Chapter 18: Rose Manor - The Three-Door Problem |
"Lin Chen, are you in there? Yezi is dead, and I'm so scared... Can you let me in?"
Curled up on the bed, Lin Chen listened to the woman's voice outside the door, his hand instinctively tightening around the room key.
The voice, muffled by the wooden door and trembling with what sounded like terror, was distorted and indistinct, but he could still recognize it as Zou Yan's.
Lin Chen didn't have a strong impression of Zou Yan. He only remembered she was a psychologist who had spoken a few words about sticking together. She always maintained a calm, gentle demeanor that put people at ease, like a soft spring breeze.
He had never heard her sound so distraught...
Lin Chen subconsciously climbed off the bed, his hand reaching for the doorknob.
But just as his fingers were about to turn it, he hesitated. A memory surfaced, replaying itself with vivid clarity.
An hour ago, as Qi Si was leaving, he had placed the room key in Lin Chen's hand, his expression more serious than ever before. "We're all adults here, but I feel I should remind you anyway: don't open the door for anyone but me."
At the time, he hadn't understood and had asked, "Why?"
The memory was so sharp that Lin Chen recoiled, his eyes fixed warily on the door.
Outside, Zou Yan's voice grew more frantic. "Lin Chen, please, help me! ...It's coming! I'm going to die!"
The fear and desperation in her voice sounded genuine, not like an act. Hearing it, Lin Chen's heart pounded with alarm.
He knew he couldn't trust the other players, but they were only suspects, not villains with irrefutable proof of their guilt. What if Qi Si's suspicions were wrong?
If he didn't open the door, Zou Yan might really die...
But the decision to open it involved not just his own safety, but Qi Si's as well...
Beads of sweat formed on Lin Chen's forehead. He wavered, his grip on the key tightening until it bit into his flesh.
...
On the third floor, Qi Si stepped out of the room filled with skeletons and, for a brief moment, heard the sound of rain.
The castle's corridors had no windows. The thick, ancient stone walls sealed the outside world away, and without visual confirmation, his sense of hearing faded in the silence. The sound he thought he'd heard felt like a trick of the mind.
And yet, Qi Si felt that it was about time for it to rain.
After all, in third-rate dramas, whenever the tragic plot reached its climax, a downpour was always necessary to set the mood, wasn't it?
He had explored the first room thoroughly enough; wasting more time there wouldn't yield any new clues. Qi Si walked over to the room labeled "2," took out a thin piece of wire, and expertly picked the lock as he had before.
As usual, he had Chang Xu go in first. Only after his silent companion had made a full circle of the room without incident did Qi Si leisurely step inside.
His gaze fell upon a massive floor-to-ceiling window that took up nearly an entire wall. The gray-purple sky was reflected into the room, casting a hazy, somber light on the floor and walls.
Through the spiderweb-laced glass, he could see a curtain of rain descending in silken threads. The crisscrossing strands layered over one another, becoming a tangled, indistinguishable web, like gossamer.
A soft *thump* sounded behind him as something hit the floor.
Qi Si turned his head and looked down to see a worn-out rag doll lying near his heel.
It was a little girl in a red dress with braided hair. Her eyes were two simple "X"s, and her single-line mouth opened and closed as she sang a creepy nursery rhyme:
"She's coming, she's coming, in the pouring rain..."
"Don't look at me, don't look at me, I'm in the wardrobe..."
The door slammed shut behind them with a loud *bang*. The ambient light quickly dimmed, taking on the sepia-toned hue of a flashback.
[Side Quest Triggered]
[Side Quest (Mandatory): Play hide-and-seek with Anna and Annie]
Two lines of text refreshed on the system interface. Qi Si narrowed his eyes slightly.
A side quest, and it was specifically marked "mandatory." Did that mean there would be "optional" quests later on?
He watched thoughtfully as three identical wardrobes materialized against the wall. Each was about half a person's height and two people wide, casting a dusty gray shadow on the floor.
A little girl in a black dress slowly took shape within the shadows. In a sweet voice, she said, "My sister is hiding in one of the wardrobes. Can you help me find her? Each of you gets to open one wardrobe. But if you open an empty one, you'll die."
So, it's a blind box problem?
Qi Si recalled the example he had given Lin Chen not long ago and raised an eyebrow. "Can we use methods like knocking on the wardrobes to help us decide?"
"No, you can't. Before you make your choice, you can only look, not touch."
Dust motes floated and danced in the air. The little girl was surrounded by a faint halo of light, but her face was a complete blank, making her look like a phantom from a hallucination.
She crossed her hands over her chest and urged them on with innocent cruelty, "Go on, pick. One of you has to choose first."
Qi Si looked down at the girl's featureless face and asked abruptly, "Are you human?"
The little girl tilted her head up. "Yes, I am. I have always been human."
Qi Si smiled. "Alright, then. My teammate will choose a wardrobe first, but he won't open it. Then, you go and open one of the other two. How about that? You said it yourself, 'each of you gets to open one wardrobe'."
In the dim, old-film-like light, Qi Si waited with perfect composure. The little girl tilted her head, silently and hesitantly considering his proposal.
On the floor behind him, the doll continued to chant its nursery rhyme in a monotone voice.
"She's coming, she's coming, in the pouring rain..."
"Don't look at me, don't look at me, I'm in the... *squish*!"
Without warning, the chanting stopped, replaced by a sound like a cricket being crushed underfoot.
The ghostly image of the girl flickered twice, then vanished along with the two wardrobes beside it, leaving only the middle one standing alone.
