CH 27.2

While the eight Missiontakers fall into silence in the corridor, Xü Beijin is already out of his bookstore and walking about the service area with the audience.

The viewers kept egging him on, and he is interested as well, so he stopped observing the Missiontakers.

The service area is actually pretty lively, with eateries, a supermarket and tuck shops. Even though there are no Missiontakers in sight, the Actors are still diligently going about their work.

Some of them give Xü Beijin odd looks when he appears, though they do not pay him further attention. Many Actors have become used to the routine already; they might even mistake Xü Beijin for being a Missiontaker given what he’s doing too.

In a sense, many of the Actors have truly become ‘NPCs.’

Xü Beijin takes a deep breath and also pays those Actors no mind. After circling the area once to get a sense of its layout, he walks straight for the supermarket.

“Welcome to… Oh, it’s you,” behind the register is the young man from before, who smiles and asks, “so, here to join our ‘Operation Defeat NE’?”

Xü Beijin shakes his head.

The viewers are typing the myriad of questions they have on the comment barrage. Xü Beijin takes a look and decides to go with the flow and ask about this Nightmare.

“I’m just curious what the truth of this Nightmare is.”

The young man’s eyes seem to glow a little when he replies, “that kind of curiosity is rare around here.”

Xü Beijin sighs and wonders if this is the young man’s attempt to segue into his… ‘Operation Defeat NE’?

He can understand what he is trying to do given most of the Actors have lost interest in Nightmares entirely. Their lives are emotionless, meaningless. They live like true NPCs – only following predetermined scripts and repeating their lives day after repeated day.

Perhaps it couldn’t even be called ‘living’ anymore.

And so, someone like Xü Beijin, who is still proactively exploring the Nightmares and curious about their truths, is exceedingly rare.

Though that is of course because he got a streaming service that allows him to spy on the Missiontakers from afar, so his interest would naturally be piqued; his original life as dull as dishwater has already changed.

The young man shrugs as he continues examining Xü Beijin with a pleasantly surprised expression, before getting back on track to say, “I’m just a side character here… I don’t have too much information here.”

Xü Beijin nods to say, “I’m just an extra.”

“An extra?” The young man repeats and remarks, “I thought you would be more…”

“Antagonist?”

The young man smiles in response and nods, “alright, I admit I was thinking that.”

Xü Beijin “…”

He frowns.

“See? See? That’s it. The face you’re making seriously screams ‘the big bad guy behind everything’ here,” the young man is guffawing when he continues, “nobody says extras are definitely nobodies. Sure, a lot of them do blend entirely into the background, but in some movies, these insignificant roles are actually the heart and soul of them.”

Xü Beijin pauses for a second before speaking up, “movies… huh.”

He can feel his memories stretching far back into the past, back before the days he entered the Tower. It is no exaggeration to say that for many of them, it is as far as a lifetime ago.

The young man here just casually mentioned it, as if it was the everyday, regular topic that it used to be.

He is sharp, too, immediately asking, “you’re thinking about the Tower?”

Xü Beijin is quiet for a moment before slowly nodding.

The young man thinks before patting Xü Beijin on the shoulder and answering, “be more optimistic, bro,” then his gaze drifts towards the heavy eyebags on Xü Beijin’s face and he can’t help but ask, “you haven’t slept for a really long time, huh?”

Xü Beijin is surprised by the question and glances at the young man curiously, before nodding in the end.

“Think of it this way. We’re just experiencing a ‘second life’ of sorts,” the young man has a big grin on as he continues, “on the other hand, though, a ‘second life’ means greater stress, that’s for sure.”

Xü Beijin couldn’t help but smile at the response, “you’re really living the life.”

The young man shrugs, answering, “how else would you survive in the Tower?” Then he changes topics, “so, anyway, back to this Nightmare…”

Xü Beijin is taken aback, only now realising that the topic has digressed way off the rails.

He checks the comments, but it seems the comments are not too confused. The viewers are probably taking their conversation to be two players who ended up unfortunately as Actors complaining about the Server and the game company behind it.

Xü Beijin’s face turns gloomier as his thoughts digress again. When he snaps back to reality, the young man in front of him happens to be retrieving a packet of soft candy from the shelves, handing it over.

Xü Beijin receives it with a blanked out face.

The young man then inexplicably chuckles before answering, “wouldn’t it be boring if I told you the truth right now? Actually, in that bookstore you’re in, there are some clues already. The Missiontakers would probably visit later, too,” then he points to the packet of sweets he handed over, saying, “take the sweets as my apology. Too bad we can’t take them outside of Nightmares, but they taste pretty well.”

