CH 66.2
Chapter 66.2: “Why don’t we make a deal?”
Wen Jianyan blinked: “But, it’s alright.”
“!!!” After hearing the other party’s reply, Wang Hanyu showed a look of surprise and joy on his face.
He obviously found out that he was lying, but the black side anchor actually agreed to this deal that was only beneficial to him! Could it be that……
Wang Hanyu secretly looked at the young man in front of him; a glimmer of light flashed in his eyes.
Was there actually such a selfless person in this live broadcast?
In order to prevent the other party from going back on his word, Wang Hanyu hurriedly took out the soul-locking altar and handed it to the other party.
Wen Jianyan weighed the soul-locking altar in his hand and heard the familiar sound from the system.
Great, it’s the real thing.
During this process, Chen Mo remained silent, standing firmly a few meters away, looking away, and standing like a wooden sculpture made of clay. It was as if his whole person had merged into the darkness.
Wang Hanyu half-knelt on the ground and raised his head, staring eagerly at the young man in front of him:
“You, can you join me right now?”
“Of course.”
The young man with amber eyes lowered his eyes: “Do you know what the purpose of our cult is?”
“Wh-what?”
“Honesty and redemption.” Wen Jianyan leaned down slightly, caressed the other’s cheek lovingly, and then slowly turned sideways, revealing Chen Mo not far behind:
“So, sincerely atone for your sins to the other party.”
He smiled softly, like a devil in an angel’s shell: “I will allow you to join only if my precious congregation agrees to your atonement, understand?”
Wang Hanyu couldn’t react for a while.
He stared blankly at the young man in front of him. His gaze wandered over his former teammates and the black side anchor. Soon, after realizing what the other party was talking about, his facial color began to fade a little bit and finally looked as pale and fragile as paper.
Chen Mo in the distance was stunned.
He raised his eyes and looked at Wen Jianyan, who was not far away, in disbelief. He opened his mouth slightly, but no sound came out.
……Why?
According to his habits and style, he would never allow this kind of person who betrayed and stabbed him to live, but Chen Mo also knew that, although he wanted to kill the two-faced villain in front of him from the bottom of his heart, Wen Jianyan had once said that he wasn’t going to complete the main line task. So after hearing Wang Hanyu’s tearful pleading, he still chose to stop taking revenge and called Wen Jianyan.
He always remembered that no matter what his purpose was, this man saved himself and pulled him out of the near-death situation.
Chen Mo didn’t like to owe favors to others.
Wen Jianyan walked over, patted Chen Mo’s shoulder lightly, and said in a low voice with a smile:
“It’s up to you now.”
After speaking, he put the soul-locking altar in his pocket, turned around, and left.
Chen Mo stared blankly at the back of the other party.
The young man’s slender figure somehow coincided with the figure that was shrouded in bloody holy light in his chaotic memory because of low san value.
He felt his heart being struck hard, the shock and feelings he had deliberately suppressed returning so strongly that he felt overwhelmed in an instant. As if a floodgate had been opened, countless emotions gushed out like a flood, leaving Chen Mo befuddled for a while.
Just like……
He was really the other party’s believer.
Too strange.
Too… terrible.
He didn’t like to owe favors to others.
But now he didn’t know why, but the debt was getting deeper and deeper.
Wang Hanyu sat on the spot blankly, four words echoing in his mind:
“The tower is upright.”
“Everything about you will crumble and disintegrate from the depths, and all the bad things you have done will come back to you.
***
After parting with Chen Mo and the others, Wen Jianyan went back to the destination he had decided on from the beginning.
He had one thing to confirm.
Wen Jianyan deftly navigated around the map and finally stopped in front of a familiar door.
1326.
He stretched out his hand and slowly pushed the door open.
In the original world at the beginning, it was located directly opposite 1304. As long as one went out and crossed the corridor, they could enter the room where the massacre had occurred.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and walked into the room.
The familiar smell of incense and ashes came, and the cramped, messy, and narrow room opened before his eyes. The scarlet electronic candle was lit in front of the small Buddha statue, barely dispelling the heavy darkness.
