This Damned Thirst for Survival
chapter-60

There was a loud bang in the bathroom.

Fu Wei was thrown to the ground by Jiang Luo.

One of the dark-haired youth’s knees rested menacingly against Fu Wei’s neck, Jiang Luo smiled and looked down, patting Fu Wei’s cheek gently, “Don’t do things like this that make your brother Jiang very uncomfortable, okay?”

Fu Wei frowned and touched his lips, the corners of his mouth were broken. No one would have thought that the youth who had overpowered him, such an overly thin body, could be so powerful.

Jiang Luo cocked his head, and he warned with a smirk, “Spit at me again, and I’ll press the butt of the cigarette in your face.”

As he said this, he pulled Fu Lu out of his shirt and stuck it on Fu Wei’s body.

Jiang Luo has not forgotten his gamble with Chi You, and he needs to find out what Chi You is.

Fu Wei has some similarities and some differences. But it’s better to be wrong than to be wrong, and Jiang Luo’s Fu Lu is free anyway.

At the critical moment, Fu Wei grabbed his wrist and frowned in repulsion, “What are you doing?”

Jiang Luo didn’t bother to talk to him, his knees pushed hard and Fu Wei grunted as the force in his hands slackened.

Fu Lu is almost posted, but there is a knock on the bathroom door.

“Are you all right?” Zhang Cheng’s voice hid the excited apprehension of a good show underneath the concern, “What’s going on? Someone’s here with a video camera, they want to record something.”

Fu Wei took the opportunity to roll to the ground and sit up with his back against the bathroom door, his long legs propped up and his arms resting on his knees, holding his anger in check, “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

It doesn’t look like it, it really doesn’t.

But if Chi You is going to play the “guess who” game with him, he certainly won’t reveal himself in a blatant way.

Jiang Luo stood up regretfully and collected Fu Lu to open the door.

Zhang Cheng looked twice into the bathroom and saw the blood on the corner of Fu Wei’s lip and let out an “ah”, “Fu Wei, what is this ……”

“What’s wrong?” A gentle voice asked.

Jiang Luo looks with the voice and sees another handsome man.

This is Xi Si, the second runner-up in Next Stop Idol. He is much better looking in person than on camera, humble and polite, and very caring.

“How did you get hurt?” Xi Si frowned, “Don’t touch the wound, Zhang Cheng, go to my dormitory and bring the medical kit.”

“Okay, Brother Xi.” Without another word, Zhang Cheng ran out.

Fu Wei sits in his seat with a sullen face and doesn’t say a word.

Zhao Ban didn’t even dare to speak, Xi Si seemed to be worried as if he didn’t notice the condensation in the atmosphere, “We’re recording tomorrow, how are you going to be on camera like this? I’ll ask the manager for an egg to roll around and see if I can get the make-up artist to cover it up when I do my make-up tomorrow.”

Fu Wei’s face clouded over, “None of your business.”

No one would lick his face if he said that to anyone else. But Xi Si’s smile remains the same and he kindly warns, “Fu Wei, be careful, there are cameras.”

Jiang Luo is hidden behind people watching them.

He has no intention of coming up to the camera, nor is he worried about having it on him. The director had promised to keep him out of the film as much as possible, and as a bystander, Jiang Luo could clearly see the undercurrents beneath the surface of this peaceful group of people.

It’s kinda fun.

But he wanted to stand by, and someone didn’t want him to. Not sure if it was genuine kindness or fake kindness, Xi Si took the initiative and looked at Jiang Luo , “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

The camera follows his words and focuses on Jiang Luo.

Jiang Luo narrowed his eyes and looked critically at Xi Si.

Xi Si walked over to his bedside and looked at the name tag and smiled, ” Jiang Huan , a very nice name and beautiful characters. Xiaohua, take a shot at your new teammate’s writing.”

The trainee called Xiaohua gave a “hey” and obediently went up to Jiang Luo and patted his character.

This is a deliberate attempt to give Jiang Luo a shot.

If Jiang Luo was really a mere trainee, he would probably be grateful to Xi Si.

The dark lens shifts from the nameplate to Jiang Luo’s face, the rounded lens like a giant eyeless eye. Jiang Luo glances casually at the camera, but stops dead in his tracks.

A sticky feeling of voyeurism clings to his bones, burrowing into the crevices as his delicate teeth gnaw at Jiang Luo’s bony flesh. It was as if someone was watching him through this camera, no, had been watching Jiang Luo for a long time, perhaps since Jiang Luo had first stepped into the location of Next Stop Idol, since Jiang Luo had been testing out others …… only Jiang Luo He didn’t notice.

Now, as if teasing its prey, the gaze surfaced, deliberately allowing Jiang Luo to spot it.

As an afterthought, a chill ran down his back and Jiang Luo stared soberly into the camera, his sweat standing on end for a moment.

