Chapter 19: Subjective Time |
"Assuming my deduction is correct," Qi Si began, his gaze drifting to the rain streaking down the windowpane, "the time loop has already started. There were nine players who originally entered this instance..." He crumpled the photograph in his hand and tossed it to the floor.
"Knowing myself, and faced with a one-in-three chance of dying, my first move would have been to ensure I didn't break any rules. Then, I'd simply wait for three unlucky souls to make a mistake and get themselves killed. An easy win."
He was only telling half the story. The truth was far uglier.
A rookie forced to masquerade as a veteran, fighting for a sliver of hope in a deadly game. To survive, he would have had to be more cautious than anyone, planning every single move with painstaking care.
After learning about the game's brutal "guaranteed death count"—a system designed to pit players against each other like venomous insects in a jar—he would have done anything to avoid being sacrificed. He would have struck first, seizing every opportunity to thin the herd. It was entirely possible that one of those three bodies in the garden was his own handiwork.
Of course, this was all just speculation. Ultimately, he had no memory of this supposed "first round."
Then it occurred to Qi Si: he had woken up in the garden outside the manor, while all the other players had appeared safely inside.
His late arrival had forced him to take the seat closest to the head of the table—the most dangerous spot.
And so, with a mindset of having nothing left to lose, he had resorted to shameless deception and testing the limits.
It was only then, already a person of interest to the NPC, that he had decided to explore the third floor and unravel the instance's secrets—his only path to survival.
It was all as if someone had orchestrated it. Someone who understood his psyche with terrifying accuracy...
And the only person who had ever truly understood him... was himself.
In that instant, the clues clicked into place. Qi Si felt a surge of understanding as the fog of confusion in his mind evaporated, leaving everything startlingly clear.
He reigned in his thoughts, a brilliant smile spreading across his face. "It seems my 'better you than me' approach has already failed, otherwise this new loop wouldn't have started. To get through this, there's only one path left: unravel the lore."
Chang Xu fell silent for a moment before saying, "My gut tells me my first choice would have been to figure out the lore and try to minimize the death toll."
Qi Si scoffed inwardly but didn't bother to argue.
He was no stranger to spouting noble-sounding platitudes. When dealing with police investigations in the real world, he could spin a tale on the spot, perfectly maintaining his persona as a model, law-abiding citizen.
"Seems like unraveling the lore is harder than it looks, huh? Two rounds and you still haven't cracked it," Qi Si quipped, ignoring Chang Xu's baffled expression as he strode toward the farthest room on the third floor.
It was the last unexplored room, and its exterior was much tidier than the other two. The door was immaculate, the keyhole polished to a gleam. Someone was clearly living inside.
Qi Si brushed aside the vines that stirred in the windless hallway, his feet crunching on scattered leaves as he walked to the door. He stopped, his eyes fixed on the dried flower petals peeking from beneath it.
"Someone's inside," Chang Xu noted, pointing a finger at the slender marks on the doorknob. "We might run into Miss Anna."
In this context, the "Miss Anna" he meant was obviously the one the players had seen at the dinner table—the younger sister from the melodramatic backstory.
Even though both the older and younger sister were technically "Miss Anna," encountering either of them on the third floor meant breaking the ninth rule. Still, the sister in the black dress was undoubtedly the more dangerous of the two.
"We probably won't run into her. She should be in the garden right now. And if we do... well, that's just our bad luck." Qi Si smiled, stroking the custom bracelet on his right wrist. "Besides, the penalty for breaking the rules isn't tallied until nighttime. We have more than enough time to figure this place out, don't we?"
He curled his fingers and rapped on the door three times, slow and deliberate.
Last night, a ghost had knocked on his door. This morning, he was knocking on a ghost's. The sheer theatricality and dark humor of the situation made the corners of his eyes crinkle in amusement.
Chang Xu watched as the young man chose to knock properly instead of picking the lock with a wire. His expression remained neutral, his gaze slightly lowered.
It was a move that could easily alert their quarry, but its politeness might just be enough to lower the NPC's guard.
If all went as expected, the person in the room would be the real "Anna"—the one in the red dress mentioned in the rules. She was trustworthy, or at least, a relatively safe NPC to interact with.
As Qi Si knocked a second time, a long, drawn-out *creak* echoed, and the tightly shut door swung slowly inward.
The cloying scent of flowers mixed with the stench of rot washed over them. The room inside was a tangled, writhing mass of dark green vines and branches, like knotted serpents. Nearly every inch of space was consumed, but through a small gap in the foliage, they could just make out a flicker of red.
It was an old woman, her skin a landscape of wrinkles. Half her face had rotted away, a grotesque sight that had nothing to do with beauty. She moaned, her consciousness fading, seeming on the verge of death, yet her clouded eyes were fixed directly on Qi Si.
