Soon enough, the sea of blood is already submerging half the interior space of elevator Two, and still rising fast. The three Missiontakers, struggling the entire time, splashing about in the blood, has finally managed to get the elevator door shut. The rate of blood inflow has quickly diminished.
They are all currently neck-deep in blood.
Jiang Shuangmeiâs expression is quite horrid. She feels extremely uncomfortable her whole body over. The sea of blood that has barged in out of left field has their clothes fully soaked. The cold, sticky feeling is making her imagine that there are as if countless vipers crawling on her skin.
Currently, elevator Two is a box of sloshing blood with three heads poking out of its surface, and all three have an expression of abject horror on their faces.
Jiang Shuangmei is commenting with a stiff tone, âwhy is this elevator Two only heading for floors that are soâŠâ
Feiâs mouth remains shut. She does not want to try opening her mouth at all.
It feels like the blood stuck to her face would flow into her mouth the moment she does.
Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ suddenly asks, though, âcould the blood on the ground of the 21st floor, have come from the blood permeating down from this floor?â
Jiang Shuangmei, listening to the young man proposing the idea with a frigid tone, is feeling the chilliness descend her spine. She quietly affirms it, âperhaps⊠it is possible.â
Although that still doesnât answer the question of what the body parts on the 21st floor are for.
⊠Decoration?
Jiang Shuangmei finds the morbidity of that thought amusing, but she is unable to smile at all.
A moment later, she asks, ânow where do we go? All these⊠blood, in the elevator, needs to go somewhere.â
The three Missiontakers glance at each other, and Fei says, âthe 21st floor.â
They still do not know where button one leads to, so heading to the more familiar 21st floor would be a better idea. Itâs a pretty revolting place in its own right, but at least, there doesnât seem to be any danger.
Jiang Shuangmei nods, and then looks over at the panel of buttons currently completely submerged in blood. She furrows her brows in disgust while moving her hand over, and tries to feel for the button leading to the 21st floor, which was twenty-five, and pushes on it.
A few agonising seconds later, the elevator stops, and the door opens.
The sea of blood in the elevator immediately drains out, until it has formed a thin layer across the whole floor.
Looking at this scene, Jiang Shuangmei canât help but shudder and ask, âhey, do you guys feel likeâŠâ
âDonât,â Fei, biting her lips, with her face in a deep, contrastive pale against her blood-soaked clothes, is staring straight into the floor. Her tone is colder than ever, almost like the desperate last gasps before death. She repeats, âdonât say itâŠâ
Shun YĂŒnjĂŒ glances at the two Missiontakers with soulless eyes.
He knows what they mean.
LookââDoesnât the blood on the ground of the 21st floor, resemble what has happened after they âtransportedâ blood down from the upper floor?
This makes no sense. This makes no sense at all. They have been to the 21st floor already. They have seen how the blood on this floor has been there all along. But now, they have returned from where they went next, and poured blood onto this floor.
The act itself could have been said to have paved blood onto this floor in the first place.
It is a sense of logic that suggests a Möbius strip, making all three Missiontakers present feel seriously disoriented, in addition to fear.
Finally, the elevator closes automatically, and in a sense, also isolating and leaving their fears in the floor beyond.
Jiang Shuangmei suddenly turns to Fei to ask, âwhat were you going to say earlier?â
Fei, confused, asks, âhuhâŠ?â Then, hesitant, she asks, âThe most Nightmare-like⊠Nightmare? âŠNightmare?â
She suddenly realises what Jiang Shuangmei is getting at, and is looking at her with this shocked face.
Jiang Shuangmei, perhaps merely muttering to herself, quietly ponders, âin a sense, we could also be playing the part of a person in this Nightmare, to some degree.â
âThat is impossible!â Fei retorts, âhow could Nightmares possibly control what we doâŠâ
She suddenly comes to a stop.
Jiang Shuangmei says, âyouâve got it,â she pauses, and then explains, âour action so far could only rely on either the elevator or the stairs. In short, there is a manipulability.â
Fei, knitting her brows, asks, âbut then whatâs the point? Even if we can be made to do things that affect the Nightmareâs scenes, so what? We are still only after the truth of this Nightmare, ultimately.â
Jiang Shuangmei looks like she still wants to say something.
But Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ cuts her off, saying, âassuming that we really did cause the floor to be covered in blood on the 21st floorâŠâ He stops momentarily, as he notices the two other Missiontakersâ faces going pale at the same time, but he still decides to continue, âbut shouldnât we still first consider the factor of time?â
Both Jiang Shuangmei and Fei stop to think.
Then, Jiang Shuangmei starts asking, confused, âso we first went to the 21st floor, where there was already blood on the floor; and then, we travelled up the elevator, and brought the blood from up the floor down to the 21st floor⊠Does this mean we travelled to the past?â
Shen YĂŒnjĂŒ shakes his head to show that he doesnât know either. He is merely throwing out suggestions.
Fei sighs, going, âdonât overthink things. The blood on the 21st floor might not even have had anything to do with us.â
The other Missiontakers can only nod.
Then, they finally look towards the panel in elevator Two, and Jiang Shuangmei finally pushes down, on that button sheâs been mentally reminding herself of. The button reading one.
While the three Missiontakers in elevator Two have stopped discussing the issue with the origin of the blood on the ground of the floor, the stream is still currently host to a heated debate.
No matter what, the fact that the blood flowed down onto the 21st floor would perfectly resonate with what the Missiontakers encountered earlier. This would cause a mismatched sense of cause and effect â
Could it be, that their decision to dump the box of blood onto the 21st floor, is what caused the ground of the 21st floor to be covered in a thin layer of blood in the first place?
The audience are holding opposing views, and the arguments are flying through the barrage.
âim!po!ssi!ble! they already went and saw the blood on the 21st floor beforehand! it was already solidified! solid!â
âyeah! there havent been any signs so far that time or loop or cause and effect is a theme in this nightmareâ
âthat said, but did you realise, that those three in elevator one, when they left the little girl behind on the 31st floor, it also oddly reminds me of what it must have been like when the little girls mother and her coworkers left her beâŠâ
âespecially when the only female missiontaker, the mystic, told her to hide under the desk to wait for them if sheâs scaredâ
â!!! omg stop spooking me!â
âI believe, that rather than a contradiction in time or in causality, it is more suggestive of the Missiontakers having created certain scenes⊠Or rather, the Missiontakers are reliving events that have happened in the Nightmare?â
âthe detective dalao is right! the mystic cant actually be the little girls motherâ
â⊠but what if she actually isâŠâ
âfuck, no way!â
âletâs stop guessing, we only have these two events with the weird deja vu, and the missiontakers are still exploring normally all other timesâ
âbut then what would it all mean for the nightmare?â
â⊠I have no ideaâ
The viewers debated lots of possibilities, but they canât even settle on fundamentals like whether these instances can be attributed to coincidence or not.
Finally, the detective dalao concludes and shuts down everyone, âWe will have to wait and see, when more elevators are found for them to head to other floors. Too bad Beibei is busy, or heâll be able to help us out.â
Thatâs right, right now, XĂŒ Beijin is busy dealing with other things.