Chapter Fourteen: This Is the Proper Way to Complete the Challenge!

[You have cleared the game.]

The system sent only a few words.

Liu Tong and the others exchanged glances. They could sense the system’s message was extremely perfunctory, but regardless, clearing the game was clearing the game.

Then, another message arrived in their minds.

[Congratulations to the players for successfully clearing the Ghost Ship through a special method. Now, here is the official walkthrough.

Have you all been thinking that the blueprint was the key to clearing the game? Haha, you’ve all been fooled. The blueprint doesn’t contain any information about the mysterious wooden cabin on the second floor—it was a trap from the start.]

Liu Tong and the others were stunned.

Good heavens, the blueprint was just a trap, and it had no information about the cabin. Then how were they supposed to locate it?

The system continued:

[You must be curious about how the locator works. Haha, actually, locating a place that can’t be located is simple: change your thinking and turn the abstract into the concrete. Have you ever considered that the entity “Wei Chen” standing before you is the impostor? Then where is the real Wei Chen?]

Boom!

Like a thunderclap from the heavens, everyone realized the answer to clearing the game was so straightforward.

Wei Chen had been replaced by the impostor; therefore, the real Wei Chen must be inside the wooden cabin.

So, by locating Wei Chen himself, they could find the cabin.

“We’ve all been tricked,” Liu Tong suddenly recalled the description on the locator.

[To locate a room, you need to know the room number.]

And the old lady had said there was a blueprint in the library.

Too cunning.

All of it was designed to mislead players into searching for the cabin’s room number.

But in reality, the cabin didn’t have a room number at all.

The true way to break the deadlock was to locate the person replaced by the impostor.

Liu Tong instinctively took out the locator and input Wei Chen’s name.

Then, like a radar, the locator extended a red arrow.

The arrow stretched rapidly and finally pierced the wall.

Whoosh!

In an instant, the mysterious wooden cabin appeared, the wooden door directly pierced through by the arrow.

Curious, Bai Wan and the others exchanged a glance and then ascended to the second floor, entering the mysterious cabin.

Inside was an old, unfinished room without any decoration.

There was only a single table in the room.

---

At that moment, a person lay on the floor.

That person was Wei Chen himself.

Indeed, from the very beginning, the way to find the wooden door was to locate the person.

The method to locate the indescribable cabin was to assign it a coordinate yourself.

Wei Chen lying inside was the perfect coordinate.

On the wooden table was only a diary, which Bai Wan and the others curiously flipped through.

The content was sparse, only a couple of hundred words, recounting a story about the statue in the main hall.

It told of a scholar traveling at night to take an exam, encountering the impostor, and finally reaching the statue’s feet, where the impostor was driven away by the statue.

The rest of the diary was blank.

“Is this the final path to survival? The statue in the hall is real? But why doesn’t it work now…” Liu Tong pondered after reading.

“It’s because the impostor disguised itself as a human,” Bai Wan immediately offered the answer. He had always wondered why the impostor insisted on disguising itself as a person. Now it made sense—it was to fool the statue in the hall.

Then, the system spoke again:

[Correct, the statue in the hall is real and does indeed have the power to expel the impostor. However, the impostor in this game disguised itself as a human to deceive the statue’s detection, so the statue had no reaction to it.

Therefore, the final way to clear the game is to carry the person replaced by the impostor out of the cabin, and let both the impostor and its disguise appear before the statue. Since no two humans are exactly alike, the statue will naturally detect the impostor and ultimately expel it. Hmph, this is the proper way to clear the game!]

Liu Tong and the others couldn’t help but feel a flicker of admiration.

Brilliant.

So this was the normal method: first locate the person replaced by the impostor and enter the cabin, then carry that person back to the hall to confront the impostor, and the statue would expose the impostor and expel it, allowing a smooth clearance.

From the start, they had fallen into the game’s trap, chasing useless blueprints. Following the normal process could actually have been quite dangerous!

However…

Liu Tong and Zhang Wen secretly glanced at Bai Wan.

Because of this mysterious newcomer, the impostor had been trapped twice inside the wall, completely breaking the game’s flow. No one was even bothering to look for blueprints; their attention was all on the old lady’s delicious steak.

At this moment, Liu Tong and Zhang Wen felt a bit sorry for the impostor game.

What should have been an exciting storyline had been completely messed up by Bai Wan.

No wonder the game system seemed to be in a bad mood.

The system continued:

[The statue will devour the impostor alive. You were amazed at that time, but what you didn’t realize was that the real horror lies within the statue itself!]

Hearing this, everyone felt a chill.

The next second, the statue of Guanyin that had been standing in the hall suddenly opened its eyes.

Whoosh!

Almost like teleportation, it darted to the center of the hall.

The once solemn Guanyin statue seemed to come to life, wearing a satisfied expression and an exaggerated grin, emitting an eerie laugh as its body grew larger with each laugh.

Its eyes curved into hooks, its mouth stretched wide to its ears, and its plump ears dripped blood.

The colossal statue bowed its massive head slightly, producing the screeching sound of metal scraping metal, gazing down at everyone with a benevolent yet terrifying smile.

Blood-colored aura spread around it, and eight pairs of pitch-black, twisted arms sprouted from its back.

Boom!

In an instant, the entire ghost ship seemed frozen in time.

The terrifying suffocating sensation rendered Bai Wan unable to move, and a dense black malice visibly emanated from the statue.

What was this thing before their eyes… a monster?

Was it truly a statue?

Whoosh.

The black Guanyin statue shattered a window and flew into the sky.

What followed was a scene none would ever forget.

Fog had risen over the sea’s surface at some unknown time.

Within the mist stood a colossal entity hundreds, perhaps thousands, of meters tall, towering like a god over the sea, looking down on all beings with disdain.

Bai Wan and the others couldn’t help but stare as a trace of a merciful smile appeared on the unknown face.

Yet that smile sent shivers down their spines, making their hearts pound fiercely.

Because that face was exactly the same as the one on the statue.

Beside this towering mysterious being stood several statues of various sizes, all bearing the same face.

The statue they had seen on the ship was just one of them.

Wuu…

Though the Guanyin’s expression seemed compassionate and merciful, the overwhelming horror that shook Bai Wan and the others to their core reminded them that this monster was an impostor, a terrifying entity beyond imagination…

Or perhaps…

Bai Wan suddenly recalled the little girl’s diary…

A god… they had seen a god…

Seconds later, as the fog dissipated, the “god” vanished without a trace.

Only then did Bai Wan and the others finally dare to breathe again.

At the same time, a voice echoed in their minds.

[The Ghost Ship game has been cleared. You may exit the instance at will. The final results will be calculated based on your performance. All players will be automatically exited in one hour.]