Chapter 406: Snow Mountain |
"Let's start by looking for any useful clues," Qi Si said, turning away from the window. He moved to the nightstand to the left of the wooden bed, pulling open the drawers one by one and feeling around inside.
Lin Chen nodded and began searching the nightstand on the other side, his movements deliberately avoiding the six-armed Mahakala statue on its surface, as if even the slightest touch might bring disastrous consequences.
He was struck by a sense of déjà vu. In the Rose Manor instance, he and Qi Si had shared a room, collecting clues in much the same way.
Back then, he had been just a clueless college student. He never imagined that in a mere two months, the world would be turned upside down. His ambition had evolved from simply wanting to survive to now hoping he could be of some use to Qi Si.
"Lin Chen," Qi Si asked out of the blue, "do you still have the Undead Shepherd card?"
Lin Chen was taken aback for a moment before he recalled. Like Qi Si, he possessed two identity cards. The Plague Doctor card was already bound to him, while the Undead Shepherd card remained safely tucked away in his inventory.
He had examined both cards right after seeing the fractured stele of revelation but had found nothing out of the ordinary. He’d studied them again yesterday, with the same fruitless result.
"It's still with me," Lin Chen replied, seeing no reason to be suspicious. "I've kept it in my inventory. I can't bind it, and it seems I can't give it to anyone else either. I'm not sure what it's for."
Qi Si couldn't bring himself to truly trust anyone, but he still gave a noncommittal "Mm," letting the subject drop as he resumed his search.
However, judging by the accumulated dust and fine wood shavings at the bottom, the cleaning was far from meticulous; at the very least, they hadn't been wiped down with a damp cloth.
If a previous guest had wanted to leave a message, it would have been incredibly easy. Qi Si himself immediately thought of several ways to hide a clue, such as tucking a slip of paper into a crack in the wood.
The room had no electric lights, and the dimness was a hindrance. Qi Si simply plucked a candle from its holder and aimed the flame into the depths of the drawer, casting a murky yellow glow on its grayish-black bottom.
The inside of the drawer was even filthier than the outside. The wooden surface appeared to be coated in a layer of wax, which, when warmed by the candle's flame, began to soften and writhe. The uneven, gelatinous substance looked disturbingly like a festering sore.
Qi Si pulled the candle back, retrieved a handkerchief from his pack, and gently wiped away the melted wax. A jumble of scratches, once hidden, was now exposed to view. The twisted strokes seemed to radiate a tangible aura of terror and madness.
Mirror? I don't remember... Mirror? Who am I? Mirror? Mirror. Mirror. Mir...
After the first few phrases, the message devolved into a frantic repetition of the same word. The strokes grew increasingly erratic and difficult to decipher, eventually collapsing into a chaotic scrawl, like the scratching of a madman. One could almost picture the person who carved it, losing their sanity piece by piece, consumed by this endless, snow-swept mountain.
Why carve the same word over and over? What had he forgotten? And why did he question his own identity?
He must have discovered something utterly terrifying. Convinced he was about to die and with no one to turn to, he must have tried to record his findings in this hidden spot.
But as he began to carve, he must have realized the wooden plank was already covered in dense script—all in his own handwriting, yet he had no memory of writing it...
So, what exactly did he see in the mirror?
His interest piqued, Qi Si rose and paced around the room before turning into the washroom tucked away in the corner.
A massive mirror stood before him, deeply embedded in the wall. The moment one stepped inside, their reflection confronted them.
If the light had been any dimmer, it would have been easy to mistake it for the illusion of another person, identical in stature, walking forward to stand face-to-face.
Qi Si leaned against the doorframe, studying his reflection for a moment—the red suit, the black hair. He saw nothing out of the ordinary.
The mirror seemed to be just an ordinary mirror. The man within it was his perfect double, from his appearance to his expression, with the same pale skin and gentle features. It didn't suddenly break into a sinister smile, as so often happens in horror films.
Qi Si tilted his head, and the man in the mirror mimicked the gesture, his crimson eyes reflecting Qi Si's own image.
Perhaps it was because he’d been staring too long, the uncanny valley effect taking hold, but for a fleeting instant, he felt the reflection's gaze was unnervingly cold and desolate.
A jarring sense of dissonance bloomed in his chest, as if a switch had been flipped. The scene in the mirror began to subtly shift, transforming strand by strand.
Qi Si noticed that while he stood in the inn, a brownish-yellow wooden wall behind him, his reflection was standing amidst a vast expanse of white snow. His red suit trousers were blurred to a dusty rose by the falling flakes, and his blood-red cape billowed and snapped in a fierce wind.
