157 - The Truth Emerges

Translated by rabbitrisu

“Old man, we just moved here and would like to ask something about the community. Could you open the door?” Su Zimo asked in a soft and gently tone.

“Get out! Don’t think I don’t know your tricks! You can’t fool me, get out of here!”

The voice of the old man inside was very angry, like Su Zimo and the others were health product salesmen that he couldn’t drive away.

“Old man, we really are new people. We aren’t bad guys.” Qin Rong persuaded from the side with her soft feminine voice.

“Bad people? Haha, there aren’t any bad people in this world today!” The old man’s tone sounded completely opposite what he said. He clearly said there were no bad people in the world, but he refused to open the door for some reason.

“You said you’re new here, so what do you guys do?” The voice behind the door gradually calmed down, but his tone still lacked any trust in Su Zimo and the others. It seemed that he simply wanted to talk to them.

Su Zimo and the others exchanged looks and then briefly introduced themselves. Su Zimo said he was a student, Liu Xu said he was retired, Mu Feng said he was unemployed, Qin Rong said she was a white-collar worker, and Uncle Chen Long said he was a physical education teacher.

After speaking, there was no sound behind the door. Even the previous reprimanding voice no longer appeared. The old man behind the door didn’t respond at all.

What should we do now? Mu Feng mouthed to Su Zimo beside him.

Su Zimo thought for a while and didn’t hesitate anymore. Now that he knew there was a ‘person’ behind the door, he directly pierced the sharp umbrella sword into the slightly cracked door, then gave the ghost umbrella a look. It directly caused the door to open with a ‘click.’

The trainers next to them only saw Su Zimo poke the umbrella inside. They didn’t know what he had done. The lock on the door in front of them broke, and the door creaked open into a large crack. Inside the door was dark; they couldn’t see anything.

Pushing the door inward, Su Zimo and the others used the dim light of the hall and saw an old man with an ugly face standing inside, looking at them with a pale, panicked expression.

“I knew… I knew that you would kill us sooner or later!” The old man murmured. “Forget it. If I die, I die. This old man has lived long enough.”

The old man’s words were very soft, but Su Zimo and the others could hear them clearly. There was too much information in those words.

Kill who?

Who’s lived long enough?

Are you sure that’s what a ghost would say?

Even a ghost who didn’t know their own identity wouldn’t be caught in such a panicked situation, right? Could it be this old man wasn’t a ghost, but an ordinary living person?

“We really aren’t bad guys. We’re people who just moved here.” Su Zimo emphasized again with some helplessness.

“There’s a glass of water over there.” The old man pointed to the shoe cabinet next to the door. “Drink the water and swallow it, then I’ll believe you.”

Everyone looked at the cup on the shoe cabinet. It was indeed filled with liquid, but no one was sure if it was water.

“Can we drink our own water?” Liu Xu took out a bottle of water from his backpack, not daring to risk drinking something from the nightmare world.

“Yes, anything will do as long as you can swallow it.”

As soon as the old man finished speaking, Liu Xu raised his head and started pouring water, swallowing it all at an unimaginable speed, then neatly wiped the water residue off the corner of his mouth.

The old man glanced at the water residue dripping in the hall with a complicated expression, then muttered to himself: “Someone really moved here again? Where did so many people come from?”

Although he said something that the trainers didn’t understand, the old man turned on the dim light in the room. Su Zimo and the others could see a simple living room with a square table and several chairs.

“Come in.” The old man stepped aside. “Hurry up, don’t delay.”

As soon as Su Zimo and the others entered the door, the old man asked them something they couldn’t respond to: “Are you trainers?”

They all couldn’t help but be stunned.

They really didn’t expect that they would one day hear the term ‘trainer’ from a native in the nightmare world.

“Old man? You’re not a ghost?” The old man spoke straightforwardly, and Su Zimo followed up straightforwardly.

“Of course I’m not a ghost.” The old man glared at Su Zimo, then reluctantly shook his head. “But we people aren’t as good as ghosts. We can only live lives in fear.”

“Old man, are there really ghosts in this community?” Uncle Chen Long looked at the man in sympathy. “Rather than being scared by yourself, it’s better to tell us about the ghosts or share it with other people in the community. Maybe someone can help; don’t hide it alone.”

