Run three of the Nightmare begins.
The Missiontakers are all breathing heavily where they stand, still in shock.
Just now, that coldly cackling man in black was rushing at them with his big machete, immediately slashing all over the place in the corridor.
The Missiontakers that were practically tortured to death by him the first run almost faltered immediately; they were killed in full brightness this time as opposed to in the dark.
Lin Qin didn’t even have time to respond before someone has breathed their last on the floor of the bloodied corridor alongside the limbs that were hacked off.
Then, the Nightmare restarted.
Fortunately, right before someone died, Laosan and Mu Jiashi immediately finalised the deal of Mu Jiashi helping to keep the man in black preoccupied as much as possible to buy time for the bedroom team.
And now, after the Nightmare has restarted, a “number off!” fires off next to their ears again. Laosan yells out “one” without hesitation, then waits nervously——Fortunately, the first number is still one.
At least it seems the numbers to be reported don’t change as the Nightmare restarts. That is good news, at least.
Laosan sighs in relief. He is nervous in the dark, especially when he is aware that man in black might suddenly pop out. This is the third run already, so who knows if it might just start crumbling somewhere.
Normally, Nightmares begin to change or deteriorate starting from the third run.
Therefore, most of the Missiontakers would choose to go straight to an Ending between the third and sixth run; any more and they risk the Nightmare crumbling to an irrevocable degree.
Of course, some Missiontakers still choose to take the risk because, the more the Nightmare has crumbled, the more information would be forced to the surface, and the greater the probability to achieve a True End when the more conservative Missiontakers would quietly leave with a Normal End.
Laosan is nervously working out the time. There is one minute——No, he knows the second number already, so two minutes——He doesn’t know the third number, so he has to guess…
His thoughts suddenly digress recalling the scene he saw when the man in black rushed out of this bedroom earlier.
A woman that was terribly chopped up, all bloodied and gory, on the bed——This bed, that is right next to them.
A woman… The man in black, killed that woman.
What does this mean?
What was their relationship? Why did he kill her? What did this have to do with the corridor, a road out from there and the service area?
And most importantly… The owner of the Nightmare, is a little boy.
So the most straightforward explanation would be…
Laosan is thinking when someone quietly approaches and whispers, “later… the third number, what should we say?”
While spooked, realising it was just Ding Yi, Laosan quickly calms down to think before saying, “we can only test them one by one.”
“Earlier, when you were counting, one, two, three, four and five, only one, two and four were correct. So for the third and fifth number…”
Laosan then says, “since the third number wasn’t three, we’d have to start from five.”
Ding Yi hesitates before asking, “what if the numbers could repeat?”
Laosan freezes.
In the stream, when Ding Yi voiced her question, the viewers also falls into shock.
“yeah, what if the numbers can repeat? there isn’t even any pattern anymore, so why can’t they repeat?”
“but… fuck! frankly, if the numbers can repeat, is this damn game even possible?”
“Before we talk about repeating, there’s another question as well… What if they needed to say ten numbers, but one of them is actually above ten? Not even a single digit number anymore? The possibilities become endless at that point”
“true, and who knows how many numbers they have to count even? and if the third number was actually a few billion? I’m exaggerating but if it really was a big number, are they gonna have to test them all?”
“I believe NE wouldn’t come up with an unsolvable conundrum”
That’s right.
Xü Beijin is nodding in the bookstore seeing what the detective dalao just typed.
He has been through quite a number of Nightmares already, and he has already seen Missiontakers die countless times because of dangers in the Nightmares, and countless complaints and curses directed at the high difficulty of them, but there is never truly a dead-end in that sense of the word.
All Nightmares have an underlying logic to them.
“Numbering off… numbers…” Xü Beijin is quietly muttering those numbers to himself, when suddenly, his eyes widen.
Meanwhile, Laosan’s face also changes drastically as he yells out, “numbers!”
Erge is leaning on the wall, all irritated, when he hears Laosan yelling, and asks, “Laosan, what’s got into you now?”
“The numbers!” Laosan sounds excited for once, saying, “that little boy, back in the Tower, he kept repeating a string of numbers!”
Ding Yi pauses before immediately asking, “so you’re saying that string of numbers are…”
“The numbers we have to report right now! It’s possible… There are always clues about the Nightmares themselves in the Tower!” Laosan’s voice begins lowering in tone at this point, as he dejected says, “I didn’t memorise them, though.”
“Those numbers?” Laoda suddenly interjects to say, “I remember some of them.”
All the other three immediately turn towards him.
Laoda shrugs and explains, “I just remember three of them, though. One, two and seven. They were the beginning, and the brat kept saying it over and over again, so it was drilled into my head. It was one, two, seven something something…”
Laosan is enthused, again.
When suddenly, another “number off!” fires off. Laosan almost reflexively shouts a “seven” in return, but he quickly bites himself on the tongue to stop himself with the pain.
