Dimensional Store: Welcome to the Apocalypse Apartment - Chapter 254

Chapter 254

The person doing the filming was silent.

Lulu went from loving the camera, to resisting the camera, to growing used to the camera.

Gradually, Lulu also learned to pick up the video camera and point it at other people.

At first, she liked filming dead cats and dogs, filming birds as they fell from the sky. Later, after entering Gray Mist University, she began turning her lens on the people in the hospital who had died from Mist Lung Disease.

She liked recording the painful, ugly way they looked on the brink of death.

People really did look hideous when they were about to die. Their hands flailed wildly in the air, the skin all over their bodies shriveling and rotting away, their eyes cloudy, like empty shells with their souls scooped out.

Lulu would also point the camera at the poor students after the bastards in class finished bullying them, capturing the way their self-respect had been crushed.

When those people died, their eyes were filled with despair.

Bodies once full of life gradually went cold as that life drained away.

Lulu collected it all and treated it as her treasure.

“Won’t you become part of my lens too?”

“No.”

Inside the camera frame, Lulu turned her head at the end of the film and reached a hand toward Gu Huaiwei, trying to pull her into the shot.

Outside the camera frame, Lulu walked up behind her and likewise tried to shove her into the shot.

Four icy hands grabbed Gu Huaiwei by the wrists and rested on her shoulders, one set in front and one behind, clinging and tugging at her.

Gu Huaiwei frowned slightly. “I already said no. Why don’t you ever learn?”

She twisted Lulu’s four hands together like a braided dough twist, and only then did Lulu finally settle down.

Lulu really wanted to say that the Instance had made her do it.

Gu Huaiwei had triggered this switch in her, and now she had even twisted her hands together.

Right now, she wanted to immediately, instantly post about what had happened to her in the Anomaly group chat and tell the other Anomaly entities to restrain themselves if they ever ran into Gu Huaiwei. Even if she triggered a key plot point, they absolutely must not actually make a move. Otherwise, they would end up as miserable as she was now.

Lulu’s Fiancé had obtained this Videotape by chance.

He liked the Lulu in the Videotape very much.

She was no longer cold, no longer keeping everyone at arm’s length.

Her distortion excited him beyond measure.

He, too, liked using a camera to record the sins he had created with his own hands.

He would brag about the things he had done to those poor students.

He treated it all as conversation fodder.

So when he discovered that his fiancée was not actually a boring person, his target shifted.

He began exploring Lulu’s inner world, wanting to pull her into his own.

He felt that they were equally dark, that they could enjoy the pleasure of bullying others together.

On Lulu’s twenty-first birthday, he prepared only twenty candles. He intended to confess to her then, to tell her that the hypocritical, lonely version of herself from the past twenty years was already dead, and that their first year together had only just begun.

But when Lulu saw the twenty candles, she thought her fiancé meant to harm her, to keep her from making it through her twenty-first birthday. So she struck first. On the day of her birthday, she stabbed the birthday knife into his abdomen, then tried to flee.

She had not meant to kill him.

If a knife was lodged in the stomach and had not pierced any organs, as long as it was not pulled out, there was still time to call a doctor and stop the bleeding.

But as her fiancé looked at her holding the sharp knife, blood splattered across her birthmark, and at the beautiful sight she made, he pulled the knife out himself and stabbed it into the same spot on her body.

The two of them collapsed in a pool of blood.
Their blood mingled together.

They died from excessive blood loss.

The camera kept recording until that final moment.

From life to death.

From crying infants swaddled in blankets to young girls dyed red with blood, their bodies slowly going cold.

Life was as brilliant and fleeting as fireworks.

Those two twisted lives remained tightly entwined even after death, forming an obsession that had lingered and tangled within the Instance to this day.

Gu Huaiwei took down the videotape and stuffed it into the pocket of Lulu’s school uniform.

After she formed a Contract with Lulu, An Qiushui and Zhang Guoqing finally opened their eyes.

Gu Huaiwei told them exactly what had happened.

The train tickets were hidden in the last layer of cream on the birthday cake.

After they got the tickets, Gu Huaiwei told them not to leave the Instance for the time being.

She still needed some time to take Lulu to find the Hospital Director.

For Oasis Sanatorium to upgrade from Three-star to four-star, the mission required her to invite no fewer than three prominent merchants from the town. Gu Huaiwei had originally chosen the Library Director, the Director of the Hot Spring Mansion, and the Black-hearted Merchant.

But the Black-hearted Merchant wanted a special medicine for Mist Lung Disease.

Every so-called special medicine in this town was fake.

And the formula for the fake medicine was in the Hospital Director’s hands.

Gu Huaiwei took Lulu with her to pay the Hospital Director a visit and get the formula.

If what the Black-hearted Merchant wanted was the fake medicine formula, then everyone would be happy and the mission would be complete.

If the Black-hearted Merchant’s demand was more complicated, and a real special medicine for Mist Lung Disease had to be developed, then Gu Huaiwei would bring the Hospital Director back with her and use him to complete this mission.

Gray Mist Hospital was located at the edge of town. A few more steps and one could leave Gray Mist Town. The hospital and the Hot Spring Mansion were connected by location, occupying the two farthest points of the town.

The town subway was under construction nearby, making transportation inconvenient. Cars couldn’t get through, but a Green Train was temporarily in operation.

The Green Train was an Instance.

Lulu gave Gu Huaiwei two tickets for the Green Train.

They were, in truth, invitations to a new Instance.

If it had been any other Trial-taker, the Trial-taker’s name would have appeared on the ticket.

But when Gu Huaiwei and Bai Miemie received their tickets, the name field was blank.

They boarded the Green Train.

In the entire carriage, aside from Gu Huaiwei, Bai Miemie, and Lulu, there were a few other passengers.

A little boy using his own head as a racket.

A grandmother beside him who kept praising the boy.

An uncle who, irritated by the boy’s racket, smoked as he angrily cursed and shouted.

And a nervous young girl clutching a Black Cat in her arms…

The attendant in the carriage was a human Trial-taker.

From the moment Gu Huaiwei and the others boarded, the attendant was especially nervous when he came to check their tickets.

The attendant was a young man.

As he checked their tickets, his eyes stayed fixed on Gu Huaiwei. He probably thought she looked neither like an Anomaly nor like a human.

Lulu sat right beside Gu Huaiwei.

When the Green Train started moving, Lulu turned her head and looked out the window.

“Today is my birthday… kakakaka… Every year on my birthday, they never come to see me, not even once.”

The “they” Lulu spoke of were the Dean and his wife-also her father and mother.

Just then, the uncle who had been shouting and cursing suddenly couldn’t catch his breath. Clutching his chest, he collapsed to the floor, foaming at the mouth.

The other Anomalies gathered around him.

“Hurry, go get a doctor!”

The girl hugged the Black Cat in her arms even tighter. She said to everyone, “I saw the Hospital Director in Car No. 0. There are doctors with him…”