Xü Beijin “…”

He is hesitant, and makes a glance at the stream before replying, “alright,” and finishes with a “thank you.”

“No problem,” the young man replies, “I also don’t want to lose another companion.”

The young man’s expression could almost be said to be sombre when he says that.

They’re quiet for a moment.

Then the young man speaks back up, “oh, I haven’t introduced myself, have I… I’m Dai Wu.”

“Xü Beijin.”

Dai Wu nods and puts his smile back on to say, “ah, so you’re the rumoured — I should’ve guessed when I saw those eyebags…”

Xü Beijin nods, slightly awkward from embarrassment this time.

Dai Wu remarks, “and you’re actually harmless, huh.”

Xü Beijin falls into thought for a second before shaking his head, saying, “no, I’m not,” then his face turns serious. The pale man with the dark eyebags beneath his eyes says calmly, “I just do not mind how things are most of the time.”

Dai Wu’s eyes widen a little.

It is difficult to describe all the complex thoughts going through his mind right now.

Perhaps his eyes really deceived him? Perhaps Xü Beijin really is a terrifying person? Well, there’s at least that ability to switch between his faces on demand…

Xü Beijin suddenly puts on a harmless smile to ask, “… see, it’s more frightening than harmless, isn’t it?”

Dai Wu “…”

He angrily speaks up, “oi oi, man, you…”

Xü Beijin raises his hand with the packet of sweets and waves at Dai Wu with a smile before leaving the supermarket.

The viewers are expressing their awe in the stream.

“woah, pretty naughty huh Beibei”

“more like only our Bei can act naughty that way”

“hahaha look at the dude with his frightened face.”

“Sigh, there wasn’t any useful information…”

“the detective dalao’s career minded heart is really impressive”

“look at the other camera! the missiontakers look like theyre about to do something!”

Since Xü Beijin left the bookstore, he has set the scene of the corridor at the bottom right corner of his stream.

The Missiontakers spent the whole time thinking about how to resolve this dead-end too.

The whole corridor is really like the kind of scene you’d see in a dream, too. The open windows are blocked by some kind of invisible wall. Even though it is brightly lit close to the car park, but the other end grows darker and eerier with every step inside.

Still, they checked every door, window and all the corners, until they were forced to conclude——There is nowhere to go.

Laoda is saying dejectedly, “seriously? Is this a Server bug? A real dead-end?”

Erge coldly retorts, “there’s never been any Nightmare that has trapped Missiontakers in a dead-end besides those Collapsed Nightmares…” He pauses before saying, “there is definitely a way out. We just haven’t discovered it yet.”

It really is fortunate that the moment he said that, the stream’s audio source wasn’t fixed on them, or the viewers should be questioning what a ‘Collapsed Nightmare’ is.

Suddenly Laosan says hesitantly, “do you hear something?”

“What?”

The Missiontakers all look at each other and quiet down. Then, there is suddenly a series of strange noises approaching them from afar.

Erge furrows his brows and listens for a bit before saying, “it’s the bedroom.”

They look at each other and quietly approach the bedroom.

What kind of… noise is that?

The horrifying wailings of a woman in pain. Cries and yells, and a series of——Thump. Thump. Thump. What sounds like chopping meat.

The Missiontakers’ steps become slow and hesitant. They can sense the fear crawling on their backs, as if the thumping meat-chopping sounds are chopping directly on their backs.

Laosan is murmuring like a sleepwalker would, “that man, was holding… a big machete…”

Suddenly, he recalls that, in the last Nightmare, he remembers hearing a woman’s cries in his dizziness. He thought it was Ding Yi’s whimpers, but… perhaps they weren’t?

It was like, there was another simultaneous bloody slaughter in that dark room. It was right next to them, but they didn’t even realise.

“What is going on in the room?” Scapegoat forces himself to ask, “who is he… killing?”

They are standing right in front of the door in silence. The woman’s screams have disappeared by now, rendering the whole corridor silent again; outside, the Missiontakers are indecisive and standing still.

Mu Jiashi quietly murmurs, “perhaps… this is related to the truth in this Nightmare. The Nightmare plays out, with or without the Missiontakers…”

He is about to say something else when suddenly, the man dressed in black, with his big machete in hand, bursts out of the bedroom door. On the blade of his machete, is fresh, red blood that is still dripping!