WTNL Chapter 617

Lucky Cruise Ship
Chapter 617: She is a truly respectable and beautiful lady

“…”

Wen Jianyan could almost picture the current state of his livestream.

He took a deep breath and slowly looked away.

…Regardless, he wasn’t going to open that livestream interface for at least half a month.

There are some things that, as long as you don’t see them yourself, didn’t actually happen, right?

Just like that, Wen Jianyan quickly completed his self-deception.

At the same time, the elevator finally reached its destination.

With a ding, the rusted metal doors slowly slid open before them—proving that even with more than just Wen Jianyan inside, the mechanism to go directly to the Negative 17th Floor was still effective.

What appeared before them was a dark red, old, and mottled corridor.

“Miss Dan Zhu is in Cabin A-2,” the elevator operator said with a smile, reciting the exact same sentence as last time in a completely unchanging tone. “You may proceed on your own.”

However, this time, Wen Jianyan didn’t send the elevator back.

He took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks.”

Following behind Wen Jianyan, the group stepped out of the elevator together.

The elevator doors closed behind them.

This was the Negative 17th Floor of the Lucky Cruise Ship.

Last time, Wen Jianyan had only stayed in the elevator and looked from a distance. This time, he finally stepped inside personally.

The corridor was enclosed and utterly silent. The cabin doors on both sides were tightly shut. The air temperature was very low, carrying an uncomfortable chill, as if some ominous presence was lurking in the darkness, following them like a shadow.

Ma Qi couldn’t help but lean closer to Wen Ya, pressing tightly against her arm.

“Notice anything?” Wen Ya turned to look at her and asked.

“No.” Ma Qi sniffed and shook her head, clinging even tighter.

This floor was indeed incredibly cold and gloomy, but the aggressive sense of danger from the floor above had disappeared.

They didn’t see those terrifying tenants covered in black, nor did they smell a single trace of blood—just as Wen Jianyan had said, there were no corpses on this floor capable of hosting parasites.

Chen Mo: “It looks safe for now.”

No parasitic corpses meant Dan Zhu couldn’t locate them for the time being. If the Guild Leader’s ally could spread the pollen to other floors as promised, they could maintain their safety for a while.

—Unless someone tried to do something unnecessary.

At this very moment, Wen Jianyan was craning his neck, peering toward the direction of Cabin A-2. No matter how you looked at it, he was up to no good.

“Wait,” Chen Mo’s eye twitched. “Guild Leader, you aren’t thinking…”

Wen Jianyan retracted his gaze, looking bashful. “Well, you know, since we’re already here.”

They had already come all the way to B17; wouldn’t it be a loss not to check out what was inside Dan Zhu’s room?

Chen Mo: “…”

I knew it.

“The room of a Top 3 Nightmare anchor isn’t easy to enter,” Chen Cheng suddenly spoke up from the side.

His brows were slightly furrowed, his expression serious.

Looking at the vocal Chen Cheng, Chen Mo let out a sigh of relief.

Finally, someone was bringing some rationality back.

“—So we’d better be careful,” Chen Cheng continued.

As he spoke, he began digging through his backpack for items, picking and choosing. “Hold on, I have an internal pass card from Eternal Day, and some items only we core members possess… Look at this, this, and this… These should come in handy.”

Chen Mo: “……”

He was crazy to have ever counted on that guy.

Watching Chen Cheng, who was enthusiastically scheming with Wen Jianyan, the others wore complicated expressions.

Seriously, bro, are you really a formal core member of Eternal Day?

No wonder Dan Zhu targeted you first; you really weren’t wrongly accused.

Wen Jianyan’s eyes lit up. “Good, good, good.”

“Do you know much about Eternal Day’s internal defense measures?” He seemed to think of something and asked.

Chen Cheng: “Don’t worry, it’s enough.”

Just like that, the two bad seeds hit it off immediately.

They huddled together, heads bowed, muttering for a long time.

Chen Cheng, who knew more about Eternal Day, was responsible for providing intelligence and items, while Wen Jianyan, who was full of wicked ideas, was responsible for the strategy.

