Chapter 48 - Escaping From Flowers In The River And The Moon’s Reflection In The Lake (VII)

Chapter 48 - Escaping From Flowers In The River And The Moon’s Reflection In The Lake (VII)

Thank you Anon and Kiya for the Ko-Fis—Bonus chapter (1/3)

Editor: Kitty

If I am the 35th student, how can I escape from here?

Luo Jian swept his eyes around the chamber and suddenly felt sadness surge up from his heart. Clearly, he’d gathered the keys and grasped the final victory, but he still did not know how to get out of the secret chamber. The cold mahogany door seemed to be laughing at his ignorance. Luo Jian was a little flustered. He went to the front door of the classroom and touched the keys in his two pockets.

In his left hand was the key to the real secret chamber. In his right hand was the key to the illusory secret chamber.

Which key would match the door in front of him?

Or was there something he did not take into account or any puzzle he did not solve? Luo Jian turned his head and glanced at the whole secret chamber. That’s right! Who killed all the students in the classroom?

Luo Jian had placed the teacher’s body on the podium. He moved it and placed it beside the female corpse. These two bodies were the only intact bodies in the whole classroom. The rest were chopped into pieces by Luo Jian. Luo Jian looked at these two bodies for a long time and sighed sadly.

Luo Jian thought for a long moment, but he could not make out anything. He could only return to the big mirror and picked up the diary. It was not much different from the other diary he had found. It appeared the same except for the words in it, which were written in the correct manner. Luo Jian turned to the back of the diary, to the last entry. The shaky handwriting and words were filled with despair. Luo Jian’s eyes rested on the last sentence:

[So this is goodbye.]

Luo Jian unconsciously repeated this sentence, and suddenly there was a thought that appeared in his mind, just like a flash of inspiration, which allowed him to understand something at that moment. Luo Jian flipped through the diary again. He had read most of the diary’s contents. From beginning to end, the girl was narrating her personal life and the whole unfolding of the tragic history. She sometimes talked to her imaginary boyfriend, but she never mentioned the boyfriend’s name.

But it seemed that it was not quite right. Since it was a person she loved deeply, how can she not even write their name at least once? Since they were a couple, there should have been a certain nickname that they used to call each other or mentions of things like love keepsakes they had exchanged, beautiful memories, etc. In such a thick diary, there should be at least one or two sentences that mention these things! But…… But Xiao YaXuan did not write anything like this! She did not even mention a word of it!

“It’s not quite right.” Luo Jian looked through the diary over and over again. His eyebrows wrinkled. The last diary entry had implied that Xiao YaXuan was just pretending that her boyfriend was still alive. But when he read through the whole diary, what her last sentence implied was inconsistent with the contents of the rest of the diary. Knowing this, Luo Jian felt that Xiao YaXuan was not writing an exchange diary with an ‘imaginary boyfriend’!

Xiao YaXuan had once pretended that her boyfriend was still alive, thought that there was still someone sitting in the vacant seat, used two cellphones to send text messages to each other, and imitated her boyfriend’s handwriting. However, Luo Jian felt that Xiao YaXuan was not writing an exchange diary with her ‘boyfriend’. She was writing with another person, a person who came from her fantasies.

“Dual personalities?” He murmured and stood up with the diary in his hand. He moved to stand in front of the big mirror.

“The 35th person does exist,” Luo Jian said, “It’s just that this person doesn’t exist in the real world. In a way, he is like me. He does not exist in this world. Nobody can see him. He can’t be seen in the mirror. He is Xiao YaXuan’s second personality, or rather…… he is more like a ghostly existence, a will, or they may even be a feeling of resentment.

“Xiao YaXuan placed this resentment in the mirror’s world, which is an imaginary world, and thus formed this double-sided secret chamber.” Luo Jian thought through this issue very seriously. He kneaded his temples subconsciously. He came up with a very bold idea that honestly shocked him to his core.

“Let’s suppose that…… and assume…… when I was sent into the secret chamber, I was set as the ‘35th person,’ so I am the ‘existence’ formed by Xiao YaXuan’s resentment!

