Life Game In Other World
Chapter 780: In the Maze Room? (Super Long - for Monthly Votes)

Chapter 780: Chapter 780: In the Maze Room? (Super Long Chapter for Monthly Votes)

Inner Church Hall

Bright rays shone through the glazed windows, illuminating the wooden chairs, as several men in casual attire appeared at the center of the church.

"This is the pseudo-church of those heretics?"

A scrawny man glanced at the ’holy’ surroundings of the church, "No matter how well they disguise it, they’re just heretic faithful who have twisted the guidance of the Eternal Radiance."

"Be careful,"

another man with glasses whispered beside him, "Those heretic faithful have stolen the power of the Eternal Radiance and fused it with this church. There are things here imbued with Divine Power, and even a B-level might be devoured."

"Don’t worry,"

a burly man, also surveying the surroundings, chimed in, "As long as we follow the rules in here, we won’t have any troubles."

"Indeed."

The man with glasses nodded, "Everyone, be cautious. Act according to the intelligence provided by our leader. However, the pseudo-church should have activated ’anti-invasion’ mode by now, so most of the information we have might already be invalid. Be careful of the anomalies appearing in the church and adhere to its rules."

"Okay!" "Yes!" "All right!"

A chorus of assents echoed through the crowd.

"We have to follow the rules of the pseudo-church? Doesn’t that mean we acknowledge them?"

Amidst these affirmative responses, someone suddenly spoke out.

All faces darkened.

"Ahem,"

the man with glasses coughed, "We’re not following the pseudo-church rules; we’re respecting the power of the Eternal Radiance they have stolen."

"That’s right,"

the burly man added, "We’re merely expressing our respect for the great Eternal Radiance."

"Don’t scare yourself too much,"

a scrawny man walked out from the crowd toward the grand glazed windows and scoffed, "These heretic faithful always like to mess with all things ghostly and divine."

His hand brushed over the wooden chairs, "For all we know, we could be in some kind of illusion right now."

"Still, we should be cautious,"

the burly man glanced at the scrawny man, who had strayed from the group, and said, "Don’t go so far; this hall is safe for only a brief time,"

Before he could finish, every light in the hall suddenly flickered.

His expression changed instantly, and he yelled, "Hide, QUICK!!!"

A cold wind brushed the edges of everyone’s clothing as thick fog suddenly billowed from all directions within the church.

The crowd instantly scrambled towards the surroundings.

Those closest to the back immediately rushed to the last row of chairs, desperately cramming beneath them.

And the burly man, closest to the front cabinet, did not hesitate and dashed toward it.

The fog advanced swiftly, engulfing large areas nearly the instant people began to move.

The scrawny man, after a brief hesitation, found the space under the last row of chairs quickly filling up with people not yet fully squeezed in but almost all settled in their spots.

He glanced at the rapidly approaching fog, then at the burly man rushing toward the cabinet, and ultimately decided to follow the burly man, trying to squeeze into the cabinet.

He moved with speed and got close to the cabinet door within a second, within half a meter.

But at that moment, the thick fog caught up with him.

In that instant, it was as if countless tiny and sharp invisible teeth bit into his flesh, a golden radiance emanated from him, forming a sturdy armor, which, in the blink of an eye, was easily torn apart into scattered glimmers of light.

The tiny teeth latched on and shredded his outer layer of flesh, blood pouring out from beneath his skin. In a brief moment, he was dyed a vivid red, a blood-soaked figure.

"Save me... Save me..."

He reached out towards the burly man who had forcefully squeezed into the cabinet.

Click—

The cabinet door suddenly shut and was bolted from the inside.

The scrawny man’s eyes widened in shock as his body melted away like a snowman under the scorching sun, enveloped and dissipated by the dense fog, until he completely vanished within it.

The spreading fog brushed past the tightly closed cabinet door.

...

Meanwhile inside the cabinet, the burly man curled up, clutching the cabinet door tightly, gasping for breath.