The figure still wore his face and shared his demeanor, yet it radiated a palpable strangeness. It felt less like a reflection and more like a separate individual who just happened to look like him.
"Another me?" Qi Si murmured, reaching out to touch the cool surface of the mirror, his index finger pressing against its counterpart. "If I'm not mistaken... your name is Zhou Ke."
He had initially suspected that Qi had left some kind of arrangement in place, something lost within his thirty-six years of missing memories and thus unknown to him. Then he'd considered that it might be an inherent mechanism of the extra identity card, which would spontaneously generate a suitable holder.
But now, another possibility occurred to him: what if the tendrils of the Final Instance had been planted in reality long ago? What if all the anomalies he had encountered were merely parts of this final game, all destined to receive their final judgment on this very mountain?
The clues were too sparse. All his thoughts were mere speculation, not definitive conclusions.
But if another version of him truly existed, then he was exposed while his enemy remained in the shadows. With the first move still undecided, he was undoubtedly at a disadvantage in this contest.
It was just like the situation with his duplicate in the *Dialectic Game*.
Qi Si stood before the mirror for a while longer, only belatedly registering the cold. A biting wind, carrying shards of ice, whipped against his face and body, stripping away his body heat and driving his already low temperature even lower.
His exposed skin stung as if sliced by a thousand tiny blades. The chill seeped into his bones, a piercing ache that settled deep in his marrow before spreading throughout his entire body.
Qi Si watched as his reflection instinctively hunched forward, crossing its arms to shield itself from the wind and snow. A moment later, he realized he was doing the exact same thing.
The sudden chill wasn't some unfounded empathy; it was a physical sensation, reaching him through the mirror's surface. He felt as if he were right there with his reflection, stranded in a frozen wasteland, being battered by the merciless wind.
The scene in the mirror wasn't static, either; the background was constantly receding. Or, to be more precise, his reflection was walking forward.
Qi Si spotted a climbing knife stuck in the snow near his reflection's right foot, and an interesting idea suddenly took shape in his mind.
And so, he slowly bent down, reaching a hand toward his own left foot. He watched intently as the figure in the mirror mirrored his movement, its own hand reaching for the climbing knife by its right foot. The reflection's index finger swiped firmly across the blade's edge.
A sharp sting shot through his fingertip. Qi Si glanced down to see a clean slice on his own index finger, blood welling up and trickling out. The reflection's finger was bleeding too, but its face remained impassive, showing no hint of surprise or pain. It made no further move, acting just like a simple projection, a phantom in the glass without thought, consciousness, or will of its own.
Qi Si brought his finger to his lips, sucking on the cut as he mused with great interest on the mirror's purpose and the nature of his connection to the man within it.
Knowing himself as he did, if his double had truly wanted to conceal its existence, it could have easily ignored a minor injury like a cut finger. With its acting abilities—his acting abilities—it could have easily feigned ignorance, and no one would have been the wiser.
So, should he try inflicting a more... lethal injury?
Considering that any injury sustained by his reflection would also appear on his own body, Qi Si decisively abandoned the idea of self-mutilation.
At the end of the day, both of them were, in essence, "Qi Si." Their conflict could be shelved for the time being. If they were to tear each other apart, only to let the Kyushu and Listening Wind guilds swoop in and pick up the pieces, he would never forgive his own stupidity.
"Qi Si, I found some records over here! It looks like a diary," Lin Chen's voice called from near the nightstand, breaking Qi Si's train of thought.
Qi Si abandoned his study of the inscrutable mirror and walked over to him.
Lin Chen was holding a thread-bound notebook. Its cover had been thoroughly soaked and then left to dry, leaving it warped and uneven like dead skin. Its surface was mottled with yellow stains of various sizes.
Fortunately, the writing inside was still legible. The script was as neat as printed text, and even where the ink had blurred on a few words, the meaning could be inferred from the context.
It was, as Lin Chen had said, a diary. More than that, it seemed to be a record intentionally left behind, with every detail recorded as clearly as possible.
[January 1, 2014, recorded at the Snow Mountain inn:
[My name is Chu Yining, from the Ark Guild. My last memory is of attending a guild mobilization meeting in the Sunset Ruins. I blinked, and when I came to, I was here.
[It's not just me; Lin Jue is here too. Who knows what the selection criteria were. Lin Jue thinks this must be the Final Instance, and I agree. After all, with all this talk of a 'Mother God' and 'eternal life,' it certainly feels like one.