The rocking chair let out a creaking sound.
When the door was pushed open, the sound of the rocking chair paused for a moment, and an old voice sounded from the depths of the house: “Xiuqing, is that you?”
“It’s me.”
Wen Jianyan walked toward the depths of the house and replied.
As the distance drew closer, the figure of the old woman was already close in front of his eyes. Just like before Wen Jianyan left, she was leaning back on the rocking chair, her lower body covered with a thick blanket.
She raised her cloudy and loving eyes, looking in the air for the figure of the person coming, and then slowly stretched out her hand tremblingly to Wen Jianyan: “Why have you been out for so long? Xiuqing, spend more time with your mom.”
Wen Jianyan stood there without moving, his eyes lowered, sweeping his gaze lightly across the opponent’s body.
His voice was gentle and soft:
“Of course.”
Wen Jianyan looked around the hall as if looking for something.
Soon, his eyes fell on a corner of the hall, and his eyes could not help but light up slightly.
“I’m busy with work after all.” Wen Jianyan leaned over to pick up the clothes pole in the corner and replied with a normal and even smiling voice.
He weighed the heavy metal pole in his hand, squinted his eyes, glanced at the distance between him and the opponent, and then swung his arms silently:
“But don’t worry, I will definitely accompany you more in the future.”
“Whoosh—”
He waved the clothes pole in the air.
“……”
The old lady on the rocking chair stood up slowly, her face changed at a speed visible to the naked eye, and she changed into the appearance of Granny Wen in the blink of an eye.
Her eyeballs were covered with white clouds, and her wrinkled, loose skin trembled with the frequency of her speech. Although the smile on her face was the same as before, it had a particularly sinister and gloomy meaning no matter how one looked at it:
“Young man, don’t you know what it means to respect the old and love the young?”
Unfortunately, it didn’t hit.
Wen Jianyan threw away the clothes pole regretfully.
“Old lady, to be so old and not die is thieving*; have you heard of it?” He said with a smile: “Birth, old age, sickness, and death are natural laws.”
[*T/N: used to scorn an old person that lacks morality or proper behavior.]
The wrinkles on Granny Wen’s face trembled again, and a pair of eyes covered with white clouds stared at the young man in front of her.
The hatred for the other party for breaking into her house and destroying the Bodhisattva statue was superimposed, making her expression look extraordinarily ferocious.
Granny Wen asked coldly:
“How did you find out?”
“You mean, how do I find out you’re an imposter?”
Wen Jianyan leaned his back against the door and said with a smile: “You stayed in the rocking chair all this time, but your posture hasn’t changed. Your right hand is always placed below your chest, just five centimeters above the blanket I tuck in. It’s no different from when I left.”
Wen Jianyan’s gaze swept across the blanket that fell on the ground
“As long as it is a living person, isn’t it impossible not to move for such a long time?”
“This is the first point.”
“…and the second point?” Granny Wen narrowed her eyes slowly.
Wen Jianyan nodded: “Naturally.”
He leaned loosely against the door panel, looking frivolous and carefree, “Because this isn’t really the outside world, right?”
“……”
When he said this, Granny Wen’s expression suddenly became gloomy.
At first, Wen Jianyan was just guessing.
After all, even after she realized that he was playing tricks behind her back, the other party continued to import new anchors into the inner world. Wen Jianyan didn’t think that Granny Wen would be so clueless.
On the contrary, the other party’s mind was much more sinister than that.
It could be seen from the fact that she tried to sacrifice all the anchors from the beginning.
It was Granny Wen’s consistent way that betrayed her.
Desire and massacre—only these two could be refined into a soul-locking altar, and the betrayal of those anchors to their teammates by writing their names on yellow paper in order to survive was itself a ruthless self-inflicted massacre.
Regarding the map they were currently in, Wen Jianyan had initially thought that the external world and the internal world had been merged, but after discovering the abnormality in Granny Wen’s behavior, Wen Jianyan began to re-analyze his previous conclusions and then realized that things were not so simple.