And he quickly says, “two!”
It is correct.
He sighs, relieved.
“Looks like you saved our asses,” Erge pats Laoda on the shoulder, saying with a smile, “good on you.”
Laoda chuckles with an awkward ‘hehe.’
After that second number, Laosan quickly begins to churn his brains while discussing with Ding Yi.
They have four numbers now, one two seven four.
No repeated numbers yet, so if they discount that possibility for now, they would try other numbers for the fifth position.
“So, what would the fifth number be?”
Laosan gives it a thought before saying, “I don’t recall what the string of numbers the boy was repeating was, but it wasn’t a long string; it’s definitely less than ten numbers long, and they were all single numbers… Up to ten, at most. They were all just one character.” (TL: This is possible to tell because Chinese numbers are all single-syllabled from zero to ten)
Ding Yi nods and says, “if there’s no repeated (TL: Or skipped) numbers, then that string would be between seven and ten numbers long.”
“One, two, seven, four…” Laosan murmurs, “the remaining ones are three, five, six, eight, nine and ten…”
“Would there be a zero?”
Laosan furrows his brows and says, “you wouldn’t number off with a zero normally, right?”
Ding Yi nods and accepts; they don’t have too much time to ponder about that anyway, and asks, “so, we’ll be going with three for the fifth number?”
Laosan is still hesitant, though.
It’s hard to decide. Of course, even if they got a number wrong, the corridor team would still try to keep the man in black over at their side as much as possible, but… It’s as unreliable as they come.
Worst-case scenario, the moment they got the number wrong, the man in black and his machete comes for them immediately; this is not a pleasant thought for sure.
Though this is only the third run, so even if the man in black was here, they could perhaps still make it through two rounds of numbering off…
“Alright,” Laosan agrees after some thought, but then adds, “we will still report the numbers in order after that.”
Ding Yi is surprised to hear that.
Laosan explains, “we reported five for the fifth number before, so we’ll go with three this time. Then six for the sixth one, and seven… we’ll think about it if we make it, and then eight for the eighth, etc. I think we should try all the numbers at their expected positions first, what do you think?”
He asks everyone else’s opinions again first, as usual.
Right now, they know that the third and fifth numbers were wrong and the third is actually seven, but one, two and four are correct.
This proportional of correct numbers means it isn’t guaranteed that the number corresponding to its position in the string would definitely be wrong.
What if the sixth number was actually six, for instance?
Of course, they know the seventh number isn’t seven, assuming the numbers do not repeat…
Laosan is growing anxious again, and subconsciously turns towards Erge for help, asking, “Erge, what do you think?”
Meanwhile, Erge, annoyed at the unchanging darkness, just answers tersely, “that’ll do.”
Laosan then sighs in relief.
Ding Yi also goes with the flow and accepts to do as Laosan says.
It would seem the bedroom team has come to a productive agreement. Meanwhile…
The other team is very troubled indeed.
Since Xü Beijin saw that the bedroom team has already come up with a plan, he switched the camera over to the corridor, feeling quite profoundly like he is just a director cutting scenes.
And right now, it has merely been two minutes and a bit since the new run began.
And in just these two minutes, the corridor team has been locked in a heated argument.
Of course, mainly between Selfish and Scapegoat.
Selfish is chastising Mu Jiashi for agreeing to help Laosan’s team out of their pinch; he is unwilling to risk dying from the man in black.
Scapegoat lambastes Selfish for being selfish.
But telling Scapegoat to be Laosan’s team’s scapegoat? Then, no way.
And that’s what they’ve been arguing about for the whole two minutes after the third run began.
Even when they are being chased by the man in black.
Mu Jiashi heaves a weary sigh.
When they arrive at the empty parking lot, ready to speed chase their way to the service area, Mu Jiashi suddenly says, “I’ll stay.”
Everyone is looking at Mu Jiashi.
“I’ll stay,” Mu Jiashi repeats himself.
Selfish makes a disdainful smirk and says with a surprised tone, “oh? I can’t believe I was right, you’re actually some selfless saint?”
Then, the man that has always been unenergetic and unmotivated raises his head, giving Selfish a stony gaze, as he makes himself clear, “in this situation, to leave this Nightmare, we have to work together. If you’re unwilling to sacrifice yourselves, then I can only sacrifice myself. At least, I have the right to decide when I’ll sacrifice myself.”
Selfish goes silent.
Scapegoat can feel a frigid chill down his spine as he realises that, Mu Jiashi isn’t just some kind, saintly figure – He isn’t. He is solely driven by risk and reward.
Right now, because neither Selfish nor himself want to sacrifice themselves, and it is not the time to abandon them for good yet, therefore, Mu Jiashi chose to sacrifice himself.
