Chapter 6

“Ah—”

Knowing what was inside and personally seeing it was completely different.

Before opening this door, Gu Yuhuan thought that she had mentally prepared for it.

However, she wasn’t.

Gu Yuhuan was just a normal 23-year-old young woman. She wasn’t particularly fond of horror movies either. When she was a child, she would be so terrified after reading her mother’s detective novels that she couldn’t sleep. She absolutely, absolutely, absolutely, didn’t have the courage to come face-to-face with a corpse, let alone one who died a gruesome death.

The walls of the entire room were hung with corpses; the manner of death for each one extremely cruel. It was almost as if they couldn’t rest until they managed to display the most wretched way of dying possible. In the center was a pool filled with bloody water, clumps of hair floating on top.

“AHHHH!”

A surge of blood suddenly flowed toward her feet. With a clatter, the key ring fell into the blood. Gu Yuhuan suppressed her nausea and quickly picked it up.

In fairy tales, once a golden key is stained with blood, the stain can never be wiped clean.

This was the first time in Gu Yuhuan’s life that she had been this close to a corpse. She had no idea what kept her under control, stopping her from bolting out the door immediately. For some reason, the room was unusually bright—everything was visible, painfully, horribly clear.

Forcing herself to look closely, she finally identified the First Queen among the mutilated remains.

The beautiful princess was hung alone on a wall.

Gu Yuhuan took out the painting she had tucked against her chest and unfolded it—just as she did, the First Queen hanging on the wall suddenly moved.

This time, Gu Yuhuan couldn’t take it anymore. The Queen’s head was intact, but only half of it was still attached to her neck. Her body was covered in wounds; under normal circumstances, she should have been long dead.

And yet, she moved.

Gu Yuhuan vomited. The smell in the room became even more unbearable.

…The door was locked; it couldn’t be opened from the inside.

“Help—!”

Gu Yuhuan had thought she would faint, but she didn’t. After screaming, she gradually calmed down, her reason returning. The reanimated Queen helped with that too—though she had suddenly moved, her motions were minimal. She barely managed to raise a hand before seeming to run out of strength.

The Queen pointed at herself.

Gu Yuhuan took out the pieced-together painting from her chest and showed it to the Queen. Even in her current state, the Queen retained a trace of her beauty. Upon seeing the painting, the muscles on her face began to twitch rapidly, as if she wanted to say something to Gu Yuhuan—but her vocal cords had been severed, and her head barely hung from her neck. It was clear she couldn’t speak.

After struggling futilely for a long time, the Queen suddenly rolled her eyes upward and, with great effort, pointed toward the only table in the room. On it lay a bloodstained axe—the weapon that must have severed her neck. Following her gesture, Gu Yuhuan found a whistle beside the axe.

[Item: The First Queen’s Whistle (Go on, scream! Scream your lungs out and someone will come help you.)]

At last, she had found a way to kill Bluebeard.

The tension that had been coiled in Gu Yuhuan’s chest instantly dissipated. For a moment, she didn’t even have the strength to complain about how bizarre the item’s description was. Her limbs went weak, and she slid down the wall to sit on the floor.

The Queen seemed to want to tell her something more. Her head kept banging against the wall behind her with dull thuds. Realizing the Queen couldn’t jump down from the wall, Gu Yuhuan felt less afraid.

Thinking about it, this was a fairy tale after all—dead princesses often had a chance to be revived. A corpse moving wasn’t all that strange.

Sitting on the floor, Gu Yuhuan separated the golden key and wiped the blood off it with her clothes. Just like in the original Bluebeard story, the bloodstain on the golden key could not be cleaned. Even if it was wiped away, it would soon reappear on another side.

After a few attempts, she gave up.

Accompanied by the sound of the Queen banging her head against the wall, Gu Yuhuan fell into a sweet slumber within this room filled with mangled corpses.

…

Gu Yuhuan was awakened by the sound of knocking.

Knock, knock.

“My beautiful queen, your dear husband has returned! Quickly come open the door!”

The door couldn’t block out the sound of King Bluebeard’s excited laughter.

Instinctively, Gu Yuhuan clenched her left hand. The whistle pressed painfully into her palm, and that sharp sensation finally steadied her nerves. She climbed out of bed and realized she was still wearing yesterday’s clothes. There was even dried blood on the hem of her pants, but the knocking at the door was growing more urgent. Clearly, Bluebeard wouldn’t give her time to change.