The scrawny man was not weak by any means; like him, he was C-level, an elite brought in from another city by the leader, but still, he was swallowed by the fog in an instant.

Death had been so close to him.

"Uh..."

Just then, a faint crying sound reached his ears.

He lifted his bracelet, using its faint glow to illuminate the source of the crying sound.

There was a little girl in a red dress sitting next to him, covering her face as she cried, with an exquisitely crafted paper butterfly perched on her hair tip, just like a hairpin fixed on her hair.

The burly man took a deep breath, he had rushed in too quickly and had not seen if there was such a little girl in the closet.

The space inside the closet seemed a bit larger than it appeared from the outside; after squeezing in, he surprisingly didn’t feel cramped, but rather, there was a decent amount of space to move around.

"Is it some kind of weird thing?"

He muttered softly.

The little girl didn’t look strong, appearing extremely frail and deceivable, not quite like any powerful monster.

But inexplicably, he felt somewhat irritable upon hearing the crying, so he yelled, "Stop crying."

The little girl seemed startled, her crying paused for a moment and became quieter.

The burly man sighed with relief, sitting in the pitch-black space.

It seemed to be a minor monster, no real threat.

"Whimper..."

After a while, the low sobbing echoed once more in the dark space.

"I told you to stop crying, didn’t you hear me?"

The irritating feeling surfaced again in his heart and the burly man reached out, grabbed the little girl by the neck from behind, and pushed her to the ground.

The soft cries still echoed in the silent space.

The paper butterfly from her hair fluttered down like a stray duckweed, landing in the darkness.

"What a piece of crap,"

The burly man flicked his finger, sending the paper butterfly flying, then he drew a short knife from his waist, "I’ll kill you."

It was at that moment he saw the girl release her hands from her face and turn around.

Under the weak light of the smart bracelet, he saw the girl’s ’face’ clearly.

It was an utterly featureless face, smooth and reflective like a mirror.

Then, under the burly man’s gaze, a cross-shaped crack split open on that cheek, blooming like petals.

The paper butterfly that fluttered in the darkness returned to the girl’s hair tip, and the faint crying sound reverberated in the quiet space.

Outside the closet, in the dense fog with a tinge of orange glow, the bright red blood, like a brook, flowed from the gaps in the closet and dissipated into the fog.

——

Thump... thump thump... thump...

The rhythmic knocking sounded.

He Ao shifted his gaze from the paper that seemed to be a diary and looked towards the door.

He held his Knight sword and slowly walked over.

At the same time, he carefully scrutinized the ’structure’ from the desk to the door.

Since there was no wardrobe, all the clothes in the room were hung on a rusted wire nailed in the corner of the wall.

The wire wasn’t high, enabling a child to easily hang clothes on it.

There weren’t many clothes hanging on it, just a few dresses for a little girl, and one or two similar-looking work clothes in the smallest size.

Next to these clothes was a neatly stacked ’bedding’ made from adult clothes.

This bedding used clothes as a mattress, covered by a washed-out white bedsheet, and a somewhat thin cotton coat was piled beside it, seemingly serving as the quilt.

On the cotton coat, He Ao noticed a plastic medal pinned to the front, adorned with a pattern of radiating light.

He was not unfamiliar with this medal.

Yiluo had received such a ’plastic medal’ back in school.

These medals appeared to be credentials of the Eternal Secret Teachings’ Faithful.

He Ao scanned the room again, where even the wall plaster had begun to fall off; the people living here seemed to be Believers of the Eternal Secret Teachings.

But why would a Faithful’s ’house’ appear inside the Inner Church?

After stepping over the bedding on the floor, He Ao reached the door of the room.

The door was not equipped with a smart lock, but rather an old and simple mechanical lock.

The handle of the lock showed rust marks, indicating it had been used for many years.

At a higher position on the door, a ’peephole’ was installed.

The gentle knocking continued.