It didn’t take long for the two of them to prepare the items they might need and formulate a plan based on potential scenarios for entering the room.

Wen Jianyan was brimming with confidence: “Onwards to Cabin A-2!”

Chen Cheng rubbed his hands together: “Charge!”

The others: “…”

They exchanged blank glances, seeing the same dead-inside look in each other’s eyes.

…Unbelievable.

The higher the rank of the A-series rooms, the higher the specifications, and naturally, the larger the area.

They walked forward for quite a while before finally arriving at the location of Cabin A-2.

Wen Jianyan and Chen Cheng were already waiting at the door.

However, unlike before, the two of them were now staring intently at the tightly closed cabin door. The excitement on their faces was gone, replaced by a solemn, grave, and even somewhat… dejected expression.

“What’s wrong?” Wen Ya asked.

“The door won’t open.” Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and pointed at the cabin door.

All their previous plans were based on the premise that the door could be opened. With the very first step impossible to complete, everything else was just empty talk—

Following the direction of Wen Jianyan’s finger, everyone looked closely.

On the heavy metal cabin door, the place where a keyhole should have been was empty. It was smooth, polished, and pristine. This meant that master keys and lock-picking tools were useless.

Chen Mo: “What about items? Do those work?”

Wen Jianyan: “No, they don’t work either.”

“And there’s no way to break it open with brute force from the outside,” Chen Cheng said indignantly, arms crossed and brows furrowed. “Don’t worry, I tried.”

Only then did everyone notice several deep knife marks carved into the wall next to the door, clearly left by Chen Cheng’s attempt to force entry. However, despite the damage to the wall, the cabin door connected to it didn’t have a single scratch.

The atmosphere, which had just been ignited, instantly plummeted again.

The entire corridor fell into a dead silence.

Wen Jianyan and Chen Cheng stood in front of the closed door, looking like withered vegetables after a frost.

“…”

Looking at the closed door in front of him, Chen Cheng sighed, clearly disappointed.

He was a very vindictive person.

So, as long as it caused trouble for the other party, he was more than happy to participate—it was just a pity that, judging by the current situation, their plan to break into Dan Zhu’s room was a wash.

Wen Jianyan frowned just as deeply.

True, unknown dangers lurked in Dan Zhu’s room, and there was a high probability it would expose their current location—but high risk meant high reward. There were too many doubts and mysteries surrounding Dan Zhu. Her knowledge of this instance and her designs on the instance’s core far exceeded their imagination. Her fixed room on the cruise ship was the best option for answering these questions.

For Wen Jianyan, this risk was worth taking.

But he still hadn’t anticipated the extent of the instance’s security.

“It seems we can only wait according to the original plan,” Chen Cheng leaned against the wall with his arms crossed, shrugging impatiently. “Hopefully, she won’t make us wait too long.”

Wen Jianyan: “She probably won’t—”

Suddenly, his voice cut off.

As if discovering something, Wen Jianyan stopped speaking and abruptly took a step forward, leaning his entire body in to scrutinize the nameplate hanging on the cabin door.

The iron plate was mottled.

However, unlike the completely illegible ones on B18, the text on the nameplates on this floor was still readable.

On the rusty nameplate, four numbers were engraved: [1702].

And below the numbers, a line of small text was written.

[Dan Zhu]

[Occupied]

Does the cabin nameplate actually display the owner’s name?

Wen Jianyan frowned.

But suddenly, as if realizing something, he froze as if hit by an invisible sledgehammer.

Wen Jianyan’s eyes stared fixedly at the nameplate, his pupils dilating slightly, his face looking somewhat pale under the lights.

To the side, Wen Ya noticed the change in his expression and asked with concern, “What’s wrong?”

“…”

Perhaps he was too lost in thought, but Wen Jianyan didn’t hear Wen Ya’s question.

He simply turned around and walked quickly deeper into the corridor.

“?!”

His sudden movement stunned everyone.

What’s going on?

They exchanged confused glances. Although they didn’t know the reason, they chased after him, quickly catching up to Wen Jianyan’s pace.