Yet, if the situation calls for it, then Scapegoat is sure that Mu Jiashi will immediately act in the most pragmatic way to maximise the gains from the situation, all in the name of the best interest for the team. He would not hesitate even if he had to betray every single one of them.
A naïve saint?
No! He’s a damned profit-driven demon that can even sell himself out if it means the greater good to him!
Scapegoat is shuddering, and is also thinking about the fact that there are all these monstrous Missiontakers in this Nightmare… Terrifying.
The Tower is a place filled with people of hidden talents——And that is not necessarily a praise; it implies there are all sorts of perverse, mad, insane people in the Tower, especially when the situation in the Tower often drives people to their limits and cause their values to change for the worse; death is no longer a deterrent or a haven.
They cannot die, so they can do whatever they want.
Scapegoat even knows a true nutcase himself – that person seeks the joy in death itself.
No matter what Nightmare they were together in, if they ended up with that nutcase, then the Missiontakers will have to wait until that person has had enough thrilling deaths, namely by experiencing all the possible ways to die in the Nightmare, before they can actually try to resolve it.
They’ll already have restarted the Nightmare several times by that point, and the difficulty of it would have risen sharply.
Though strangely enough, though the nutcase always seeks the thrill of death in those Nightmares, yet each and every time they at least achieve a Normal End, and even sometimes secure a True End.
Because of that, some Missiontakers who are truly desperate for a chance to ascend to a higher floor, would actually seek out the nutcase to join whatever Nightmare the person ends up in.
Though people like that nutcase are really the minority here. People that are merely weirdos——Are infinitely more common.
In any case, Scapegoat really is feeling under the weather by now.
He has never seen this man before; Mu Jiashi has an unremarkable appearance and was apathetic and self-loathing the entire time, calling himself a piece of trash and a loser, and yet, his ruthless attitude and behaviour means Scapegoat could never afford to underestimate him.
Selfish, meanwhile, couldn’t care less, and heads directly for the closest vehicle nearby.
Mu Jiashi is standing at the exit of the corridor. He turns his head around to look at the man in black; this time, they ran away more quickly, and so the man is still about two hundred metres or so behind them. He’ll be here in at least thirty seconds.
While he has the big machete in his hand, ‘chasing’ them, but he is moving at a sluggish pace.
Mu Jiashi is dissing inside, but then glances back at the Missiontakers and can’t help but mention, “I suggest that car closer to the road… never mind, just choose whatever you want.”
He suddenly loses motivation in the middle of speaking again.
Though Selfish and Scapegoat listened and headed for the car further away. In the car, Scapegoat honks and pokes his head out of the window to ask loudly, “dalao?”
Lin Qin hasn’t boarded yet.
He is leaning lazily by the wall on the right side of the exit to the corridor, saying, “I’ll stay here; leave me be.”
Mu Jiashi almost looks moved.
Lin Qin doesn’t even so much as lift his head to say, “not for your sake.”
Mu Jiashi “…”
His mood sinks back down immediately.
Lin Qin rubs his chin as he recalls what happened right in the final moments of the last run.
During all the chaos, gore and noise, Laosan and Mu Jiashi quickly finalised their cooperation, but Ding Yi also quickly approached Lin Qin.
That was also a factor that made Lin Qin unable to stop the man in black from killing someone in the end, otherwise, given his mood, he might have helped moved them out of harm’s way.
The woman with the grue hair walked to his side to quietly whisper, “dalao, please help out a little.”
Lin Qin ignored her at that point.
Ding Yi did not seem discouraged, when she continued, “I am aware that you are searching for drinks recently…”
Lin Qin furrowed his brow to look up at her with a cold gaze.
“I am a Necessities Merchant,” Ding Yi was perhaps aware that Lin Qin would not physically hurt someone no matter what, so she wasn’t deterred, explaining, “I could provide you with a shipment of the drinks you want. They are already packed up in a certain empty house in the Tower. If you help stop the man in black the next run of the Nightmare, I would tell you where that house is.”
Unoccupied houses are open to anyone in the Tower, though most people aren’t in the mood to acquire any, outside of Necessities Merchants like Ding Yi.
Lin Qin thought about it for a second before agreeing and also adding, “just this once.”
He did happen to be looking for drinks, for the sole purpose of trying to get Xü Beijin to fight him. He collected them openly without keeping anything under wraps, so naturally, well-connected Merchants like Ding Yi would learn of that news.
Still, it is an invasion of privacy, so he is slightly annoyed.
Therefore, despite Ding Yi offering him drinks for practically nothing in return, he is not at all friendlier towards her.
He saw it as her way of making it up to him; an equivalent exchange.
Merchants being Merchants, even if Ding Yi is taciturn and introverted in the Tower, she still possesses certain qualities.
And it has to be said that Ding Yi’s information network and her use of the information were intriguing.
Nowadays, Missiontakers like Ding Yi, who has managed to forge her own empire in the Tower through her efforts, rarely enter Nightmares anymore.
