/
Vol. 8 Chapter 140.1
Strange Phenomenon
Translated by boilpoil
Edited by boilpoil
Xü Beijin is thinking, and he can’t even decide between first dealing with his wound and first dealing with the chaos in the stream.
In his hesitation, Lin Qin is already standing in front of him.
With a poker face, he says, “no, dan-, ger.”
Xü Beijin, feeling quite guilty, as it were, says, “hahaha… no mortal danger.”
Lin Qin “…”
Angry, and also worried, looking at Xü Beijin’s pale face and blood-drenched white shirt, can’t exactly start scolding him.
He just angrily spouts, “you knew I couldn’t throw a tantrum at you.”
Xü Beijin chuckles, then lets himself fall into Lin Qin’s embrace, “it really hurts, though.”
Lin Qin is holding him, and with just one look, he finds himself snapping his head away, not wanting to look at that gaping wound again.
He thinks his whole heart is trembling, but he also carries XĂź Beijin to the marketplace on the bottom floor with exceptional calm.
The Missiontakers left in quite a hurry, so there are stuff left behind.
Lin Qin grabs medicine and medical supplies – all items won through the lottery at the end of Nightmares. They are classed as living essentials.
Then he carefully patches XĂź Beijin up.
As Xü Beijin isn’t a Missiontaker, he can’t use utility cards to treat his wounds instantly. So all he can do is give him the much simpler and slow-acting method.
The entire bottom floor of the Tower is empty save for the sounds of their own breathing.
Keeping his agitation to himself, Lin Qin finishes patching up Xü Beijin and throws away the valuable medicine in his hands without a second thought. Then he locks onto Xü Beijin’s lips directly and rather brashly, to demonstrate his dissatisfaction and worry.
Xü Beijin lets him do as he wants with him, caressing Lin Qin’s hair gently with his intact right arm.
During the moments between kisses, slightly out of breath, Xü Beijin says, “don’t worry.”
So Lin Qin stops, and puts his forehead to Xü Beijin’s, and slowly utters, “I am really worried. I am really angry.”
Xü Beijin has no excuses. He apologises, “I’m sorry…”
“I’m just really angry at myself,” Lin Qin’s tone is threatening to break into tears, “I don’t want to see you hurt, but I still allowed you to get hurt again and again. I feel useless.
They say I’m the strongest Missiontaker in the entire Tower, but I can’t even protect you well.”
“That’s not true. You’re not useless. It’s just…” Xü Beijin thinks and says, “you’ve also been in the boundary of the Tower. I was careless and couldn’t avoid all of them…”
Lin Qin grumbles, “that’s why I’m useless.”
Xü Beijin is desperately trying to convince Lin Qin with anything, but Lin Qin is adamant that, because he’s not by Xü Beijin’s side when he’s hurt and stop him from hurting himself, he’s useless, he’s incompetent, he’s sad, and he’s angry at himself.
Xü Beijin, out of ideas, just says, “you really are not… how about this. You can come with me wherever I go from now on. You can prove yourself. Alright?”
Lin Qin immediately jumps on the idea, “it’s a promise now. You can’t leave me behind wherever you go.”
XĂź Beijin agrees.
Though he quickly realises something and gives Lin Qin a glance of suspicion.
Did he just successfully wail and bluff his way into his promising him never to leave him again?
Xü Beijin thinks he’s right on the money.
While somewhat speechless, he also finds he’s quite receptive to the gesture.
He thinks he can also sympathise with Lin Qin’s worry and anxiety.
He’s wounded, but, this being a game, he’s recovering far faster than it would take in reality. His wound isn’t even hurting anymore.
But before his wound visibly improves, Lin Qin isn’t going to let him go anywhere yet.
So XĂź Beijin decides to check the Ultimate Nightmare through his stream first.
It turns out the Ultimate Nightmare has descended into chaos.
The people are generally aware that the Apocalypse had two——Perhaps three?——stages.
The first is the spread of the madness; the second is the Raining Hellfire; the third, why, that would be their entering the Tower.
