Chapter 121: Urban Legend·The Red Dress

Chapter 121 Urban Legend · The Red Dress

Compared to direct sensory stimulation, this bone-chilling dread of narrowly escaping danger left a deeper impression on Chang Shuyue.

Amid her fear, she secretly felt relieved—thankfully, she hadn’t been the poor sap walking between the two corners back then. Otherwise...

"Otherwise, I would have been the one stripped of who I was, the one who disappeared."

She whispered under her breath.

A curious player asked, "Is there any hope of making it out alive for the person who vanished outside the corner?"

"Maybe."

Yu Yin speculated casually, "Perhaps that person would be trapped in that pitch-black, hollowed-out room until the next round of the Four Corners Game begins. Then, they’d become the next 'fifth person' who shouldn’t exist, trying to occupy a corner when the game ends, borrowing someone else’s identity to return to reality..."

"Finding the right identity to occupy isn’t easy," Chu Fu gave a half-shrug, sounding like he spoke from bitter experience. "I had to wait a long time myself."

The other players fell silent: "..."

This kind of empathy was better left unshared!

Wait—no normal player would have such "rich" experiences!

The silence stretched. One player changed the subject, trying to lighten the mood: "Reporter Chang, you should be careful. If necessary, move out of the dorm."

Another player chimed in, "It’s just our speculation that only one roommate was replaced. What if..."

What if there was more than one inhuman thing in the dorm?

Chang Shuyue’s face went ashen.

She couldn’t help imagining herself surrounded by three monsters—perhaps in the dead hours of night, her three roommates would stand silently by her bed, staring at her with the hungry gaze of predators eyeing their prey...

Snapping out of that crawling sense of dread, Chang Shuyue shared her second urban legend.

"The Crossroads at 4 Hongfang Street—starting from the school gate, go past two traffic lights, turn left, and walk a bit further to reach it."

"When I triggered this urban legend, my roommates and I had just finished playing the Four Corners Game and were walking back to campus. At that crossroads, one of my roommates’ shoelaces came undone. She crouched to tie them, another took her bags for her, and I got a few steps ahead. When I turned back to look, they were all gone. I was the only one left at the crossroads."

"The road sign had changed too. There was only a line of crooked, blood-scrawled letters: 'Do not turn back. Keep walking forward.'"

"I kept walking forward, but the crossroads stretched endlessly ahead—all labeled 'Hongfang Street No. 4.' The shops and decorations along the road remained unchanged. Only after walking for a long time did the sign’s words shift to 'Turn left.'"

"So I followed the sign’s instruction and began turning left. As I walked, strange disturbances kept cropping up, trying to mislead me."

"Sometimes, my roommate’s voice would call from the right, saying I was lost and urging me to follow her back to campus."

"Other times, a pallid, gargantuan specter's face would block the left path, its maw stretched unnaturally wide, threatening to swallow me whole. I closed my eyes and walked through it, only to realize it was an illusion."

"Occasionally, warm lights would flicker on in the shops by the roadside, and a grandmotherly shopkeeper would invite me inside, offering to call my family..."

After recounting several close calls, Chang Shuyue smiled. "Actually, these seemingly terrifying disturbances reassured me—they proved I was on the right path. They felt safer than the monotonous, unchanging crossroads from before."

"But once, I nearly fell for the trick and got lost in this urban legend."

Chang Shuyue’s expression turned serious as she recalled, "That crossroads showed no signs of distortion—it looked exactly the same as before. I almost mindlessly followed the instruction to turn left. But then, by chance, I glanced at the storefront signage along the road..."

"The words on them were mirrored, as if the entire scene was a reflection cast through a looking-glass, then reflected into my eyes."

"So I realized—this crossroads wasn’t unchanged. Its alteration was subtle: everything was mirrored. Here, 'left' actually meant 'right,' and 'right' was the real 'left.'"

"After turning right at that crossroads, I finally escaped the urban legend."

Chang Shuyue concluded, "This urban legend isn’t highly dangerous—it doesn’t require combat skills. But challengers must have perseverance and patience, resisting the despair of endless crossroads, and possess keen observation and judgment to avoid eroding their sanity."

"You can decide for yourselves whether to attempt adding it to your collection."

After Chang Shuyue finished sharing, Yu Yin stood up and spun in place, showing off her crimson dress to the other players.

As she moved, the vivid skirt flared and swayed midair, its delicate fabric glistening like freshly spilled blood. The dress resembled soft petals dancing in the wind—or a beautiful illusion that compelled onlookers to reach out and grasp it.

Some players, whose Abilities had little defense against mental interference, immediately went glassy-eyed, their eyes locked onto the hypnotic sway of the skirt. One even reached out, desperate to touch it.

Yu Yin quickly slapped the hand away. Only when the dazed looks in their eyes faded, replaced by shock and wariness, did she speak: "One of the urban legends I experienced is this very red dress."

Recalling the players’ earlier obsession, Chang Shuyue grew wary. "You’re still wearing it... Does that mean you haven’t fully escaped its control?"

