Chapter 115
A fine layer of cold sweat broke out on the surprised Mo Yi’s back. He turned his head suddenly and looked towards the place where the sound came from.
He noticed another tightly closed door right beside one which he just came out of. The colour of the door panel was mottled and ugly, resembling the surface of an aged canvas. Dark brown spots, likely to be bloodstains which have long since dried up, were splattered all over the door panel.
And the voice seemed to come from inside this door.
The difference between this room and others along this corridor was that there was a rusty steel plate welded near the bottom of this closed door. It was tightly embedded into the wooden panel, and there was even a dark thin slit across the bottom of it, making it seem as though it could be lifted.
This was like… a little window to pass things through.
Mo Yi’s heart was beating violently in his chest. The shirt plastered to his back was wet with cold sweat but he couldn’t feel the coldness at this moment.
His gaze was firmly glued to the steel plate on the door, and he seemed to be unable to move his attention away.
There was some strange and unknown premonition in his heart that he could not put his finger on, but it was tugging at his mind, pulling at his nerves, and bringing a sense of trembling that could not be ignored.
At this moment, a hoarse and rusty creaking sounded in the dead corridor.
It was thin and sharp, like a sharp knife scraping across the tight nerves of a person, and making their scalp go numb.
The small steel plate was slowly lifted up. The thin shadow below gradually expanded as a result, followed by the sight of several thin and pale fingers slowly stretching out from the darkness within.
Mo Yi’s breathing stagnated for a moment.
Those pale fingers were bone thin, with just a layer of skin wrapped around the skeleton, looking as though it was a mere corpses.
But it was still obvious at a single glance that it was a pair of children’s hands.
That thin and soft child’s voice wafted through the heavy door, sounding oddly ethereal as it repeated the words:
“You came.”
Mo Yi’s Adam’s apple moved slightly. He felt a dry and painful feeling, but he took a deep breath nevertheless and replied in a hoarse voice.
“Yes.”
A child’s giggle came from behind the door, echoing in the empty corridor.
“You are so interesting.”
Mo Yi had calmed down by this point. He shifted his body without a sound, positioning his body at an angle while keeping his eyes trained on the steel plate and the hand protruding from it.
Controlling his voice, he replied cautiously.
“Why do you say that?”
The child’s voice behind the door sounded again, crystal clear.
“Generally speaking, shouldn’t you be asking me: who are you? Why are you here? What’s your purpose?”
The voice suddenly shifted into one with a hint of mystery. “Or… ask: Where is my companion? Is she still alive?”
Mo Yi’s heart stuttered. His fingers shrank subconsciously but the expression on his face remained calm.
“Do you want me to ask those questions?”
As if realising that Mo Yi was trying to seize the flow of this conversation, that child’s voice suddenly became rougher.
“Of course not!”
The protruding thin fingers tightened suddenly, and the sharp nails seemed like they would dig holes into the wooden door panel.
Yet in the next second, the child’s voice became sweet again.
“However… if you were the one who asked these questions, I might have answered it.”
A layer of cold sweat leaked from Mo Yi’s back. He pursed his paling lips nervously, but his voice was still steady and calm:
“Well then, who are you?”
The child’s voice burst into giggles. “You should have guessed it a long time ago, right? I am Edwin.”
Mo Yi’s pale fingertips hanging by his sides twitched. His breathing rate changed slightly—he did guess this, but he didn’t expect the other party to give the answer so easily.
He continued to ask another question according to the order Edwin provided earlier. “Why are you here?”
Edwin’s voice was tinged with resentment and viciousness. “Of course it was because I was locked up.”
Mo Yi’s heart was beating violently. A thin layer of hot sweat was emerging from his palms, which made them very wet and uncomfortable. Struggling to control his breathing, he continued to ask.
“Who locked you up?”
Edwin giggled. “Of course it is the other Edwins.”
Mo Yi’s fingers tightened slowly, feeling a little startled.
—When he was in that room just now, he actually had some vague guesses in his mind.
Those corpses ranging from toys to small animals to humans were obviously for experimenting and improving the killing technique—which was then also carried out in the exact same way on the dead players they’d encountered on those two floors.
This instance was a mental asylum, and its name was Edwin… This meant that this place had to have some related associations with the boy.
It was just that all of these were simply one of the conjectures Mo Yi came up with, and he had listed at least four or five possible alternatives. This instance did not provide any more evidence and clues, which makes him unable to narrow down the number of objections.