[Side Quest Completed]
The cold, electronic voice sounded abruptly.
Qi Si turned to see Chang Xu's expressionless face, and... the doll crushed beneath his foot.
Chang Xu was silent for a moment before looking down. "I didn't expect it to be so weak."
...Did you pay for a premium account or are you just hacking? What is this? If you can't solve the problem, just eliminate the one who posed it?
Qi Si was suddenly reminded of a discussion he'd once heard about the trolley problem, where someone had offered the solution: "blow up the trolley."
He felt a wave of relief that he hadn't provoked Chang Xu earlier. He put on a smile and teased, "You seem pretty good at dealing with supernatural things. I'm guessing your identity isn't as simple as you've let on."
Chang Xu tugged at the brim of his cap and uttered two words: "Born this way."
"Impressive, very impressive."
Qi Si offered a perfunctory compliment and gestured toward the flattened doll on the floor, signaling for Chang Xu to pick it up.
Chang Xu complied wordlessly. He took the rag doll and turned it over in his hands, examining it before flipping up the corner of its dress for Qi Si to see.
Embroidered there in red thread was a single English word—"Anna."
"It's Anna's doll, the older sister. From the nursery rhyme, we can tell that Anna was terrified of her sister, Annie. Annie's 'love' was most likely unrequited," Qi Si repeated his earlier speculation, which remained largely unchanged.
He scanned the room's layout, confirmed there was nothing else to investigate, and then raised a hand to point at the wardrobe in front of them.
Chang Xu understood. He pulled the wardrobe door open, then bent down to pick up a yellowed old photograph from the dusty interior.
The photo's composition was haphazard. Nine people sat stiffly at a long table laden with food, all facing the camera with wooden, unnatural postures.
Four of the faces were clearly visible, while the other five were just blurs.
Qi Si leaned in for a closer look and immediately recognized a familiar face among the four clear ones. It was Shen Ming!
Of the remaining three, he had seen one before—it was the first body Chang Xu had dug up from the garden.
A theory began to sprout in his mind, and it was confirmed a second later.
Chang Xu's long, slender index finger tapped each of the three less familiar faces. "The bodies of these three are all in the garden. I dug them up myself."
Qi Si stared at the figure closest to the head of the table. "When a player dies, their face appears in the photo," he said softly. "There are five empty spots left, which just happens to match the five remaining players. Does this mean this instance was never meant to let any players leave alive?"
All the inconsistencies he had noticed now clicked into place. The thrill of being on the razor's edge of life and death was so fascinating that he had to force himself to suppress a smile. "What do you think of this possibility: a time loop started the moment the instance began? A three-day cycle, three deaths each round. And we're in the second round."
"Impossible," Chang Xu said, shaking his head. "I would never have left obvious places with important clues, like the garden and the third floor, unexplored until the second round."
Qi Si let out a sneer. "Or perhaps we already explored them all in the first round, but failed to break the cycle. And so, everything reset."
The implication behind his words carried a bone-deep chill.
To explore again and again, to fail again and again, losing all memory and being thrown back into the loop.
The cycle repeats, companions die one by one, the number of survivors dwindles, and the hope of escape grows ever fainter...
To be trapped in despair without even knowing it, struggling onward with the false hope of survival, until you are silently devoured by this strange manor and become nutrients for the roses...
The thoughts spread through his mind like creeping vines. Qi Si's breath quickened at the tragic beauty of the image.
Ignoring the dirt, he took the photograph from Chang Xu's hand.
The front of the photo began to bleed ink as if it had been dropped in water. In just a few seconds, the once-clear image became a blur.
Words written in blood soaked through from the back, already dried and fixed:
[WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE]
...
After her parents died, the girl got her wish: to live alone with her sister. That is, until that man appeared.
The girl couldn't understand why a stranger who had suddenly intruded on their lives could steal her sister's attention.
He wasn't even handsome, nowhere near as beautiful as her sister. Why would her sister love him so humbly, so cautiously?
The girl interfered, and the man finally left, unable to take her sister with him.
The girl watched her sister spend her days awash in tears, unable to understand the depth of her sorrow.
Her sister grew more haggard by the day, her beautiful face turning dull. When the roses in the garden withered, she wilted with the season.
Powerless, the girl could only climb to the attic once more and pray to the idol.
The god said, "She is sick and will die. Only the heart of her truest love can bring her back to life."
The girl didn't want to admit it, but she knew with perfect clarity that her sister loved that man.
Fortunately, by then, her appearance was nearly identical to her sister's. Even their parents, were they alive, might not have noticed the difference.
When the man returned to the manor, she greeted him in her sister's place. And she killed him.
Her sister's corpse opened its eyes in the coffin. But it was a monster, a ghost parasitized by roses. It no longer called her name, no longer looked at her with sad eyes. With every passing moment, it aged, rotted, and withered.
She became afraid and pleaded with the god for help.
The merciful god granted her a fragment of time—three days—allowing her and her sister to barely cling to existence in an endless loop.
She watched her sister repeat the process of decay in the infinite three-day cycle. Though her condition didn't worsen, her face had long since rotted away.
To her horror, she found she could not accept her sister's ugliness.
Every time she saw that wrinkled face, the flesh flaking away to reveal bone, she felt sick, wanting to vomit.
She even began to regret everything she had done to possess her sister.
She asked the god, could her sister's beauty be restored?
The god opened its scarlet eyes, its smile bloodthirsty. "Lure the guests who come to the manor. Nourish the roses with their flesh and blood, and everything will be as you wish."
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