The person holding the camera stumbled backwards two steps, sweating profusely as he put it down and looked at Jiang Luo in horror, “Brother Xi, Xi, his eyes are so scary!”

In that moment, he even felt as if the man was going to kill him.

The eyes of the crowd were on Jiang Luo’s body.

Jiang Luo’s eyes were nothing special, and he looked back strangely, “What’s scary about my eyes?”

Jiang Luo’s eyes were so normal, and there was a smile that swirled in the tilted end of his eyes, that not only was it not scary, it was beautiful. So normal that it was as if the look he had just seen was an illusion.

“I’m sorry ……,” he finally said.

Xi Si didn’t stay in their room for long, and after all this fuss, it was getting late and Jiang Luo washed up in bed.

Zhang Cheng subconsciously glanced at Jiang Luo, ” Can Jiang Huan sleep with the light on?”

Jiang Luo said lazily, “I’ll do as I please.”

Fu Wei looked coldly at Zhang Cheng , “If you don’t want to die, don’t turn off the lights.”

Thinking Fu Wei was threatening him, Zhang Cheng took a few deep breaths and returned to bed with an embarrassed look on his face, hanging his clothes as a curtain along the edge of the bed.

The room fell silent and Jiang Luo took a short nap, waking up at twelve midnight. The sound of breathing in the dormitory was hushed and everyone else was asleep. Jiang Luo got under the covers under the cover of the light and pulled out his mobile phone.

“When’s the action?”

Lu Youyi said, “I have someone here who is still awake, so I guess I’ll be a bit late.”

“I’ll be a bit late too,” Ye Xun said, “there’s someone in my room who’s very strange and he’s very hostile to me.”

As we were chatting, a text message popped up at the top of the phone and Jiang Luo casually tapped on it, which contained only five words: [Have you found me?]

The mobile number of the text message was unfamiliar, and the content did not include a name, but Jiang Luo knew instantly who had sent it to him.

He pressed his phone out and quickly poked his head out to look at the top bunk.

Fu Wei’s back is turned out of the bed and there appears to be no mobile phone in her hands.

Jiang Luo returned to bed when a new text message arrived on his phone.

[If I can be found on the first day, there might be a little surprise]

Jiang Luo, who had seen the face of Chi You in the flat words, gave a short, cold laugh and dialled the number back.

There was a faint ringing of a mobile phone outside the door.

Jiang Luo tugs on his jacket and drapes it over him, walking cleanly out the door, his steps as fast as if he were flying. There are bright lights in the corridor, but no one is there, and small moths buzz around the incandescent lamps.

“Jingle bells.”

The phone rings at the end of the corridor.

Jiang Luo gathers his coat and steps into the darkness.

There is an escape route at the end of the corridor and the lights in the stairwell are dark. A mobile phone rings in front of the stairway in solitude, vibrating more than once.

It was like a crude and stupid trap, and Jiang Luo looked around the phone.

The stairway was dark. It didn’t make sense for the corridor to be lit while the stairway, where safety accidents are more likely to occur, was unlit. Jiang Luo suddenly remembered Fu Wei’s words, “If you don’t want to die, then don’t turn off the lights”.

Is this statement really a threat?

What happens if the lights are turned off?

The unanswered phone stops ringing and Jiang Luo sends another message.

[Your disappearance is the biggest surprise to me]

After sending it, Jiang Luo stared at the phone in the stairway. The phone did light up for a moment, and Jiang Luo thought, “Will Chi You show up?

But after a brief silence, his phone lit up instead.

A message came to him from the untouched phone in front of him, [How can I leave you when you’re so funny?]

Jiang Luo : “……”

He put his phone down with a grimace and looked around, finding the hallway light switch on the wall.

Jiang Luo, a bold man with a lot of courage and a lot of anger now, simply pressed the light out.

A curse that he lowered his voice to came from the darkness.

Three of the corridor lights went out.

The moment it was extinguished, Jiang Luo saw what appeared to be a human being standing in the darkness in the distance, a withered, straight human shadow.

He froze and immediately turned on the light.

In the light, there was nothing in the corridor, and the place where the man had just stood was empty.

Jiang Luo rubs his fingertips over the open light and turns it off again.

The withered human shadow appears again, but unlike the last time, it turns to face Jiang Luo.

The discomfort of being watched by something came keenly.

Jiang Luo’s breathing lightens as he turns on the light, and in the light, there is still nothing.

But the empty corridor seems to be hiding some ghostly creature that cannot be seen by the human eye. The unknown means fear, and Jiang Luo turns off the light again.

But the last time the dark figure was 20 metres away, it was in front of Jiang Luo, only three metres away from him.

Jiang Luo jerked on the light.

The black shadow disappears.

In a few moments, Jiang Luo’s forehead was already covered in sweat.