He Ao stood on his toes and peered through the peephole outside.

Outside seemed to be a somewhat cramped corridor, dimly lit.

Thump... thump thump... thump...

The knocking still resounded, but there was no figure outside the door.

He Ao glanced at the doorknob but did not open the door directly.

He turned his attention to the side of the door.

Next to the door, there was a small window about eighty centimeters wide.

This was the only window in the room, facing the hallway.

The glass of the window was covered from the inside with several layers of colored plastic paper, seemingly to prevent people outside from peeping in.

He reached out and touched the plastic paper on the glass, which was completely adhered to the surface, irremovable.

After a moment of contemplation, he returned to the desk and pulled open its drawers.

All the drawers were empty.

On the surface, it seemed he could leave this room just by opening that door.

But after the maneuver of hiding in the cabinet to leave the hall, he vaguely felt that this ’room’ and the ’Inner Church’ might not be so simple.

He might have to move continuously between these rooms to enter a place closer to the core of the main church.

This reminded He Ao of another thing, a maze.

This might just be the defense mechanism of the Inner Church; it had not constructed any shields or solid fortresses but used the church’s special rules to turn the entire church into a ’maze’.

Only by passing through these spaces, which are connected by special rules and finding the correct route, can one reach the deepest part of the maze, the true ’core of the church’.

And these maze rooms were not safe; they were filled with various ’Strange entities’.

’Invaders’ could easily die at the hands of the maze’s Strange entities.

And even if the ’invaders’ were not killed by the Strange entities, just confining the ’invaders’ within the maze was advantageous for the Eternal Secret Teachings.

The Eternal Secret Teachings should be urgently summoning some combat personnel back to defend the main church.

Once these combatants convened, coupled with the special rules of the main church, He Ao would likely have a hard time breaking through the defenses of the Eternal Secret Teachings.

So, He Ao does not have much time and must quickly pass through this ’maze’.

The knocking outside the door still echoed, while countless thoughts flashed through He Ao’s mind.

If the little girl in the cabinet had not deceived him and indeed pointed out a ’correct path’ for him,

What distinguishes this correct path from the others?

He Ao lowered his head, looking at the piece of paper on the table that was written in blood.

He pondered slightly and picked up the paper.

At that instant, his mind raced, and he turned to look at the window covered by newspapers.

At that very moment, it seemed a Shadow had flitted past the outside of the window.

Was someone outside the window peering in here?

He Ao thoughtfully approached the window while holding the paper.

At this moment, he suddenly realized that the knocking outside the door seemed to have ’stopped’.

Click—

Immediately after, the rusty doorknob began to shake violently, as did the entire door, as if someone outside was trying to open it.

However, the door was locked from inside and could not be opened from outside.

He Ao slowly walked to the back of the door.

Then, seemingly having heard his footsteps, a loud shout came from outside, "Alice, open the door, you can’t stay at home, it’s dangerous inside, your brother has gone mad, he’s imprisoning you, you need to open the door quickly, we need to get out of here."

It seemed to be the voice of a middle-aged man.

For some reason, He Ao felt this man’s voice was somewhat familiar.

He leaned against the door, looking through the peephole again.

Outside was still the dark and cramped hallway, nothing else.

Then He Ao looked down at the text on the paper in his hand, his gaze fixating on the six words ’Didn’t go out, very safe’.

He thoughtfully stepped back two steps, staring at the violently trembling door.

The ’voice’ outside and the ’diary’ inside provided him with two completely contradictory ’directions’.

Theoretically, he should continue to collect more information to attempt to deduce the correct path, but now he had a simpler and more violent method.

He watched the trembling door, and in his Spiritual Vision, the entire door was composed of a stack of twisted patterns.

And the densest part of these stacked patterns was the ’peephole’.

Without any hesitation, He Ao drew his Knight sword, covered it with Divine Sense, and stabbed it into the location of the ’peephole’.

