Chapter 67: Volume 3 - CH 51.1

Coincidentally

Jiang Shuangjie thinks she must have run into the most laughable thing in the world.

A light bulb──A light bulb in the corridor, is fucking asking for help from her!

She is looking back at the corridor with a poker face, suspecting she must be dreaming──Ha, of course she has to be, she is in a Nightmare, after all.

She takes a deep breath to calm herself down, and asks tentatively, “are you… asking for help? If yes, then blink once…”

Before she has even finished speaking, the light on the corridor blinks once.

… Just fucking once!

Jiang Shuangjie feels dizzy. She cannot comprehend such a supernatural phenomenon.

Besides… A light… Why is a light asking her for help?!

“I…” Jiang Shuangjie gulps; her throat feels parched. She asks, “how, do I help you?”

In the corridor, the light bulb and the person fall into silence.

A light bulb cannot speak, nor can Jiang Shuangjie understand anything from blinking lights. She only recognises SOS in Morse code, but she can’t remember a single other letter.

She isn’t one of those geniuses who remembers everything seen once, or a know-it-all.

In the end, the light on the corridor just maintains its luminescence throughout. It seems to have given up entirely.

Jiang Shuangjie gives a deep look at the light hanging over the eighth floor corridor and recalls how Jiang Shuangmei incoherently blabbered about the light in Room 408 hinting them… She wonders, if there might be some kind of commonality between these events?

They’re both lights. They’re both friendly or at least cooperative in attitude…

She cannot make sense of it otherwise, and looks back at the elevator lobby instead.

Taking a deep breath, she decides to take the stairs in the end. No matter what, safety first. Nobody knows if the elevators are hostile towards them. Nobody can guarantee anything.

A few minutes later, the Missiontakers again assemble on the lobby of the ground floor, save for Lin Qin and Muscular.

Thin doesn’t mind that neither have shown up. Xü Beijin, perhaps in a fit of OCD flaring up, checks out where they’re going, and sees that Lin Qin left the apartment building before anybody else came downstairs, perhaps heading for the commercial complex.

While Muscular… Muscular…

Xü Beijin is surprised to find Muscular where nobody expected.

Room 807.

… Isn’t this Jiang Shuangjie’s apartment?

How did he even make it inside? Xü Beijin remembers that in the first run of the Nightmare, Jiang Shuangjie already tried returning to her apartment unit, but the door would not open.

Could only Missiontakers who are not the designated tenant re-enter an apartment unit of some other Missiontaker? Or could it be that the lock of Jiang Shuangjie’s apartment was acting up somehow?

Xü Beijin is tending towards the latter.

Though there isn’t really any danger in Jiang Shuangjie’s apartment unit… Other than the curtains that float up and the door lock that refuses its owner.

Still, it is strange for Muscular to be inside her apartment unit in any case. What is he even doing here?

Wait… Is he thinking that Jiang Shuangjie could have placed her utility cards in the apartment unit?

Xü Beijin finds himself speechless at the possibility.

And that is exactly what Muscular is assuming – in the last run, after he stole Jiang Shuangjie’s utility cards, he hid them inside his own apartment unit.

After realising how valuable the two utility cards were back then, he believes that Jiang Shuangjie would be much more careful with them now.

Therefore, Muscular thinks that she may have only brought one card out with her and left the other one in her apartment unit so that it wouldn’t be stolen. If he could break into her apartment unit, then he might be able to retrieve that utility card with zero effort, no?

In some sense, Muscular is correct, because Jiang Shuangjie did become more cautious and wary after having her cards stolen, but, he was assuming himself on her too much.

Because utility cards are worthless to Missiontakers if they are put away unused in Nightmares no matter what, you see?

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Still, Muscular went to Room 807.

He didn’t have the emergency passcode, so he was just here to try his luck.

However, when he arrived at the door to Room 807, somehow, the door was ajar, leaving a small gap. Muscular is elated, thinking even the Heavens are helping him out──Jiang Shuangjie forgot to shut the door properly when she left!

He slips into Room 807 and shuts the door.

The door makes a ‘click’ sound as it locks back up.