Granny Wen in the instance did not know the existence of the instance or the Nightmare system, and it was even more impossible for her to know about the alienation of the instance. Then, if this premise were removed and we looked at it from the other party’s prospective—he destroyed the statue inside the other party’s room, found the key letter from the base of the statue, and then turned around and fled into the mirror.
As the instigator behind all this, Granny Wen, who was not prepared to enter the mirror from the very beginning, what would she do?
The most efficient way, naturally, was to take advantage of the trend and continue refining the soul-locking altar according to the original plan.
She didn’t even need to change the entire map; just a few changes in many details toward the real world to fool the anchors into thinking the two worlds had merged, and then make them kill and betray each other just like now.
This was also why Granny Wen couldn’t affect the area where Wen Jianyan was before—according to the content of the paper that Wen Jianyan found in the other party’s room, the dimensions between the two mirrors were superimposed on each other rather than merged like matryoshka dolls. Granny Wen could only affect the layer closest to her and could also send the anchor into a deeper layer, but she couldn’t directly exert control over the second layer.
Of course, these were just Wen Jianyan’s guesses.
He didn’t have any very tangible evidence and only had some doubts about the logic of Granny Wen’s behavior, but this was enough for him.
After entering 1304 and seeing Granny Wen disguised as the old lady, Wen Jianyan was completely sure that his thoughts were correct.
If he was really located in the outermost layer of the superimposed worlds right now, no matter whether the inner and outer worlds overlap or not, the people in the room would not change. Granny Wen didn’t have that much power to control the real world.
Since the old lady was not here, this was by no means the outermost layer.
Granny Wen stared at the young man not far away; the wrinkles on her face trembled slightly, but there was no excess emotion on her old face:
“Pity.”
“You are a bright young man.”
The moment Granny Wen’s voice fell, the scene around her changed in an instant. Although the inside of 1326 was chaotic, it was full of warmth. The internal environment gradually disappeared and faded, like a faded oil painting. All kinds of weird magic weapons and many items that were very evil at first glance appeared in the narrow space.
A brass Bodhisattva statue as tall as a person appeared in front of Wen Jianyan.
In the dim light, only the two scarlet, blood-like electronic candles in front of the Bodhisattva statue remained unchanged and were still dimly lit.
Granny Wen showed a loving, even happy smile at Wen Jianyan:
“—You still stepped into my room.”
“Since you have already guessed a lot, it doesn’t matter if I reveal a little more to you.”
Leaning on the walking stick, Granny Wen walked slowly to the table and sat down, staring fixedly at the young man not far away with her eyes covered with white clouds, and the smile on her face gradually deepened: “Indeed, my influence in this world is limited, but as long as you step into my room in this world, you have entered my world—no matter how smart you are, you can’t step out of here without my permission.”
A sinister smile appeared on Granny Wen’s old and ugly face: “What a pity, you are so close to the truth, but you still—”
The rest of her words were stuck in her throat.
The young man in front of him didn’t seem to notice what she was talking about at all. He looked left and right, and finally walked to the side of the tall Bodhisattva statue. He leaned over to look closer, and even stretched out his hand and curled his knuckles—
“What are you doing?!”
Granny Wen’s voice suddenly sharpened.
Wen Jianyan paused, withdrew his hand without any shame, and turned to look at Granny Wen: “Ah, it’s nothing. I just want to make sure that I didn’t break it before.”
A regretful expression appeared on his face:
“Modern craftsmanship can make it so finely, but there are really not many.”
Granny Wen: “……”
She was so angry that her nose was crooked, her facial features shifted under the intense anger, and her voice contained terrible anger that seemed to be able to burn everything: “You have to pay the price for your disrespect——”
Before she could finish her sentence, she saw the young man slowly taking something out of his pocket.
“Thud.”
A pitch-black pottery jar was placed on the table and made a slight sound.
At that moment, Granny Wen’s neck seemed to be stuck by an invisible force; her eyes trembled slightly, and she looked at the soul-locking altar in front of her in disbelief.