She didn’t put on the blood-soaked shoes under the bed. Barefoot, she moved to open the door.

At that moment, she noticed a slip of paper on the table.

[Bluebeard Rule Five: The detestable dragon-slayer King Bluebeard cannot be killed by anyone as long as he remains calm.
Bluebeard Rule Six: Bluebeard fears most that his secret will be discovered, but he does not know that there are other secrets hidden within the castle.]

Gu Yuhuan: “I! #@$”

Telling me this now?! I’m about to die!

The door was directly kicked open.

Bluebeard still looked travel-worn, but this time, his face carried a malicious grin—like a venomous snake staring at prey that could no longer escape.

“Ah! I’m back, my beautiful queen. Please return the castle keys to me.”

Just as she thought!

Whether or not she had used the golden key to open the forbidden door, Bluebeard already knew without checking.

Just like yesterday and the day before, he had known she hadn’t used the golden key, so when he took back the keys, he hadn’t even bothered to inspect them.

Which raised a question: how did King Bluebeard, who left the castle every afternoon, know what happened each night?

If he could monitor everything in the castle, what was the point of this game?

Gu Yuhuan said, “The keys are on the bed. Go get them yourself.”

Bluebeard shot her a cold glance and turned towards the bed. Gu Yuhuan opened her mouth and began screaming at the top of her lungs:

“Ahhhhhh—!”

As she screamed, she kept an eye on the whistle.

Nothing happened.

…Her heart sank.

“Look what I’ve found! My beautiful queen used the golden key to open the forbidden door… Ah! I must kill her.”

“Ahhhhhhh—!”

“Doo-doo—”

The whistle sounded.

Gu Yuhuan bolted out the door. The Queen’s chamber was on the third floor, and by the time she reached the first-floor hall, the castle doors were thrown open. Two fully armored knights rushed in, carrying heavy greatswords. Tears nearly spilled from her eyes as she hurried behind them. At that moment, King Bluebeard charged out of the room in pursuit, gripping a massive axe.

Bluebeard’s features were grotesquely twisted. His eyes were bloodshot with excitement, his mouth warped by fangs that had grown from within, and a long crimson tongue lolled out. He had completely lost his human form—he was now a monster.

“My beautiful queen, my axe has been sharpened to perfection. Hurry and offer me your neck!”

Gu Yuhuan: …Did that so-called Judge completely misunderstand what the word “fairytale” means? What kind of damn fairytale is this?!

Clutching her head, Gu Yuhuan fled in panic: “Help!”

The two armored warriors engaged Bluebeard, their greatswords clashing against him. But this inhuman Bluebeard seemed to possess immense strength. Within a single exchange, he knocked one of the warriors’ swords flying. Seeing the situation turn dire, Gu Yuhuan lifted her skirt and ran toward the main gate. But it was as if an invisible barrier blocked her path, trapping her inside and preventing her from escaping.

I’m going to die! I’m going to die!

At that moment, Bluebeard spoke again.

“My beautiful queen! Hurry and offer your neck! Stop your futile struggle. No one can kill a calm King Bluebeard.”

A calm King Bluebeard?!

Gu Yuhuan found a relatively safe spot and shouted hoarsely, “You don’t want to kill me because of the golden key. You want to kill me because you suspect I’ve been unfaithful!”

Bluebeard’s movements visibly faltered for a moment, but he quickly let out a cold laugh, “Ha! Wouldn’t it be better to obediently await your death?”

In that instant, Gu Yuhuan understood everything.

“You’re wrong, I haven’t been unfaithful.”

Bluebeard stared at her coldly, “…Sophistry won’t keep you from death’s scythe.”

Seeing one of the warriors about to be struck down by the axe, Gu Yuhuan sped up her words: “I know the truth—it was you. The king during the day… and the lover at night, they’re both you.”

“Bang—”

The axe missed its strike.

When did Gu Yuhuan start to suspect the truth? From the very first night, she had felt that something was off. However, she only truly confirmed it last night, when she found the oil paintings hidden beneath the desk. Those paintings were all erotic portraits of the former queens.

