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XĂź Beijin quietly watches the scenes flashing like a mirage, like a kaleidoscope before his eyes.
It makes him feel a sense of wonder. He didn’t ‘know’ his ‘past’ at all, but his brain is able to recreate it so vividly.
Then, a stranger thought hits him.
Is he, dying?
There’s that thing about seeing delusions right before death, replaying the person’s life before their eyes like a zoetrope. Letting them reflect on their life just before passing over.
XĂź Beijin is laughing.
He’s not really laughing, but instead, just some terribly amusing trigger that makes him want to cackle spreading through his mind. Something is amusing to him, but what?
He doesn’t know either. It’s just so funny, so farcical, so tragic, so poignant.
So it’s better to smile.
Then, he remembers what Lin Qin said.
‘You don’t have to smile if you don’t want to.’
So the urge to laugh is gone, just as mysteriously as when it came.
Now, only an apathy remains. It’s like a lucid dream. It’s time he woke up.
But he can’t.
Something has trapped him here. Something… that’s always…
What, inside the Tower, could actually trap him?
So Xü Beijin suddenly understands. He ‘speaks,’ or perhaps, imagines speaking in his mind, “NE, let me go. I have to resolve everything.”
It’s like some kind of veiled idea slowly lifting up from his chest, but he doesn’t want to think about them. He just repeats himself, “let, me, go.”
Then his consciousness feels as if something silky has brushed past his face, and something left his brain in response. Then, he opens his eyes.
Lin Qin is all ready to go berserk when he suddenly sees XĂź Beijin opening his eyes.
At the same time, he hears Xü Beijin complain with this suppressed and painful tone, “damned NE…”
“NE?” Lin Qin wonders, then quickly asks, “are you awake? How do you feel?”
“Little apple?” Xü Beijin finally noticed that Lin Qin was here, as it were, saying, “why would you… well, I suppose it’s the almighty instincts again. I’m fine, don’t worry.”
Lin Qin sighs in relief, but his brows stay knitted.
Standing nearby, A-Two is also relieved Xü Beijin woke up, though the sudden term of address of ‘little apple’ makes him rather regretful he didn’t block his ears up just now.
Oh, dalao, please enjoy your more private moments somewhere less… like this.
Though what else could A-Two do but shift his footing a little ways away from them, while also keeping a close eye on Chen Simiao so that he doesn’t run away.
Neither XĂź Beijin nor Lin Qin notices what A-Two did, though.
Lin Qin is now looking at Xü Beijin doubtfully, asking, “you’re fine? You’ve even fainted!”
Xü Beijin has no response. He knows he’s not got much credibility here, so he quickly starts calming his little apple instead, saying, “don’t worry. It was an unexpected accident. It was…” Hesitant, but he pushes on, “NE. NE made me faint.”
“NE?” Lin Qin asks, “but the others were saying that NE is on our side.”
Xü Beijin is quiet for a moment, before bitterly smiling and telling Lin Qin, “it’s… difficult to say. It might be helping us right now, but I doubt it’s actually on humanity’s side.”
Lin Qin furrows his brows, confused.
This time, it’s Xü Beijin’s turn to alleviate the wrinkles formed.
Xü Beijin’s tone is gentle and slightly throaty. Looking intently at Lin Qin, he tells him, “believe me, Lin Qin. I won’t ever lie to you. It was really an accident, and I guarantee that there won’t be a next time.”
He didn’t lie to Lin Qin about how he can withstand the amount of dizziness striking him, as it was so in the grey fog.
So the sudden severity of the last headache just now was completely unexpected, as he didn’t realise how bad it was going to be.
Lin Qin mumbles, “you just always say that…” Then he moves on from the topic, and just proclaims, “but I’ll not leave your side anymore.”
XĂź Beijin turns to A-Two then, with a slightly embarrassed expression.
When A-Two is about to talk, audible chatter starts to drift into the area from the outside. Looking at each other, nonplussed, they see Mu Jiashi and his companions have found the four other Missiontakers, and have returned here with Fei and Wu Jian.
They’re communicating about the information they have received. He Shujün is quite audibly surprised with what they’ve discovered so far.
When they turn the corner and notice that several people are already here, they’re all surprised.
Mu Jiashi asks, “you’re already back? We didn’t see you outside, and thought we’d wait for you to come back here…”
Then he stops talking.
He can see that XĂź Beijin is sitting on the ground with his back leaning on the wall, and with an expression of deep exhaustion. Meanwhile, Lin Qin is kneeling with one leg on the ground, propping XĂź Beijin up almost with a hug.
Mu Jiashi quickly turns rather serious and he asks, “are you alright? Are we out of time?”
Are they out of time?
Xü Beijin cannot answer. In fact, he also wants to know if that’s the case. Otherwise, has NE gone mad?
He averts the question entirely, answering, “a little… accident happened.”
Mu Jiashi appears surprised, but then he looks like he understood what Xü Beijin meant – he’s assumed this is another of those things Xü Beijin cannot answer directly. In fact, Xü Beijin doesn’t know the answer either.
In any case, after the interlude, Mu Jiashi quickly turns his gaze over to Chen Simiao.
Then he thinks and asks, “who’s going to use ‘the Devil’s Mask’?”
The Missiontakers look at each other, then moves their gaze onto Mu Jiashi in tandem.
Mu Jiashi “…”
Has he spoiled these Missiontakers a bit too much?
Feeling a little tired, in his mind, he is dissing these Missiontakers for being… so unreliable!
So he just takes the utility card from Shen Yünjü’s hands. The way Shen Yünjü hands it to him would almost make him think that the utility card is like some terrible curse that he’d rather ‘hot potato’ it away… Mu Jiashi is speechless.
When he’s about to use the utility card, though, Chen Simiao suddenly says, “I’ll tell you… where the gap is.”
Mu Jiashi stops, and looks at Chen Simiao, falling into thought. Then, looking at the utility card… he smiles. It’s better not to have to rely on utility cards to cheat anyhow.
Because of Jiang Shuangjie’s incident, he also doesn’t feel comfortable with this utility card at all either, even though it’s only one of the tools in this game.
He hands the card back to Shen YĂźnjĂź without another word, then stares right at Chen Simiao.
Everyone is staring, too… except Lin Qin, who is staring at Xü Beijin, though the young man himself is also staring at Chen Simiao.
Chen Simiao says, “the gap’s position, is right at… the right side corridor from the entrance, on the outside wall. It is 370 metres from the entrance, about 30 centimetres long, and stretches from 150 to 180 metres off the ground.”
After saying all that, he breathes out, like he just found solace in something.
He looks like he still wants to say something, but now, his audience have already moved on hurriedly, to go where he just said.
“Thrown away as soon as I’ve no value, huh…”
Chen Simiao mumbles, with a sad smile. He knows, he deserves it.
It’s like there’s a missing piece in his mind; he just admitted something, but also denied something, he thinks.
And, after standing there gormlessly for a while, he quickly follows after the people who left.
He also wants to know, how Xü Beijin is going to use this gap to fix humanity’s current predicament.