Author: 木尺素 / Mu Chisu

Translator: Kinky || https://kinkytranslations.com/

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Chapter 55

Upon the command of the small town’s mayor, the squad behind him immediately approached the players. Almost simultaneously, the seven players acted to hide all the crystal balls on them into their bags.

The bags and system watches were assigned to the players by the system; they all belong to something outside the instance logic, and NPCs would directly ignore them. Thus, even though the clothes the players were wearing were very suspicious, no crystal balls or similar witchcraft items were found on them.

Five minutes later, the players were invited into a very spacious commercial vehicle.

The players sat in three rows, with five men at the back and two women arranged in the front row, each held at gunpoint by two individuals.

In front of these three rows of seats, the mayor sat on a solitary, revolving, high-grade leather chair. Facing all the players, he scrutinized them with a discerning gaze.

“Hello, I’m Ryan.” After a long while, the mayor spoke in a deep and pleasant voice. “Hmm… Although all of you are dressed in witches’ clothing, there are five men, so we can temporarily exclude suspicion. As for the two ladies, sorry, we need to interrogate you separately.”

At this moment, Yin Jiujiu felt utterly drained. She never thought that, having just exploited her female identity to outmaneuver her teammates, she would now find herself in a predicament due to this very identity, along with her enemy, Situ Qing.

If she defended herself now, she would inevitably have to defend Situ Qing as well, but she had no choice.

A feeling of the turning of fortune arose in her heart. Yin Jiujiu frowned and said, “The seven of us are tourists who accidentally entered Beautiful Flower Town. We don’t even know what witches are. We were discovered by them in the town and then taken away. These clothes were also forced on us. We are definitely not witches.”

“Don’t worry. Beautiful Flower Town is a quiet, tranquil, and peace-loving town. As long as it’s confirmed that you are not witches, I will, of course, let you go,” Mayor Ryan said to her and glanced out of the window. “You accidentally entered Beautiful Flower Town? I am sorry you had to see such a dreadful town. Fortunately, we have completed the reconstruction work in the south. What you are about to see… will be a completely new town. I hope this will change your impression of this place.”

Hearing this, Zhou Qian also looked out the window. When they were taken away from the magical town by Sarah and the other witches, he had only glimpsed the new southern town from the edge of the forest and hadn’t seen its full view.

The commercial vehicle was now taking another road—a mountain road not obstructed by any tall trees. Hence, from the high terrain of Weir Mountain, Zhou Qian could clearly see the appearance of the new southern town below the mountain.

This town was very different from his initial imagination. Each house was designed in a fluid shape, saving space and looking very technological; every piece of material used in the buildings there seemed to be extraordinary.

In short, the whole town looked quite upscale. Even from a distance, one could see that it was a town with a very advanced level of technology.

Withdrawing his gaze, Zhou Qian looked at both sides of the mountain road.

There were railings on both sides, plastered with signs reading “Warning”, “Research Base”, “Production Base”, “Unauthorized Personnel Keep Out”, and the like.

Seeing this, Zhou Qian couldn’t help recalling his conversation with Eva on the bus. On the way to Weir Mountain, besides showing Eva the diary and receiving a “phone” from her, Zhou Qian had also specifically inquired about Weir Mountain.

He asked Eva, “Is Weir Mountain a famous mountain locally?”

“A long time ago, the town’s electricity all came from Weir Mountain,” Eva said. “There’s a power station there. So… yes, Weir Mountain is famous; the residents of the town have an attachment to it. They worship this mountain.”

“Then… why is there a strawberry field near the power station?” Zhou Qian asked.

Eva said, “The power station—that was a matter of many years ago. Later, with the advent of newer power generation technologies, the power station at Weir Mountain was decommissioned. It once became an open tourist attraction, allowing people to visit and witness this great technology. It was only re-closed last year.”

“In short… many townspeople indeed worship the mayor and also admire the Weir Mountain power station. The mayor is the leader in technology. The townspeople regard him as a godlike figure, believing that he has indeed brought a lot of conveniences to everyone… People like the mayor, like Weir Mountain, so the town has been developing tourism around Weir Mountain, thus the existence of things like strawberry fields.”

