/
All the Missiontakers are silent.
In the end, Fei wipes her tears and approaches the limbless person, asking with a rather harsh tone, “what did they do, after destroying the labyrinth?”
Why are the humans in the Tower? Why have they lost all memories of what happened after the Apocalypse began?
Yet the person does not answer.
Mu Jiashi repeats the question.
This time, the person answers slowly, “I don’t know. I, died here.”
He moves his head a little, trying to look at himself, but he can’t, and gives up. Then he says, “died like this.”
Fei only feels a deep emptiness.
They’re so close to the truth now, but, they still don’t have the answer to what has troubled them in the beginning.
The Earth is over. Humanity is over. They know all that now.
But, why the Tower? Why is there this Tower?
Mu Jiashi also knows why Fei asked, and tells her, “this question might be something only NE can answer.”
“And XĂŒ Beijin,” Fei says, “he might know.”
Mu Jiashi appears hesitant, then he suggests, “we’ll try that next run. We should go now, and look for
 the exit to this labyrinth.”
Fei nods

Yet when they’re about the leave, the person lying on the ground says, “it’s a waste of time.”
The Missiontakers all pause in place.
Looking up, the person tells them, “to trap ‘them,’ we didn’t build an exit to this labyrinth.”
Mu Jiashi’s expression changes wildly.
Then the person adds, “of course, there isn’t anything dangerous in here.”
Humanity only wanted to make ‘them’ hostages to negotiate with the species behind it. Yet, they couldn’t even achieve the first step.
Since the very beginning, this labyrinth was built to be a prison.
Originally, to trap their enemy. Now, it trapped themselves. Fate is fickle, farcical, and rarely fortuitous to people.
Mu Jiashi stands there, with countless thoughts crossing his mind. His face, decorated by the shifting colours cast all around him, is made all the more unreadable.
Silence reigns. It seems to take him a long time to accept this fact, and think about how to deal with this situation.
Finally, he ends, “let’s go. We need to look for the others and tell them about this. We could also dig up more information using Ding Yi’s card from the other people that are still alive here.
Without the utility card, I suspect it would be far more difficult and complicated.
And
”
Wu Jian asks, “and?”
“And, we need to ask XĂŒ Beijin,” Mu Jiashi says, “he’s the owner. He also said that this scene is the one he’s been looking for. So, he should know, what we are supposed to do instead of finding the exit.”
Wu Jian nods; he looks to have recovered emotionally, or, possibly not having a comprehensive understanding of all the information he just received.
He merely comments, “can’t believe this bloody place doesn’t even have an entrance.”
Mu Jiashi replies nonchalantly, “they built it without an exit anyway
”
He hasn’t even finished when Mystic suddenly turns to stare at him, with an expression of clear shock.
Mu Jiashi, confused, but also knowing that Mystic’s senses would sometimes be right on point and cannot be simply ignored, asks, “did you feel something?”
Mystic remains frozen like this for a bit before saying, “it’s a
 strange, inkling. A
 dĂ©jĂ  vu.”
DĂ©jĂ  vu?
Fei and Wu Jian almost immediately find their thoughts occupied with the office building that had deeply troubling elevators.
Fei asks, “what kind of dĂ©jĂ  vu? Do you see anything specific?”
Mystic looks bewildered now, slowly shaking her head and mumbling, “I can’t remember
 But it’s just, familiar to the ears.”
Wu Jian scratches her head and tries to take a guess, “Mu-ge said this was a place ‘built without an exit,’ so does it mean this place might have an exit after all? Or not? The Nightmare owner is here, too; he won’t just let himself be trapped, would he?”
So Mu Jiashi intuitively concludes, “this means this place must have an exit.”
Then Fei’s expression changes rather drastically.
Mu Jiashi asks, seeming somewhat anxious, “what’s wrong? Do you have something?”
“The Tower
” Fei appears to doubt herself, but still ends up saying it quietly, “the Tower has no exit. But, we can still leave?”
“He said no exit was built, but XĂŒ Beijin told us that the Ultimate Nightmare had an exit within
”
Mu Jiashi abruptly stops speaking.
His face sours once more. He’s just realised something terrible and dark. Demons are screaming right into his ears.
Fei, shivering, says, “what if the Tower, really had no exit? What if the ‘exit’ he told us isn’t what we imagined
 Just like this labyrinth, it was a prison without any exit?”
Mu Jiashi does not reply. Instead, he says, “never mind all that. I’m still willing to believe, that we can leave,” he mumbles to himself, “yes. I am willing to believe.”
Fei opens her mouth multiple times, and finally says, “I think so, too.”
Wu Jian quickly turns the mood around as they leave this corner to look for their other companions.
He ShujĂŒn and the others turned left repeatedly at the second intersection on the path to the right, until they ended up in a small room hidden away from the labyrinth at large.
They thought they’d meet ‘someone’ there, but it turned out, this ‘someone’ was more like something akin to a corpse lying on the ground——Yes. Just ‘something,’ because you can barely tell it is still a human.
A tattered body. Facial features are unrecognisable. Limbs are curled up on his body. He leans right at the far corner of this hidden room, not reacting at all to the four strangers walking in.
It’s difficult to say what he has experienced to end up like this from the appearance.
Maybe he’s been through torture, or maybe, his body was drenched in a torrent of water until everything became bloated, from his clothes to his body.
He ShujĂŒn and A-One look quite hurried when walking in, while Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ and Ye Lan merely looked stern and collected, like they usually are.
He ShujĂŒn is the first to try and chat with the person.
Yet, unfortunately, none of her questions could elicit a response.
The person’s eyes are all unfocused. He doesn’t react to anything at all. He ShujĂŒn suspects he might not even have heard what she said, since not even his eyes moved or ears twitched at all.
A-One seems confounded by this, standing by He ShujĂŒn’s side, saying, “this is weird. When we were here before, he would mumble stuff that are ridiculous. Why isn’t he reacting at all now?
Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ comes along and asks, “what did he talk about before?”
A-One recalls in his mind and then says, “actually, these people would all talk about similar stuff, like being hopeless, thinking it was all useless and whatever, but none of it felt useful at all.”
Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ looks disappointed, then starts speculating, “so he talked before, but not now. Would it be because he has undergone changes between this Nightmare and the normal Nightmare in the Tower?”
“You’re saying, he’s succumbed?” A-One falls into thought. He still hasn’t internalised the fact that the people that appear in these scenes are the succumbed who failed to hold onto their sense of self.
After thinking about it, he says, shrugging, “it’s possible, but how are we even supposed to gather information from him like this?” He rubs his chin, then suggests, “maybe there’s some condition to trigger?”
Ye Lan also tries talking to the person, but she is ignored all the same. She shakes her head and says, “let’s go and check out the other places first.