Volume 5 - CH 82.2

Xü Beijin is looking intently at the pale-faced, fearful and distracted-looking woman on the stream.

He wonders if she could sense the wrongness here. Would she remember? Her daughter, her escape, her mistake.

Her past.

Xü Beijin does not speak anything, of course; the viewers of the stream? He might get his livestream cut off again; Missiontakers? Actors? He would be unable to provide any supporting evidence.

So, he merely sighs in the end, with a stuffy feeling in his chest.

All those years past, he has been stuck in a similar kind of gloomy mood. Thankfully, at least for now, the viewers of the stream——Plus Lin Qin, how ever Xü Beijin wouldn’t want to admit it——are giving him the warmth of accompaniment.

A warmth he has not experienced for a long time.

After the brief interlude, Xü Beijin sighs and continues listening in on the Missiontakers while sitting there.

Suits and Teen couldn’t convince Mystic, but they’re successful with the rest of the Missiontakers with the explanation for the photograph and what they would do next.

Also… what to do with the little girl.

That is when Fei suddenly poses a question, “you said the little girl was on the 31st floor, while you were some floors beneath her, so when the building collapsed, wouldn’t she have died first?

Suits and Teen look at each other. After briefly considering it, Suits replies, “the building’s collapse wasn’t spread evenly throughout the building, and… if the little girl, as per Mystic’s instructions, hid under the office desk the entire time, she could have been safe.”

Fei nods and then says, “so this run, we’ll have to look for her again,” she continues, “from all the floors we’ve looked through so far, only the little girl is open to communicating…”

Before she can finish, Wu Jian interrupts her, “there’s people on the 16th floor!”

Fei stops, quickly asking, “the 16th?”

So Wu Jian tells them what they saw climbing down the stairs with Lin Qin the entire way, while keeping the gossip regarding Lin Qin out of the way, since he still does treasure his dear life very much.

When he says they left the 16th floor for the 9th, Suits interrupts, knitting his brows, “so you only knew there are people on the 16th floor, not asking them anything?”

Wu Jian rolls his eyes, thinking about how he didn’t interrupt Suits when he was blabbering on earlier and now he’s gone to interrupt him instead. Also, the situation for the 9th floor and below is crucial here, and never mind that?

Though looking at Fei, Wu Jian sees his companion also furrowing her brows, possibly disappointed in his information gathering… So Wu Jian skips to when he returned to the 16th floor.

Soon enough, he finishes.

Suits sounds utterly disappointed still, “that’s nothing useful.”

They’ve already figured out the elevators are random.

Fei glances at Wu Jian, then says, “perhaps we can head for the 16th floor once again later.”

Wu Jian “…”

Ok fine, he can tell he’s being despised.

Well… He knows how straightforward Fei can get, and not sternly rebuking him for his ‘worthless questions’ is already saving his face here.

Wu Jian rubs his nose, and decides to shut his mouth wisely.

… Then he recalls how he still hasn’t talked about what he saw below the 9th floor and what he experienced on the 15th, and hurriedly tells them about that.

The former is simply completely bad news, while the latter…

Jiang Shuangmei sounds surprised, asking, “you got that as well?” Before Wu Jian can react, she goes through what her group thought the last run. The Missiontakers all seem surprised to hear it all.

Once a happenstance, twice a coincidence, but thrice, quadrice and quintice, happening to every Missiontaker as well. That is well beyond the realm of incidental occurrence. Something must be behind it.

Suits is pondering about it, “this déjà vu seems entirely based on scenes of the ‘dream’ itself but not our own memories… So that is saying these recreated scenes must relate to this Nightmare.”

Fei agrees, and additionally replies, “because the little girl you met on the 31st floor also provides the sense of déjà vu, we can assume for now that these strange feelings all tie into what the Nightmare owner personally experienced.”

Wu Jian looks at everyone, and can’t help but ask, “are you all that sure, that the Nightmare owner really is the mother of the little girl?”

All the Missiontakers turn their heads to him.

Wu Jian, spooked, asks, “what? Was it… weird to ask?”

“No. It was definitely a fair question,” says Teen with a derisive smirk, “assuming you didn’t realise one thing yet – the logic this Nightmare operates by.”

Fei explains it more plainly, “by what we have figured out regarding Nightmare’s operations earlier, it is an eventuality that elevator One would end up on the 31st floor, causing us to notice the existence of the little girl.

That can only mean that the little girl is deeply connected to the Nightmare, which makes her mother a probable candidate for the Nightmare. Besides…”

She seems hesitant to say the next, but she still tells Wu Jian, “most importantly, everyone here knows that, the Tower resident in question, is female.”

Gender is the most direct way of confirming who could be and could not be the Nightmare owner. It is what many Missiontakers take to be common knowledge.

It is because they already know that the Tower resident is female, so after arriving in this Nightmare, they would instinctively look for female Tower residents to confirm who the Nightmare owner is.

In this Nightmare, the little girl’s mother, is a very prominent, possible option.

They are not yet certain the little girl’s mother is the owner, but by analysing everything with this assumption, they find that a lot of things they experience become reasonable and predictable.

Teen isn’t interested in dealing with Wu Jian’s questions anymore, instead continuing the earlier topic, “so all these things we experienced that feels like déjà vu, it could be our unintentional re-creation of certain scenes, but also possibly deliberately arranged by this Nightmare.

So, is this implying the truth behind the Nightmare?”

Fei thinks about it but says, “no, that’s not only the case. You said earlier that the 20th floor contained a large spilling of blood coming from the elevator lobby?”

Suits nods.

Fei then says, “it could have been from us. The 20th floor… Yes, it’s highly probable,” then she turns to Mystic to ask, “when you were riding the elevators alone, and reached some floor, did you meet people completely drenched in blood again?”

Mystic seems to have heard the question in her daze. It takes her a few seconds of blanking out, but she finally nods.

Then, perhaps in a moment of lucidity, she seems to regain herself, asking, “was… was that, you?”

Fei nods.

Suits, knitting his brows, concludes, “so it is also possible for this phenomenon to occur with actions involving only us.”

Teen just asks impatiently, “isn’t that just exactly the two situations I said?”

“What I mean is that,” Fei says, “these two situations, are still fundamentally the same. That we unintentionally re-create the scenes is irrelevant, because that is in fact a certainty, that is guaranteed to occur due to the intricate machinations of the Nightmare.”