When Chen Long said that, Su Zimo and Liu Xu gave him a thoughtful look.

Although the old man didn’t say much, the information they obtained from his words was enough to make Su Zimo certain that even if something really happened to him, the old man would never ask for help from others in the community.

Sure enough, after hearing what Chen Long said, the old man sneered and said–

“Do you think that the things that appear to be alive and kicking in the community are really people?”

“……”

Even if they had guessed as such inside their hearts, Su Zimo and the other trainers were still silent when they heard the old man directly say it.

The old man walked to the window and opened the thick curtains so that Su Zimo and the others could see the bright lights of the community and the ‘people’ who were still singing, dancing, talking, and laughing as the night darkened. Su Zimo and the others fell into deep thought.

It was lively and vibrant outside.

It was dark, cold, and quiet inside.

The outside and the inside were like two different worlds.

At first, the trainers thought that the outside was the world of the living and the inside was the world of ghosts. But if what the old man said was true, then the people living in the dark in this residential building were alive, and the enthusiastic partiers outside where almost countless ghosts!

This old man was a human, but A-Li, the jogging girl, and the old people square danced and did Tai Chi were the ghosts!

Everyone felt a chill run down their backs.

At first, they thought that entering the residential building and encountering dozens of ghosts was the worst part of the twentieth nightmare world.

But now… they were likely to face over a hundred… even hundreds of ghosts!

“If this is true… we’ll die.” Mu Feng felt his teeth shake. Who could fight that kind of battle?

They had never even seen such a thing!

At that moment, the trainers finally knew why, no matter how powerful, the trainers could not survive the twentieth nightmare world.

But Su Zimo still had doubts.

Why couldn’t the trainers who failed to clear the twentieth nightmare world not use nightmare points to offset their death penalty?

Compared to other nightmare worlds, did this nightmare world really only differ in combat difficulty?

“Old man, how do you know about trainers?” Su Zimo asked aloud.

“Are you really human?” The old man didn’t seem to believe them.

“Old man, you made us drink water because ghosts can’t eat, right?” Uncle Chen Long off to the side seemed to understand very well, so he frit his teeth and took out a small but very sharp knife from his pocket. He cut a wound as shallowly as possible on his arm so the old man could clearly see the bright red flowing out. “Would such a ghost bleed?”

“……” The old man was silent for a while, then finally walked to the living room while beckoning to Su Zimo and the others. “You all come with me.”

“Su Zimo and the others followed the old man into the bedroom, holding various ghost tools in their hands. Then they saw the old man open an old wooden wardrobe and set aside the clothes hanging inside.

After a series of motions, Su Zimo saw that there was a large hold in the closet that had been forcibly torn out! It was barely large enough for a person to go through!

“Follow me.” The old man took out a flashlight from the cabinet. After turning it on, he entered the hole first.

The trainers followed the old man and entered the hole, then used the old man’s flashlight to clearly see that they had entered the next room.

After moving a coffee table next door, a downward ladder was revealed.

Although the old man was old, his abilities weren’t concealed. He seemed very familiar with the route.

Su Zimo roughly counted. They seemed to use this path to directly descend five or six floors, then entered a space with no windows at all. It seemed to be the basement of the residential building!

It was a pitch-black space with no windows. After Su Zimo and the others arrived, candles were lit and twenty or thirty pale-faced people stood there.

If they guessed correctly, they should all be tenants of the residential building.

They didn’t know how long they’d lived in the residential building, so they chose that time-consuming and silly way to gather together without going out.

That would also explain why Su Zimo’s knocking on doors didn’t cause any movements.

Perhaps at the time, most of the residents were still hiding in the basement they’d connected by themselves!

“Old Jin, are there more trainers here again?” Some of the residents asked when they saw Su Zimo and the others.

“Yes, ah.” The old man nodded.

“What the hell is going on?” Uncle Chen Long didn’t understand. “Why do you all know about trainers?”

“There were trainers who came here before, and they asked the same questions as you. How could we not know about trainers? Now the world has become such a mess. Isn’t it all because of the damn nightmare world?” A lady with loose hair and a face paler than ghosts grit her teeth and said, “The whole city may just be those of us who don’t have any abilities now. Even the trainers may have been killed by ghosts.”

