What's Wrong With Seeking Death? - Chapter 1
On a late June afternoon, the sun was shining and the room was bright.
In the homestay, several 17 or 18-year-old teenagers were playing board games together. The table was covered with a one-metre-long map that had colourful chess pieces scattered all over it. Someone started shaking the dice vigorously.
“It’s 7! You have to move forward 7 squares… Come on, draw the event cards!”
The chaotic chatter of the boys and girls filled the room, making Xu Turan, who was sitting in the corner, seem out of place.
She sat quietly in the corner alone, holding a package of Skittles in her hand as she chewed some casually. Her beautiful face was completely devoid of any emotion, as if her senses were completely cut off from the surrounding noise.
After Gu Xiaoya finished her round, she turned her head to look at Xu Turan. Then, she frowned and pinched the boy next to her.
“Look at what you did!” She said to the boy in a hushed voice, “Who told you to invite her here?”
The boy was coaxing the others to drink some prickly pear juice. Hearing this, he clicked his tongue, “Weren’t you the one who asked me to find an opportunity to talk to her?”
“I told you to talk to her privately, you know— talking it out and making an apology; no one told you to bring her along to the gathering!” Gu Xiaoya complained, “It’s bad enough you dragged her over, but can’t you teach her the ways of the game a little? Gu Chenfeng, don’t think I’m stupid. The lot of you were obviously in cahoots just now. You guys eliminated her on purpose from the game early on. I just pretended that there was nothing wrong when that happened!”
“It’s obviously because she has bad luck,” The boy snorted, “Besides, what’s there to apologise for? I was the one who was harassed, not her!”
Xu Turan was their junior high school classmate. In fact, they had only been in the same class for two years before they went separate ways in the third year of junior high school. Until the end of the college entrance examination a while ago, she and their group never contacted each other again.
However, a week ago, Xu Turan appeared at Gu Chenfeng’s third-year farewell dinner party in his class and confessed to him in public with shocking words. She even claimed that she was already in a long-distance and online relationship with him for three years. Either way, the scene was just pure chaos.
“An An was pissed off on the spot! The people next to her even booed at me,” Gu Chenfeng muttered unhappily. An An was the girl that he had a crush on, but she stopped talking to him from that day onwards.
“I’ve been laughed at by my classmates because of this, and yet, you want me to apologise.”
Gu Xiaoya was his strong twin sister who was only one minute older than him. Hence, he was forced to concede. Since he really didn’t want to have any sort of private contact with Xu Turan, he took the opportunity of the junior high school class reunion to call her over.
Their schools were integrated and many of them attended junior high and high school together, forming good personal relationships with Gu Chenfeng. It was natural for them to stand on his side, so Xu Turan was naturally slightly excluded.
The conspired outcome of the deliberate elimination from the game was just a small portion of the neglect that was reflected in the group’s treatment towards Xu Turan. Even if Gu Xiaoya had been doing her best, it was difficult to offset their undisguised feeling of rejection towards Xu Turan.
“If she knew how to read the room, she would have left just now. I told you, she’s not normal…” Gu Chenfeng muttered, earning another pinch from Gu Xiaoya. She looked worriedly at Xu Turan in the distance and lowered her voice, “I am not saying that you must apologise to her, but the misunderstanding must be made clear. How many times have I said that you should talk things out peacefully and not just vent your emotions… you idiot.”
She sighed, “I’m going to talk to her now, so go to her once you give things a bit more thought! Have a bit of grace, you got it?”
…Don’t.
Please, please don’t.
On the other side, listening to the whispers of the siblings, Xu Turan pleaded internally.
It’s not that she deliberately eavesdropped on their conversation, but that she was born with better hearing. Especially when someone mentioned her name, the gossip seemed like it was sent over by the wind for her to pick up on.
The reason for not wanting Gu Xiaoya to come to her was very simple— not only did she not want to talk, she didn’t have any idea as to what they were talking about.
After all, she had only arrived in this world for three days.
To be precise, it took only three days for her to transmigrate into this world.
The current Xu Turan was a transmigrator.
And at the moment, she was in the world constructed by the novel called ‘A Hundred Days of Strange Conversations‘ which had an extraordinarily unique plot.