Such intimate works clearly couldn’t have been painted by the terrifying King Bluebeard. He had never shown that kind of tenderness toward his wives. That left only one possibility: they were painted by the queens’ lover.

Every queen had a lover? That in itself was strange. But if it were a remarkably handsome painter, always smiling gently and deliberately seducing them day after day—while they themselves were married to a terrifying husband—then everything made sense.

But for every queen’s lover to possess extraordinary painting skills? That was far too coincidental.

Another possibility was that the lovers had never been killed at all.

Bluebeard was obsessively controlling, so much so that he even dictated what his wives wore. He had killed even his most trusted servant for having an affair with one of his queens. How could he possibly allow a “lover” to live? In the entire castle, the only person Bluebeard could not kill… was himself.

The crimson tongue in Bluebeard’s mouth slowly withdrew, and his teeth began returning to normal. He was clearly becoming agitated.

“What nonsense are you talking about?”

Gu Yuhuan said, “You were once a handsome prince. To marry a princess from a neighboring kingdom, you risked your life and slew a dragon. But on the day you wed her, the dragon’s curse took effect. You became hideous, growing a blue beard. Even though the princess told you again and again, ‘I don’t mind,’ you were too sensitive, convinced that everyone saw you as a monster… You grew insecure, began to doubt your wife, and eventually couldn’t resist testing her.”

It was, in truth, an easy story to piece together.

Bluebeard must have found a way to retrieve the dragon’s heart. But perhaps consuming it couldn’t fully lift the curse, or maybe he never obtained the complete heart—there might even have been another method. In any case, only at night could he transform back into a handsome young man. Instead of telling his wife the truth, he chose to use that appearance to test her.

And when he discovered that the wife for whom he had sacrificed everything had truly betrayed him, he went mad and killed her.

His beautiful queen.

The bloodshot redness in Bluebeard’s eyes slowly began to fade.

“You judged your first wife, believed she was unfaithful, and killed her. Then you convinced yourself you were the most just of judges, and began marrying new queens over and over, testing each of them in the same way.”

As the saying goes, flies don’t gather around a flawless egg. These young women may have had moral failings, but was Bluebeard—who disguised himself as a painter to seduce them—truly innocent? Very few people in this world possess absolute self-control. Most people’s convictions are fragile, easily shaken by temptation.

But in ordinary life, there aren’t so many temptations pushing people toward wrongdoing.

Even if one doesn’t consider this “temptation” as something Bluebeard created, their sins still shouldn’t be punished with death. That was far too cruel.

Why did Bluebeard keep marrying new wives?

It was nothing more than unresolved resentment and revenge.

Gu Yuhuan spoke faster and faster, her voice rising:

“There’s a secret you don’t know! You don’t know that the princess you risked your life to marry actually loved you. She had long known that the man playing the role of her lover was also you. What could possibly escape the notice of the clever First Queen? She had been going along with your test all along. She never imagined that you were testing her loyalty, and before she even had the chance to confess the truth to you, you cruelly killed her!”

Bluebeard froze completely. The monstrous mutations on his body rapidly faded away.

King Bluebeard: “Is what you said… true?”

Gu Yuhuan: …Seventy percent of that was guesswork. How would I know if it’s true?

But Bluebeard wasn’t really asking her. It was as if he had remembered something. Suddenly, he began to laugh. Slowly, the laughter turned into tears.

This absurd secret…

“Ahhhhh—!”

Bluebeard slammed his head wildly against the hard floor, blood streaming from his eyes as he screamed in agony. The two armored warriors stood there, stunned. Gu Yuhuan almost felt like rushing forward to finish it herself.

At that moment, a graceful figure slowly appeared behind Bluebeard: the golden-haired spirit of the First Queen. She pressed close behind him, gazing at him gently. Her slender arms wrapped around his neck, pulling back with force.

Crack.

King Bluebeard’s neck was snapped.

Gu Yuhuan: “…damn, damn, damn.”

The Queen’s spirit did not disappear immediately. She looked at Gu Yuhuan with gratitude and wrote the word “rose” on the ground.

A love so sincere that one was willing to give their life for it had been completely destroyed by a mere flicker of suspicion. This grand love story, which began with slaying a dragon, ended in such a tragic way.

【Ding-dong, single-player dungeon “Bluebeard’s Wife” cleared. Reward: one little red flower.】