Wen Jianyan stopped at the location of Cabin A-3. He stared unblinkingly at the text on the nameplate, his expression incredibly ugly.

Chen Cheng followed Wen Jianyan’s gaze—

After seeing the text on it, he also froze, his pupils constricting slightly. “Wait, this is…”

On the nameplate, the numbers [1703] were engraved.

Below it was densely packed small text:

[Hugo]

[Occupied]

A terrifying thought began to breed and brew in everyone’s minds.

Wen Jianyan’s gaze remained fixed on that row of text, his breathing a bit unstable.

He spoke slowly, his voice seemingly suppressing some emotion that was about to erupt.

“I think… these rooms are prepared for us.”

Casino, Negative 3rd Floor.

The tilt of the floor could no longer be ignored.

The cold air was filled with a ghostly aura, and the thick scent of blood lingered in the nose.

On the floor, puddles of seawater had accumulated at some point, reflecting pale faces in the water.

Behind an overturned gambling table, a pale-faced anchor sat on the ground, gritting his teeth, his body trembling uncontrollably.

“…”

Even though he knew well that Nightmare instances would spike in difficulty in the later stages.

He still hadn’t expected a Double-S rank instance to turn into such a hellscape near the end.

The cruise ship was still speeding forward, and the faster it went, the more severe the tilt became.

At this rate, sinking completely was a foregone conclusion.

And the scariest part wasn’t even the sinking ship…

Starting from a certain point in time, the originally well-behaved “tenants” suddenly changed their behavior patterns and began hunting and slaughtering unscrupulously—recalling those who had been brutally killed and had their body parts stolen, he shivered.

And that wasn’t the worst part.

The floating corpses that the casino had previously shut out had somehow found a way to invade. They had no intelligence, no emotions; they simply killed one living person after another, driven by instinct.

In an instant, the cruise ship seemed to have turned into a slaughterhouse sailing on the sea.

Behind the gambling table.

The anchor took deep breaths, trying to calm his panic.

Just then, the corpse of his companion not far away suddenly twitched violently.

“—?!”

What the hell?!

Under his horrified gaze, the cold, lifeless body began to wriggle at a bizarre frequency. The stomach gradually swelled until, with a bang, it burst open. A thick fragrance immediately filled the air.

A black shadow appeared inside the burst abdomen of the corpse. Although its face couldn’t be seen clearly, the terrifying aura radiating from it still made the anchor tremble all over.

Reflexively, he activated an item.

However, in the next second, the black shadow turned its head and “looked” at him.

“You overestimate yourself.”

A cold female voice rang out.

The scent of rotting flowers expanded the moment her voice fell, attacking as if it had a life of its own, pouring into his nasal cavity and throat.

“Mmph… mph, mph!” The anchor’s eyes bulged. He clawed at his own skin with his fingers, leaving shocking bloody streaks. Under the torn skin, tiny blood-colored stems wriggled like living creatures, bursting out of his body in the blink of an eye.

“No… no, no, AHHH!!” The attacked man let out a wretched scream.

In the blink of an eye, he ceased to breathe.

Plant vines covered the still-warm human corpse like a carpet, and blood-red, moist flower buds began to sprout on the tips of the slender branches.

Aside from the beginning, the “shadow” never gave him a second glance.

Like crushing a bug, not killing a person.

Through the projection created by her talent, Dan Zhu looked around.

Pinocchio and his group were not here.

This was already the fourth time she had looked in the wrong place.

“…” The smile was gone from the woman’s beautiful face, her eyes cold and terrifying.

Although she didn’t know how those people did it, she had still lost track of her prey.

This feeling of being played was terrible.

Dan Zhu hadn’t been frustrated like this for a long time, which made her already bad mood even worse.

She lowered her eyes, her gaze landing on the floor that was now tilted at an angle of nearly thirty degrees.

At this rate, in maybe one or two hours at most, the Lucky Cruise Ship would sink completely to the bottom of the sea.

By then, all efforts would be in vain.

Dan Zhu raised her eyes and let out a slow laugh.

As expected of that Pinocchio.

She would search for ten more minutes.