“How is that possible? We saw cars and pedestrians outside the residential area, and lots of lights.” Qin Rong couldn’t help shouting.

He found the others strange. These people were speaking like they were the survivors of the apocalypse.

“Those are all fake.” Old Jin said. “Those are illusions created by the ghosts outside. This city has long been deserted; it’s only us who survived.”

Hearing Old Jin talk about this, Su Zimo thought of something, so he asked a question that made the other people very confused: “Old man, what’s the name of the country where we are now? What’s the most powerful country in the world now? What year and month is it now?”

Not only were the trainers stunned, but the old man was also stunned.

But in the end, Old Jin and the others answered truthfully.

What shocked the trainers was that they had never heard the names of the two countries Old Jin mentioned, like they had never existed in history! Old Jin even said that the current year was 987 in the new calendar, which was a way of counting years that the trainers had never heard of.

The nightmare world… wasn’t it all what happened in the real world?

At that time, Su Zimo suddenly saw some books scattered on the ground under the candlelight. Among them was a book with a tattered cover and another called ‘Starry Lake.’

It was obviously a fairy tale book that no one except him had read in their childhood, but he could see it everywhere in this ‘nightmare world’?

“Have you read this book?” Su Zimo picked up the fairy tale book from the ground and asked Mu Feng and the others next to him.

But the trainers shook their heads uncomprehendingly. Their thoughts hadn’t yet recovered from the old man’s ‘new calendar’ and the unfamiliar country names.

“Then have you heard of this book?” Su Zimo asked the ‘native people’ on the other side.

“Doesn’t everyone know that fairy tale book?” Even Old Man Jin looked at Su Zimo as if he was speaking nonsense. “Children love reading this. Especially after the nightmare world disaster, even adults especially enjoy the story in this fairy tale book.”

“Mr. Su, what’s going on.” While they were outside, Mu Feng didn’t call Su Zimo Master Su.

“Countries we haven’t heard of, a way of counting years we haven’t heard of, fairy tale books we haven’t heard of.” Su Zimo sighed. “What we haven’t heard of is something that all children know about in this world. If you think about it, there may be only one explanation.”

“This is another world.”

Although Su Zimo explained briefly, he knew that Mu Feng may not understand what he meant. After all, the only ones who knew that another world existed were Su Zimo and the ghost umbrella behind him.

Su Zimo’s mother, An Yu, cane from a world destroyed by ghosts, so the fairy tale books Su Zimo read during his childhood may also have come from that world.

Su Zimo had wondered before why the trainers who failed to clear the nightmare world would die directly. Why couldn’t they use nightmare points to offset the death penalty?

Because this isn’t a nightmare world at all!

The transit station was basically the dividing point between Su Zimo’s world and his mother An Yu’s world. Those who experienced the nightmare world nineteen times were actually ‘exiled’ to another apocalyptic world that had been ravaged!

The land Su Zimo was in now as his mother An Yu’s homeland!

Another world!

It was a world that had been completely invaded by ghosts. Mankind even fell apart by voting for sacrifices!

“Nothing.” Su Zimo wanted to explain, but eventually shook his head and said, “Just treat this as an independent nightmare world.”

An unimaginable nightmare.

Just when Mu Feng and the others were about to continue questioning him, directly above the basement they were standing in, they suddenly heard… knocking on a door!

Su Zimo immediately looked up and found that the sound came from above the entrance panel above the basement.

“Is anyone still coming down?” Su Zimo looked around.

The old man counted silently, then finally shook his pale head and said, “No. All of us are here.”

So who was knocking on the door now?

[I know you’re all under there.] Su Zimo seemed to had heard it before. But now the voice that had become ghostlike came from above the entrance panel.

“It’s A-Li!” Someone in the crowd shouted.

“Aaaahh! How do they know about this place!” Someone screamed uncontrollably.

“Calm down!” Su Zimo and Old Jin could only do their best to calm the others down.

[Do you really think it’s safe to hide there?] The malicious spirit A-Li’s voice continued. [Are the few humans that suddenly appeared being hidden by you? If you want to continue living, hand over the fresh humans.]

[Be obedient and we’ll continue to protect you…… hahaha……]

The originally lively and vibrant world seemed to have suddenly been unmasked, revealing the cold inner pages even down to the bone.