Concerning more details, like what technology the power station used, Eva didn’t know.

According to her, many people in the town only knew that the mayor was very smart and powerful and had a background as a scientist. But what field he specialized in and his accomplishments in that field, no one could say.

However, at this point, even though Eva couldn’t provide more information, a very terrifying speculation was slowly forming in Zhou Qian’s mind.

He checked his life points, and the number recorded was “18”.

They hadn’t delayed here for too long, but the value had already sharply decreased by 4 points. It showed that Weir Mountain was indeed a place with substantial problems.

Fortunately, since getting into this luxury commercial vehicle, the countdown on the card had slowed down, almost the same as when they were at the witches’ base. Seeing this, Zhou Qian temporarily put away the card. He didn’t speak all the way, just leaning back in his chair, closing his eyes to rest, and quietly waiting for the commercial vehicle to take them to a new town.

40 minutes later. The players arrived at a place similar to a town hall. The building was built in a circular shape, with semi-transparent material connecting the building to the ground, and from a distance, it seemed like the entire circular building was floating in mid-air, which was quite an awe-inducing sight.

The players, with guns pointed at their heads, had just walked into the hall when the mishap occurred—

Wu Ren, whose one life point card had been cleared and the other card only had “2” left, collapsed unexpectedly. His head hitting the smooth floor made a “bang”, attracting the attention of everyone in the hall.

There were many working staff coming and going here; they all seriously looked at Wu Ren, who was lying on the ground, exchanging extremely frightened glances with each other.

Mayor Ryan was also quite serious; he raised his hand to call over two subordinates and said in a low tone, “Take him to the isolation treatment room. Have the rest undergo a unified examination. Also… take those two women to the interrogation room to see if they are witches.”

By this time, Yin Jiujiu, Situ Qing, and Zhou Qian had all recovered their strength. Hearing this, Yin Jiujiu immediately clenched her wine gourd, seemingly wanting to resist. She knew her actions had offended all her teammates except Li Buhui.

If she were imprisoned, no one would come to her rescue! On the other side, Situ Qing looked at Zhou Qian, seemingly to see his opinion. Soon she received a message from Zhou Qian through the system. “Eva mentioned before that two witch companions disappeared on Weir Mountain; maybe they are also in the interrogation room. Try to find them and talk to them.”

Seeing this, Situ Qing relaxed the hand holding the bell in her bag. Under the indication of the NPC in soldier uniform, she extended her wrists without any intention to resist, and then she was handcuffed and taken away.

Yin Jiujiu raised her gourd, seemingly wanting to fight. But the soldier shot faster, and something like an electric current quickly hit her wrists.

With both hands powerless, Yin Jiujiu almost clenched her teeth with willpower to hold on, so she didn’t let the weapon gourd fall from her hand, but she indeed couldn’t release her skills and could only breathe angrily.

Before being taken away, Yin Jiujiu, as if thinking of something, turned her head and looked at Zhou Qian with very complicated eyes. Zhou Qian looked at her calmly and mouthed to her, “Now you can only cooperate with Situ Qing.”

The implication was that if she refused to cooperate, Zhou Qian would also refuse to help her. Receiving Zhou Qian’s gaze, Yin Jiujiu glared at him fiercely and was taken away with gritted teeth.

The situation was becoming increasingly unfavorable for the players.

Situ Qing and Yin Jiujui, one DPS and one tank, were directly taken away for interrogation. Another powerful DPS, Wu Ren, was unconscious and was also taken away.

Those still present were only Zhou Qian, Qi Liuxing, Ke Yuxiao, and Li Buhui, four people.

These four were quickly taken to a place called the “Isolation Testing Room”.

They each stood on a platform, and soon, two people in white protective suits came in, each holding a large sprayer, gesturing to the players to hold their breath and close their eyes before spraying them intensively.

