Liu Cui was in the living area, dodging attacks from the employees. For some unknown reason, the previously quiet Boss had suddenly become manic. Liu Cui clearly felt the surrounding temperature rise, to the point that she could not even use her sand-transformation ability smoothly. When her feet were severed and she fell to the ground, she was surprised to find that she could actually feel pain; her blood and bones had not turned into sand.
“Damn it,” Liu Cui said. “What is going on? Yi Ban, can you get Lucifer to try and control the Boss?”
Yi Ban closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She glanced at Liu Cui and remained silent.
Liu Cui urged anxiously, “Hurry up! What are you waiting for? Look at what time it is.”
“Seven-thirty in the evening.”
Liu Cui: “…”
She was now certain that Yi Ban’s mental state must be influenced by something; she had started listening to only half of what was said, giving irrelevant answers, and rambling.
But Liu Cui no longer had the time to care about Yi Ban. The scorching temperature was making her sand uncontrollable…
Seeing the Boss walking closer and closer, Liu Cui uncontrollably opened her eyes wide in horror.
Inside the room, Xing Yun was not doing any better. She felt the right arm with the armband on it becoming exceptionally scorching. After only a few minutes, the heat wave spread throughout her entire body. The pain in her right arm made her roll on the floor, sweat oozing from her pores as she moaned for help.
Yu Yan was also panicked. “What is wrong with you?” She saw Xing Yun’s face gradually turning red, but did not know the reason.
Under the influence of her body temperature, Xing Yun kept twisting, looking for a cold place, and began to messily pull at her neckline.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t, this is not good, is it?” Yu Yan’s old face flushed red as well. She turned away and glared fiercely at Yu Xi and Xu Lang. “See if I do not dig your eyes out if you keep looking.”
Xu Lang: “…”
God is his witness, he had only been observing the room and thinking of countermeasures from start to finish.
Xing Yun was burning with fever. When she opened her eyes, even her vision was blurry, with circle after circle of black halos at the edges. Her ability to think was reduced to zero; she only felt that her right arm was painfully hot, and the armband was sticking to her tightly, as if it wanted to crush her right arm.
She even heard a hair-raising “crack” of bone being squeezed.
“So painful…” she choked out. “Damn it…”
Sweat seeped from Xing Yun’s forehead. She could feel Yu Yan saying something beside her; human voices reached her ears hazily, but she could not hear them clearly at all.
“Xing Yun… Xing Yun, are you okay?”
She blinked with difficulty, but could not respond to Yu Yan’s calls.
Yu Yan fanned her, as if that could make her feel better.
Blood flowed along the armband, gathering beneath Xing Yun. She felt her body sinking, sinking from within her own blood…
“What exactly is this?” Yu Yan reached out to pull her, but it was all in vain.
She watched helplessly as Xing Yun disappeared from her sight, and then the blood on the floor gradually dried up, finally evaporating without a trace.
When Xing Yun woke up again, what she saw when she opened her eyes was pure white. It took her a long time to realize that she had returned to the white space she had been to at the beginning.
This time, there was no one else in the space, only her and a woman.
The woman stood motionless in the center. The ends of her long hair were slightly curled, hanging down to her waist, obscuring her face. Her hands, with long red nails, hung naturally at her sides.
Xing Yun recognized her immediately… it was the woman who had scratched her.
Xing Yun dared not act rashly. She kept observing the woman while holding her right arm steady. After a long time, confirming that the woman would not move, she walked over slowly.
Her legs were weak, and she felt unable to control her body as she wished.
The closer she got to this woman, the stronger the sense of familiarity became. Under this impulse, her hand brushed away the woman’s long hair… The moment she saw clearly, her pupils shrank, and she pulled her hand back as if she had been electrocuted, her fingers trembling slightly.
This woman had a face identical to hers.
The two faced each other like a reflection in a mirror; apart from one having long hair and the other short, there was no difference at all.
Xing Yun tentatively spoke, “Did you call me here?”
“Who are you? Why do you look just like me?”
“Are you ignoring me?”
“…”
Xing Yun withdrew her gaze, because no matter what she said, the other party had no intention of responding.
Xing Yun looked at the white space and felt her eyes getting blurry from staring for too long. “No wonder the boss said I look like you…” She checked behind the woman’s left ear; that small mole was just like hers.
Xing Yun was stunned. She slightly pulled open the woman’s collar and saw the feather tattoo on her chest.
She slammed the clothes shut, completely bewildered. This could no longer be explained as just looking alike.
Anyone would get the illusion that they were the same person.
“Could it be, could it be—you… are me?” This bold guess made Xing Yun feel dazed. She stumbled backward. “No, no, no… It seems I have been in the instance for too long and my mental state is affected; I am hallucinating.”
She leaned closer to the woman. “Do you have nothing to say to me?”
She found that this woman’s state was somewhat similar to puppets like Ge Chuan. The only slight difference was that she did not have a haggard appearance; her skin remained flawless, as if it would break at a touch.
Xing Yun could not find a breakthrough from this woman and had no choice but to give up. She followed the same method, finding the hollow brick on the wall and pressing the red button again.
This time, after she pressed it, no door opened, but a scene appeared inside the hollow brick.
The scene inside was the moment she had pressed the button in the white space for the first time, as if showing her a recording from the beginning.
