a slow sigh of relief and sat down somewhat drained on the half-torn sofa nearby. Whether it was the sound of the axe chopping the door or the door handle being rattled, they had all disappeared. Only a dead silence remained in Room 1306.

Su Cheng was equally shaken:

“Do you think… the male host of this family really ate his child?”

Wen Jianyan was noncommittal: “Perhaps.”

He narrowed his eyes slightly and said thoughtfully, “However, combined with the information from the last instance, if the female host really gave birth in Fukang Private General Hospital, then the child she brought home should be an infant created by the hospital director to cultivate ghost infants. Although he didn’t tell me whether a child brought home by its biological parents was still considered human, the probability of an infant spawned using such abnormal dark magic being normal is not high.”

Perhaps this was why the male host would say “our child was switched.”

In a sense, his judgment wasn’t wrong.

But… realizing his child was switched, and eating the child and dismembering his wife with an axe, the difference between these two is still massive. Something must have happened in between…

What does this have to do with the “evil spirits” and the “stolen Soul-Locking Urns” that Granny Wen mentioned?

Was it because the male host of this family stole the Soul-Locking Urn that he was possessed by an evil spirit and killed his whole family?

And in 1304, it was the wife who poisoned the dinner, killing the whole family.

Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but fall into deep thought.

Although he felt that the truth in this instance was still obscured by thick layers of fog, he always felt as if he had vaguely grasped some hidden threads in the dark.

Suddenly, the doll on the floor moved.

The two were instantly startled.

They saw that under the pull of an invisible force, the doll that was divided into five parts was slowly pieced together into a complete puppet. Next, it slowly and sluggishly, crookedly, walked towards Wen Jianyan’s direction, approaching step by step.

“Careful!”

Su Cheng gasped, raising his hand to grab Wen Jianyan’s arm, wanting to pull him backward.

However, the young man pondered for a few seconds and shook his head at Su Cheng: “It’s fine.”

Su Cheng was taken aback and subconsciously let go.

Wen Jianyan stepped forward, leaned down, and examined the fragmented little doll in front of him.

Perhaps because he knew it was once part of a ghost infant, as the Mother of the Ghost Infants from the last instance, he didn’t feel afraid of this doll. On the contrary, he felt a faint sense of closeness because of this.

The doll slowly climbed up along Wen Jianyan’s pant leg. It moved upwards, clambered, and finally crawled into Wen Jianyan’s pants pocket and stopped moving.

Wen Jianyan froze for a moment.

He reached out and took the doll, which had completely reverted back to an inanimate object, out of his pocket, along with—

A biscuit tin.

He recalled that the Soul-Locking Urn found in 1304 contained exactly an infant’s bones.

Coupled with the fact that the interval between the two family massacres was a full month.

Could it be…

The Soul-Locking Urn in 1304 actually contained the corpse of the child from 1306?

Too many thoughts were stuffed into his mind. Wen Jianyan frowned. These few family massacre cases also seemed to be inextricably linked, but the information he had now was still too little, making him somewhat unable to sort it all out for a moment.

Perhaps…

There would be some clues in the comments?

Although the live broadcast room had a strict anti-spoiler mechanism, at most it only prevented viewers from directly stating the instance plots and clues. However, their attitudes and many subtle reactions revealed far more than one might imagine.

Thinking of this, Wen Jianyan opened the live broadcast panel.

In the “Integrity First” live broadcast room instantly exploded:

[!!!]

[Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh! The streamer opened the comments!]

[The first time in this instance!! Is he finally going to interact with us wuwuwuwu!!!]

[Ahhhhhhh, wife, let me rub against you!]

The densely packed comments overlapped on the screen, dazzling Wen Jianyan’s eyes for a moment.

Under the dim light, the young man’s face carried a touch of helplessness:

“Alright, alright, everyone control your enthusiasm a bit; don’t spam so fast, I can’t even see what you’re trying to say.”

As time passed, the explosive wave of enthusiasm brought by just opening the comments finally subsided, and Wen Jianyan could finally see the specific comments clearly.

“It’s indeed been a long time. Before, I haven’t had the chance to…”

Wen Jianyan’s voice paused.

He blinked, looking somewhat blankly at the most spammed comment on the screen, his expression carrying a trace of incomprehensible confusion: “What?”

“What’s wrong with calling the paper doll ‘husband’?”

Wen Jianyan asked back, completely bewildered.

Wasn’t that because in the plot setting just now, he had to follow along with the paper doll’s words? What’s the problem with that?

The moment his words fell, related comments were spammed even more.

The more Wen Jianyan read, the more he felt something was wrong.

…Why does it feel like, after just a few days of not looking, the style of the comments in the live broadcast room has become different from his memory?

Did he do something strange?

Wen Jianyan thought back carefully.

It didn’t seem like it!

“Don’t change clothes? Is there a problem with these clothes…”

“No?”

All the comments spamming the screen completely exceeded his expectations. Under the bombardment of these overly enthusiastic comments, Wen Jianyan found himself somewhat unable to parry for the first time.

The expression on his face mixed confusion and shock, almost unable to imagine seeing such…

Enthusiastic remarks in the comment section:

“Don’t wear clothes from now on… Eh?”

“…”

The next second, the young man froze, and a subtle crack appeared on his always composed expression:

“You guys want to hear me call you ‘husband’?”

__

Author’s Note:

Wen Jianyan: ??? You viewers this term are not right (pointing fingers)