Vol 3: Chapter 4-1.
“Enter the beam within thirty seconds. Target locked, starting transportation to The Grudge.”
Five people, no, it was five people and Arnold standing inside the beam.
That same half awake state, by the time they woke up, they were inside a very normal room. The floor was covered with tatami (rice straw mat), the rooms were divided by shoji (paper door). By the style and decorations of this room, this was a Japanese house.
The five of them immediately counted the people on the floor. The result terrified them. There were fifteen newbies, including the five of them would make the difficulty reach twenty.
The more people there were, the more difficult the movie was. In Alien, fifteen people caused God to change the plot and almost wiped them out. And this time, the number of people reached the maximum allowed.
Jie fell on the floor and mumbled. “The Grudge, it’s The Grudge, and it’s The Grudge with twenty people difficulty… we are…”
Lan recovered from the shock and ran over to the window. This was a residential house. She was looking outside from the second floor, but if she were to look at the house from outside, this house was exactly the same as the one in the movie.
Lan turned around with a pale face and said to Xuan. “You’re probably not experienced in this type of movies, let me analyze it this time?”
Xuan nodded silently.
Some newbies had started to wake up, but Lan didn’t pay much attention to them. She began to explain the concept of a Ju on (curse).
“A Ju on is when a person filled with grudge dies, that grudge becomes a curse. This curse usually lingers at the place where the person lived. Once someone enters this place, this person will be killed by the curse. The cursed place in this movie… is this house!”
Lan touched her forehead and continued. “Once someone gets cursed in this movie, that person will definitely die. Perhaps after a few days, or a few weeks, the ghost will kill that person eventually!”
Zheng sighed. “You’re saying we have all been cursed? Once the movie starts, we can get killed anytime?”
Lan forced a smile. “Yes… this is the type of movies that can’t be explained with science. We don’t have any means to analyze how the ghost kills, we don’t even know how to avoid them… Then what can be our mission?”
They looked at their watches at the same time. Their mission was to survive seven days. There was also another option, killing the main body of Kayako once will be rewarded with a rank B reward and 5000 points!
“A rank B reward and 5000 points?” Jie jumped up from the tatami and shouted excitedly. “Shit, that’s worth risking our lives. We just have to complete this one then we can do whatever we want.”
That lighten up the stressful atmosphere. Zheng laughed. “You really think it would be easy? Think how scary the Queen was and everyone only got a rank D reward, and I got an extra 3000 points. Kayako must be even scarier.”
The five of them fell into silence again…
It had been nine days since Zheng returned to God’s World. He almost hadn’t spoken a word to Xuan since then. He spent the time discussing combat techniques with Jie and Zero, and training to use guns and other survival skills. It wasn’t until right before they were about to enter the third movie did Xuan came up to him. He handed them each a cellphone looking device.
“One each, they can communicate without getting interfered by satellite signals. Maximum distance is 50 kilometers. I think this should be useful in a team.”
Xuan also barely spoke with anyone since then. He spent his time making this device and a large amount of bullets. To everyone’s curiosity, he spent the rest of his points in magical bullets. These bullets looked the same as normal ones but had rune words carved on the shells.
Without rhyme and reason, the rest of them, including Zheng, also exchanged a large amount of magical bullets. This was the cheapest item that can damage spiritual monsters, and it could be used in any gun. Zheng stored a cubic meter of bullets in his ring. In contrast, he only got a few armor piercing shells.
The people without a Na ring exchanged tactical backpacks and stocked them with hemostasis sprays, bandage, antidotes, rations, solidified water in capsules, and a winter jacket. These things spent every point they had. Since some people had more points than others, Zheng had to fill the gaps with his points.
Zheng sat on the tatami in silence as he watched Lan explain the rules to the newbies. He recalled the plot of this movie in his mind.
The Grudge was a trilogy. He had actually watched this famous movie within the past few days. He could still recall the details vividly. The most unforgettable thing was no one survived the Ju on.
The plot started with Kayako loving a man in secret during college. Yet due to her unsocial personality, she could only stare at him from a distance and write her feelings down in diary. That man wasn’t aware of Kayako and dated another woman at the same time. He married that woman shortly after, but it left Kayako with hatred.
Then Kayako went through a serious of unfortunate events. The cat that grew up with her died, both her parents died in a car accident. And at this time, her heart was filled with grudge.
Kayako married another man shortly after and gave birth to a boy. She lived in peace for a few years until the boy was old enough to go to school. She found out that the boy’s teacher was the man she had loved.
At the same time her husband found out he suffered from male infidelity, that it was difficult for him to have a child. He also discovered Kayako’s diary and assumed that boy was the product of an affair. He became abusive and tortured and killed Kayako then hid the body in the attic. He also killed the man Kayako loved afterward.
Yet the fact was that child actually belonged to Kayako and her husband. The misunderstanding and torture from her husband drove her grudge to the limit. So this place became cursed.
This was the plot he knew. Even though The Grudge was a trilogy, all three movies told the same thing, how Kayako killed anyone that entered this house.
(Kill Kayako? When her ghost appears, can we kill her with magical bullets? If it is possible then wouldn’t it be too easy compared with the difficulty and rewards?)
As Zheng was thinking, a bulky man with his face red shouted. “I was doing business on the internet and clicked on a pop up, how did I get here? F*ck, have you knocked me out with anesthesia from behind then brought me to the room next door to blackmail me? Don’t you think this is creative, countless people had done it before…”
All the newbies aside from three people seemed rather normal, whether it was their clothing, expressions, or reactions. These three people started talking loudly and the red faced man even started to go downstairs, eight people followed him.
Of the three people, a boy about fifteen years old sat there reading a book quietly. A man was studying the tatami and shoji. A young woman was lying on the tatami, it looked like she wasn’t even awake, dressed in sexy pajamas with her eyes out of focus.
There were also three young men in their twenties that stayed. The reason was they had been staring at that sexy woman.
Lan was about to stop people from leaving but Zheng got a hold of her. “Let them leave. This is the first spirit type movie we encountered. We don’t have the ability to help anybody. If they want to trust us and stay beside us, then we can protect them a bit, but if they want to leave… then let luck decide their fate.”
The man that was studying the tatami stopped and sighed. “I am starting to believe your words. This is the layout of a Japanese residential house. The designs of tatami and shoji were also popular in Japan ten years ago…”
The woman yawned. “Japan? How did I get here? I remember I was chatting on the internet. Oh right, why are you in my house?” She took a look around, realized the environment was different and screamed.
A woman’s voice came from downstairs when Zheng was about to speak. She was speaking in Japanese! This woman was probably one of the movie characters. The movie starts when they can interact with the characters.
Suddenly a chill wind swept across everyone. Yet no one else except Zheng felt this coldness. His body trembled and he immediately took out the submachine gun, it was coincidentally loaded with magical bullets, and fired at the attic.
Everyone looked at him in confusion, but Zheng could sense that coldness subsided. They didn’t realize an air of darkness stuck to their body… even on Zheng’s body.
“Is this… the Ju on?”