But to think the “Edwin” on this floor… would actually reveal the answer directly?!
Mo Yi’s brows were tightly pulled into a frown. He couldn’t refute the proposed conjecture for a while as all the evidence pointed to the same conclusion—
What the other party said was right.
The reason why this mental asylum was called Edwin, was because Edwin himself was a mental asylum.
The man on -3F, the woman on -2F, and the child on this floor, they were all the same person, they were all Edwin.
So in the prompt at the beginning of this instance, it said, You are me.
And the completely blank reference room on -2F backed up this conclusion too. Since this mental asylum itself was not a real building, it was naturally impossible for it to have any materials in its archive room.
But Mo Yi still had a vague uneasiness in his heart.
Because if that was the case… Then who was that person who pushed him on -3F?
What was the meaning of the butterfly that kept appearing all over the three floors? Was it just a murderous symbol of a psychopathic killer?
As if realising that Mo Yi hadn’t replied for a long time, there was a trace of dissatisfaction in the child’s voice when it sounded again.
“Why aren’t you talking?”
Mo Yi came back to his senses. He took a deep breath, feigning a calm tone.
“It’s nothing, I was just stunned by your words.”
Edwin laughed. His giggles echoed in the corridor, which sounded a little frightening. After about half a minute, he suddenly stopped laughing and spoke in a more solemn tone.
“She likes killing women, he likes killing men, but I only like toys and small animals.”
His voice suddenly became terrifying and deep.
“That’s why they locked me up.”
Mo Yi recalled what Jiang Yuanrou said before. In her previous instance, the boss slaughtered the players by a specific gender each day. If Edwin really had a dissociative identity disorder, then he really only showed two personalities then.
He squinted his eyes, staring at the finger protruding from under the steel plate, and suddenly asked the third question asked by the other party.
“What’s your purpose?”
Edwin slowly withdrew his finger, leaving only a narrow gap left on the steel plate again. His voice sounded muffled behind the door panel, thin and weak, gently reaching his ears. “Of course… it’s mutual benefit and reciprocity.”
Mo Yi’s heart skipped a beat, and an ominous premonition rose from the depths of his heart.
“Look behind you.”
The voice sounded child-like and innocent.
Mo Yi turned and looked behind—following the window to look at the opposite corridor…
He saw a familiar, petite figure standing at the end of the corridor, with a stiff body and slightly lowered head. Her long curly brown hair hung down, with deep shadows shrouding the rest of her face except for a pale pointed chin.
Mo Yi’s heart was beating wildly. His hands and feet were cold, and a thin layer of sweat appeared on his forehead, slowly trickling down his hot temples.
He subconsciously took a step forward, and the situation in his eyes became clearer—
Jiang Yuanrou was walking along the corridor at an extremely slow speed. The pattern of the dull green wallpaper on the corridor wall seemed to be moving and spinning around her.
Her movements were stiff, as if she was being manipulated by something, and she moved towards the end of the corridor step by step.
Mo Yi’s gaze shifted and his eyes fell on the end of the corridor.
There was a door in a deep bright red colour, which looked so rich that it appeared as if blood was slowly flowing down the straight door frame and deeply imprinted onto the wall.
—”Up is down”.
—”To go is to stay”.
If what Edwin said was correct, then although they were slowly going up in the elevator, they were actually slowly moving deeper.
And if Jiang Yuanrou walked out of that door, then she would have left in the deepest part of the dungeon…
Then she would be left behind here forever.
Mo Yi’s heart tightened harshly. A cold feeling spread upwards from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head, and a huge tremor moved along his nerves to the other parts of his body.
He took a sudden step forward, rushed to the window, and reflexively slapped on the cold glass vigorously with his palm.
There was a banging sound and vibration from the glass, and he heard his hoarse voice echoing in the silent and narrow corridor.
“Yuanrou!!!”
Mo Yi pounded on the blurry and hard glass as hard as he could. There was a fiery pain coming from deep within his throat, as if there was sand particles rubbing against each other, and also a sharp twinge from the base of the injured finger, as though there was a dull rusty knife sawing on his nerve, bringing waves of discomfort to him like he was having heart palpitations.
At this moment, the soft child’s voice sounded from behind again.
His voice was cold and smooth, as if it was a cold-blooded animal which was slowly wriggling and shrinking its soft body. His words left cold and slippery marks on the listener’s skin, causing goosebumps and physiological tremors to erupt through them.
“—How about you let me out of here and I’ll help you save her?”
“Mutual benefit.”
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