[Besides us, Ji Yi, Zhai Qifan, Zhang Hongbin, Ivan Quinn, Arthur Ross, and Vasilievna are also here. I'm not sure if we can clear the Final Instance, but it’s best to prepare for the worst. If we fail, I hope these records survive and can be of some help to those who come after us.]
[1. The hymns will continuously attract believers. The believers' goal is to 'convert' travelers, and the method of conversion is parasitism. Do not make physical contact with the believers. (P.S. This part is actually pretty easy, just stay calm. The believers walk so slowly that even I, stuck in a wheelchair, could easily get away. ^▽^)]
[2. Most of Shangri-La's original inhabitants probably want to convert travelers (Lin Jue found a book called the 'Scripture of Salvation' in the town's sutra shop; who knows if it will still be there when you arrive), so don't trust any NPC easily.
[However, the NPCs don't seem to act randomly. Conversion must follow certain rules. (P.S. Right now, I suspect that the old man at the inn, Sang Ji, needs the correct room number to convert someone. He keeps asking everyone for their room number, but none of us have told him.)]
[3. All extra expenses in Shangri-La must be paid for with "something from the Mother God." This can be an item, or your soul or flesh. Lin Jue advises against using items lightly; it's a trap. But I think trading your soul and flesh sounds like an even bigger trap! ~]
[4. It's normal not to be able to see the system interface; we can't either. Lin Jue and I plan to explore the town tomorrow and then head up the mountain to see what's there. (P.S. Don't look out the window at night, it's pretty scary. Same goes for mirrors, for the same reason.)
[Having prepared for the worst, let me say something more hopeful: I think our chances of clearing the Final Instance are pretty high. We have Lin Jue here, after all. And going by standard story tropes, it's been fifteen years; surely it's time for all this to end! ~]
The remaining pages of the diary were stuck fast together, impossible to separate no matter how carefully they tried to pull them apart. The information on the first page was mostly things Qi Si had already figured out; only the detail about "conversion" was of any real use to him.
Lin Chen clutched the diary, his voice turning raw as a grim realization dawned on him. "In the end... they failed. They're all still here, trapped forever."
"That's right," Qi Si said, lying back on the bed and staring up at the ceiling. "If they had succeeded, we'd all be back in our own homes right now. We never would have been dragged into this twisted game in the first place."
Lin Chen fell silent.
The players of the past had arrived full of hope, ignorant of the outcome that awaited them. Now, those from the future looked upon their legacy, observing their optimism with the chilling clarity of hindsight. The contrast was staggering.
The people mentioned in the diary were legends from the dawn of the Weird Game. They were the first players, the pioneers who had clawed their way forward, establishing a new order through countless sacrifices and painful trial and error, deciphering the game's fundamental rules.
Lin Chen reflected that they had struggled in this game for fifteen years, accumulating far more skill and experience than a newcomer like himself, and yet... they had still died here.
After a moment of thought, Lin Chen asked, "Qi Si... do you think we'll succeed?"
"I don't know," Qi Si replied calmly. "Maybe we will, maybe we won't. We're already players in this game, which means we're destined to never know the outcome."
He knew what was worrying Lin Chen, but in his view, the players who entered this instance eleven years ago weren't necessarily all dead.
The names Lin Jue and Xiao Fengchao were displayed prominently on the fractured stele, listed as the holders of the Dark Judge and Doomsday Prophet identity cards, respectively.
And as everyone knew, the dead could not hold identity cards.
Qi Si was inclined to believe that the Weird Game had been recruiting players for the past thirty-six years, and only now had it gathered enough participants in a single instance to begin the final contest.
But had it truly gathered everyone? The fractured stele still listed four identity cards with no holder named...
Lin Chen was quiet for a moment before asking, "Qi Si, what do we do now?"
"There are too few clues. Stop overthinking it," Qi Si said, rolling over to face away from Lin Chen and closing his eyes. "Get some sleep. We'll explore the town tomorrow. I'm quite curious to see what that 'Scripture of Salvation' looks like."
"Oh, right." Lin Chen rustled as he climbed into bed, settling down beside Qi Si without another word.
Listening to the breathing beside him slow into a steady rhythm, Qi Si closed his eyes as well, but his thoughts refused to quiet, continuing to drift uncontrollably.
What did true death actually feel like? Was it like sleep, an endless plunge into a darkness from which one could never wake?
How utterly boring that would be...