Just a second away, he felt the dark figure about to pounce.

It was a shock, but Jiang Luo got a good look at the dark figure. The body was long and lean, the arms were long and draped around the knees, and there were no features on the face.

What’s this?!

Jiang Luo recalled the dark figure over and over again, etching every detail of it into his mind, before his heart gradually calmed down.

If something like this does appear when the lights are turned off, it means Fu Wei definitely knows something.

Jiang Luo recalls where the monster was standing when the lights were first turned off.

He looks up and walks towards where the monster was standing before, and has just taken a step out when Jiang Luo’s mobile phone rings.

But Jiang Luo had clearly silenced his phone.

He stops in his tracks and takes out his phone. The top of the phone shows a string of calls from an unfamiliar mobile number, the same one that Chi You had sent him a message from.

Jiang Luo purses his lips and turns his head to the stairway, where there is still only a constantly vibrating mobile phone.

He pressed the answer button and held the phone to his ear.

“I haven’t let you go,” the man said with a low chuckle, “how can you.”

Jiang Luo is about to hang up the phone.

But the lights furthest away from him suddenly went out one by one.

Jiang Luo’s arms stiffened and he lifted the phone again, ” Chi You, are you threatening me?”

He gazed into the distant darkness, but the long, thin, ghostly figure did not appear in the darkness.

But Jiang Luo knew that the monster was hiding in the darkness.

“I just want to continue the game with you,” the man replied, “now it’s time for you to answer my question.”

Chi You has a surprising amount of patience with Jiang Luo.

But he himself did not seem to notice.

Jiang Luo presses the corner of his forehead, and every time Chi You appears, it easily stirs up his anger. The evil spirit stomps on Jiang Luo’s nerves and laughs, but Jiang Luo just wants to take his knife and cut him into pieces.

“On reflection,” Jiang Luo tugged at his lips, “this game you have set up, Mr. Evil, is not inherently fair.”

The evil spirit smiled vaguely, “Hmm?”

“I need both to find you and to make sure I don’t try to screw the Chi family, meeting both conditions to achieve victory,” the dark haired youth clasped his arms, his brow mocking, “but not you, you only need me to fail at one of them to win the game. ”

Mr. Evil Ghost let out a “Well” and came to his senses, “Yes indeed.”

Jiang Luo said, “You were at least a character when you were alive, but an evil spirit when you were dead, and that’s how you bully people?”

The evil spirit smothered a moment of laughter, “You’re right.”

“Then change the rules.”

Somewhere.

Chi You holds out a pale hand.

A wild cat passing by was caught in his hand.

The wildcat gave a shrill cry as Chi You’s fingers brushed over its head, and soon it was reveling in his touch, voluntarily stretching its neck and allowing the cold, hard, ghostly hand to stroke its chin.

Chi You gently circles the wildcat’s neck.

The prey obeys him as if Jiang Luo is bowing down to him.

His voice was pleasant, but his hands kept pushing harder and harder, and the wildcat had nowhere to run in his grip.

“Since it is to be fair, you should not use your Fu Lu and bracelet either. If you complete both, I will add a secret,” the evil spirit said in a low voice, “but with that, you will have to give something.”

“Every night, you need to tell me an answer to who you think I am, and if you get it wrong, then,” the evil spirit mused for a moment, “you will receive a small punishment.”

At the end of this sentence, the phone was hung up.

Chi You slowly stroked the cat and muttered to himself, “How should I punish him.”

The wild cat in his hand seems to have turned into Jiang Luo. At the moment when the wild cat is about to suffocate, he suddenly bites Chi You’s palm hard, his hands and feet stare at each other, his sharp nails scratching blood marks on Chi You’s hand, and abruptly leaps out of sight.

Jiang Luo squeezed his phone, his eyes sunken. He turned and walked towards where the monster had been standing before, but walked in front of his own dormitory.

He pushed open the door and the dormitory was quiet, the leaves outside the window swayed as if a wildcat had flown by.

Jiang Luo walks over to the bed and sits down.

What is the monster in the dark shadow and why is that monster standing outside this dormitory door, is it a coincidence or is it hiding a deeper meaning?

Fuckin’ Chi You.

Adding to the hustle and bustle.

Jiang Luo glances around.

Although the dormitory was brightly lit, Jiang Luo felt that once the lights were turned off, the monster was still following him.

It was three metres away before, and with the lights off again, it might have reached face-to-face distance with Jiang Luo.

Jiang Luo simply got up, walked to the bathroom and took out three coins from his pocket.

According to Jiang Luo’s understanding, divination and fortune-telling are strictly two different things, as divination is about the general sign of the trigrams and asking vague questions. For example, Feng Li’s third reading of Jiang Luo’s “very bad” trigram only gives him the overall result of “very bad”, but not the details of it.