Finally, those two left, and the room’s door was closed, and white gas sprayed from the ceiling, enveloping and washing over the four people. This was repeated three times.

After about ten minutes, the four were asked to change into regular clothes and then were taken to a reception room. A female staff member came over and poured them water, saying that Mayor Ryan would come to talk to them in a while.

This female staff member was wearing a loose dress, and her abdomen was visibly protruding, seemingly pregnant. She politely greeted everyone and was about to leave after placing the kettle down when Zhou Qian stopped her, his gaze unintentionally lingering on her abdomen before meeting her brown eyes. “Excuse me for asking, your child—”

“Oh… just four months,” the staff member smiled, touching her belly, then her eyes became slightly melancholic.

Zhou Qian caught her melancholy immediately. “My sister lost her child in the disaster. I wish she could, like you, move past the grief and have another child with her husband… Maybe it would comfort her. We have to keep moving forward.”

“Your sister’s child also…” The staff member sighed, wiping a tear from her eye. “What a tragedy… which child could survive such an incident…”

“What exactly happened? Who did this…” Zhou Qian pretended to be angry, slamming his fist on the table. “My niece was the most innocent and adorable. I can’t believe…”

“It seems… you are really not their accomplices.” The staff member frowned, anger in her eyes. “It’s certainly the witches’ doing! They keep harming people! We executed several witches last year. The townspeople hate the witches, and the witches hate the townspeople. This is their revenge on the whole town! Luckily…”

She shook her head, saying with relief, “Luckily, Mayor Ryan had planned the town relocation in advance. Although our old home was destroyed, we were able to move into a new one immediately… Haa…”

The suspicions about the mayor were growing.

Zhou Qian’s hand, placed under the table, slightly tightened as he asked the staff member again, “But where do these witches get such great ability? How did they do it? I heard that fireworks were set off on the night of the music festival. Could the emergence of the evil spirits be related to the fireworks? Do you know what’s the deal with those fireworks?”

“Fireworks? I don’t recall fireworks being set off that night…” The staff member recalled. “After the tragedy occurred, we didn’t immediately go up the mountain. The mayor was afraid that something would happen to us, so he let us stay away from the town first. Until… until the mayor let the research institute develop protective gear capable of resisting evil spirits. With the protective gear, he allowed us to act. Later, we, wearing protective gear, went to Mount Weir for an investigation… Indeed, we found fireworks. Those are the fireworks that are set off every year at the Strawberry Festival. But this year’s fireworks weren’t set off, they were still behind the square halfway up the mountain, all sealed in boxes.”

At this point in the conversation, beeping sounds came from the staff member, as if someone was contacting her. Then she nodded to Zhou Qian and the others and quickly left.

The large meeting room was temporarily left with only four players.

“So… what do you all think about the current situation?” The one who asked this was Li Bu Hui.

Zhou Qian raised his eyelids and glanced at him with profound meaning but did not respond immediately.

Realizing something, Li Buhui hastily said, “Is it because of Yin Jiujiu that you have a bad impression of me? Don’t be like that. Well… I had to cling to her to get the chance to enter this instance. Whatever she asks of me, I listen to her. I am just her follower, so I don’t have a choice. I am merely seeking to survive. I haven’t done anything wrong. Now, good… Both of them are locked up. This…”

Zhou Qian withdrew his gaze and didn’t look at Li Bu Hui anymore. He started to examine the conference room.

There was no visible air conditioning unit in the conference room, yet the walls seemed to breathe, providing ample oxygen and maintaining a very constant temperature, making it very comfortable.

Including the door…from inside this room, one couldn’t distinguish where the door was. It was seamless with the walls. It seemed that the technology of this town had indeed reached an advanced stage.

Then Zhou Qian asked, “What do you think about the ‘fireworks’ at the music festival?”

“The tickets for the Strawberry Music Festival had a background of fireworks… but according to the female staff member we spoke to earlier, there were no fireworks that night.” Qi Liuxing said, “But Lily’s diary explicitly mentioned fireworks blooming like shooting stars… Perhaps the root of the tragedy is related to the fireworks.”

