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Fei is mumbling with a trembling voice, “this looks… nothing different to the grey fog outside the Tower…”
As she says, the fog is so thick it’s just like in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare.
So she is baffled at what’s happening——
Though, just as she told Jiang Shuangmei earlier, things happen regardless of their wishes, but there should always be a cause and an effect behind them.
So Fei cannot understand why the grey fog outside of the Tower can seep into a Nightmare inside. It’s even so thick.
She grips Jiang Shuangmei’s hands tightly, because she can no longer see her in such a thick fog.
Jiang Shuangmei also sounds slightly shook as she asks, “should we keep going?”
They still kept walking through the fog building up, until it was so thick they couldn’t see their feet. Right now, they should be just outside of some park.
Fei thinks about it, then says, “let’s stop and take a rest, and see what happens next.”
They wait for a few minutes, they think, and then…
“A door!”
“That’s impossible!”
Their voices almost overlap as they look at the door appearing in the fog in shock.
In the thick fog, all directions, height and distance are meaningless – the door is about a few steps away from them, glowing gently, waiting for them to open it up, it seems.
And Jiang Shuangmei is staring fixedly at it.
The door… if she opens it, she can meet succumbed Missiontakers within.
Fei is holding tightly onto Jiang Shuangmei, so that the Missiontaker wouldn’t rush into the fog because of her older sister.
Jiang Shuangmei, after a period of silence, says, with a bitter smile, “I sure want to… really, really want to see her again. You met her in the Nightmare, didn’t you?”
Fei, while slightly uncertain, nods. Jiang Shuangmei can see it, the light from the door dispelling the fog slightly, and takes a deep breath, saying, “don’t worry. Don’t worry about me… If the need comes, I can head in without hesitation, but right now… now is not the time. I’m not crazy.”
She appears to be reassuring herself this way.
She has already acted like this before; she paid an unforgettable price for it.
Fei, closely watching her, and satisfied she isn’t going to rush into the fog, starts thinking about something else.
There are doors in the grey fog… why?
Now they’ve become largely trapped with the fog so thick. They have no idea what’s beyond this area, nor whether retracing their steps and take them back to normalcy.
And what would happen if they just stay and observe the door?
They are still looking nervously at the door, when Fei thought her vision just went awry——The door, she saw it being pushed open from the inside!
She comes to an immediately decision and yells, “run! Run away!”
Who else but insane people could emerge from doors in the grey fog?
She complete forgot that doors are always a two-way connection. They entered scenes from Nightmares through doors in the grey fog, and naturally, the mad people in the scenes can also exit through the doors!
But… but how?! When they were in Xü Beijin’s Nightmare, the insane people never seemed to use the doors. Why are they emerging from the grey fog?!
Fei is flabbergasted.
Meanwhile, Xü Beijin is answering that exact question in the stream, “right now, the grey fog has started taking over parts of the Ultimate Nightmare… devouring it.”
The viewers of his stream are listening, and so is Lin Qin, watching him quietly, sitting by his side.
Xü Beijin gives Lin Qin a smile, before continuing, “the parts devoured by the grey fog will become part of the grey fog, despite the lucid people trapped within.
Of course, the grey fog does not accept people that haven’t gone insane, so it creates ‘doors’ near them so the insane people can go… deal with them, or more precisely, ‘infect’ them.
Normally, it would be that the Ultimate Nightmare causes masses of people to succumb, and so the grey fog takes them away;
But the grey fog is currently devouring the Nightmare instead, which means it would have to ‘correct’ the people that haven’t succumbed.
Well, it may sound like I’m saying the grey fog has some kind of ‘will,’ but it’s actually just programming, but not a sentient grey fog that is planning all of this.
In a sense, we can call the mad people that are rushing out from the grey fog, the ‘difficulty’ of this Nightmare.
It is in addition to the ‘Apocalypse’ as depicted in the game, but as many players will already know of its details and can avoid the dangers, that is not enough. So the madmen are here as an additional danger.
In lore terms, the Ultimate Nightmare, being part of the condition determining the fate of the artificial intelligence in the Tower, so to save itself, obviously, the AI will also try to stop humanity. And this is how it chooses to respond.”
Then Xü Beijin coughs a little, and Lin Qin quietly hands over a glass of water——They’re not even drinks anymore!
Xü Beijin takes a few sips and thinks, he really just spoke too much too quickly with a dry throat… the little apple really didn’t need to look at him like that, did he?
Though, he’s the one that’s currently paying the price, so he can only drink water obediently.
Meanwhile, in the stream, the viewers are happily chatting it out in the comment barrage; many who didn’t understand the quickfire explanation is being helped along by the very fervent detective dalao.
Xü Beijin’s mind is drifting elsewhere, though, as he is paying close attention to the sidebar of his stream, where the number of viewers is updated in real time.
Suddenly, with a short ‘ding,’ the number of viewers has refreshed – increased, by one.
A wave of excitement rushes through XĂź Beijin.
As he realises, the one person he’s been waiting for, hoping for, is here.