Jiang Shuangjie doesn’t know Muscular has sneaked into her apartment. If she did, she would surely just be speechless at it all.

Only Carddealers who treat utility cards as merchandise would think about storing valuables somewhere safe. Missiontakers who try their best in Nightmares, like Jiang Shuangjie herself, would of course always keep useful utility cards on their persons.

What if they suddenly need to use them, right?

These Missiontakers are unable to sympathise with Carddealers, who have a wholly more greed-filled view rather than a pragmatic one. While the Carddealers are also baffled at the mere notion of using the utility cards rather than selling them when they would be worth so much more.

Neither of them can understand one another, and so the reality is that, Carddealers are increasingly viewed with contempt and disdain. That said, some Missiontakers would still hypocritically criticise Carddealers on the surface but still strike deals with them in private.

Still, fortunately, in this Nightmare at least, the Missiontakers have a universal consensus among them──They do not want to work with the Carddealer at all.

It’s rather simple. Lin Qin does not need utility cards; the Jiang sisters have years of stockpiling behind them; Shen ‘the Zombie’ Yünjü was almost the unwitting victim, and so naturally hates Muscular now,

As for Thin and the teenage girl…

They have their ways, so they do not have a need to deal with lone Carddealers like Muscular.

So none of them really care about where Muscular went, instead, they’re sharing new information about the Nightmare.

Jiang Shuangjie talks about everything she found out with her younger sister without ado, including the fact that she recovered her utility cards, the problem with the lights in Room 408 and the eighth floor corridor, and also their thoughts on attempting to converse with the elevators.

All the Missiontakers were most shocked at hearing about the lights asking for help on the eighth floor.

Thin falls into thought before speaking up, “the eighth floor…? Do you remember that letter of complaint?” He pauses before saying, “I remember that the letter was written by a tenant of that floor, who mentioned that the light bulb on his floor’s corridor kept flickering.”

“But…” Jiang Shuangjie awkwardly asks, “why is the light asking for help? Is it… Are they trapped? But… It’s a light bulb.”

The teenage girl suddenly mentions, “perhaps…”

Everyone turns their attention to her.

She says coldly, “are you all familiar with the story of the drowned corpses looking for scapegoats to replace them?” (TL: Chinese folk legend – People that drowned become poltergeists that are confined to where they died, so they lurk in the waters, waiting to drag passers-by down to be chained instead, replacing the corpses themselves and go free)

The Missiontakers all seem taken aback.

Thin is the first to understand the connection, and looks rather uneasy, dryly asking, “you mean… these sentient furniture, want someone alive to take their place, so that, they no longer have to be stuck to fixed furniture?”

When the teenage girl talked about the possibility of that, all Thin could think about is the toilet in his apartment unit… Shit, he doesn’t want to be a toilet!

Jiang Shuangjie is trembling, even, saying, “so, that ‘SOS,’ was just… just tricking people into a trap where they might be able to take them as scapegoat?”

She is seriously worried and relieved, since she was actually putting that light bulb in the friendly category.

The teenage girl nods, but cautions, “I have only proposed a hypothesis. It is not necessarily exactly what is behind this Nightmare,” then she turns towards Jiang Shuangmei and Shen Yünjü, adding, “and we already have deaths from the previous runs, but we see that they haven’t taken the place of the electronics yet.”

“Perhaps it is just not yet time!” Thin says, his voice sinking in tone more and more, “if the Nightmare starts crumbling…”

He and the teenage girl glance at each other for a moment.

The two of them know that there have been cases where Missiontakers in this Nightmare have inexplicably disappeared. What if those missing Missiontakers were actually taken to be the scapegoats? What if…

What if, these sentient electronics they are facing right now, are those missing Missiontakers?

Somehow, Thin is feeling a heavy mood settling down his chest.

He is sure that his companion, the teenage girl, perhaps has been thinking about the truth behind all these sentient electronics since she entered the Nightmare, especially in the context of the Missiontakers having disappeared.

It may have been an earlier conclusion of hers that they have become scapegoats similar to the drowned corpses in Chinese folklore.

The Missiontakers fall silent, each preoccupied with their own thoughts.

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