The sharp tip of the blade entered the peephole not as if cutting through metal to make a sharp opening but as if it had pierced a piece of soft flesh.

"Ah!!!"

A twisted scream came from the shaking door, which came to a stop in that instant. The small peephole writhed and expanded, from which a twisted ethereal Shadow broke free and lunged at He Ao.

He Ao glanced at the Shadow.

It was a spiritual being without twisted light hidden within, without the Grace of a Divine Being.

He directly raised his hand and struck with his sword, splitting the Shadow in two.

The cleaved Shadow shattered and dissipated in the air.

Weapons covered by Divine Sense could harm spiritual beings.

However, He Ao’s attention was not on this Shadow but on that already twisted and deformed cat’s eye.

In the moment the Shadow detached, he "saw" a glimpse of the scene beyond the door.

Behind it, there was no corridor, only a silent ’nothingness’.

Everything he saw through the cat’s eye existed only within the cat’s eye itself.

After the Shadow was slashed apart, the writhing cat’s eye quickly retracted and transformed back into the appearance of a cat’s eye.

All the vibrations and the knocking from outside the door also stopped abruptly.

He Ao put away the piece of paper in his hand and looked back over the entire room.

He suddenly remembered the last thing the red-haired woman had said to him, "Hide."

If the room itself was safe, then the only place to hide would be...

He Ao gripped his Knight’s sword and walked over to the iron bed, rolling underneath it.

In that instant, a cold breeze brushed under the bed, and the space around him instantly changed.

In the blink of an eye, the once open space under the bed was covered by a hanging bedsheet.

It seemed as if he had entered another ’room’.

He Ao pondered for a moment, and at the same time, he felt as if another ’person’ was lying beside him.

He turned his head to look at his side.

The figure of a little girl in a red dress appeared in his field of view.

The little girl lay on the ground, turning her head to the other side, the back of her head facing him.

At that moment, the little girl also seemed to realize someone was watching her, and she slowly turned her head.

What He Ao saw was a somewhat delicate and cute little face.

She looked at He Ao, who was watching her with confusion, seeming a bit surprised, then she gently raised her hand to her lips and made a ’shush’ gesture.

Thud... thud... thud...

Outside, heavy footsteps seemed to come through, approaching the bed covered by the bedsheet with each thud.

Hearing this sound, the little girl in the red dress seemed a bit scared, shrinking her body and listening nervously to the sounds around her.

The thin bedsheet fluttered lightly with the movements of the person outside, and a crackling sound came through, seemingly the restless flipping of something by the person outside.

Thud... thud... thud...

"Where are you... where are you..."

With each heavy step, a hoarse voice echoed throughout the room.

Hearing this voice, the little girl in the red dress trembled and curled up.

Pop—

The person searching outside seemed to tire, leaning the upper half of their body on the bed.

The room fell into a short silence.

Then, the bedsheet on the side He Ao faced on the ground was suddenly lifted,

"Found you!"

A twisted head with a savage smile and covered in blood appeared in He Ao’s field of vision.

The humanoid monster searching for them was now upside down on the ground, its head touching the ground, staring at him.

Then, a flash of pure white sword light swept by, and the monster’s head was instantly decapitated amid its dumbfounded expression.

He Ao scratched his head and crawled out from under the bed.

The monster’s writhing body tried to stand up once more, but He Ao raised his hand and struck with his sword again, briefly using Fist Technique to enhance his physical qualities, and cut the monster’s body apart.

He had thought it was another Evil Spirit or something, but it turned out to be an actual flesh-and-blood monster, nearly at the C-level limit, with only two points of energy convergence.

He surveyed the monster’s corpse on the ground.

This fellow, in such a place full of weirdness, didn’t feel out of place?

He slowly squatted down, lifted the bedsheet, and looked under the bed.

At this moment, there was no longer any sign of the little girl in the red dress, only a page that had fallen on the ground, torn from a diary.

He Ao reached out and picked up the diary page.