Volume 8 - CH 139.1

The Path

Translated by boilpoil

Edited by boilpoil

Xie Zhijin just blinked, and the door disappeared from his sight altogether.

His wife asks besides him, “what’s wrong? Seriously, I called you a few times but you wouldn’t react.”

She then wonders, “are you actually feeling unwell? You’ve got a day off anyway, why not…”

“No…”

His wife stops.

Xie Zhijin mumbles to himself, “a door in the grey fog… I know about this. I’ve seen… heard of it.”

His wife is really confused right now.

Xie Zhijin closes his eyes, looking like he’s trying to remember something, and suddenly says, “we haven’t eaten with dad for a long time, have we?”

His wife answers with bafflement, “no, not really…”

Xie Zhijin makes an odd smile as a streak of tears flow down his face.

He says, “we can’t… we can’t eat with dad anymore.”

He opens his eyes and apologises, “I’m sorry. I can’t go home with you either.”

His wife, stunned, just looks at him.

Xie Zhijin hugs her, and then turns to leave.

“Where are you going?!” His wife, shocked, even frightened, chases after him, asking, “what’s wrong with you today?! What’s happening to you?!”

Xie Zhijin answers, or possibly, is just talking to himself, “I don’t know… no, I do, but my brain isn’t telling me the answer.

But I bet someone would tell me.”

He comes to a stop, and his wife stares at him, confused.

Xie Zhijin thinks for a moment, and tells her, “just go home. I have something to do.”

“Lao-Xie, you can’t just do this,” his wife seems angry, asking, “what are you doing?! Do you even know what you are doing right now?”

Xie Zhijin looks lost for a moment, then he says, “I do.”

“Are you sure?”

Xie Zhijin nods affirmatively, and tells her, “believe in me. The same way that you believed me when you told me ‘I do,’ when I proposed to you.”

He thinks he shouldn’t bring up their proposal right now, but he did.

Because he has a feeling that, he might never be able to bring up the topic with her again.

In the past… What is in the past, is in the past. They can’t return to that moment in time anymore.

So he can only haphazardly mention it, mention his nostalgia, with naked, unromantic words.

His wife glares at him for a bit, but then tells him, “go do what you need to do, then.”

She adds, “you’re still crying. Wipe those tears off. You’re my husband, so stop acting like a wuss in public.”

“I know.”

Xie Zhijin smiles awkwardly while brushing his tears away. Then, he tells her goodbye, and quickly turns around and runs.

A few minutes later, he makes it to where Wu Jian and Ye Lan are.

“Mister and missus! Please wait!”

Wu Jian hears the familiar voice, and looks behind him by reflex, then, shocked, yells out, “lao-Xie?!”

Xie Zhijin catches up to them, and hearing Wu Jian’s term of address, pauses, and asks, “you know me? … Never mind, that doesn’t matter.”

Wu Jian doesn’t really know what to do.

Xie Zhijin asks, “what were you calling out to me for earlier?”

“There was… something, but…” Wu Jian’s voice trails off as he glances at Ye Lan.

Ye Lan picks up the cue and says, “can I first ask, though, why you are running after us even though you said you didn’t know us earlier?”

Xie Zhijin is quiet for a moment, before telling them, “a fog is rolling into town…”

Both Ye Lan and Wu Jian widen their eyes.

They’ve both been to Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, and so they both know… what the grey fog means.

The moment Fei and Wu Jian left Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, they relayed information on the Nightmare back to their organisation immediately——Mainly so that it can make its way to Xie Zhijin.

If the responsible Missiontaker was quick enough, it is quite likely Xie Zhijin would have seen the information.

So Wu Jian thinks he understands what’s going on now.

Xie Zhijin is… quite a special person in their organisation. He founded the organisation searching for answers, because he noticed the sense of déjà vu a Nightmare gave him, and realised its significance.

And possibly, Xie Zhijin just had another similar déjà vu——Even though, he’s already succumbed to this Nightmare.

Ye Lan seems to have also made the connection; in fact, in her mind, she is also reminded of the man she met with Shen Yünjü in the scene of the building with malfunctioning elevators inside Xü Beijin’s Nightmare.

Equally succumbed to the Nightmare, equally forgetting their sense of self and having gone insane, but, seemingly still retaining parts of their wits about them.

Xie Zhijin might be in a similar state right now.

Xie Zhijin still isn’t finished speaking, though, as he continues, “and… inside that fog, there was something like a door, I think.”

“A door?!” Wu Jian yells out in shock, “are you sure?!”

Xie Zhijin looks slightly hesitant, but he then nods to say, “I am sure.”

Wu Jian and Ye Lan look at each other. Wu Jian says, deeply worried, “oh damn. Why would the grey fog be involved in the Ultimate Nightmare… It makes no sense…”

Ye Lan ponders deeply about it, then asks, “all the insane Missiontakers and Actors are quarantined inside the grey fog. So if… I mean, hypothetically, if the Ultimate Nightmare produces a vast quantity of insane people, then…

Would it be that, the grey fog is coming for the Tower, instead of the Missiontakers and Actors in the Tower ending up outside after the Nightmare?”

Wu Jian looks spooked by the suggestion, wondering, “you mean, there are so many madmen here that it’s attracting the grey fog? It’s here to fetch them?”

F-, fetch...?

Ye Lan blanks out momentarily, thinking she’s able to sympathise with Fei a little just now.

But she recovers quickly enough, and answers, “yes, that is what I suspect.”

Wu Jian is quite impressed.

Actually, in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, he heard that Shen Yünjü and Ye Lan had to face the Raining Hellfire by themselves on a giant, empty plaza. He thought Ye Lan must have been really imaginative and have a keen eye for clues when she was able to lead them to safety by interpreting the Hellfire as a ‘path’ or ‘trail.’ This seems to be a perfect example of that.

Of course, he also thinks what she is suggesting is highly possible.

And at least… whatever the reason, even if it wasn’t the case that Ye Lan suggested or something or something, the grey fog is still coming for the Ultimate Nightmare.

And also, doors in that grey fog.

Wu Jian asks, “if the doors are coming, then would it mean that, we can enter the grey fog?”

He finds the whole debacle positively suspicious.

Not that he can point to any specific detail, but something about what he just said irks him…

He isolates the words he just said, and repeats a key phrase, “enter the grey fog?”

Then he quickly turns towards Xie Zhijin, who seems really baffled right now, having no idea what the two were talking about, but listening quietly regardless.

“Lao-Xie, I need to ask something,” Wu Jian says with a serious tone, “when you saw that ‘door’ before, did you feel an urge to walk inside?”

“Walk inside?” Xie Zhijin recalls and denies it, “no, not really…”

“You mean zero, not at all?”

“Not a single bit,” Xie Zhijin gives a firm answer this time, “I did not want to walk inside the door at all.”

Wu Jian is confused now, muttering, “that’s weird…”

Ye Lan decides against telling him her thoughts——If the ones outside don’t want to walk in, then, would the people inside the grey fog, want out?

Could the case actually be, that the grey fog is actively invading the entire Nightmare, rather than taking people into the grey fog?

Doors, can be passed through both ways.

She’s not going to suggest this, though, because the situation is quite severe enough. They do need a little bit of hope to cling onto.

Even someone as disaffectionate as Ye Lan would rather not have to face the madmen in the grey fog directly – she is remembering the half-insane, half-lucid man in the building’s elevator lobby. Then, she says, “let’s keep going.”

Wu Jian nods, and then speaks to Xie Zhijin, “lao-Xie. I have to tell you about what is currently happening.”