That third stage is still mostly shrouded in mystery, but they have generally learned and come to appreciate some new common knowledge through Nightmares and through word-of-mouth, especially after Mu Jiashi entered key Nightmares, including Xü Beijin’s own, and Xü Beijin didn’t stop them from spreading the news.
They’ve already got the word out before entering the Ultimate Nightmare.
So right now, the Missiontakers – the ones still awake, at least – have a general understanding of the spread of the madness and the Raining Hellfire.
And they have come to realise they need to avoid the madmen and some of the larger locations that are clearly carrying the madness ‘virus.’
They also know to seek the closest large building for shelter during the Raining Hellfire, or death would come all too easily.
At this stage, the madness has spread, but there are still no signs that the Raining Hellfire is soon to strike.
So Missiontakers and Actors are still busy moving along the streets to look for other lucid companions and support each other.
Though that is when the sudden proliferation of the fog affects their visibility greatly.
“What’s happening? Why is there suddenly a fog?”
“Is the weather turning bad?”
“Wait! I’ve heard that the grey fog outside the Tower…”
Many Missiontakers and Actors, while not having been to Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, have gained knowledge through various means that includes rumours like ‘the grey fog outside the Tower is full of mad people.’
They can’t verify the information, but many of them have kept the mental image in mind when entering the Ultimate Nightmare.
So right now, with the grey fog spreading out, they can’t help but start feeling panicked and uneasy.
Why is such a fog appearing in the Ultimate Nightmare? Are there mad people inside? Are they currently going to be in some unknown danger?
Fear and worry accompany the grey fog that suddenly appeared.
Then, the doors came.
“This is impossible!”
When Fei sees the door inside the grey fog, she spouts.
Next to her, Jiang Shuangmei is observing the door with keen interest.
She gulps, and, compared to the fright the other Missiontakers are having, she looks slightly expectant in comparison, and asks, “is that… the door in the grey fog you were talking about?”
Fei isn’t paying much attention to how Jiang Shuangmei looks right now, and is biting her lips, leaving deep teeth marks as she does so. Hesitantly, she agrees, “I… yes, I suppose… they are.”
“And Missiontakers who once succumbed in Nightmares are inside?”
“That’s right. No… wait, what are you thinking?” Fei suddenly widens her eyes and looks at Jiang Shuangmei, asking, “you’re… you’re not thinking of looking for you sister?”
Jiang Shuangmei does not answer.
Not long ago, when she just entered the Nightmare and didn’t run into Fei yet… She saw her older sister.
A shadow from the past, that the Nightmare constructed for her.
Jiang Shuangmei looked at her older sister, confused whether she was dreaming for a moment——Well, she is, a Nightmare, even. She wasn’t expecting a reunion with her sister that way in the Nightmare at all.
And oddly enough, her older sister even seemed, unfamiliar.
They haven’t separated for that long yet, but the same face and appearance was not enough for her to recognise her older sister that way.
Then she realised, it was because this was back on Earth, before they have ever entered the Tower.
Of course she isn’t her older sister.
This was… this was just a mirage the Nightmare wove for her. A fake, false, disgusting, replacement.
She still couldn’t help but look at her older sister with nostalgic eyes, right there, in their own house; their parents were calling out. It’s meal time.
Jiang Shuangmei looked closely at her older sister, and at her father, her mother.
Tears wouldn’t stop falling out of her eyes. She pried her longing eyes away from them, their clear concern and worry for her shattering her heart, too.
She said, “I’m sorry… I’m sorry, sis. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I should have listened… I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, mom and dad, I’m sorry I failed to live on well with sis…”
She cried, she apologised, she wanted to just kneel and break down there. She realised, she didn’t even bawl out remotely as much when her older sister had truly disappeared from her side, but she was crying like hell to a strange recreation of her silhouette.
Her older sister would never want to see her cry like that, she thought. She knew, she knew it was all fake.
The Ultimate Nightmare must have wanted her to indulge herself in the fake warmth. Family. Memories. The past. Anything. They were trying to keep her there in the past, so she becomes lost in it forever.
Yet… Jiang Shuangmei mumbled, “I’m sorry… but, sis, she is waiting for me.”
Jiang Shuangjie was waiting for her. Waiting for her, trapped inside the cold metallic husk of an elevator, because of her.