Divination is a little more detailed and can give you the exact answer. For example, if a person loses something, fortune telling can only tell you if you can find it, but divination can tell you in which direction it is lost.

But to divine, one has to give clear questions. What was lost and when was it lost, but most diviners in the occult ask unanswered questions and have no way of asking them in detail. As it was, Jiang Luo did not know exactly who Chi You was, and could not ask more detailed questions if he wanted to; he could only use vague questions to work out a rough result.

As the first trigram warmed up, Jiang Luo asked a question that he didn’t know would be useful: “What should I do against the enemy?”

The three coins are thrown repeatedly and the final trigram is presented to Jiang Luo: the loss trigram.

Jiang Luo : “……”

The name, alone, would already represent the inauspiciousness of this trigram.

It is also true that the trigram of loss is a lower trigram, but one of the more unusual of the lower trigrams.

Its presence does not necessarily mean that it is bad, and if it can be reversed, it can sometimes represent a win-win situation or, conversely, cause damage to the host side against the guest side.

The meaning of the trigram of loss is to gain and lose checks and balances.

It means that Jiang Luo will lose some profit, but if he uses his own loss as bait to overcome the strong with the soft, he will check the strong opponent and gain more profit.

It is even possible that Jiang Luo could have used this bait to inflict serious damage on his opponent.

Although it was a downward spiral, there was still a chance of a turnaround. Jiang Luo, having consoled himself, still could not figure out what he meant by “using his loss as bait”.

Never mind, just forget about it for now.

Jiang Luo picked up the copper plate and began again to read the trigrams of Fu Wei, Zhang Cheng and Zhao Ban.

He couldn’t ask the three directly if they were Chi You, so he had to take a roundabout approach, “Are they bad for me?”

The results were unexpected, with the exception of Fu Wei, who was a medium, and Zhang Cheng and Zhao Ban, both of whom had some animosity towards Jiang Luo.

Jiang Luo raised an eyebrow, while Yu Guang glanced at the mirror and thought it made sense.

After all, Jiang Luo was, in their view, their competition.

He tossed the coins into his pocket, not counting them, no point.

After all, Zhang Cheng and Zhao Ban are not the only two people who are hostile to Jiang Luo here.

Fu Wei This kind of Chinese trigram, which could not be seen to be enemy or friendly, was the one that deserved his attention.

It was almost 1am when Lu Youyi and Ye Xun finally got out of their room and the three of them gingerly left the dormitory building and headed for the studio.

The three of them found nothing in the studio, however, and went back to the dormitory building with nothing to show for it.

“By the way, Ye Xun ,” Jiang Luo asked, “what’s this you say about people in the dorm who are hostile to you?”

Ye Xun shakes his head, the warm light of the street lamp reflected in Xiao Fen’s dark eyes, “His name is Zhang Feng and I’ve heard a lot of gossip that there was some friction between him and the dead trainee in my dorm. He pushed me when I was sleeping in the dead trainee’s bed and said something like ‘who are you to replace him’, sounding like he was upset about the dead guy.”

Therein lies the strange point.

Why did Ye Xun, who occupied the other trainee’s position after his death, hate him when he was obviously not on good terms before he died?

And Ye Xun has a feeling in the back of his mind.

Zhang Feng is not really upset about the old man, he is just using this method to vent his fear and anger on Ye Xun’s body.

The first night here yielded only a few questions. After waking up the next day, Jiang Luo lazily followed the crowd, yawning as he walked unhurriedly into the recording hall and stood behind them.

The crowd managed to hold him back, with Lu Youyi and Ye Xun also standing at the end, the three of them like three salted fish, not wanting to show their faces at all.

But they didn’t expect that there would be others more salty than them.

The staff member said with a dark look on his face, “Is Szigui late again?”

The crowd roared with laughter and someone said with a mocking tone, “If he’s so unmotivated, why is he still here?”

“Every day he has a fierce face, damn it, I’m in the same dorm with him and I’m about to be scared to death.”

“Hahahaha you guys stop it, Jiao Jiao is obviously so cute!”

Lu Youyi said wanly, “I also know a friend called Jiao Jiao, who is also particularly cute.”

Jiang Luo paused and patted the arm of the man in front of him, “Dude, who’s this Jiao Jiao?”

The guy in front of me said, “This Jiao Jiao is one of our most basic trainees here, he can’t even sing or dance, he just makes a face. When the teacher asked him what his name was on the first day of the grading show, he said his first name was Jiao Jiao and his nickname was Dead Ghost. I don’t know where the accent came from, Si Gui was called Dead Ghost, pfft …… sorry sorry sorry, we all burst out laughing at that moment, and the teacher couldn’t help but laugh and asked him why he came to the competition, do you know what he said?”

“He said he was told that being on the show would allow his friends to see him, and when his friends saw him, they would come to him.”