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Dai Wu’s suggestion takes the other Missiontakers a moment to take in. They all turn their gaze to the wheelchair-bound Tower resident.
Next to him, Su Enya… well, given the appearance she’s chosen, Xie Ji, rebukes him, “who knows if the Missiontakers would trust your men?”
Dai Wu shrugs, saying, “they will. And we can at least try. Us Tower residents have more difficulty traversing floors, but we can relay messages through Nightmares instead. Besides, the higher floors are in complete chaos.”
In fact, the bottom floor is far more peaceful right now.
It is the result of the accidental leak and subsequent uncontrolled propagation of the information regarding the Tower residents’ identities that Fei and Wu Jian tried to send upstairs.
And Tower residents on the higher floors are generally less fearful of NE, too, so they’re happy to oblige when questioned, easily putting on a show of ‘obviously, duh, you only realised that now?’
So those Missiontakers higher up have become shellshocked and terrified.
They realise they haven’t even understood this layer of truth behind the Tower, never mind escaping the Tower.
The truth itself is also rather depressing to boot.
The Tower residents are also humanity. Great. Hurray──Now they know whoever is behind this all is even more all-powerful than they’ve ever thought, and nothing else.
What, hope?
Who the heck thinks there’s even hope in escaping anymore?!
That’s how the higher floors completely went haywire.
Well, news of the Ultimate Nightmare did help sober up the Missiontakers and Tower residents a little, but nothing else.
Ding Yi’s difficulty with transferring messages up the floors is also largely because of the chaos above.
Before they’ve entered Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, many of them have already arranged for further information on the Ultimate Nightmare to be sent back upstairs, but it’s been a few days and no replies have come back down yet. Looks like it may have been caught up in the chaos.
Mu Jiashi bitterly smiles and says, looking rather down, “it seems, before we could even start saving them, they’ve already given up on being saved…”
He Shujün disses him immediately, “and you’re certainly the champion of giving up, right here.”
Mu Jiashi “…”
The other Missiontakers all start chuckling in response.
Since they’ve come to learn what made Mu Jiashi call himself a ‘loser,’ they’ve started to tease him all the time. Mu Jiashi is vexed, but he also thinks, it might be better this way. Wounds heal better when exposed to air, and he doesn’t exactly have time to wallow in defeats of the past either.
Besides, it’s not even right to call it a ‘defeat,’ as it’s more a wake-up call from reality.
Humans often hit moments of self-introspection at arbitrary moments, coming to realise whether they were good or bad, or just or hypocritical.
Mu Jiashi shakes his head at the thought.
He Shujün also quickly gets back to business, saying, “honestly, you should really stop picturing things so pessimistically.”
She says with a cheery tone, “we’ve been through the worst part already; what’s the worst that could happen compared to how it was when we first entered the Tower?”
The other Missiontakers also fall into thought at that mention, recalling their own experiences.
The age… when they just entered the Tower. It was brutal, barbaric, bloody, and abyssal.
That hopeless age was filled only with murders and betrayals, as everyone fought tooth-and-nail when they didn’t understand the mechanics of going up floors very well.
It was chaos itself.
Oftentimes, order belies merely a façade of civility, but it is at least order.
The new normal nowadays of not trying to go up the floors in a hurry is largely because the motivation named hope is gone. Perhaps a cruel twist of fate, but losing hope has brought peace and order back to the Tower.
They are no longer hostile to everyone who isn’t themselves, or try to drag each other down so much. Carddealers have become rightly condemned.
It wasn’t like that in the beginning.
The Missiontakers are quiet, all having been through, and survived that age.
What of those who were murdered, or otherwise didn’t survive?
Look out the window, and you’ll find your answer among the grey fog.
The mood has settled as their earlier excitement and restlessness gives way to silence.
They continue to wait. Everything has been arranged now, and they have to wait for the result of whatever XĂź Beijin ends up talking to NE about.
Here, Fei can’t help but recall her earlier guesses.
The relationship between Xü Beijin and NE…
After pondering a little, she bites her lips and looks over at Wu Jian, who looks back at her, confused.
Fei seems to have resolved herself, and tells everyone her concerns, then asks, “what do you think… is the rason he is looking for NE?”
“The Ultimate Nightmare,” replies Mu Jiashi, “he said so himself.”
“The Ultimate Nightmare,” repeats Fei, “what could it be, really?”
No one could give her an answer.
Wu Jian looks around and, after thinking, asks another question to help lift the mood a little, “I’m actually curious about why his Nightmare is the grey fog outside the Tower.”
The other Missiontakers all look stunned.
Wu Jian rubs his chins. With his unique sharpness and──rather unconventional thought process?──He’s managed to come up with a question no one noticed before. He continues, “I mean, look, all the other Tower residents… their Nightmares, are based on something, right?
Something like their own experiences in the Apocalypse, even though… they are only Acting as the owner, and have a plot, but that is based on reality… not just based, re-enacted, even.
Then why… would the bookstore owner, have a Nightmare of the Tower itself… or more precisely, a part of the Tower? His Nightmare is, like, the Tower itself…”
Wu Jian doesn’t sound too sure of himself by this point.
Mu Jiashi looks like he has an epiphany.
Ye Lan is mumbling quietly to herself, “it’s true… his Nightmare, does not fit the norm.”
They’ve ignored the problem all this time. Or rather, they’ve been too overwhelmed by the information barrage since they’ve ‘snapped awake’ in the grey fog. All the information on the Apocalypse, Nightmares, the Tower and all the underlying truth, but they ended up overlooking the Nightmare itself.
They always knew that Xü Beijin was quite special in the Tower, but… this is a bit much, isn’t it?!
The Tower residents also present, Dai Wu and Xie Ji, are also looking odd.
They both have their respective Nightmares, but thinking about it, they also immediately realise how strange Xü Beijin’s Nightmare is.
He’s almost completely unlike any other Tower residents, although his countenance all this time also hinted to that effect somewhat.
They start to quietly analyse all possibilities, but in the end, their topic ends up wandering back to the Apocalypse and the Tower itself.