If she still couldn’t find them, she would have to think of other methods.

She wasn’t one of those stupid men who would throw important plans to the back of their minds for a moment of pique or anger. For victory, she would use any means necessary—utilize everything that could be utilized, snatch everything that could be snatched.

If she couldn’t kill them, then she would cooperate.

Dan Zhu had no objections.

Negative 17th Floor.

Wen Jianyan’s words were like a thunderclap, shocking everyone into stunned silence.

They began to split up, checking the signs hanging on the cabin doors one by one.

[Orange Candy] [Occupancy Available]

…

[Bai Xue] [Occupancy Available]

…

[Gentleman] [Occupancy Available]

…

Wen Jianyan stood in front of room [1706], staring fixedly at the small print below the room number, his eyes dark and obscure.

[Pinocchio] [Temporarily Unavailable for Occupancy]

However, unlike the other top ten Nightmare anchors, beneath his room number, there was an extra line of small text:

[Occupancy Progress: 35%]

Just then, the other team members had finished checking the available cabins and gathered back towards him.

“Well?” Wen Jianyan withdrew his gaze and looked at the others.

“There are a total of 9 cabins with names on the door plates,” Wen Ya took a deep breath, suppressing the shock in her heart, and spoke slowly. “They all correspond one-to-one with the top-ranking anchors in Nightmare.”

“I’m at room 1709,” Chen Cheng said, crossing his arms with a gloomy expression. “Not yet occupied, but the occupancy progress is 78%.”

“Room 1701 is Yelin’s room.”

Yelin, ranked second in Nightmare, Guild Leader of Dark Fire.

Chen Mo, who walked over from the opposite direction, said, “It shows ‘Occupied’.”

Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and nodded. “…I see.”

The First-Class rooms on the Negative 17th Floor were prepared specifically for the Nightmare Top Ten—except for the First.

According to intelligence, the Number One in Nightmare was the captain of this cruise ship, which explained why their room wasn’t here.

As for the occupancy progress…

Wen Jianyan’s gaze fell on the sign as he slowly said, “I think this progress is very likely related to the frequency of Talent usage.”

The higher the frequency of Talent usage, the deeper the corruption/alienation, and the faster one could move in.

Among the entire top ten of Nightmare, except for him and Chen Cheng, everyone else had already met the conditions for occupancy.

However…

Even though they had mutated to this extent, they were only [Occupancy Available].

In fact, among the top ten, there were only three people who were truly [Occupied] on the Negative 17th Floor: Yelin, Dan Zhu, and Hugo.

Cold sweat seeped from Wen Jianyan’s lowered palms.

He involuntarily recalled the Negative 18th Floor.

Those “tenants” trapped in the endless corridor.

If the Negative 17th Floor was prepared for them, then were those “tenants” once anchors too?

If the answer was yes, then when did they move in?

And…

Flashes of those tenants’ cold silhouettes, pitch-black masks, and the eerie smiling faces revealed after snatching human limbs and removing their masks raced through Wen Jianyan’s mind.

He felt a chill run down his spine.

… would all anchors who moved into this floor eventually turn into tenants, becoming monsters like that in the future?

Before he could figure out the answers to these questions, the phone in his pocket suddenly vibrated twice—buzz buzz—yanking Wen Jianyan out of his thoughts.

He took a deep breath, looked down, and pulled the phone out of his pocket.

The message was from an unexpected person.

Figaro.

[My friend, are you there?]

Wen Jianyan paused, then simply replied with a question mark.

[Thank goodness you replied! Ms. Dan Zhu asked me to tell you that she accepts negotiation.]

Followed by a crying fox emoji.

[Please come quickly.]

“?”

Wen Jianyan sent another question mark.

[Yes.]

[If you had replied one minute later, she was going to slice off a part of my body—I tried very hard to tell her that my life means nothing to you, but she said she knows. She’s just in a bad mood and wanted to do it.]

[She really is a terrible customer.]

The last sentence was quickly retracted after being sent.

[She really is a respectful and beautiful lady.]

Wen Jianyan: “…”

OK.

Support me on Ko-fi