Chapter 414: Seven-Day Marriage Bureau
"You're just a special item that barely has human consciousness. If Uncle Fan Xiao's body isn't here, how could the human skin you're wearing possibly stay on?" Bai Kou stared coldly at him. "Do you think I'm joking with you? Or do you want me to strip off your skin before you'll talk?"
"Let me warn you—once I strip off your skin, you'll turn back into a toy spider, and you'll never be the butler of Rose Castle again."
Mr. Dong stood silently in place, his usually expressionless face turning gloomy. Behind him, darkness crept rapidly out from the corners of the castle.
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On the train heading to the Deep Blue Laboratory station, Xu Huo used the "Actor's Mask" to swap for a plain, honest-looking face. Unfortunately, as soon as he boarded, he stepped into a trap.
It wasn't that someone had targeted him—rather, a male player was showing off his item to some female players, and Xu Huo accidentally stepped into it.
When the train arrived at the station, he was teleported directly into a seat. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw a ring of red light gathering around his feet. Before he could react, the red light quickly shrank to his right wrist, forming a red cord. The other end of the cord was connected to the male player sitting in the seat next to him.
After he appeared, the other party also looked utterly incredulous.
The dozen or so players in the carriage burst into laughter. Two girls in punk outfits in the front seats winked at them. "Chu Yuan, your item is pretty interesting, huh? A marriage bureau? Can two men actually get married?"
Xu Huo tried to cut the cord, but the young man in the next seat said mournfully, "Don't bother cutting it. That rope can't be cut—it'll last at least seven days."
Xu Huo's eyelid twitched. "You can't take the item back?"
"I can't..." Before the young man could finish, he saw the dagger that had failed to cut the rope now aimed at his neck. He quickly leaned back. "Killing me won't work either! This item is called the Seven-Day Marriage Bureau. Once two people are tied together, they enter a 'marital relationship' that only automatically dissolves after seven days. If I die, you'll have to drag my corpse around!"
"Can't you just cut off your hand?" a female player giggled, sticking out her tongue with a tongue stud.
"Hey, hey, don't say such terrifying things, okay?" the young man quickly said. "How can you harm your partner's remains during the 'marital relationship'? Haven't you heard of 'sharing life and death'? If you stab me, it's like stabbing yourself. It won't sever your hand, but at least for seven days, your hand will be useless!"
"Then how will you do instances!"
Xu Huo narrowed his eyes, as if trying to gauge the truth of his words.
"Little brother, don't worry. I have a lie-detecting item here—I'll use it to see if he's telling the truth." The tongue-stud girl from the front pulled out a fierce-looking stone statue and placed it on the table. "This item is the Mouth of Truth. Stick your hand in, and if you tell a lie, it'll bite your hand off. This isn't like the tourist version—it really will bite your hand off."
The other players in the carriage started egging them on. "What's a severed hand? A real man wouldn't even cry if his dick got bitten off!"
"That's right! Today's sunny and fine—perfect for losing a hand! Go for it, big bros have plenty of self-healing agents, guaranteed painless amputation!"
"Chu Yuan, hurry up! You don't want to be chained to a guy, do you?"
Not just this carriage, but players from the front and back carriages also crowded over to watch the fun, shouting and placing bets with those around them on whether Chu Yuan would cut off his hand.
Xu Huo noticed that most of these people had dark skin and dressed in a tropical style. Although they didn't know each other, they acted completely familiar. For a moment, he felt like he had walked into a Wild West saloon or was gathered around a campfire singing and dancing—completely different from the usual train atmosphere.
Chu Yuan, pushed around by the crowd, had his face flushed red. He stared at the stone statue's mouth, his hands trembling.
"No," Xu Huo said, pressing down on his arm. "If he gets his hand bitten off, I lose out too."
"Tch!" The players dragged out their voices. The tongue-stud girl winked at him. "Little brother, you're so timid. Want me to show you?"
With that, she brazenly pulled out a fake hand and placed it inside the stone statue. First, she said, "I am a woman."
The stone statue didn't react. Then she said, "I am a man."
The statue's open mouth snapped shut, biting the fake hand clean off. It crunched and chewed, but probably didn't like the taste, so after two bites, it spat everything out onto the girl's face.
"Haha!" The tongue-stud girl wiped the debris off her face and said to Xu Huo, "As long as it's a hand—real or fake—it works. Worst case, you get spit on! Hehe! My item's got personality!"
But the onlookers weren't satisfied. "Fake hands are boring! We want to see real blood and a real man!"
Chu Yuan quickly hid his hand under the table. "If you want to bleed so badly, go do it yourselves. I'm not doing it. It's just being locked up for seven days..."
Before he could finish, Xu Huo had already borrowed a fake hand from the tongue-stud girl and handed it to him. "Go ahead. Better to break a fake hand than a real one."
Chu Yuan's face flushed with anger. Just as he was about to stand up, a burly tattooed player next to him pushed him back down. "Everyone's having fun, don't be a killjoy. This train goes straight to the Sayil Coast, and there's no stop after this. If you don't follow the players' unwritten rules, you know what happens when you reach the coast, right?"
Chu Yuan's face twitched. He shot Xu Huo a hateful glare before reluctantly placing the fake hand inside. He repeated the item's effects he had explained earlier, adding in detail that during the item's activation, if either party in the 'marital relationship' got hurt, the other would feel it too. If Xu Huo cut off his hand, it was uncertain whether the item would deactivate, but his own hand definitely wouldn't recover within seven days.
Before the person involved could say anything, the bettors nearby were already unhappy. They moved the stone statue to another table and started playing a question-and-answer game with real hands, asking all sorts of unrestrained questions. The respondents, of course, didn't care about privacy and said whatever they wanted.
But after a few rounds, some found it boring and deliberately answered wrong just to get the stone statue to bite. However, these players were clever—they used traits or items to protect their hands. The statue couldn't bite through, so it just spat dust in their faces.
"Is there something special about the Sayil Coast that makes the train prohibit fighting?" Xu Huo asked Chu Yuan after watching for a while. Chu Yuan had wanted to fight earlier but held back due to the rules. The players on this train were getting along so cheerfully—there had to be some external constraint.
"Why should I tell you?" Chu Yuan said, his expression sour.
"You didn't tell me everything about the 'Seven-Day Marriage Bureau' item, did you?" Xu Huo stared at him. "Can two men really get married?"
This was just a probing question, but Chu Yuan's face changed with guilt. He tried to cover it up. "In my hometown, male marriage is legal."
"I can't fight you, but don't try anything on me either. Otherwise, you won't make it to the Sayil Coast alive!"
(Chapter End)