“A playback?” Xing Yun muttered to herself.
She watched everything before her with total focus.
She saw Lao Xiangyun having her feet burned off by blue flames because she came out late, and she saw other dazed people in the house being consumed by the blue flames.
The sharp, high-pitched screams made her scalp tingle.
At the same time, she discovered that the space she was in was also beginning to scorch. Survival instinct guided her, and she ran quickly to the woman’s side, because only the area near her was cooler.
On the other side, after Yu Yan watched Xing Yun sink, she only froze for a moment before turning to open the large box in the corner. Inside, Ge Chuan was curled up. Because she was worried he would be influenced by Liu Cui, she had simply locked him up now was the time to use him.
As a pure human, she did not know where Xing Yun was now, but Ge Chuan, this half-human, half-ghost, might know a direction.
She glanced at the empty large box and slammed it shut, making a “bang” sound.
The “bang” exploded in Xing Yun’s ears. She felt the entire space trembling. It was fine at first beside the woman, but later it became more and more scorching.
Just as she was wondering if she would be roasted alive, she noticed the woman’s body slowly becoming transparent and dissipating. As the woman disappeared, Xing Yun found that her brain was receiving interference. Confused, her mind was flooded with memories she had not had before, all filled with inexplicable sorrow, memories of her childhood.
As a child, she would inexplicably repeat the same sentences and perform repetitive actions.
She saw touching scenes without the urge to cry, and saw funny scenes without the desire to laugh. She found it difficult to get along with normal people and often felt unable to communicate with those around her, but her inner desire for exchange made her very anxious.
She was like someone who had lost her “true feelings.”
She dared not look people in the eye and would subconsciously avoid them at the slightest touch.
She could live in her own world as a child, but once she reached high school and her social circle expanded, she faced overwhelming pressure from the school and the variety of people she encountered.
She began to struggle to observe others’ expressions, but her excessive focus on other people’s faces made her inevitably become insecure and sensitive.
Once, a teacher asked her to go call the class representative, but she did not understand and just turned back and shouted the word “class representative” three times
Difficulties in understanding and weak communication often led her to receive looks filled with ridicule.
But she displayed an astonishing learning ability. Because she could not remember faces, she categorized everyone into various models, remembering their walking posture, fashion style, and even their speech fillers..
At the same time, this point was also reflected in her studies; she always had various ways to remember miscellaneous knowledge points.
After she came into contact with the cosplay culture, she often studied props and makeup to release her suppressed inner self… and achieved no small amount of success.
And then, she was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome…
When Xing Yun broke free from the memories, she was still dazed. Is this her?
She swallowed her saliva.
She was the standard “child of a friend,” one who had been excellent in both character and learning, won numerous awards, and was surrounded by friends since she was little.
Asperger’s syndrome?
How is that possible? She had always been cheerful toward others, emotionally expressive, and had never thought about trying to please others socially.
She touched her cheeks and felt like a stranger to herself. She tugged hard on the armband on her arm until her knuckles turned white, even though every tug caused tearing pain in her right arm…
She believed that these sudden memories were all because of this armband.
These were not her memories; they were the memories of that woman…
Just as the blue flames were about to sweep over her, her brain collapsed into a faint because it could not handle the suddenly intruding memories.
When she opened her eyes again, she was being shaken awake; she was being carried on Yu Yan’s shoulder while Yu Yan was running.
“Cough, cough, cough…” Xing Yun coughed twice.
Yu Yan was pleasantly surprised. “You are finally awake… Let me see, you must have been unconscious for at least three hours. The Boss suddenly went crazy, and we decided not to stay in the housing area anymore. After all, who can kill a skeleton?”
Indeed, the employees were no longer living people. It was easy to kill a person, but it was hard to deal with guys who were not human.
“The rain has not stopped, has it?” Xing Yun murmured. “I think I know how to clear the level.”
Yu Yan looked incredulous. “Huh?”
“It has been raining here the whole time. I thought it was because of the Boss, but now that I think about it, it only rains when she is about to appear…”
Yu Yan: “She? You mean the Boss’s girlfriend?”
Xing Yun nodded calmly after hearing this. Then she realized Yu Yan probably could not see, so she added, “She is the key to leaving this place.”
Yu Yan was overjoyed. “What are we waiting for? Let us go find her again.”
But this process was not smooth sailing. Perhaps the Boss had heard the summons and appeared like a ghost in front of them, blocking Yu Yan’s path. “Why do you always want to run? Can you not just stay here properly?”
Xing Yun was silent.
This time, the Boss did not say who she looked like; he directly treated her as that person.
Not to mention the Boss, even Xing Yun herself felt that she should have some connection to the Boss’s girlfriend.
People’s subconscious often determines many things. Freud believed this was the Id, and in Buddhist terminology, it is called the Alaya-vijñana (Storehouse Consciousness).
People are sometimes like this: when Xing Yun did not believe she had any connection to the Boss’s girlfriend, she just thought the Boss treating her as a substitute was a coincidence. Now that she thought there was a connection, her subconscious began to treat herself as the Boss’s girlfriend.
Xing Yun asked Yu Yan to put her down and asked, “Are you willing to trust me?”
“Not entirely.” Her eyes flickered, and she smiled. “But I like the thrill that comes with adventure.”