Luo Jian spoke to himself and explained his hypothesis step by step. But the more he imagined it, the more cold sweat trickled down his body.

“Since I am the one who doesn’t exist, the place where I was supposed to appear in the beginning is definitely not the real secret chamber! Since ‘I’ am an illusion, ‘I’ can only live in the mirror. ‘I’ am a mirror being who can only live in the mirror, so from the beginning when I woke up sitting in that empty seat, I did not exist in the so-called ‘real secret chamber.’

“That is to say…” Luo Jian raised his head and looked around again. There were corpses, pools of blood, decaying corpses, desks, and chairs lying all around him. Luo Jian had always thought that this was the real secret chamber, but he was wrong. “Here is the actual illusory secret chamber, and the other secret chamber that I enter through the mirror is the real secret chamber!

“The reason why all the things I see here are placed in the ‘correct’ manner and the words were also written in the ‘correct’ way is because, like the mirror, my whole body is a flipped reflection. I would naturally deem what I can see in the mirror as normal, but what I see in the real secret chamber should be reversed!

“I understand now.” Luo Jian took out his cellphone, and the time on the cellphone continued to flow. Luo Jian understood the matter this way: “I understand that the time in the secret chamber does not flow because time stops flowing in all secret chambers, and the three-hour time period is there simply as a concept. It is meant to tell me when the secret chamber will disappear. And when it disappears, I will die.

“When I ‘exist,’ the so-called ‘time’ will flow.” Luo Jian smiled hideously. “Only when I am in the illusory chamber, can I be regarded as ‘existing.’ Therefore, for me, the illusory chamber is the real chamber.

“Then how can I judge which door is the real exit?”

Luo Jian staggered to the pile of corpses. He finally realized that the students in this group were killed by someone, and that person was Luo Jian. Indeed, Luo Jian had picked up his knife and chopped them all into pieces. Therefore, the killer is Luo Jian.

“They are f*cking setting me up.” Luo Jian’s face turned ashen. He was not sure if he had killed a group of living people or if they had already been dead. But after all, this was the world in the mirror, so these people could not be considered alive.

Luo Jian still did not know which door was the correct door and which key was the right key to use. Now he felt a little confused. He found a chair and sat down to try to clear his mind. But at this moment, the cellphone in his pocket suddenly rang.

The sudden ringing startled Luo Jian. It sounded especially frightening because he was in an empty classroom. Luo Jian hurriedly took out the cellphone. It was actually not a text message but a call!

There was no phone number provided. Luo Jian’s hands shook. He hesitated for a second, carefully pressed the answer key, and then placed it to his ear.

When the call connected, Luo Jian heard some noises. It seemed that there were many people arguing and fighting. There was also a very heavy breathing sound, accompanied by choking, which sounded repeatedly in his ear. Luo Jian was frightened by these strange sounds, and they made him shiver incessantly. He wanted to ask who was calling him, but someone started to talk on the other end.

“Help…… Please help me……. ”

It was a female’s voice. It sounded weak and in pain as it reverberated in Luo Jian’s ear.

Luo Jian’s face was white, and he could not speak for a moment. He could only remain silent.

There was a lot of noise on the other end of the call as if someone was arguing. There were many people arguing. Luo Jian could only hear some words and phrases such as “Are you crazy to do such a thing?,” “She’s dying,” “Quick, stop it!,” etc. The other people were screaming and shrieking, and they seemed like they had started fighting; just by listening to the sounds, Luo Jian was able to imagine the tragic scene unfolding.

At this time, the female voice spoke again, with a voice that sounded like when she was dying. She murmured: “I forgot….. You can’t help me….. But please…… Please shatter it…… Please shatter it…”

When the female voice spoke to this point, the whole call ended abruptly. Luo Jian felt lifeless for such a long time before removing the cellphone from the side of his ear.

Shatter……? What should he shatter? Luo Jian thought as he raised his head to look at the huge mirror in the secret chamber. When he walked in front of the mirror, it did not reflect him. No matter in the real chamber or the illusory chamber, the mirrors could not reflect him. But if he shattered the mirror, could he escape from here?

