Chapter 56: The Dialectical Game |
Not all evil deeds are judged as crimes, and not all crimes are punished.
— Volume II: Crime and Punishment
A moonless, pitch-black night shrouded the cemetery. Now and then, a few red-eyed crows would flutter down to roost on the tombstones.
Qi Si sat leaning against a small grave mound, fiddling with a skeletal arm he had just pulled from the earth as if it were a freshly picked ghost orchid.
One by one, white, bony claws broke through the soil like sprouts, arranged in a haphazard, flickering array. The dark grave dirt was soon abloom with white flowers.
"Qi Si... we died so horribly..."
"You have to pay... pay with your life..."
The wind carried the whimpers of the dead. Qi Si rose to his feet and looked around, his eyes landing on a familiar statue standing in the distance.
The statue was bathed in cold moonlight, veiled in a thin, pale red haze. Its downcast gaze seemed to hold both pity and mockery.
The murder of crows rose like a malevolent gale, circling overhead. The frantic beating of their wings produced a strange, rustling rasp.
"Crack!"
Lightning struck without warning, illuminating half the sky and scaring off a host of ghouls and specters from the trees.
A cracked tombstone lay in his path. For a fleeting moment, the inscription on it was clear in the electric light; Qi Si could only make out the single character: "Qi."
A shrill female voice screamed in his ear, "You killed me! You killed me... I want you to pay with your life..."
Qi Si tilted his head slightly. A face, obscured by long hair, pressed against the tip of his nose. Tears of blood gurgled from its hollow eyes, brimming with resentment and hatred.
"First, you killed yourself," Qi Si corrected her kindly, though his own memories were a chaotic jumble. "Second, I fulfilled your final wish."
"And third, I cleaned up every piece of evidence that could possibly link me to it. I refuse to believe they could track me down after five years... so, why exactly should I pay with my life?"
The woman in the long red dress was covered in bloody gashes, looking as though she had been pieced together from broken shards.
She raised her hands and wrapped them tightly around Qi Si's neck, blood continuously spilling from her lips.
"I'm going to kill you... I'm going to kill you..."
Why can't you understand plain language?
Troubled, Qi Si looked at the woman before him. He grabbed her hands and, one by one, snapped her fingers.
The woman let out a series of venomous shrieks. Qi Si, the direct target of her rage, was suddenly struck by a memory. He bent over, clutching his stomach, and burst into laughter.
A manic energy bled into the scene. The night took on an eerie red glow and began to tremble violently.
Cracks spiderwebbed from the edges of the image, quickly spreading across the entire view, which now looked ready to shatter at any moment.
[Countdown complete. Preparing to enter the next instance.]
The cold, electronic voice extinguished the chaotic nightmare. In an instant, the woman vanished.
Qi Si found himself standing beneath a giant, golden tree wreathed in black smoke.
The tree's branches pierced the clouds, and from its drooping vines hung human heads. Its gnarled roots, like massive blood vessels, dug deep into the soil, upon which lay the corpses of various creatures—some just beginning to decay, others already picked clean to the bone.
"This dream again..." Qi Si let out a weary yawn. "It's been a while since I dreamt of that. Is it trying to tell me something?"
For years, he either didn't dream at all or had lucid dreams. It was nearly impossible to hypnotize or influence him.
Yet, dreaming of "that incident" again after so long, he had lost his usual lucidity, pulled into the illusory scene, feeling lost and bewildered.
Even though he had quickly regained his self-awareness, a faint flicker of annoyance now stirred within him. He felt a sudden, morbid urge to go back to his ancestral grave in the countryside and dig it up, just to see.
Of course, that wasn't important right now.
The real priority was clearing more instances and bringing more powerful items back to the real world.
All fear stems from a lack of firepower. If he could amass enough strength to rival the authorities, he naturally wouldn't have so many worries...
The scene shifted, and a faint light appeared before him. A full-length mirror materialized in his line of sight, and lines of text slowly scrolled across its surface.
[This is your third instance.]
[Upon clearing this instance, you will become an official player and unlock all game functions.]
Qi Si tilted his head, watching the text for a moment, but his mind drifted to the final moments of the *Flesh-Eating* instance.
The god-like NPC had told him: "In the next game, you will find symbols and revelations within the puzzles."
