/
The door to the zoo owner’s office is not locked; the owner is currently on the phone.
“Oh, we need new animals, of course. We’ll need fresh blood to keep the tourists interested if we want to stay in the business, no?
I heard that some old fart in Cangcheng is in some standoff with the whole government department; I’d rather not stoop to such silly means.
I just need a few more ‘animals’ from you… Yeah! You get it! You know what I mean.
Ah, you’ll be happy with the compensation, I guarantee that. Hey, if I’m not as old as I am, I’d even go hunting with you in the wilds. It’s all good money; time waits for no one, a shame.
Right, right. I know. Just keep that in mind, but you’ll have to excuse me. I have a visitor.”
The owner puts his phone away and stands up, showing a rather greasy smile, “mister, how can I help you?”
There is a rather calculative mind behind that business façade, and the friendliness belies a judging and examining eye. If Lin Qin can’t give him a reasonable answer, it appears he would immediately drop the pleasantries without blinking.
Lin Qin, though, only knows that he doesn’t like this owner at first glance.
He says, “I’m here to look for a door.”
“A door?” The smile on the owner’s face fades. Confused, he says, “we don’t make doors here.”
“Then what do you do here?”
“Run a zoo,” the owner appears completely confounded by this young man, and says, “you don’t even know what we do here? Why did you even come here?”
“That’s why I’m asking.”
The owner’s face turns completely sour and is going to chase Lin Qin away.
Lin Qin, though, buries his fist on the ashtray on the desk. The glass shards fly all over, but Lin Qin’s hand is entirely unhurt.
The owner’s eyes are widened in terror.
Lin Qin says, expressionlessly, “I’m asking you with this. Do you understand now?”
The owner’s legs are shaking. He gulps, and tries to make an even more obsequious smile while dryly replying, “right, right… Um, mister, what do you want to ask?”
“I said, I’m looking for a door.”
God knows what door you’re looking for! The owner wants to curse at Lin Qin.
Lin Qin raises his brows, though, saying, “you seem unhappy with something I said?”
“Nonono… of course, not. I wouldn’t dare…”
The owner is fumbling over his words. Finally, he straightens his tongue out and explains, “um, by a door, can you please be more specific? I do not know which one you might be talking about if you only say ‘a door.’”
Thinking about it, Lin Qin asks, “did you build this zoo?”
The zoo owner doesn’t understand how the logic has jumped over. He replies, “well… yes, but also no, not really. I took over more than a year ago.”
Lin Qin listens without a word.
The owner is bewildered and doesn’t know what Lin Qin wants, so he keeps going, “my brother-in-law, he was the owner before; he likes wild animals and his family is rich. So he opened one up.
But there weren’t enough visitors or business, and it was going to close down, when… you know, humans went mad.
My brother-in-law also… looked a bit off. He seemed to treat humans as the targets for his hunt, while treating the animals as if they are humans.
He just went insane… He hunts humans out there, and then locks them up into the cages of the zoo.
Since the zoo was without management anyway, I just took over and… started to run it.”
Lin Qin slowly nods.
The zoo’s ‘business’ is already insane, but the gathering of ‘animals’ behind it is even more so.
How many people would there be that have returned to the wild and treated their fellow urbanites as enemy or prey?
Probably, not just a few.
Just now, the owner also said, that this hunting is a lucrative business.
Even Lin Qin can’t help but go, ‘ah, just as he thought.’
After the idle thought passes, he turns around to leave.
The owner seems shocked, “you’ve… found your door?”
Lin Qin isn’t in the mood to answer; the moment he steps out of the wooden door to the office, the grey fog rolls out, and a door appears in front of him.
He isn’t looking for an actual, physical door, but the ‘door’ in the grey fog.
He steps in.
After a moment of discombobulation and darkness, Lin Qin opens his eyes, and after taking in his surroundings, he notices several people here. People who came to Xü Beijin’s Nightmare with him.
Shen YĂźnjĂź, Ye Lan, He ShujĂźn and Mystic are all here.
They are now all looking at each other, nonplussed.
Lin Qin merely gives them a glance, before looking back at the scene here.
It’s a Nightmare he’s never been to.
So he’s lost interest immediately.
Though Ye Lan, who seemingly blanked out for a short while, suddenly yells out, “why here?!”
Shen Yünjü and He Shujün, who’ve both regained their sense of self, turn to ask, “you’ve been here?”
Ye Lan nods after a moment of hesitation. She tries to smile, saying, “yeah. I’ve regained my memories, too.”
He Shujün then says, “it seems NE really is letting us come back to ourselves gradually.”
“Why, though?” Ye Lan mumbles, “it could have just let us off the hook immediately when we entered the Nightmare. Why are there these rules still in place?”
Shen Yünjü gives his speculation, “perhaps there is some rule of a higher authority that supersedes NE?”
“Possibly…” Ye Lan mutters, distracted in her thoughts.
They go quiet for a moment.
Then Ye Lan takes a deep breath and explains, “this Nightmare… was one I experienced on a higher floor. Specifically, this is the last Nightmare I went through before returning to the bottom floor with my companion.”
Which implies that, it is this Nightmare that ultimately caused her to lose faith in looking for an exit upstairs, and return to the bottom floor for an arguably, equally unrealistic hope.
What kind of Nightmare could have made Ye Lan give up like so?
Shen YĂźnjĂź looks up as he ponders he question, to check out the scenery around him more closely.
Ye Lan then adds, with a quieter tone this time, “we actually ended up with a Bad End here, too, and in fact… I can’t even say I understood the Nightmare.”
Shen YĂźnjĂź furrows his brows.
“It’s alright…” He Shujün then chimes in cheerily, shrugging and saying, “time for a retry; we’ll get it this time.”
Ye Lan smiles.
Obviously, He ShujĂźn had nothing to do with this Nightmare in the first place. She also knows that, because of the rumours, many Missiontakers on the higher floors chose to descend.
Rather than being ashamed of her defeat here, she is, more accurately, concerned.
Did this end up here because a Missiontaker succumbed? Or, because the owner, succumbed?
If the latter… It’s not been that long since she went in. How did the owner succumb so suddenly?
The former would not have been too difficult to imagine, by contrast. The bottom floor had many Missiontakers rushing up the floors, and some of them may not have prepared adequately for the mechanics of the Nightmares upstairs. They might have ended up ensnared.
It’s nothing surprising, but which also means, would this have caused there to be a massive influx of these tragic scenes in the grey fog? Did it affect Xü Beijin? Or NE?
Ye Lan finds herself worrying about the physical realities because of this scene being here.
They should not dither around anymore.
If they could simply explore these scenes indefinitely in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, then there shouldn’t be any reason Xü Beijin would refuse to let people in for so many years.
As time goes on, Nightmares would crumble, without exception; even if Xü Beijin’s Nightmare is special, could it have escaped this one ironclad rule?
Ye Lan thinks she has an answer.
She takes a deep breath again, and says, “we’ll have to move on as soon as possible.”
The other Missiontakers agree.