In fact, that was why Mu Jiashi was surprised to see her in the first place.
The reason is that they now value their lives and the faction they have built up. If they did end up losing themselves forever in a Collapsed Nightmare, all that work would have been for naught.
The Tower never forces any Missiontaker to go into a Nightmare, so many Necessities Merchants would, of course, stay inside the Tower and not visit Nightmares barring extraordinary circumstances, and that applies to Ding Yi as well.
She hasn’t entered a Nightmare for nigh-on three years now, and the fact that she chose to enter this one, should mean she has prepared herself to the bone; even if she wasn’t able to achieve a True End, she should at least have means to guarantee her safely leaving the Nightmare in the end.
Mu Jiashi didn’t know what the guarantee was.
Meanwhile, right now, seeing Lin Qin staying at the entrance of the corridor, the curious Mu Jiashi asks, “dalao, why did you stay?”
Lin Qin gives him an idle peek, but still answers, “that Necessities Merchant promised to give me drinks for free. In exchange, I’ll stay here.”
Mu Jiashi has figured out Ding Yi’s guarantee by now.
It’s Lin Qin. And not just because Lin Qin is here, either, but because, Ding Yi has acquired information——Information that can influence even Lin Qin. Even if it was a method that would only work once, and even if she may very well anger Lin Qin, Ding Yi still had to gamble.
Perhaps…
Is Ding Yi genuinely disinterested in ascending to a higher floor? No. Of course not. No normal person would be.
She could always look for the Golddiggers, but that is not a foolproof course of action either. Even the most famous of Golddiggers could still fail.
And the one and only Mu Jiashi who had maintained a 100% track record was on the higher floors, as far as she knew.
Thus, Ding Yi still decided to seize the opportunity and gamble on Lin Qin.
As for the ‘seized opportunity’ known as Lin Qin, what he would feel about that…
Right, he’s not happy about it, at least.
Nor is he ever really happy, in any case. Like right now, he is more preoccupied with wondering whether the drinks Ding Yi has prepared would be enough to persuade Xü Beijin to fight him seriously for once.
If it could, then all is well; Lin Qin is not one to mind using his martial prowess to help out a little.
That’s how he has been all these years in the Tower. He pays no mind to whoever it was that received his help every now and then, but many of them probably remembered the favour——Assuming they haven’t succumbed to any Nightmares yet.
This was a part of how even someone behaving as strangely as Lin Qin could still live carefree in the Tower and to be crowned the ‘dalao’ by all the Missiontakers. Otherwise, not everyone would have just stood by watching him idly hanging out about the different Nightmares.
Many a Missiontaker have a sliver of hope that, somehow, one day, Lin Qin would suddenly ‘activate’ and save them all from the Nightmares, you see. Even people like Ding Yi would think this way.
While Lin Qin looks to have agreed to Ding Yi’s deal, though if even those drinks aren’t enough to make Xü Beijin agree to fight him…
Well, Lin Qin would never go back on his word; he will deal with the man in black, alright, but Ding Yi would not exactly look good in Lin Qin’s eyes anymore, either.
All this is to say that, Xü Beijin is the crux of everything right now.
And the person in question himself…
Xü Beijin, he…
He…
Xü Beijin “…”
Wait, what?!
What did Lin Qin just say?!
The Necessities Merchant agreed to provide drinks, so Lin Qin is helping out in this Nightmare?
Ｄ・Ｒ・Ｉ・Ｎ・Ｋ・Ｓ?!
Xü Beijin is sitting stone-faced behind the bookstore counter, seriously pondering a question.
If, he did brawl with Lin Qin in a Nightmare, then, he probably, could revive… couldn’t he?
It just feels like it would hurt. Bad.
But… How should he say it? What Lin Qin is doing is actually really troubling him.
Xü Beijin heaves a weary sigh, trying to ignore all the friendly teases from the viewers in the stream. He could just about picture those comments, but hopefully they won’t start to fantasise about the relationship between him and Lin Qin.
He chooses to see no evil.
With his mood now souring, he feels like eating the soft candies Dai Wu gave him, but he only remembers when he is going through his pockets, that the Nightmare has restarted, and so the free candies have been ‘respawned.’
Xü Beijin “…”
He sits there quietly, yawning, bored with living already.
So sleepy…
Then he decides to try to energise himself a little. He pokes his head out above the counter to look at the water dispenser in a corner of the bookstore, and grabs some warm water from there. He takes some sips as he returns to the counter, when his casual glance notices something, and he stops.
“Eh? This is…”
He has actually kept what Dai Wu said in mind, that there were clues about the Nightmare in the bookstore.
Though he didn’t find any when he was back. Until now, that is.
Xü Beijin puts his cup of water onto the counter and extends his hand to grab a newspaper from the shelf below the counter.
