Volume 2 - CH 31.1

“What else did you know?”

When Mu Jiashi noticed Scapegoat’s strange expression, Laosan speaks up before he does.

The guy has been suspicious about Scapegoat and Selfish for a long time already, and so seeing Scapegoat like like confirms his suspicions inside even more.

Really, none of them trust each other at all, but at least Laosan can swear he has never misled or lied to the two of them; in fact, when Selfish went into the dark bedroom, he even told them the sequence of eight numbers they found out with their lives at stake.

Therefore, Selfish and Scapegoat clearly hiding something from them makes Laosan deeply infuriated.

Especially——When back in the car, Scapegoat was confidently retelling them what the two of them did the last run of the Nightmare. Is any of that even true now? Did they make it all up?

Scapegoat is acting shifty and wouldn’t say anything concrete, which is already proof that he definitely hid something.

Xü Beijin, watching this play out inside the stream, feels like talking to the viewers – while his screen is only on the bottom right of the stream right now, but he can just choose to open ‘host’s audio source’ to keep talking with the viewers.

In just a short period of time, Xü Beijin has already come around to the idea of talking with the viewers and sharing his thoughts. It is both because of the viewers’ wishes that caused Xü Beijin to feel a sense of responsibility as a host, and also… it was a source of liveliness for Xü Beijin, who has always been alone up to this point.

Before he says anything, though, realising Lin Qin is still present, he can only swallow his words back into his throat.

Xü Beijin “…”

… Never mind.

The comment barrage in the stream is having a riot, meanwhile.

“i knew it!!! they were sus!!!”

“though we don’t know if it’s this one or that one in the bedroom who’s behind it”

“then ask! lol i really wanna know what they were trying to hide”

“It has been eight minutes”

“?! dalao reminded me! this means the bedroom is done right?”

“director Bei, time to work!”

Xü Beijin smiles and changes the screen over to the dark bedroom, but is taken aback.

There is no one in the bedroom!

The door is wide open; some light has pierced through the darkness from the outside, so the night vision was no longer needed either. The screen now looks normal.

The viewers all type question marks into the comments.

Xü Beijin glances over at the list of scenes on the right, where names of the Missiontakers also are. Seven of the names are still inside the Expressway Service Area, but one name alone is under the Expressway scene.

Xü Beijin moves the camera source over.

Selfish is driving, or rather, escaping from the car driven by the man in black who is inexplicably chasing after him again.

The man is clearly not a good driver.

Even though the man in black hasn’t exactly sped up by this fourth run of the Nightmare, but because Selfish doesn’t know cars or driving, he picked a car that’s bad at acceleration (TL: Should be low maximum speed here), so the car of the man in black is casually following behind and Selfish isn’t able to lose him.

Selfish is all sweaty right now, murmuring, cussing, shaking, mumbling, “I don’t want to die… I don’t want to die, man…”

Xü Beijin checked out the car chase from a bird’s-eye view first before pulling the camera closer to observe Selfish in the car——And gets surprised, because Selfish isn’t alone in the car.

There is even a boy who is sitting in the backseats, quivering!

Xü Beijin’s eyes widen reflexively as information suddenly links up and forms a logical chain in his mind. He feels like he knows the truth of this Nightmare now, or at least, part of the truth, but…

What about the endings?

Right now, among the viewers of the stream, the detective dalao is perhaps the only one who is able to parallel Xü Beijin’s thought process, though he is also typing on the comments, “No wait, this makes no sense, why is he driving towards the service area? What does he actually know?”

The rest of the viewers are all acting cute, but that doesn’t help the fact that they have no brains.

“my head cant deal with all the difficult info”

“where did this boy come from? is he the owner of the nightmare?”

“hmm, he looks normal, unlike that dollmaker who was so… insane”

“looks a little pitiful sitting there… wait, hes not the bad guy right?”

“are you having some ‘Nightmare owners are bad guys’ PTSD?”

“anyway so i was thinking, the guy was numbering off in the dark bedroom and probably correctly too, so the correct sequence makes the boy appear?”

Xü Beijin nods when he sees this comment.

Yes, the boy must have been hiding inside the wardrobe, and once the Missiontakers said the correct sequence, the door can be opened——Or the boy would leave the wardrobe.

Instead of numbering off, it’s more like they’re yelling out a verbal password.

Everyone has understood up to this point now, but…

“y’s he taking the boy to the lay by tho?”

“and why was he hiding in the wardrobe?”

Because…

He was afraid.

Xü Beijin closes his eyes and answers the question in his mind.

When Mu Jiashi, searching for Lin Qin, enters the bookstore, this is the scene he runs into.

An expressionless, handsome man, with his eyes closed and a serious poker face. He is sitting behind the counter, upon which is a single glass of water.