Yu Yin’s expression turned odd. "Well... It’s more like we’re holding each other hostage."

"To be precise, our Abilities happen to counter each other. Neither can overpower the other right now."

Yu Yin fell into reminiscence.

After a friend she’d bumped into asked if she wanted to try on the red dress, Yu Yin had sensed its hypnotic allure and tried to look away.

But when she opened her mouth to refuse, her words twisted into: "Sure... What a beautiful dress."

Yu Yin’s Ability specialized in flesh manipulation, leaving her vulnerable to mental attacks.

Soon, her mind was completely ensnared by the dress. She bent down, caressing the skirt with near-reverence.

So beautiful... Such a stunning red!

This wasn’t a color achievable with ordinary dye. It was the red of warm blood gushing from veins—so vivid it made Yu Yin want to flay herself open, splinter her ribs, tear out her still-beating heart, and use the deepest crimson from her heart's chambers to adorn it!

Teetering on madness, she thought only by smearing her entire body’s flesh and blood could she create such a dazzling shade.

She wanted—no, needed—to wear this dress... No! To hide it inside her body, let its red merge with her blood, never to part again...

In a daze, Yu Yin chased after that flash of scarlet, following her "friend" back to her friend's dorm, eagerly awaiting the moment the dress would embrace her.

Inside, the friend removed the dress, revealing a body stripped of skin—exposed muscle fibers and veins pulsing beneath raw, red flesh.

Beneath the crimson layers, the outlines of bones and organs were faintly visible, arteries throbbing rhythmically.

She looked horrifying, like a mutilated corpse.

Yet neither Yu Yin nor another girl, similarly entranced by the dress, paid the gruesome sight any mind—their attention wholly consumed by the red garment.

The friend let the other girl try the dress first, smiling at Yu Yin, who was scowling at being made to wait. "Don’t worry, Xiao Yin. You’re my closest friend. Of course, I’ll save the best for last."

The other girl eagerly pulled the dress over herself. Her figure was curvier than the friend’s, making the dress several sizes too small. Yet she forced herself into it, twisting and squeezing as if wedging herself into a narrow pipe.

The dress’s material was silken yet unyielding.

No matter how hard the girl tugged, stretched, or strained, the fabric showed not a single pucker or stretch. Instead, her own flesh turned an angry red from the pressure, her bones and muscles reshaping to fit the dress’s silhouette.

When she finally wore it fully, Yu Yin even heard the sickening crunch of bones—as if her ribs had snapped clean through to conform to the dress's shape.

"Hahaha..."

The girl seemed oblivious to pain, her face flushed with excitement as she paced contentedly before the mirror, occasionally letting out eerie, chilling laughter.

Swaying her waist as if dancing, the crimson skirt, red as blood, billowed up and down, giving Yu Yin an uncanny feeling—

It was as though the skirt itself was the one admiring its reflection, judging whether this body could bear its beauty.

Behind the girl, thin tendrils snaked out from the skirt like leeches, burrowing greedily into her flesh to suck the scarlet lifeblood.

Soon, the girl’s lips grew pale and dull, while the dress, now sated with blood, became even more vivid and dazzling.

The friend leaned intimately against Yu Yin’s back, her raw, exposed flesh pressing against Yu Yin’s smooth skin. She whispered, "Yin, don’t you think the dress has grown even more beautiful?"

"Happy? *Now it’s your turn to wear it...*"

The players listened to Yu Yin’s account, so drawn in they tensed up as if they were there themselves.

"Then what? Did you really put it on?"

One player couldn’t help but ask, watching her closely, afraid that Yu Yin had long been controlled by the red dress and might suddenly force it onto another player.

"Right, I put it on," Yu Yin admitted helplessly. "But after wearing it, I actually regained my senses."

"Because it tried to consume my life force—and flesh control happens to be my Ability’s specialty. It triggered my instincts. Even if my mind wasn’t clear, my powers automatically resisted."

"So now, the dress and I are stuck in a bizarre standoff. It can’t feed on me, nor can it find a new target. But if I try to take it off, I’ll succumb to its lure again and put it right back on..."

"..."

The players were stunned. They’d never heard of someone living symbiotically with an urban legend.

Chang Shuyue’s reporter instincts kicked in, eager to record this for the "Strange Tales" column.

Meanwhile, Chu Fu secretly scanned Yu Yin’s future through the lens of fate.

From this day on, the strand of Yu Yin’s fate would intertwine with a dark red strand, entangled long after this dungeon ended and continuing into the distant future...

He couldn’t help but pity her—she’d accidentally glitched and was now irrevocably linked to the red dress.

Perhaps, in the distant future, the dress would become a useful tool in her hands.

But for now, it remained a persistent nuisance she couldn’t shake off.

"Looks like I might have to wear it through this dungeon," Yu Yin sighed, drooping over the table. "But walking around in such an eye-catching, hypnotic dress is so inconvenient! What a pain!"