Divine prophecies were likely ambiguous, but the information they contained wasn't necessarily worthless.
A lot had happened six years ago, creating questions Qi Si still couldn't answer. His recent experiences only deepened the feeling that he was a piece in someone else's game. He was curious to see what kind of answers this instance might provide.
[Countdown complete. Please enter the instance immediately.]
The electronic voice sounded again, this time with a hint of urgency.
Qi Si stepped into the mirror, as if plunging into a pool of stagnant water.
An overwhelming darkness crashed down on him. Silvery-white lines of text flew through the void, accompanied by an emotionless narration:
[Randomly generating instance...]
[Loading instance... Loading complete.]
...
[Instance Name: The Dialectical Game]
[Instance Type: Solo Puzzle]
[Preliminary Note: This instance focuses on individual ability. All of your items will be sealed.]
...
The darkness around him was boundless, almost swallowing his consciousness. His body felt as heavy as a corpse, unable to move.
Qi Si felt himself falling.
In the chaos, he lost all sense of direction, unable to even feel his own limbs. It was as if he were an abnormal creature, nothing but a head floating in the nutrient fluid of a culture tank or encased in some other formless substance.
After an unknown amount of time, the darkness slowly receded. Through his eyelids, he could sense a faint light seeping in.
Qi Si struggled for a moment and finally opened his eyes.
An orange, shadowless lamp shone directly into them. Even though his vision was blurry from having kept his eyes shut for so long, the sudden light was jarring.
He instinctively raised a hand to shield his eyes.
His arm seemed to be coated in some kind of viscous liquid, which transferred to his face on contact. It had a strange, clinging sensation, but it wasn't unpleasant.
Qi Si sat up and looked down. His entire body was covered in a transparent fluid, colorless and odorless, likely some sort of nutrient solution for preserving specimens.
He was wearing only a white shirt with a large "9" printed on the cuff. It clearly wasn't what he had been wearing before falling asleep in the real world; it looked more like a standard-issue surgical gown.
He was on a smooth operating table. The fluid had left a faint gray outline of his body on the dark surface, and the cold metal had warmed slightly from his residual body heat.
"The setting for this instance seems quite advanced..." Qi Si touched his right wrist. It was bare; his custom-made bracelet was gone.
"They said my items would be sealed, but they even took this? Or did the Weird Game finally notice a bug and decide to patch it?"
As the words "Weird Game" crossed his mind, Qi Si realized something was wrong.
His peripheral vision was completely empty. There was no system interface, no identity card, no pop-up hints, and... not even a countdown timer.
"Did it crash? Did I lose connection? Or did the Weird Game delete my account?"
Qi Si's mind raced with possibilities, but he still leaned toward the belief that he was in the game, rather than having inexplicably transmigrated or woken up in a mental hospital to find his entire past had been a delusion.
The reason was simple: there was no point in considering unsolvable possibilities.
The more troubling part was that no one on the forums had ever mentioned a situation like this.
Either this was an extremely rare occurrence, a sort of in-game easter egg, or... every player who had encountered this had died.
And most likely, the two possibilities were related.
The room Qi Si was in wasn't large, maybe thirty square meters. The four walls were clean, with no apparent stains or smudges.
On the wall directly opposite him was a closed iron door. In the left corner stood a massive glass jar, large enough to hold a person.
The glass jar was open, about three-quarters filled with a colorless, transparent liquid. A large number "9" was painted on its surface in red.
In the right corner was a pile of objects covered by a black canvas. Through the fabric, he could faintly make out their silhouettes; they were probably more of the same glass jars.
Between the canvas and the operating table was a low table. Its surface was clean, but a drawer was slightly ajar, revealing something inside.
Being alone in a sealed room, Qi Si felt it would be a disservice to himself not to search the place thoroughly.
He swung his legs off the table, pulled open the drawer, and took out everything inside, lining it all up on the operating table.
He found no scalpels or anything else that could be used for self-defense. The drawer contained nothing but paper, which appeared to be medical records.
The pages were printed with clear, black text:
[Qi Si, male, born January 1, 2014. First presented with "soul weightlessness" symptoms on January 1, 2035, and was diagnosed on February 3 of the same year. On March 15, 2035, the patient entered a persistent vegetative state, the possible cause being soul dissipation.]