Volume 6 - CH 94.1

Xü Beijin thinks that this is unrealistic.

Before entering the Nightmare, he did imagine if he would end up Acting in it.

The Nightmares he end up having workdays in is pretty random, dependent on the Server’s arrangements. Ever since he picked up that streaming system, though, the Nightmares he end up in seem to have fallen into some regular pattern.

Like the last Nightmare with the elevators, which Xü Beijin asked Dai Wu to help promote and arouse the Missiontakers’ interests. He wasn’t expecting to end up inside of it.

Yet it ended up with him Acting inside nonetheless.

Now, he is in this Nightmare.

Huh, why is NE starting to fulfil the players’ wishes?

… That is impossible.

Something must be wrong.

How could NE be taking action benefiting him? How could he let an Actor enter any Nightmare he was wishing to?

Yet it happened like that… So, what’s wrong with NE?

Even earlier, when the news of ‘someone has left the Tower successfully’ and the ‘Ultimate Nightmare’ was making the rounds, Xü Beijin has already concluded this can do nothing but revitalise the Missiontakers.

There would certainly have been a higher possibility of them stumbling out of the Tower like that, you know? It’s not unheard of for things like this to go awry.

So then, who spread this news?

All the ruckus but not a single Missiontaker managed to work out the source of the rumours.

… So it can only be NE.

NE is the ghost inhabiting this Tower.

Why did it do that? Why spread such rumours, why allow them to spread like so?

Why have Su Enya returned to the bottom floor? As the neighbour of Xü Beijin again? Alongside the Nightmare she dragged along with her?

… It is really as if NE is helping Xü Beijin.

Impossible.

Why would NE do that?

Xü Beijin, sitting there with his poker face, finds the whole affair damned unamusing.

Everyone assumes NE is the eyes of whoever was behind it all, some kind of omnipresent overseer, but from what he can ascertain, NE is even secretly nudging Missiontakers and Actors along… at least, in helping them recognise the truth.

He sighs, find his thoughts going nowhere, and his mind tiring out.

He knows a lot, but he also does not know much. He does not know what NE is like, or what the world outside the Tower is like right now. All the years they’ve spent in the Tower… could mean that nothing has remained the same.

Yes. It may even have been a long enough time that, even NE is deviating from his set programming.

Perhaps…

Xü Beijin is seriously contemplating if it is the moment to open up his Nightmare to the Missiontakers.

It would probably be quite the farcical scene, too. Everyone assumes his Nightmare must hold some kind of amazing secret, but that… Well, it’s not the kind of big secret they were hoping for, that’s for certain…

It is simply, a Nightmare relating to Nightmares.

And by opening up his Nightmare… it is more accurate to say that, he wants to enter his own Nightmare. There is a necessity, he believes, to enact attempts and changes. Or at the very least, he needs to confirm something.

NE…

The light in Xü Beijin’s eyes is flickering like a candle in the wind. It is deep and unreadable.

But if he really is to enter his own Nightmare, then he’ll definitely need some suitable personnel… Just him, or just him and Lin Qin, could never do it.

Xü Beijin thinks some more, before abandoning them altogether, to focus on the stream; he has already opened up the stream, and the viewers are quickly popping in.

“hey Beibei!”

“Beibeis been streaming more often lately, nice!”

“quietly admires Beibei’s handsome face”

“oh fuck off! Beibeis handsome face is all mine, mine!”

“fuck you off! its the little apples!”

“What kind of Nightmare are we looking at today, Beibei?”

The detective dalao’s question finally drags the atmosphere of the whole stream back to normal.

Xü Beijin thinks about it, and smiles to say, “if I tell you anything, it’ll already be spoilers.”

“uwu i actually wanna be spoiled”

“… but the detective dalao doesn’t…”

“oh well I dont have a brain anyway, good luck detective dalao!”

Xü Beijin reads the comments rolling past with a smile, before looking over at the list of locations on the right to focus the camera on someone.

Then, he finds himself staring at the names of the Missiontakers.

