IWOL Chapter 217: Lethal Gas

Silent as death.

Dong Linhai read this passage over and over again in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that the box would release such a task.

It wanted…them to kill each other?!

Wang Que was motionless, utterly petrified.

In the end, Dong Linhai swallowed hard and said, “That…I received a mission.”

“Me too.” Wang Que looked at him and suppressed her panic. She pushed away from the wall and said, “Let’s see if we can find a way out first.”

They tacitly didn’t talk about the challenge task. It took them only five minutes to completely explore the empty 20×10 room, but they couldn’t find an exit at all.

Finally, they could only sit down in the middle of the room.

At this moment, Wang Que heard the sound of something being released. She immediately raised her head and saw a thick yellow green gas being emitted from the thin mouth in the ceiling. The gas quickly began to visibly spread.

The suffocating smell drifted into their nasal cavity, and Wang Que and Dong Linhai stood and moved to a corner, tightly covering their mouth and nose.

The gas was denser than air, and it slowly sank to their feet and gathered near the floor.

The smell was too strong and overwhelming. It felt as if Wang Que was suffocating all of a sudden. Her entire nasal cavity and mouth was suffocating and soon, the smothered weight in her chest caused her to breath out hard. A strange, sour taste filled the root of her tongue, and the burning sensation over her eyes made them fill with tears.

“This is □□!” Although she didn’t attend as many chemistry classes after becoming an art student, Wang Que still had a good foundation. She managed to immediately determine the composition of the poisonous gas based on its characteristic. Her chemistry book flashed in her mind, and it revealed several solutions. But she had no usable material on hand and could only hide uselessly in the corner!

What to do? What to do? What to do……

The gas was too suffocating. Wang Que covered her mouth and couldn’t stop herself from coughing. Her mind was in a mess, and although she was very flustered and afraid, it wasn’t enough to make her mind go blank in terror. Dong Linhai was still beside her, reminding her that she wasn’t alone; she had a companion by her side.

She was willing to believe in Dong Linhai.

Dong Linhai frowned, as if he knew that his every move would affect Wang Que’s emotions. He tried not to let his face reveal his panic and anxiety, but his thumb and index fingers were constantly rubbing hard, betraying him.

His lung capacity was larger than Wang Que’s. He’d been holding his breath since the moment the poisonous gas was injected into the room. But because he originally wasn’t as uncomfortable as she was, he could still bear with it for a while.

But whether it was Dong Linhai himself or Wang Que, he understood very clearly that the crux of the issue wasn’t who could survive in the end, but would outlast the other.

The person who dies later would have a chance to live.

Wang Que tried to call her insects to find out if there were any hidden exits, but she soon discovered that her ability seemed to be blocked. The voices that could easily come from the bottom of her heart were completely silent. Even the transparent insects that accompanied her consciousness were nowhere to be found.

“I can’t use my ability anymore,” she said softly.

“Me too.” Dong Linhai became more convinced that this was definitely Kether’s trick. He’d studied many of Heimdall’s reports on challenge boxes, and none of them had tried to deliberately force pilgrims to kill one another, much less make two members from the same team fight to the death. After receiving the box prompt, he’d called Victor in his heart, but he never heard Uncle’s reply, and even the summoning beast link between them had become blurred.

“And I can’t communicate with Uncle anymore. This room is isolating us from the outside world in all aspects.” After confirming that there really was no other exit except for the two closed doors, Dong Linhai stood in the middle of the room. The bloodstains on his hands had dried up and the flakes began to fall off little by little.

Although feeling helpless himself, he still comforted Wang Que. “There must be something we can do.”

How could Wang Que not know that Dong Linhai was trying to comfort her? In fact, she wasn’t as fragile as he imagined. Although her eyes were filled with tears at this stimulating turn of events, she was fully aware that the □□ were still pouring unceasingly into the room and were now level with her calves. She was 20 centimeters shorter than Dong Linhai and her body wasn’t as good as his. She would most certainly collapse before he did.

It was best to remain silent and not talk so much, but they had to discuss countermeasures. Even now, Wang Que’s complexion was already becoming very bad. Before she entered the room, she’d been desperately running; her heart wasn’t calm; her breathing rate was quite fast; and she’d inhaled more poisonous gas. It was all she could do to keep herself from collapsing.

“If the script was deliberately changed, then it’s very likely that there won’t be another exit. But if this is the case, wouldn’t it be violating the rules of the Pure White Realm?”

Dong Linhai nodded and looked down at Wang Que. A lock of hair had fallen out of her rubber band, but Wang Que didn’t pay attention to it at all. Tears were still leaking from her red-rimmed eyes, and she seemed to be slowly suffocating. Even Dong Linhai was already starting to feel uncomfortable. His sense of his own body was gradually starting to disappear.

Let alone Wang Que.

The yellow-green gas didn’t require being inhaled through the mouth or the nose at all. In a few more minutes, he would die when his lung gave out. Or, once the concentration of the gas went beyond a certain threshold, his central nervous system would become paralyzed and he would die in a flash.

There was no time!

Those words that he had never dared to say rushed to his lips. His throbbing heartbeat, his dodging gazes full of shyness, and the memories of them training together appeared in his mind bit by bit.

Was that love? Dong Linhai didn’t know. He only knew that Wang Que often gave him a strange feeling, something he’d never felt before when facing his former girlfriends.

