noffsinger Chapter 139 No Buoyancy
Chapter 139 No Buoyancy
Jiang Lin and his two companions arrived at the Three Lives Bridge a step too late, only to find it already packed with people.
Chen Jiangqiao walked over with a dark face when he saw the three of them arrive late.
"Hey, what happened to your face!" Wang Zhe shouted loudly when he saw Chen Jiangqiao's left cheek was bruised and swollen.
Chen Jiangqiao glanced at Jiang Lin and Ji Xingyi, then gritted his teeth and replied, "I didn't see clearly while walking at night, and I fell!"
Wang Zhe: "I can tell from your appearance that you've never liked carrots since you were little. Go back and take more vitamin A supplements!"
Chen Jiangqiao: "..."
Jiang Lin scoffed inwardly, but his tone remained relatively calm: "What happened there?"
"A body has been found under the bridge, and Jin Lushan is sending people to retrieve it." Chen Jiangqiao knew what was important; despite his cursing last night, he honestly stated the information he had: "Look at Guo Xinwen."
Following Chen Jiangqiao's gaze, Jiang Lin and the other two saw Guo Xinwen squeezed into the crowd, looking anxiously into the water.
Chen Jiangqiao explained in a low voice, "She has two teammates who went out last night and haven't come back. No one has seen them since."
"Damn! Just like you, I tripped and fell while walking... and drowned in the river?" Wang Zhe couldn't believe it.
"I didn't fall into the river and drown!" Chen Jiangqiao cursed under his breath.
Having obtained firsthand information, Jingkang squeezed out of the crowd and happened to see Ji Xingyi. He said, "Not a player, I don't know who she is, she's a woman."
Guo Xinwen also breathed a sigh of relief and came out, but the situation was still not optimistic for her.
Before long, the body was covered with a white sheet and carried out.
As she passed by Jiang Lin and Ji Xingyi, a pink hairpin fell out of the white cloth with a soft thud.
Ji Xingyi opened her eyes slightly and looked at Jiang Lin: "It's Qingdai."
Chen Jiangqiao was shocked: "The prostitute you saw on the pleasure boat last night?"
Ji Xingyi frowned.
"Qingdai, why is your life so miserable!" Song San Niang, dressed in her finest attire, rushed out from the crowd with a group of servants.
"No, how could an NPC drown? What kind of logic is that?" This dungeon was indeed quite difficult for Wang Zhe.
“Because of us.” Jiang Lin’s gaze lingered on the hairpin on the ground: “Because we spoke to her last night.”
Ji Xingyi: "She didn't say anything."
The woman on the lone boat merely expressed her longing for her dear friend.
"The mayor is here!"
Upon hearing the sound, Jiang Lin looked into the distance and saw Jin Lushan, the seemingly honest and simple mayor of Qingxi Town, brush past Song San Niang, who had come to collect Qingdai's body.
“They don’t believe it,” Jiang Lin said, watching Jin Lushan walk toward the Three Lives Bridge. “They killed him.”
"How do you know it wasn't the BOSS who killed him?" Chen Jiangqiao asked in surprise.
Jiang Lin: "The person drowned; it wasn't the BOSS who did it."
"And that Song San Niang, she's laughing." Ji Xingyi also saw it. The bejeweled woman was pretending to wipe away tears with a handkerchief, a gesture that was exactly like his mother's.
Jin Lushan's servants drove everyone off the Three Lives Bridge and then bowed and scraped to welcome Jin Lushan.
Jin Lushan coughed twice, said some promotional words, and then announced that the second round of the "Fan-Shadow Beauty" competition, "Playing with Shadows in the Clear Stream," would begin immediately.
Wang Zhe felt a chill run down his spine: "Holy crap, they just pulled the bodies out of the water, and now they're telling you to jump off the bridge? How disgusting! Luckily I didn't participate! If you accidentally swallowed a mouthful of that corpse water, ugh—"
Corpse water? Upon hearing this, Chi Xuan, who was not far away, felt her stomach churn instantly.
Zhu Qingya's face also turned pale, and her boyfriend Wang Bo immediately hugged her to comfort her.
The order of the "Qingxi Nongying" round is based on the order of advancement from the first round.