Mu Jiashi. Fei. Wu Jian. Lin Qin. Ding Yi.

… What kind of insider game is this?!

Well, the four remaining names he doesn’t recognise, but the fact that he knows five of them is enough to make Xü Beijin speechless.

He shakes his head at this. He would wager that Fei, Wu Jian, and probably Mu Jiashi as well, would not be too far away from the truth after going through this Nightmare.

That said… Ding Yi?

Why’s she back at the bottom floor again? What happened to her on the higher floors?

Xü Beijin feels curious about her as he switches the camera over to them. Currently, the nine of them are all assembled on the block near the library.

Compared to how there was a post-apocalyptic ruins and an Apocalypse in progress the last two Nightmares, this time, the city looks distinctly pre-apocalyptic and bustling.

It seems to be a hot summer day with how much the cicadas are singing on the tall trees growing by the roadside. The ground is scorched from the burning sun, but some people would break the peace.

Every so often, some people who look hysterical would rush from some place to somewhere else.

The nine Missiontakers all look somewhat unsettled appearing at the intersection of some road facing this scene.

The summer heat has them sweating profusely very soon enough.

Mu Jiashi brushes the sweat on his forehead away as he examines the rest of the Missiontakers.

He came here with Fei and Wu Jian, so he’s not surprised to see them here; in fact, it is Lin Qin who is surprising him a little, since the dalao is usually pretty random in whether or not and what Nightmare he goes to.

The other Missiontakers he doesn’t know.

Save for… Ding Yi?

Mu Jiashi’s gaze stops momentarily on her, as the woman with the grue-coloured hair also looks back at him calmly, nodding to greet him.

What? Why? How’s Ding Yi back on the bottom floor?

She abandoned everything she ever worked for on the bottom floor so that she can ascend; now she’s back?

Mu Jiashi has a hard time understanding what this ex-‘billionaire’ is thinking.

Then he checks out the four Missiontakers he doesn’t know; they presumably chose to come here based on the latest rumour of the bottom floor of the Tower.

The rumours relate to a new Nightmare.

It should be noted that having this new rumour circulating on the bottom floor, like, again, Mu Jiashi can’t help but wonder where these mess of rumours come from. And are they, the Missiontakers, seriously busting their asses chasing location after location for all these unverifiable hearsay?

Though when he learned the content of the rumour, and investigated himself, he was in full shock.

He realised, this Nightmare… it, it’s the exact Nightmare he met on a higher floor in the Tower!

What in the world?!

He immediately suspects that Su Enya is involved… Actually, she is definitely involved somehow.

Yet, when he tried looking for her again, he finds out that she has gone missing.

That moment, Mu Jiashi only felt an inconsolable fear take over him. The fact that Su Enya is missing seem to be some kind of premonition; some kind of invisible hand seem to be tucking at the strings of fate behind the scenes, pushing everything to go forward.

The question is, would the owner of this hand, harbour goodwill? Or ill will?

When he was worried and planned to go home, he saw Xü Beijin’s bookstore right opposite Su Enya’s house, and decided to pay him a visit after some hesitation.

Then, in the conversation with Xü Beijin, what he remembers the most vividly, is how the pale man with a heavy presence sitting behind his counter tells him, with this solemn, but cold tone,

“To know the truth is a terrible predicament, but if you do not come to learn the truth right up to the day you are buried six feet under, would you regret it?”

Mu Jiashi replied to that firmly, “if the truth would lead where I want myself to go, then… Yes. I will. I will want to know the truth.”

Xü Beijin stared at him hard for a minute, before telling him, “then go. To that Nightmare.”

Mu Jiashi was confused for a moment.

Then Xü Beijin clarified, “to that Nightmare that is the topic of the latest gossip of the bottom floor. That one.”

So Mu Jiashi ended up in this Nightmare… again, he should clarify.

He is actually somewhat curious if Xü Beijin would know he has been to this Nightmare; he should not, but some kind of mysterious aura always seem to surround the bookstore owner. Mu Jiashi cannot help but feel like everything is in that man’s control.

Even if he was only a Tower resident.