Run three of the Nightmare begins.
The Missiontakers are all breathing heavily where they stand, still in shock.
Just now, that coldly cackling man in black was rushing at them with his big machete, immediately slashing all over the place in the corridor.
The Missiontakers that were practically tortured to death by him the first run almost faltered immediately; they were killed in full brightness this time as opposed to in the dark.
Lin Qin didn’t even have time to respond before someone has breathed their last on the floor of the bloodied corridor alongside the limbs that were hacked off.
Then, the Nightmare restarted.
Fortunately, right before someone died, Laosan and Mu Jiashi immediately finalised the deal of Mu Jiashi helping to keep the man in black preoccupied as much as possible to buy time for the bedroom team.
And now, after the Nightmare has restarted, a “number off!” fires off next to their ears again. Laosan yells out “one” without hesitation, then waits nervously——Fortunately, the first number is still one.
At least it seems the numbers to be reported don’t change as the Nightmare restarts. That is good news, at least.
Laosan sighs in relief. He is nervous in the dark, especially when he is aware that man in black might suddenly pop out. This is the third run already, so who knows if it might just start crumbling somewhere.
Normally, Nightmares begin to change or deteriorate starting from the third run.
Therefore, most of the Missiontakers would choose to go straight to an Ending between the third and sixth run; any more and they risk the Nightmare crumbling to an irrevocable degree.
Of course, some Missiontakers still choose to take the risk because, the more the Nightmare has crumbled, the more information would be forced to the surface, and the greater the probability to achieve a True End when the more conservative Missiontakers would quietly leave with a Normal End.
Laosan is nervously working out the time. There is one minute——No, he knows the second number already, so two minutes——He doesn’t know the third number, so he has to guess…
His thoughts suddenly digress recalling the scene he saw when the man in black rushed out of this bedroom earlier.
A woman that was terribly chopped up, all bloodied and gory, on the bed——This bed, that is right next to them.
A woman… The man in black, killed that woman.
What does this mean?
What was their relationship? Why did he kill her? What did this have to do with the corridor, a road out from there and the service area?
And most importantly… The owner of the Nightmare, is a little boy.
So the most straightforward explanation would be…
Laosan is thinking when someone quietly approaches and whispers, “later… the third number, what should we say?”
While spooked, realising it was just Ding Yi, Laosan quickly calms down to think before saying, “we can only test them one by one.”
“Earlier, when you were counting, one, two, three, four and five, only one, two and four were correct. So for the third and fifth number…”
Laosan then says, “since the third number wasn’t three, we’d have to start from five.”
Ding Yi hesitates before asking, “what if the numbers could repeat?”
Laosan freezes.
In the stream, when Ding Yi voiced her question, the viewers also falls into shock.
“yeah, what if the numbers can repeat? there isn’t even any pattern anymore, so why can’t they repeat?”
“but… fuck! frankly, if the numbers can repeat, is this damn game even possible?”
“Before we talk about repeating, there’s another question as well… What if they needed to say ten numbers, but one of them is actually above ten? Not even a single digit number anymore? The possibilities become endless at that point”
“true, and who knows how many numbers they have to count even? and if the third number was actually a few billion? I’m exaggerating but if it really was a big number, are they gonna have to test them all?”
“I believe NE wouldn’t come up with an unsolvable conundrum”
That’s right.
Xü Beijin is nodding in the bookstore seeing what the detective dalao just typed.
He has been through quite a number of Nightmares already, and he has already seen Missiontakers die countless times because of dangers in the Nightmares, and countless complaints and curses directed at the high difficulty of them, but there is never truly a dead-end in that sense of the word.
All Nightmares have an underlying logic to them.
“Numbering off… numbers…” Xü Beijin is quietly muttering those numbers to himself, when suddenly, his eyes widen.
Meanwhile, Laosan’s face also changes drastically as he yells out, “numbers!”
Erge is leaning on the wall, all irritated, when he hears Laosan yelling, and asks, “Laosan, what’s got into you now?”
“The numbers!” Laosan sounds excited for once, saying, “that little boy, back in the Tower, he kept repeating a string of numbers!”
Ding Yi pauses before immediately asking, “so you’re saying that string of numbers are…”
“The numbers we have to report right now! It’s possible… There are always clues about the Nightmares themselves in the Tower!” Laosan’s voice begins lowering in tone at this point, as he dejected says, “I didn’t memorise them, though.”
“Those numbers?” Laoda suddenly interjects to say, “I remember some of them.”
All the other three immediately turn towards him.
Laoda shrugs and explains, “I just remember three of them, though. One, two and seven. They were the beginning, and the brat kept saying it over and over again, so it was drilled into my head. It was one, two, seven something something…”
Laosan is enthused, again.
When suddenly, another “number off!” fires off. Laosan almost reflexively shouts a “seven” in return, but he quickly bites himself on the tongue to stop himself with the pain.