She originally lived in another world, with the same name, surname and gender as Xu Turan in the book. She had an accident and when she woke up, she had already transmigrated into this novel that she had never heard of, replacing the original owner of the body.
Xu Turan didn’t have much memory of her own death as the only thing she remembered was a sense of falling. The fall was excruciatingly long. Then with a snap, as if she had awoken from a nightmare, she found herself here.
As for the original owner of the body, according to the system, the night Xu Turan transmigrated over, she had already stopped breathing. She suffered a heart attack whilst living alone and was not treated in time.
Mm, yes, the system— Xu Turan initially had a system.
The reason why she said ‘initially‘ was because in the first hour after she transmigrated into the book, the system exclaimed and said that it had to return in order to undergo maintenance. With that being said, it left without looking back.
The return date was uncertain, but Xu Turan expected that it would take quite a long time.
It was fine for the system to leave, but the problem was that it didn’t provide her with much valid information. Xu Turan didn’t even understand the content of the novel. The stupid system only told her that this was a thriller romance novel and the original owner of the body was a cannon fodder as she played the role of a supporting actress.
This was also the only mission requirement given to her by the system.
Live as the original owner, seek death and integrate herself into the story as much as possible.
As for what to do after the ‘integration‘, the system did not mention it. It may have believed that it would return by the time Xu Turan would be able to finish up to the integration part. Afterwards, it would give Xu Turan new instructions.
“You know what it means to seek death, right?” It asked Xu Turan before leaving.
Xu Turan was a lonely star in her last life. She was someone who had no money, no love, no family, and her heart knew no fear. Xu Turan recalled her rich experience of seaking death in her previous life and she replied affirmatively with absolute confidence.
With that, the system withdrew with its mind at ease. Before leaving, it stuffed her with a box. In the box, there were some novel-related materials and a death-value calculation software.
The computing software was directly bound to Xu Turan’s consciousness. With the accumulation of the death value, different levels of functional rewards could be activated. The system even promised that if Xu Turan filled up the value in the software before it returned, it would give her an additional wish.
“What if it can’t be done?” Xu Turan asked seriously.
The system also replied seriously, “When the time comes, according to the regulations, I can only fire you.”
Fire didn’t sound like a good word.
Xu Turan didn’t really care about her life or death. However, she was quite curious about this ‘wish‘.
Besides, since she had already arrived here, she might as well make her second chance at life a bit more interesting. Otherwise, it would definitely be boring.
Xu Turan’s attitude was pretty straightforward. After the system left, she thought about accumulating the death value. As she did not inherit the original owner’s memory, she had to spend some time to obtain information and adapt to her identity. When she finally had time to study the novel materials provided by the system, she finally discovered a very bad issue.
Amidst the information the system gave her, there was not a trace of the original text of the novel.
The box only contained detailed biographies of the male and female protagonists, some supporting characters, some worldview settings, a ‘Transmigration Books for Newcomers’ and a set of quick materials called ‘Trangmisgration Books: From Beginnings to Wealth’…
Xu Turan fell silent.
If she remembered correctly, the original owner was all alone before she died. Gaining the legacy of a deceased, there were many zeros in her bank card balance. So, she didn’t quite understand what the system was thinking while putting in the last book for her.
Fortunately, she figured out part of the plot from the original owner’s character record. In the novel, the original owner played the role of a wealthy female supporting character who would be tempted by her delusions to be with the male protagonist. From there, she became hostile to the female protagonist, desperately interfering between the two, twisting and turning the fates of the main characters.
Xu Turan read the information for a long time but didn’t see any room for her to die in this plot.
It was also possible that she had only read a few novels like this, so she might not be clear about certain things.
In desperation, she had to come up with ideas herself. In the last three days, she had tried things like heating raw eggs in a microwave oven, poke a socket with a metal fork and other acts of death that a good child would never do. Even so, her actions didn’t raise her death value at all.
In the end, she came to the conclusion that she was missing something important. She remembered the system once saying that she had to ‘integrate herself into the atmosphere of the story’. Hence, she wondered if her death-defying behaviour had to conform to the original characteristics of the story?
Now, the question was: What were the characteristics of this story?
The system had said that it was a thriller romance novel.
