"Alright." The white paper resident stood up first, then reached out and pulled Mu Anqi up by the arm. "I accept your request to stay. Inside the house, you may move freely and use my belongings as you wish. As long as you don't intentionally cause damage, I won't mind."
This girl's hand was really cold, and the strength she used to pull her was great—she easily lifted her up. But the resident controlled the force well and didn't hurt her. Mu Anqi felt her earlier assumptions might have been a bit off. This white paper resident… could it be a neutral being? No, but they were also devotees of the Goddess of Beauty!
"Of course, if you still want to play games with me, that's fine too." The resident continued in that emotionless tone, "However, there's no need to give me those little snacks."
"You don't like them?"
"Lord Beauty despises greedy people. As followers of the Lord, we must not harbor greed."
Mu Anqi was stunned. A blank sheet of paper—it was impossible to read any expression on the resident's face, and she couldn't tell whether the resident was telling the truth or lying. But… they were devotees of the Goddess of Beauty. Whether the Goddess of Beauty was real or not, in the eyes of the followers, the Goddess of Beauty favored honest believers. Which meant everything these followers said was true.
"Have you ever seen Goddess of Beauty?" Mu Anqi asked cautiously.
"No. Only those who join the Goddess of Beauty's followers have a chance to see the Lord." When the white paper resident said this, there was a hint of regret and longing in their tone.
"…" Mu Anqi certainly remembered that when she first asked the white paper resident, they had said that more than half of the Goddess of Beauty's followers were once outsiders—that meant players, didn't it? Players turned into followers of the Goddess of Beauty and were forever kept here… wasn't that basically death?! "Then, how do you join the Goddess of Beauty's followers?"
"I don't know," the white paper resident said. "The Lord is everywhere, constantly testing Her followers. When I pass the trials, the Lord will surely send a divine message and summon me."
Mu Anqi was silent for a moment and then changed the subject. She figured that if the white paper resident had already joined the Goddess of Beauty's followers, they wouldn't still be like this. "Your home is really clean. Do you clean it every day?"
"Our city is called Samsara City." Mu Anqi inexplicably saw a trace of confusion from that blank sheet, as if the resident couldn't understand why Mu Anqi would ask such a question. "A cycle lasts seven days. After seven days, the eighth day is a new beginning. At midnight on the eighth day, everything in the city resets."
"This is thanks to the Lord."
The food in the fridge, the trash produced by players, even the corpses of players… all consumption would disappear when the eighth day arrived. Everything would return to the brand-new state it was in on the first day.
Mu Anqi wasn't shocked by this. When she learned that the name of this trial instance was "Seven-Day Samsara City," she had already suspected as much. What she hadn't expected was that the white paper residents in the city actually retained their memories through the cycles?! She should've realized it sooner—after all, a resident had previously mentioned what happened to players who entered the instance. Remembering it was normal. But when the white paper resident earnestly spoke about the cycle and credited everything to the Lord, Mu Anqi couldn't help but feel a chill down her spine.
Whenever Mu Anqi didn't speak, the white paper resident would also fall silent. That blank paper face always quietly faced her direction, as if this "person" was intently watching her.
"Can the paper on your face be taken off?" Mu Anqi finally asked the question.
"No," the resident replied. "It's a part of my body. Forcibly removing it would be very painful."
Mu Anqi never thought she'd hear the words "it would be very painful" come from the mouth of a ghost. She looked at the resident and hesitated before asking, "Then… can I touch it?"
The white paper resident took a step back, the sheet of paper still facing Mu Anqi. The room fell silent again. A large space now separated Mu Anqi and the white paper resident, with neither of them moving, as if locked in a distant standoff.
Tick, tock. Only the sound of the clock ticking quietly filled the room.
"You may."
The white paper resident spoke.
Clearly… Mu Anqi had felt the atmosphere was incredibly tense. She had thought of more than a dozen four-character blessings in her head, and yet… they agreed?
Mu Anqi was momentarily caught off guard. The white paper resident stepped closer and stopped just within arm's reach. Mu Anqi hesitantly reached out her hand, carefully watching the resident for any sudden movement. But even as her fingertips touched the cold paper, the white paper resident made no move at all.
The cold texture felt no different from ordinary paper. Mu Anqi tried to feel for any facial features beneath the paper, but found nothing—it was as if the paper was pasted onto a completely flat wall.
This feeling was actually a bit creepy—after all, Mu Anqi knew full well that she had entered a survival horror game, not a vacation getaway, and certainly not a romance or pet simulation. But still… if she ignored the abnormal body temperature, the eerie white paper on the face, the stiffness in movement, and the fact that the white paper resident might not even have facial features—Mu Anqi actually found the resident… kind of cute. [T/N: I ship it—!! I scream as I get dragged to a white room]
"Alright, thank you." Mu Anqi withdrew her hand. "Do you know how to cook?"