Zhou Qian nodded and continued. “On the way to Weir Mountain, I asked Eva; she said there’s an abandoned power station on Weir Mountain. The power station used some advanced technology that brought much convenience to people’s lives. So, it was turned into a tourist attraction but was closed again last year. We can speculate… maybe it reopened this year, perhaps conducting some secret experiments.”

“I think we can make bold assumptions at this time,” Zhou Qian continued. “If the ‘monsterization’ of children’s bodies and the strange transformations of flora and fauna have nothing to do with magical fantasy, then it can only be explained scientifically. For example—‘genetic’ mutation.

“Based on this, we can also speculate what happened in this town. Look… the mayor and the soldiers he brought were all wearing special protective suits. What are those suits protecting against?”

At this moment, Qi Liuxing and Ke Yuxiao almost simultaneously murmured the word, “Radiation.”

“Right. It’s radiation.” Zhou Qian said, “I suspect that the power station is something like a nuclear power plant. Assuming all our deductions are correct, last year this power station was secretly restarted, but for some reason… the mayor didn’t inform the other townspeople.”

“So, the festival proceeded as usual on the day of the music festival. Everyone sang, ate strawberries… and then a nuclear explosion-like accident occurred. The real fireworks that night hadn’t been set off yet. But the reason the children saw ‘beautiful fireworks like shooting stars’ was merely because some reactor at the power station had a problem, leading to an explosion.”

The power station was built at the highest point of the Weir Mountains.

The festival was held on the hillside of one of the mountains.

An explosion occurred at the mountain-top power station, and “flames” rushed from the experimental laboratory at the top of the mountain towards the night sky, creating fireworks, then turning into rain-like ash falling from the sky.

Unsuspecting children on the hillside plaza saw this scene and thought it was this year’s special edition of fireworks, just like shooting stars.

So, the children ran, laughed, played, and made wishes in the radioactive dust…

But they didn’t know, every particle of this dust had strong radioactivity.

The children went home covered in radioactive dust, and the radiation caused genetic mutations in their bodies, altering their appearances over time.

Then, they were seen as “possessed by evil spirits” by the ignorant witches.

Lily must have suffered immensely during her “mutation” due to radiation.

But she was locked up by her ignorant mother, even had her fingers and palm cut off, and eventually died in endless pain.

However, Lily was just one of countless tragedies.

Many children in the town went through similar experiences.

The explosion that night was already a massive accident.

But Zhou Qian knew that the accident was just the beginning of the tragedy.

Faced with such truth, Qi Liuxing felt suffocated.

He clenched his fists tightly for a long time before loosening them and asking Zhou Qian, “Then…what about Lina’s death? Didn’t we leave the study after answering correctly?”

Zhou Qian said, “That’s only the truth in Lina’s cognition. After all, that night in her memory, all the adults went on vacation to the neighboring town, leaving only Lily by her side.”

“Also, do you remember I asked Eva something about what she saw when she returned home in the early morning the next day?”

Qi Liuxing’s eyes widened involuntarily, muttering, “She said Lily was unconscious. She thought, Lily fainted temporarily because her body couldn’t bear the power of the evil spirit…”

“Eva also said, she took the opportunity to anesthetize Lily, cut off her fingers, and decided to summon her daughter’s soul…”

“Correct,” Zhou Qian said. “So, I suppose there’s no need for me to explain what the real truth is.”

Qi Liuxing’s face turned pale. “No need to explain. I understand. I originally wanted to ask… It’s one thing if it’s just one or two people, but why do all witches similar to Eva uniformly believe that their children are murderers possessed by evil spirits…

“Everyone has been manipulated. This is a shocking conspiracy. This is too, too horrifying…”

“Who the hell did these things—!”

Qi Liuxing couldn’t speak the rest of his words.

Because the doors of the conference room opened on their own, and someone came in.

After the person entered, the door, which separated and merged into the wall like water, slid out again in the same manner. The door then blended with the wall, indistinguishable.