Wang Que had a hard time remaining standing. The strong sense of suffocation made her grasp her chest, trying hard to draw in air. But the only thing she inhaled was just poisonous gas.

Most of her weight was slumped weakly against Dong Linhai, and the gun at his waist rubbed against her arm. But Wang Que did not try to grab for the gun and shoot Dong Linhai.

—Think. Think. I don’t want to die.

I haven’t gone back to see my parents yet. I haven’t gotten my vengeance from Tan Qiuyu, and there are still so many things I haven’t done. I shouldn’t die just like this.

In the chaos, Wang Que no longer knew what she was thinking. She keenly felt the rapid passing of her life, but her desire to live was still so strong.

Really…unwilling.

Poisonous gas kept pouring in.

He had to do something.

This thought was clearer than ever. In this secret room filled with poisonous gas, he had to do something for Wang Que and for himself.

Dong Linhai struggled to support her. With trembling lips, he said in a low voice, “The existence of rules means that there must be constraints. For example… the so-called death is only a form of temporary elimination. If the team successfully clears the box, the dead might still have a chance to be resurrected, right?”

Wang Que’s dizzy brain thought for a few seconds before she understood what Dong Linhai meant.

“….No!” She was immediately horrified, but she didn’t have the energy to speak. She could only try to squeeze Dong Linhai’s hand and said in anger, “Don’t do anything stupid. What if you’re wrong? I would never forgive myself.”

“But if both of us died in here, I would regret it forever.” Dong Linhai’s mind was gradually starting to become blank, but he pinched his thigh hard, forcing himself awake. He even smiled as he said, “Have you heard such a sentence? When people are killed, they will discover that they are only mortal. Today, let me see if this is true.”

Dong Linhai put the dagger into her hand. But Wang Que had already lost the strength to hold on or to resist. He wrapped her fingers around the handle and closed his larger hands over her smaller one so that they were both holding onto the dagger together.

“There is one thing I have never dared to tell you.” He looked down at Wang Que. At this moment, her dark eyes were pleading.

—No.

At this moment, all his shyness and timidity disappeared. He became hard-hearted, and yet his heart was full softness.

“I like you.”

Dong Linhai lowered his head and kissed Wang Que’s cold and trembling lips. This was the girl that he’d longed for, the object of his carefully concealed admiration. In the next instant, an incomparable courage burst from the bottom of his heart. He tighten his grip over Wang Que’s hand and firmly plunged the dagger into his heart.

His body was already poisoned and his grip was also very firm. The force caused the dagger that was already stained with other people’s blood to slide through skin and muscles, stabbing into the chest cavity and piercing his crazily-beating heart.

Scorching hot blood immediately gushed out, almost burning Wang Que’s hand.

Don’t! No no no no!

Wang Que screamed wildly in her heart, but her body lacked the energy to move. She could feel Dong Linhai’s hands gradually loosening. His body leaned toward her and the lips that pressed against her own lips were so warm as they moved gently, as if wanting to say something.

But in the end, Dong Linhai failed to make a sound. He slid weakly, brushed against Wang Que’s chin and shoulder, and fell onto his knees, drowning in the yellow-green gas at the bottom.

Wang Que was nearly crushed by Dong Linhai’s body and almost fell to the ground. The bloodied dagger fell to the floor, but Wang Que didn’t notice. Her mind was blank, even as Dong Linhai’s trembling voice echoed inside of her.

–I like you.

How could I not know? You’re so silly, you write everything on your face. But…but why would you say it at this time?

Why say it now?

The door on one side silently opened.

Wang Que held onto the wall. Her body moved of its own accord, driven by the instinct to survive. She stumbled toward the door. One step, two steps, one more step…The door to life was there. The severe lack of oxygen made her body lose its strength, and she fell to the floor. Stretching out her thin hands, she grabbed the door frame as hard as she could and pulled herself forward.

The moment she was out the door, the box’s prompt sounded.

[Challenge Task: Leave the Blue Room (Completed).]

All her discomforts disappeared in an instant, but her tears couldn’t stop flowing. Wang Que turned her head back. The room she’d just left had stopped injecting poisonous gas. Dong Linhai’s body was still lying alone in the remaining cloud of poisonous gas. Wang Que scrambled pitifully toward the room, desperately wanting to drag Dong Linhai out. But when she was about to enter the room, the scene in front of her suddenly disappeared.

The room became a long hallway, as if everything that had happened was an illusion.

She froze. Her drowsy mind cleared, and she suddenly reacted.

How could…How could this happen?!

Sometimes, all it took was just a moment for a person to totally collapse. At this moment, Wang Que couldn’t wait to kill herself.

The box hadn’t deceived them, but what was to be done? In order to keep her alive, her companion had aimed the tip of his knife at his own heart and was now gone.

How selfish she was!

Up until the very end, all she could think was that she didn’t want to die and there were still many things she still wanted to do. Wasn’t Dong Linhai also thinking the same thing?

But why could Dong Linhai throw everything away, including his life, for her? And yet, all she could do was pray, naively and stupidly pray for a way out for both of them.

She was…so ugly.

Xixi: If I wasn’t able to complete a chapter in time to post tomorrow, then I wish you all a Happy New Year filled with much blessings and good health.

Translation Notes:
The □□ were from the raw.