"I do." After answering, the white paper resident couldn't help but ask, "Are you hungry?"
"I kind of want a late-night snack," Mu Anqi replied, a bit embarrassed. The white paper resident looked creepy and unsettling, but seemed surprisingly easy to talk to. She sat obediently on the sofa, clasped her hands together, and looked at the white paper resident. "Thank you!"
Mu Anqi thought, the white paper resident probably had never seen such a graceful and unique "traveler" like her. She watched the resident stand up and walk toward the fridge, and the once eerie voice now sounded surprisingly normal: "Tomato and egg noodles?"
"Yes!"
While the white paper resident was cooking, Mu Anqi walked to the master bedroom door and looked speechlessly at the candy cane lying flat on the ground. She sighed, picked it up, shrank it down, and slipped it into her pocket.
A short while later.
Slurping tomato and egg noodles and sipping on her fizzy "happy drink," Mu Anqi let out a satisfied burp. Though she didn't know what was happening with the other players who were also staying over, she felt… surely none of them were having a better or more enjoyable time than she was.
After eating and drinking her fill, Mu Anqi walked a few laps around the living room to help digest, then bid the white paper resident goodnight and obediently returned to her room to sleep.
…
Zhao Huazhu was one of the players in the trial instance. On the first day of the game, he hadn't gathered any particularly important information. When he tried to use force to make a white paper resident talk, the Goddess of Beauty followers in tin soldier outfits showed up far too quickly. He was strong, yes, but not enough to take on ten at once. So, he backed off.
He was very confident in his own strength, and since he hadn't found any key info during the day, he decided to stay at a white paper resident's house, using the opportunity to search for clues and close the information gap with the other players. Goddess of Beauty? This was just a survival game—the bosses were all demons and monsters. How could a real deity pop up in a trial? It was all just fake mysticism.
He had been recruited by a black bear demon he encountered in the game. The black bear demon admired his abilities and gave him a trial token. If he passed the trial, he would no longer be just an ordinary player. In the Shattered Mirror Continent, he'd have someone backing him too! In this trial, he was determined to show his worth and use his divine power to drag that so-called "Goddess of Beauty" down from the altar and beat the crap out of her.
With such grand ambition in his heart, Zhao Huazhu confidently left the group of players and followed a white paper resident home.
Zhao Huazhu was very suspicious of what these white paper residents actually were. They all looked more or less the same, with similar body shapes. Apart from distinguishing between male and female by body type, there was nothing else he could tell. He couldn't even differentiate who was who among them. But no matter how creepy they were, it didn't matter—he'd torn apart plenty of ghosts with his bare hands. Those Goddess of Beauty followers had ruined his plans during the day; once he got to this resident's home, he was determined to find out the city lord's weakness from them.
The resident's home was very simply furnished. As soon as Zhao Huazhu entered, he checked the coffee table, cabinets, and other places. He then went into the kitchen, opened the fridge to see if there were any corpses hidden inside. But strangely, the house was too clean, too normal—he found nothing at all. Zhao Huazhu grew a bit irritable. When he turned around, he saw the white paper resident standing at the bedroom door, staring straight at him through that sheet of white paper on its face. At first glance, Zhao Huazhu was startled. Once he realized what it was, he rubbed his arm in annoyance and strode over angrily. "What are you looking at?!"
"You seem to be searching for something? Perhaps I can help you."
Zhao Huazhu let out a cold laugh. That calm voice made him feel slightly insulted. "You think talking like that is gonna scare me? Tch! What am I looking for… what the hell are 'you', anyway?"
"I am a follower of Lord Beauty."
"Goddess of Beauty? Tch…" Zhao Huazhu didn't say anything more, remembering the two rules posted at the players' starting point. He looked at the sheet of paper on the resident's face and roughly dragged the person to the sofa. "Tell me—where is the City Lord's mansion? How can I meet the Goddess of Beauty?"
"Only members of the Goddess of Beauty's followers have a chance to meet the Lord."
"Then how do I become a follower? What's the deal with this city? Do you know where in the City Lord's mansion the pass is kept?" Zhao Huazhu figured these white paper residents were just mass-produced puppets. He fired off several questions in a row, just waiting for the puppet to spit out the answers. He glared at that sheet of white paper on the resident's face—it annoyed him no matter how he looked at it. With that thing plastered on their face, he couldn't even tell whether the resident was lying.
"I don't know," the white paper resident replied.
"Heh, take that thing off your face," Zhao Huazhu said. After talking to this white paper resident for so long, he still hadn't seen any trace of a puppet's true nature. He started thinking—maybe this was the key to the "stay-over"? During the stay, the Goddess of Beauty followers didn't patrol inside the white paper residents' homes. In other words…
"Are you talking about this?" The white paper resident touched the sheet on their face. "It is part of me and cannot be removed."