And he quickly says, “two!”
It is correct.
He sighs, relieved.
“Looks like you saved our asses,” Erge pats Laoda on the shoulder, saying with a smile, “good on you.”
Laoda chuckles with an awkward ‘hehe.’
After that second number, Laosan quickly begins to churn his brains while discussing with Ding Yi.
They have four numbers now, one two seven four.
No repeated numbers yet, so if they discount that possibility for now, they would try other numbers for the fifth position.
“So, what would the fifth number be?”
Laosan gives it a thought before saying, “I don’t recall what the string of numbers the boy was repeating was, but it wasn’t a long string; it’s definitely less than ten numbers long, and they were all single numbers… Up to ten, at most. They were all just one character.” (TL: This is possible to tell because Chinese numbers are all single-syllabled from zero to ten)
Ding Yi nods and says, “if there’s no repeated (TL: Or skipped) numbers, then that string would be between seven and ten numbers long.”
“One, two, seven, four…” Laosan murmurs, “the remaining ones are three, five, six, eight, nine and ten…”
“Would there be a zero?”
Laosan furrows his brows and says, “you wouldn’t number off with a zero normally, right?”
Ding Yi nods and accepts; they don’t have too much time to ponder about that anyway, and asks, “so, we’ll be going with three for the fifth number?”
Laosan is still hesitant, though.
It’s hard to decide. Of course, even if they got a number wrong, the corridor team would still try to keep the man in black over at their side as much as possible, but… It’s as unreliable as they come.
Worst-case scenario, the moment they got the number wrong, the man in black and his machete comes for them immediately; this is not a pleasant thought for sure.
Though this is only the third run, so even if the man in black was here, they could perhaps still make it through two rounds of numbering off…
“Alright,” Laosan agrees after some thought, but then adds, “we will still report the numbers in order after that.”
Ding Yi is surprised to hear that.
Laosan explains, “we reported five for the fifth number before, so we’ll go with three this time. Then six for the sixth one, and seven… we’ll think about it if we make it, and then eight for the eighth, etc. I think we should try all the numbers at their expected positions first, what do you think?”
He asks everyone else’s opinions again first, as usual.
Right now, they know that the third and fifth numbers were wrong and the third is actually seven, but one, two and four are correct.
This proportional of correct numbers means it isn’t guaranteed that the number corresponding to its position in the string would definitely be wrong.
What if the sixth number was actually six, for instance?
Of course, they know the seventh number isn’t seven, assuming the numbers do not repeat…
Laosan is growing anxious again, and subconsciously turns towards Erge for help, asking, “Erge, what do you think?”
Meanwhile, Erge, annoyed at the unchanging darkness, just answers tersely, “that’ll do.”
Laosan then sighs in relief.
Ding Yi also goes with the flow and accepts to do as Laosan says.
It would seem the bedroom team has come to a productive agreement. Meanwhile…
The other team is very troubled indeed.
Since Xü Beijin saw that the bedroom team has already come up with a plan, he switched the camera over to the corridor, feeling quite profoundly like he is just a director cutting scenes.
And right now, it has merely been two minutes and a bit since the new run began.
And in just these two minutes, the corridor team has been locked in a heated argument.
Of course, mainly between Selfish and Scapegoat.
Selfish is chastising Mu Jiashi for agreeing to help Laosan’s team out of their pinch; he is unwilling to risk dying from the man in black.
Scapegoat lambastes Selfish for being selfish.
But telling Scapegoat to be Laosan’s team’s scapegoat? Then, no way.
And that’s what they’ve been arguing about for the whole two minutes after the third run began.
Even when they are being chased by the man in black.
Mu Jiashi heaves a weary sigh.
When they arrive at the empty parking lot, ready to speed chase their way to the service area, Mu Jiashi suddenly says, “I’ll stay.”
Everyone is looking at Mu Jiashi.
“I’ll stay,” Mu Jiashi repeats himself.
Selfish makes a disdainful smirk and says with a surprised tone, “oh? I can’t believe I was right, you’re actually some selfless saint?”
Then, the man that has always been unenergetic and unmotivated raises his head, giving Selfish a stony gaze, as he makes himself clear, “in this situation, to leave this Nightmare, we have to work together. If you’re unwilling to sacrifice yourselves, then I can only sacrifice myself. At least, I have the right to decide when I’ll sacrifice myself.”
Selfish goes silent.
Scapegoat can feel a frigid chill down his spine as he realises that, Mu Jiashi isn’t just some kind, saintly figure – He isn’t. He is solely driven by risk and reward.
Right now, because neither Selfish nor himself want to sacrifice themselves, and it is not the time to abandon them for good yet, therefore, Mu Jiashi chose to sacrifice himself.