Perhaps he is tired. Perhaps he is troubled by Lin Qin’s presence. Perhaps he is uncomfortable with this Nightmare overall, but in any case, he doesn’t look very well. There is a rather discouraging aura about him.

It makes Mu Jiashi pause a little, but not because of his appearance or his countenance.

He is looking right at Xü Beijin, his eyes widen a little but returns to normal soon enough——He recognises this Tower resident.

He has once interacted with him.

He knows this person runs a bookstore. He is always dressed in a white shirt and has heavy eyebags under his eyes. His hair is unkempt, and his appearance is devilishly handsome… These are all remarkable features. So remarkable that, despite the time passed ever since he last saw him, Mu Jiashi still recognised him immediately.

He once had a vivid impression of him and was morbidly curious as well, desperately wanting to enter his Nightmare. Yet, after he failed, the man, for some reason, provided him with a clue about another Nightmare. This is something that he never understood.

Why would this unkempt, asocial bookstore owner know clues about other Nightmares? Why does he never sleep? Why does he not let Missiontakers into his Nightmare?

And also…

Mu Jiashi tilts his head to glance at Lin Qin.

Why is Lin Qin here? Did he come here seeking for this Tower resident? Does he know him, or…

Even though his brain is filled with all these questions, on the surface, he just looks like he stopped in front of the door for a bit before coming back to himself.

True, he was once really interested in Xü Beijin, and even in Lin Qin, too, who was once the topic du jour between him and his friends in his Golddigger team, when they excitedly talked about ways they could pull the dalao into their team…

The past is in the past, however.

It has to be said that while that failure in the upper floors of the Tower destroyed him, and many Missiontakers think so, too, but, given his strength and intellect, it was definitely not out of the question that he could rebuild.

The point is that, even before that, and really, starting from the moment he decided to leave Golddigging behind, he has already deviated from the daily life he has become used to.

The Tower…

He so laments, before packing his emotions back in. He decides against greeting Xü Beijin at all.

He asks Lin Qin, “dalao, we plan to go back to the corridor and check it out. Are you coming with us?”

After realising Selfish and Scapegoat have concealed something, because Scapegoat wouldn’t talk, they could only return to the corridor and back to the dark bedroom to check out what happened.

Also, because the Nightmare still hasn’t ended after the expected eight minutes, it means that Selfish must have avoided being killed by the man in black by numbering off the correct sequence of numbers.

Would this also cause changes in the bedroom?

They will also have to find out.

Laoda and Erge are still somewhere in the service area, so after some discussions between Mu Jiashi, Ding Yi and Laosan, they went separate ways and Mu Jiashi and Laosan would head for the bedroom. Ding Yi would stay.

Mu Jiashi happens to see Lin Qin on his way out, though, and decides to tell him.

Although Mu Jiashi looks unenergetic, he is unable to bring himself to act aloof throughout the Nightmare and do nothing even if he has already come to learn things.

His personality that puts the team above all else also makes him prioritise the team member of Lin Qin, who is disinterested but whose every action still carries an immense weight.

… Yes, as far as Mu Jiashi is concerned, Lin Qin is also obviously part of the team; at least, in the last Nightmare, he helped them (TL: Out of obligation only, though).

He’s at least much better than Selfish or Scapegoat – even someone as disheartened as Mu Jiashi already is still can’t help but be annoyed at the two of them.

Mu Jiashi would rather not show his anger blatantly on his face like Laosan, though. In fact, he hasn’t even told the whole thing to Lin Qin, merely telling him what they’ve decided to do right now.

In the bookstore, both Xü Beijin and Lin Qin turn towards Mu Jiashi.

At the same time, because Mu Jiashi has dragged the video feed of the stream over with him, the audience also suddenly realised Lin Qin is again by their host’s side.

“eh? why’s the dalao by Beibei’s side?”

“since Beibeis first stream hes been here to try to fight with Beibei, but hes here again… hmm”

“his name was… linqin right?”

“hahaha the little apple is so fixated on our Bei”

“? little apple?”

“‘Lin qin’ may refer to two different plants. Either apples or sugar-apples——According to Baidu Encyclopaedia”

“holy shit little apple lolol”

It takes everything Xü Beijin could muster to force himself not to break into laughter.

Connecting Lin Qin’s image with an apple… Seriously? The name really is a bit unusually casual, though.

Lin Qin, blissfully unaware of Xü Beijin and the viewers joking about his name, just gives a disinterested glance at Mu Jiashi and says lazily, “I’m not going.”

Mu Jiashi nods and is about to leave when he spies Xü Beijin and hesitates before nodding to say goodbye too. Then his gaze lowers onto the newspaper right in front of the counter below.

Just like Ponytail, he also instinctively realises that the Server, NE, would never just randomly place printed magazines and books anywhere. Any legible information is definitely useful.

He walks forward and takes the topmost newspaper from there, and his gaze locks onto one of the article headlines.