She asked, "What time is it?"
Qi Si glanced at Chang Xu, who consulted his pocket watch. "Two-oh-two in the afternoon," he replied.
The old woman tilted her head, struggling to process the information.
After a long moment, she let out a rattling laugh. "One o'clock this afternoon was longer than yesterday's."
With that, she lowered her head and seemed to drift back into a stupor, clearly having no desire to engage further with the two intruders.
Qi Si watched her in silence for a long moment before a gentle smile touched his lips.
He pushed aside the hanging vines and walked slowly toward the old woman. Crouching before her, he asked, slowly and deliberately, "Do you want to see him?" The old woman, roused from her daze, lifted her head. She stared blankly forward, her eyes reflecting nothing.
Qi Si smiled, a reminiscent look warming his eyes. His voice was soft, measured. "After that day, he left the manor and returned to his own estate, but he never forgot you. He spent years convincing his father before he finally dared to return for you. But by then, you were already gone."
As Qi Si spoke, a flicker of life stirred in the stagnant pools of the old woman's eyes.
She reached out, her hand clutching at Qi Si's sleeve. "I must see him," she murmured, "I must see him... Where is he?"
"I don't know," Qi Si replied, his eyes lowered, his smile disarmingly warm. "But I have two companions who might know where he is. Would you like to see them?"
The old woman stared at him, her gaze unwavering.
Qi Si smiled, his voice gentle and persuasive. "All you have to do is say, 'I want Zou Yan and Liu Qingye to come to the third floor to see me.'"
"I want Zou Yan and Liu Qingye to come to the third floor to see me..."
The instant the old woman finished speaking, Qi Si ruthlessly yanked his sleeve free. He gestured to Chang Xu. "Done. Let's go."
It took Chang Xu only a moment to grasp Qi Si's scheme. His brow furrowed. "You're trying to make Zou Yan and Yezi break the rules, too?"
The old woman was also a "Miss Anna." By having her summon Zou Yan and Yezi to the third floor, Qi Si had put the two of them in an impossible position.
If they came, they would violate the ninth rule:
[Try to avoid going to the third floor. If you must go, do not let Miss Anna see you.]
If they didn't come, they would violate the fourth rule:
[Do not refuse Miss Anna's requests. Fulfill her every desire, as she despises disobedient guests.]
Either way, they would have to break at least one rule, putting them on even footing with the two men who had already come upstairs.
Qi Si walked out of the room, glancing back with a malicious grin. "There's safety in numbers, after all. Since we've all chosen this thankless path of unraveling the mystery, I'd rather not be the only one to die for it."
Chang Xu hurried to catch up. "Why spare Lin Chen?" he demanded.
"Oh, my mistake. I forgot to mention, Lin Chen was up here long before us. So, theoretically, everyone has now broken the same number of rules." Qi Si pulled the door shut, his gaze drifting innocently toward the ceiling. "Ah, the things I do to keep everything fair. It's not easy, you know."
Chang Xu was left speechless.
He finally realized it then: the seemingly harmless young man beside him hadn't spoken a single word of truth!
Had he refused to explore the third floor together, Qi Si would have undoubtedly added his name to Miss Anna's summons...
Qi Si met Chang Xu's wary gaze with a careless smile.
He had never been the noble type to bear a burden alone. From the moment he decided to explore the third floor, he had been devising a plan to distribute the risk, determined to drag every last player down with him.
It could be said that from the very beginning—when he sent Lin Chen to scout the third floor, verbally trapping him into breaking a rule—every subsequent action, every choice, and the entire course of events had unfolded exactly according to his design.
And now, he had undeniably succeeded.
The risky exploration had yielded a wealth of useful information, and the mechanics of the instance were becoming crystal clear in his mind.
The old woman could perceive the temporal anomaly, stating that "one o'clock this afternoon was longer than yesterday's." And yet, despite the endless time loop, she remained in a state of perpetual, arrested decay.
This proved one thing: in this instance, a person's physical state was separate from their ability to act and remember.
While a physical body would reset with the time loop, anyone who became a ghost could retain their memories and even act freely during the rewind.
For a ghost, that rewound hour was a free gift of time, existing without consequence and born from nothing.
With that realization, the path to victory became blindingly obvious.
Qi Si’s eyes fell upon the seventh rule on the system interface.
[7. Only a ghost can kill a human. Please believe firmly that you are human.]
He had originally assumed it was a restrictive rule designed to prevent players from killing one another. He had even wondered why this cruel, dog-eat-dog game would be so benevolent.
Now he saw the truth. The key to winning the game was written right there, hidden in plain sight.
By making the main NPC—the malevolent Miss Anna—a human, and explicitly stating that "only a ghost can kill a human," the game was giving them a clue that couldn't be any clearer.
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