Yet, if the situation calls for it, then Scapegoat is sure that Mu Jiashi will immediately act in the most pragmatic way to maximise the gains from the situation, all in the name of the best interest for the team. He would not hesitate even if he had to betray every single one of them.
A naïve saint?
No! He’s a damned profit-driven demon that can even sell himself out if it means the greater good to him!
Scapegoat is shuddering, and is also thinking about the fact that there are all these monstrous Missiontakers in this Nightmare… Terrifying.
The Tower is a place filled with people of hidden talents——And that is not necessarily a praise; it implies there are all sorts of perverse, mad, insane people in the Tower, especially when the situation in the Tower often drives people to their limits and cause their values to change for the worse; death is no longer a deterrent or a haven.
They cannot die, so they can do whatever they want.
Scapegoat even knows a true nutcase himself – that person seeks the joy in death itself.
No matter what Nightmare they were together in, if they ended up with that nutcase, then the Missiontakers will have to wait until that person has had enough thrilling deaths, namely by experiencing all the possible ways to die in the Nightmare, before they can actually try to resolve it.
They’ll already have restarted the Nightmare several times by that point, and the difficulty of it would have risen sharply.
Though strangely enough, though the nutcase always seeks the thrill of death in those Nightmares, yet each and every time they at least achieve a Normal End, and even sometimes secure a True End.
Because of that, some Missiontakers who are truly desperate for a chance to ascend to a higher floor, would actually seek out the nutcase to join whatever Nightmare the person ends up in.
Though people like that nutcase are really the minority here. People that are merely weirdos——Are infinitely more common.
In any case, Scapegoat really is feeling under the weather by now.
He has never seen this man before; Mu Jiashi has an unremarkable appearance and was apathetic and self-loathing the entire time, calling himself a piece of trash and a loser, and yet, his ruthless attitude and behaviour means Scapegoat could never afford to underestimate him.
Selfish, meanwhile, couldn’t care less, and heads directly for the closest vehicle nearby.
Mu Jiashi is standing at the exit of the corridor. He turns his head around to look at the man in black; this time, they ran away more quickly, and so the man is still about two hundred metres or so behind them. He’ll be here in at least thirty seconds.
While he has the big machete in his hand, ‘chasing’ them, but he is moving at a sluggish pace.
Mu Jiashi is dissing inside, but then glances back at the Missiontakers and can’t help but mention, “I suggest that car closer to the road… never mind, just choose whatever you want.”
He suddenly loses motivation in the middle of speaking again.
Though Selfish and Scapegoat listened and headed for the car further away. In the car, Scapegoat honks and pokes his head out of the window to ask loudly, “dalao?”
Lin Qin hasn’t boarded yet.
He is leaning lazily by the wall on the right side of the exit to the corridor, saying, “I’ll stay here; leave me be.”
Mu Jiashi almost looks moved.
Lin Qin doesn’t even so much as lift his head to say, “not for your sake.”
Mu Jiashi “…”
His mood sinks back down immediately.
Lin Qin rubs his chin as he recalls what happened right in the final moments of the last run.
During all the chaos, gore and noise, Laosan and Mu Jiashi quickly finalised their cooperation, but Ding Yi also quickly approached Lin Qin.
That was also a factor that made Lin Qin unable to stop the man in black from killing someone in the end, otherwise, given his mood, he might have helped moved them out of harm’s way.
The woman with the grue hair walked to his side to quietly whisper, “dalao, please help out a little.”
Lin Qin ignored her at that point.
Ding Yi did not seem discouraged, when she continued, “I am aware that you are searching for drinks recently…”
Lin Qin furrowed his brow to look up at her with a cold gaze.
“I am a Necessities Merchant,” Ding Yi was perhaps aware that Lin Qin would not physically hurt someone no matter what, so she wasn’t deterred, explaining, “I could provide you with a shipment of the drinks you want. They are already packed up in a certain empty house in the Tower. If you help stop the man in black the next run of the Nightmare, I would tell you where that house is.”
Unoccupied houses are open to anyone in the Tower, though most people aren’t in the mood to acquire any, outside of Necessities Merchants like Ding Yi.
Lin Qin thought about it for a second before agreeing and also adding, “just this once.”
He did happen to be looking for drinks, for the sole purpose of trying to get Xü Beijin to fight him. He collected them openly without keeping anything under wraps, so naturally, well-connected Merchants like Ding Yi would learn of that news.
Still, it is an invasion of privacy, so he is slightly annoyed.
Therefore, despite Ding Yi offering him drinks for practically nothing in return, he is not at all friendlier towards her.
He saw it as her way of making it up to him; an equivalent exchange.
Merchants being Merchants, even if Ding Yi is taciturn and introverted in the Tower, she still possesses certain qualities.
And it has to be said that Ding Yi’s information network and her use of the information were intriguing.
Nowadays, Missiontakers like Ding Yi, who has managed to forge her own empire in the Tower through her efforts, rarely enter Nightmares anymore.