Furthermore, which mirror should he shatter?

No, for Xiao YaXuan, the mirror she wanted to shatter should be the one in the real secret chamber.

Luo Jian thought for a while, took out the transmission mirror, and read the transmission phrases again. His vision blurred, and he was suddenly transported to the secret chamber where everything was placed in complete reverse. The time on his cellphone stopped at 14:30. He had half an hour left.

And since he now knew that the reversed secret chamber was real, the secret chamber that had everything placed in the correct manner must be illusory.

Luo Jian went to the mirror and knocked on it with his hand, but there was no sound. He took a deep breath and drew out the knife, which the stalker had given him. He stabbed it hard at the mirror, and the mirror immediately split into pieces. Luo Jian subsequently pulled out the knife, and the mirror shattered with a crash.

But what Luo Jian did not expect was that there was something behind the mirror. It was a piece of printed paper with purple patterns and was nailed to the wall behind the mirror.

Luo Jian immediately pulled down the note and looked at it carefully. The note was written with a beautiful ink pen. It wrote:

[Dear Mr. Luo Jian:]

[You do not have much time remaining, and you may or may not truly understand the meaning of reality and illusion. However, you should know that sometimes, even if something is fake, as time passes, the value of it will rise, and it will also become something real.]

[A lock can have many keys, but a key can only open one lock.]

[With that, all the hints are provided. Good luck.]

“A lock can have many keys, but a key can only open one lock! Hahaha! I’m such a f*cking fool!” Luo Jian smiled bitterly. He rubbed his temples hard and sneered at himself, “I’m really f*cking stupid. It’s such a simple concept, but I only understood it now! I don’t have to think about which is the real door!

“Regardless of whether I’m in a real or illusory chamber, the key is exactly the same as the other. Is there any reason why the door can’t be opened? It’s just that one door is in reality, and one door is in the illusory world. Since I want to go back to the real world, I naturally need to open the real door. As for which key to use, is it still not clear now? The key I found here can only open the door here!”

In his left hand was the key to the real secret chamber. In his right hand was the key to the illusory secret chamber…… No, it should be reversed. The left hand held the key to the illusory chamber, and the right hand held the key to the real chamber!

Luo Jian naturally took out the key in his right pocket, and without any hesitation, he directly inserted it into the keyhole on the door. Then, with a click, the door unlocked.

Luo Jian then grasped the door handle and slowly turned it, but he could not help but stop moving. There was cold sweat on his back. He hesitated again at this moment. Perhaps he was wrong? What if he made a mistake? What if everything was completely different from what he thought, and he had opened the wrong door?

The secret chamber never abided by common sense and never followed commonly accepted principles. If Luo Jian opened the wrong door here, he may end up in a strange place, such as the endless darkness behind the door. He may be completely swallowed by the darkness or left to drift in it forever.

Should I give up and return to check through what I can again?

Luo Jian let go of the doorknob, left the key in the keyhole, and allowed the door to remain closed. He took a step back. He felt that he should go to the other secret chamber again. There must be something else he missed. Now, he was standing at a crossroads. If he made a wrong choice here, Luo Jian would not be given another chance.

Luo Jian took a step back again, but he shook his head. He held the door handle again. “I can’t retreat. This secret chamber is testing my resolution, so when standing at a crossroads, I must be decisive.”

I must be decisive!

Luo Jian clenched his teeth and opened the door.

T/N: I love reading the conjectures you guys have. As for XY’s role in this arc……Kitty and I had a conversation about it. Here’s an excerpt that I find particularly hilarious:

Kitty: he’s just there to check on his wife lmao

Kitty: But XY just drops in for some affection and leaves

Fleur: he’s like good luck im just here to do the deed

orz Like many of you guys here, I love reading unlimited flow stories but unfortunately… If I were to be in them, I’ll probably be like the first cannon fodder to die. *sobs*

Anyway, this chapter is the last chapter of this arc!!