Xu Turan decisively ignored the word ‘romance’ and began to think hard about ‘thriller’.
Then, she finally understood— she should go find a ghost to worsen her luck.
Another question arose again: Where could she find a ghost?
Xu Turan researched the only information she had over and over again until she stumbled upon a realisation.
Why did the original owner like the male protagonist? Because the male protagonist was her ideal boyfriend. But why didn’t she seek him out afterwards in the story? Because Mr. Ideal died.
Mr. Ideal, named ‘Gu Chenfeng’, died in a class reunion.
Seven high school graduates went to a suburban homestay to hang out, but they were found dead the next day in horrific conditions.
This description sounded weird.
In the original story, it was also mentioned that the original owner had actually received a party invitation from Gu Chenfeng. However, she did not go. Xu Turan hurriedly flipped through the original owner’s mobile phone, and as expected, she found the party invitation sent by Gu Chenfeng. It was just a day after she had previously rejected the offer, so she quickly replied, saying that she had changed her mind and was willing to go.
Mr. Ideal seemed to be reluctant, but he had already sent her the meeting address and time in a very honest manner— a homestay on the mountain with inconvenient transportation. Just by listening to the descriptions, it already sounded like a perfect place for her to have encounters with death itself.
Xu Turan also thought about whether to warn Gu Chenfeng and the others to not be sacrificed. However, whenever she tried to send the message, her phone began to malfunction. She later read the ‘Rules for Newcomers’ manual and found out that this was a prohibition set by the system— as a transmigrator, her actions were somewhat limited.
Since the rules were there, Xu Turan had no choice but to give up.
The facts had proven that her judgement was not wrong. As soon as she came to the party site today, her death value rose by five points, which caused her to raise an eyebrow.
The gains didn’t stop there.
She came a little late so the others were already playing board games when she arrived. The original owner obviously did not have a good relationship with these people, so only the girl named Gu Xiaoya actively dragged her to the table.
Xu Turan originally wanted to decline, but after noticing the name of the board game, she silently changed his mind. She chose the chess pieces cooperatively, and before the first round was over, a loud ding sounded in her head.
Xu Turan heard it immediately— that was the sound of another death value, which was received.
The name of the board game was very interesting as it was called ‘Homestay Fright’.
Xu Turan earned 3 death points as she joined the game. The amount of points given were lesser than expected, so she knew that this was not going to be as easy as she thought.
She was only able to play a few rounds before she was deliberately eliminated. Even then, she got another 3 points.
To have 6 points gained in such a short time, Xu Turan was happy and quite surprised to see the sudden increase.
As the only person to be eliminated from the game at present, Xu Turan quietly walked to the side with a bag of Skittles that she had just gotten.
The wind and rain were approaching as the night was quiet. While there was still time, she did not forget to observe the situation around her.
The homestay that they rented had three floors, entirely being booked by the group of teenagers. At this moment, everyone was gathered in the lobby on the first floor with the entrance door of the homestay situated across the corridor behind them.
She already knew Gu Xiaoya and Gu Chenfeng. Gu Chenfeng was ‘Mr. Ideal’. Sitting diagonally opposite of him was a girl with dyed brown hair, named ‘Xiaomi’. She wore matching bestie outfits with Gu Xiaoya.
In addition, the ‘Sports Committee’ was the tallest one whereas the ‘Study Committee’ was a little girl with glasses. Everyone else called another boy with classes the ‘Monitor’.
What a gathering; he pretty much gathered all the class committee.
It was strange now that she thought about it— at this moment, including her, there were seven people in the room. In the original plot, ‘Xu Turan’ did not attend this party.
But the corpses that were found later were still seven.
What happened? Was someone else still arriving?
Xu Turan’s eyes moved slightly, and when she saw Gu Xiaoya walking towards her from the corner of her eye, she immediately interrupted her thoughts and pondered how to deal with the upcoming scenario.
Who would have thought that before Gu Xiaoya managed to get in front of her, something unexpected happened.
There seemed to be dark clouds passing by the window and the room was pitch black for a moment. Only a sliver of light came from the direction of the table—
A few seconds later, next to the table, there was a scream and the sound of heavy objects falling to the ground.