In fact, that was why Mu Jiashi was surprised to see her in the first place.
The reason is that they now value their lives and the faction they have built up. If they did end up losing themselves forever in a Collapsed Nightmare, all that work would have been for naught.
The Tower never forces any Missiontaker to go into a Nightmare, so many Necessities Merchants would, of course, stay inside the Tower and not visit Nightmares barring extraordinary circumstances, and that applies to Ding Yi as well.
She hasn’t entered a Nightmare for nigh-on three years now, and the fact that she chose to enter this one, should mean she has prepared herself to the bone; even if she wasn’t able to achieve a True End, she should at least have means to guarantee her safely leaving the Nightmare in the end.
Mu Jiashi didn’t know what the guarantee was.
Meanwhile, right now, seeing Lin Qin staying at the entrance of the corridor, the curious Mu Jiashi asks, “dalao, why did you stay?”
Lin Qin gives him an idle peek, but still answers, “that Necessities Merchant promised to give me drinks for free. In exchange, I’ll stay here.”
Mu Jiashi has figured out Ding Yi’s guarantee by now.
It’s Lin Qin. And not just because Lin Qin is here, either, but because, Ding Yi has acquired information——Information that can influence even Lin Qin. Even if it was a method that would only work once, and even if she may very well anger Lin Qin, Ding Yi still had to gamble.
Perhaps…
Is Ding Yi genuinely disinterested in ascending to a higher floor? No. Of course not. No normal person would be.
She could always look for the Golddiggers, but that is not a foolproof course of action either. Even the most famous of Golddiggers could still fail.
And the one and only Mu Jiashi who had maintained a 100% track record was on the higher floors, as far as she knew.
Thus, Ding Yi still decided to seize the opportunity and gamble on Lin Qin.
As for the ‘seized opportunity’ known as Lin Qin, what he would feel about that…
Right, he’s not happy about it, at least.
Nor is he ever really happy, in any case. Like right now, he is more preoccupied with wondering whether the drinks Ding Yi has prepared would be enough to persuade Xü Beijin to fight him seriously for once.
If it could, then all is well; Lin Qin is not one to mind using his martial prowess to help out a little.
That’s how he has been all these years in the Tower. He pays no mind to whoever it was that received his help every now and then, but many of them probably remembered the favour——Assuming they haven’t succumbed to any Nightmares yet.
This was a part of how even someone behaving as strangely as Lin Qin could still live carefree in the Tower and to be crowned the ‘dalao’ by all the Missiontakers. Otherwise, not everyone would have just stood by watching him idly hanging out about the different Nightmares.
Many a Missiontaker have a sliver of hope that, somehow, one day, Lin Qin would suddenly ‘activate’ and save them all from the Nightmares, you see. Even people like Ding Yi would think this way.
While Lin Qin looks to have agreed to Ding Yi’s deal, though if even those drinks aren’t enough to make Xü Beijin agree to fight him…
Well, Lin Qin would never go back on his word; he will deal with the man in black, alright, but Ding Yi would not exactly look good in Lin Qin’s eyes anymore, either.
All this is to say that, Xü Beijin is the crux of everything right now.
And the person in question himself…
Xü Beijin, he…
He…
Xü Beijin “…”
Wait, what?!
What did Lin Qin just say?!
The Necessities Merchant agreed to provide drinks, so Lin Qin is helping out in this Nightmare?
Ｄ・Ｒ・Ｉ・Ｎ・Ｋ・Ｓ?!
Xü Beijin is sitting stone-faced behind the bookstore counter, seriously pondering a question.
If, he did brawl with Lin Qin in a Nightmare, then, he probably, could revive… couldn’t he?
It just feels like it would hurt. Bad.
But… How should he say it? What Lin Qin is doing is actually really troubling him.
Xü Beijin heaves a weary sigh, trying to ignore all the friendly teases from the viewers in the stream. He could just about picture those comments, but hopefully they won’t start to fantasise about the relationship between him and Lin Qin.
He chooses to see no evil.
With his mood now souring, he feels like eating the soft candies Dai Wu gave him, but he only remembers when he is going through his pockets, that the Nightmare has restarted, and so the free candies have been ‘respawned.’
Xü Beijin “…”
He sits there quietly, yawning, bored with living already.
So sleepy…
Then he decides to try to energise himself a little. He pokes his head out above the counter to look at the water dispenser in a corner of the bookstore, and grabs some warm water from there. He takes some sips as he returns to the counter, when his casual glance notices something, and he stops.
“Eh? This is…”
He has actually kept what Dai Wu said in mind, that there were clues about the Nightmare in the bookstore.
Though he didn’t find any when he was back. Until now, that is.
Xü Beijin puts his cup of water onto the counter and extends his hand to grab a newspaper from the shelf below the counter.