It was Mayor Ryan.

This time, he wasn’t wearing goggles or protective gear and was dressed in just a suit.

He had golden hair, and his blue eyes were as mysterious as a lake.

When he sat down facing the four players, he asked with a smile in his eyes, “I am here to ask you some questions. Why were you all at Weir Mountain?”

Everyone was immersed in the shock of facing the brutal truth.

A moment later, Zhou Qian was the first to speak. “We were forcibly taken by the witches. They had us follow them up the mountain to search. We still don’t know what they wanted us to find.”

After answering, Zhou Qian took the initiative and asked, “What exactly is going on with this town?”

“Why don’t you first tell me what you all have seen?” Ryan asked.

Zhou Qian replied, “Monsters, giant flowers, even faces on the flowers… We also saw bodies, but those bodies weren’t like humans but like monsters. That’s about it. Is all of this caused by some evil magic?”

Ryan had the typical Western appearance, with very fair skin, and pronounced features.

As the mayor, he seemed to have great sympathy for the town’s residents, and he had high empathy. Hearing Zhou Qian’s words, his face showed great pain and anger.

After taking several deep breaths, Ryan calmed himself and said, “Of course, all of this is done by the witches. ‘The horror of the flower of evil… it blooms at the edge of hell…’ all witches are horrifying and malicious flowers of evil!”

The real flower of evil is probably not the witches, but you, the mayor, and the malicious intentions behind all of this.

This was what Zhou Qian thought in his heart, but on the surface, he just maintained an apparently very innocent and sincere smile.

All the doubts and incongruities had explanations.

The only thing Zhou Qian didn’t understand was—what experiments were being conducted in the power station after the restart, or rather, what research was the mayor conducting.

According to Zhou Qian’s understanding, radiation could cause cancer and mutations in unborn children.

Now in this instance, animals and plants had experienced such a degree of genetic mutation, obviously, the actual situation was much more complicated. Like butterflies having grown something similar to human legs—it was as if it copied a part of human genes.

Ryan took a deep breath, looked at Zhou Qian and the others. “Actually, I am willing to believe that you are not in league with the witches. After testing, indeed, there are no evil spirits or anything on you. How about this, I will take you to see a place. Let’s experience the new vitality of the town together.”

After finishing speaking, Ryan really led the four players out of the reception room.

Accompanied by a dozen soldiers, they reached the 11^th floor by elevator.

The moment they stepped out of the elevator, the scene the players saw was truly beyond expectation.

It was like a maternity hospital here. The people walking in the corridor, those sitting together talking in the rest area… all were pregnant women.

And the banners hanging around the floor were all encouraging childbirth, saying “For every additional child born, receive a government subsidy of three thousand yuan per month”, “Pregnant women can be properly cared for at the government’s childbirth center”, and so on.

“The witches are hateful flowers of evil. They killed all the children in the town.”

Mayor Ryan’s pleasing voice came again, but it carried a chilling tone.

“Fortunately, people have recovered from the pain. Through some incentive measures, people are still willing to have children again. Beautiful Flower Town will not be destroyed by the witches. The next generation… is coming soon. We humans, still have a future.”

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The author has something to say:

1. The remaining part of the truth will be revealed tomorrow if there is still anything unclear.
2. The inspiration for this story comes from the Chernobyl incident.
3. One thing that must be clarified is that Epoh, Jiang Yuqing, including the mayor here—their character settings are all part of the instance plot and have nothing to do with Bai Zhou himself. Please do not let the character setting of the mayor affect your perception of Zhouzhou.

As mentioned earlier, Rank God players loading into NPCs can appropriately use the game rules to increase game difficulty and test the “Shepherd” they have chosen, but they cannot change the plot and character settings. In terms of plot and character setup, Bai Zhou is essentially just an observer living inside the NPC.

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Kinky Thoughts:

Speaking of Chernobyl reminded me of the miniseries I watch of the same name. It’s quite a good historical drama which I recommend to everyone.

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