The first NPC girl was named Liuzhi.
The girl, dressed in a pink jacket and skirt, nervously walked onto the Three Lives Stone Bridge.
Jin Lushan raised his hand, and the villagers on both sides of the river instantly fell silent.
The girl glanced at her parents on the shore with a struggle in her eyes, then covered her mouth and nose, screamed, and jumped off the Bridge of Three Lives.
Wang Zhe couldn't help but exclaim, "What a huge splash!"
Jiang Lin, Ji Xingyi, Chen Jiangqiao: "..."
Time ticked by, one minute, two minutes, three minutes. Chi Xuan, standing behind Liu Zhi, gradually turned pale.
"Why isn't there any movement?" Wang Zhe swallowed.
The girl jumped down and never resurfaced.
It's like throwing an 80-pound stone into a bottomless well.
Apart from the splash when she first fell into the water, there was not a sound at all after that!
Wang Zhe looked down at the clear stream flowing slowly below the bank once more, feeling as if someone had breathed cold air on the back of his neck, making the hairs on his body stand on end.
"Hey!" Wang Zhe grabbed a random villager NPC: "Aren't you going to rescue them? What if they drowned?"
"So what! They all signed death waivers!" The villager still looked on with amusement. "So what if she drowns! Her parents can get a thousand taels!"
Jin Lushan didn't wait long; after more than five minutes, he announced that Liu Zhi was eliminated. Immediately, an elderly couple on the shore began to wail. Jin Lushan waved his hand, and his servants, receiving the order, led the two wailing old people to collect their money.
Wang Zhe's face turned white, then green, then red, and he finally uttered the word "grass".
The second to appear was Chi Xuan. After nodding to Zhou Jue, Chi Xuan walked onto the Three Lives Bridge and, as originally planned, told Jin Lushan that she had chosen to give up the competition.
Chi Xuan held her breath and saw the middle-aged mayor, who had just been kind and amiable, immediately straighten his expression.
"Once you participate, you can't abstain!" Jin Lushan grinned expressionlessly.
"If I can't, then I'll..." Chi Xuan was about to say she would continue the competition when Jin Lushan shoved her, the immense force from his back leaving her no room to resist. Chi Xuan screamed and fell off the bridge.
"Hiss—this is no use either!" Wang Zhe was really worried for the beautiful Chi.
The underwater situation was the same as when Liu Zhi jumped in; apart from the initial splash upon entering the water, it fell into a long silence once again.
30 seconds!
1 minutes!
2 minutes!
Zhou Jue's face was grim. He put one foot on the railing and was about to jump off the bank when he was suddenly grabbed by the arm by the young man next to him.
Jiang Lin: "We're up."
As soon as Jiang Lin finished speaking, bubbles and waves appeared in the calm Qingxi River.
A dense swarm of red carp surged up, and in the center of the school of fish, Chi Xuan gradually emerged from the water.
With her eyes closed, Chi Xuan floated motionless on the water's surface, surrounded by red carp.
Jin Lushan clapped and announced loudly, "Congratulations to Ms. Chi Xuan for advancing to the third round!"
Zhou Jue immediately jumped into the lake, weaved through the fish, and rescued Chi Xuan. After patting Chi Xuan's cheeks, he saw that she was still unconscious and quickly began to perform artificial respiration on her.
"Cough! Cough! Cough cough!" Chi Xuan's chest heaved, and after choking on a mouthful of lake water, she finally opened her eyes.
Zhou Jue patted Chi Xuan's back forcefully to help her expel the cold lake water.
Jingkang asked anxiously, "What happened?" The next contestant was Su Yuning from their team.
Chi Xuan gasped for breath, her face filled with terror: "The water is so deep, I can't float up no matter what!"
"I don't know how to explain it, it seems like there's no buoyancy!"
Chi Xuan's body trembled more and more as she spoke.
She could swim, though not as well as a professional athlete, but still strong enough to float to the surface. But the water in the stream seemed to have no buoyancy at all; the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.
"Zhou Jue, I thought I was going to die!"
My body sank deeper and deeper into the water, and the light above me grew dimmer and dimmer, as if I were about to fall into an endless hell.