“Is this enough?”
Wen Jianyan asked with a smile.
He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Granny Wen: “You should know, this is the last soul-locking altar. As long as it is destroyed, the evil spirit will be released—and, since there is only the last step left, I can release it now if I want to.”
Wen Jianyan gently tapped the mouth of the altar with his fingertips; his amber eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile flickered in his eyes:
“Guess why I took the initiative to enter your territory?”
“Naturally, it’s because I don’t want to see that happen either.”
Wen Jianyan leaned over slightly, with a sincere expression on his face:
“Why don’t we make a deal?”
The author has something to say:
#Kind and benevolent old Granny
#Honest and trustworthy Wen Jianyan
Wen Jianyan blinked: “But, it’s alright.”
“!!!” After hearing the other party’s reply, Wang Hanyu showed a look of surprise and joy on his face.
He obviously found out that he was lying, but the black side anchor actually agreed to this deal that was only beneficial to him! Could it be that……
Wang Hanyu secretly looked at the young man in front of him; a glimmer of light flashed in his eyes.
Was there actually such a selfless person in this live broadcast?
In order to prevent the other party from going back on his word, Wang Hanyu hurriedly took out the soul-locking altar and handed it to the other party.
Wen Jianyan weighed the soul-locking altar in his hand and heard the familiar sound from the system.
Great, it’s the real thing.
During this process, Chen Mo remained silent, standing firmly a few meters away, looking away, and standing like a wooden sculpture made of clay. It was as if his whole person had merged into the darkness.
Wang Hanyu half-knelt on the ground and raised his head, staring eagerly at the young man in front of him:
“You, can you join me right now?”
“Of course.”
The young man with amber eyes lowered his eyes: “Do you know what the purpose of our cult is?”
“Wh-what?”
“Honesty and redemption.” Wen Jianyan leaned down slightly, caressed the other’s cheek lovingly, and then slowly turned sideways, revealing Chen Mo not far behind:
“So, sincerely atone for your sins to the other party.”
He smiled softly, like a devil in an angel’s shell: “I will allow you to join only if my precious congregation agrees to your atonement, understand?”
Wang Hanyu couldn’t react for a while.
He stared blankly at the young man in front of him. His gaze wandered over his former teammates and the black side anchor. Soon, after realizing what the other party was talking about, his facial color began to fade a little bit and finally looked as pale and fragile as paper.
Chen Mo in the distance was stunned.
He raised his eyes and looked at Wen Jianyan, who was not far away, in disbelief. He opened his mouth slightly, but no sound came out.
……Why?
According to his habits and style, he would never allow this kind of person who betrayed and stabbed him to live, but Chen Mo also knew that, although he wanted to kill the two-faced villain in front of him from the bottom of his heart, Wen Jianyan had once said that he wasn’t going to complete the main line task. So after hearing Wang Hanyu’s tearful pleading, he still chose to stop taking revenge and called Wen Jianyan.
He always remembered that no matter what his purpose was, this man saved himself and pulled him out of the near-death situation.
Chen Mo didn’t like to owe favors to others.
Wen Jianyan walked over, patted Chen Mo’s shoulder lightly, and said in a low voice with a smile:
“It’s up to you now.”
After speaking, he put the soul-locking altar in his pocket, turned around, and left.
Chen Mo stared blankly at the back of the other party.
The young man’s slender figure somehow coincided with the figure that was shrouded in bloody holy light in his chaotic memory because of low san value.
He felt his heart being struck hard, the shock and feelings he had deliberately suppressed returning so strongly that he felt overwhelmed in an instant. As if a floodgate had been opened, countless emotions gushed out like a flood, leaving Chen Mo befuddled for a while.
Just like……
He was really the other party’s believer.
Too strange.
Too… terrible.
He didn’t like to owe favors to others.
But now he didn’t know why, but the debt was getting deeper and deeper.
Wang Hanyu sat on the spot blankly, four words echoing in his mind:
“The tower is upright.”
“Everything about you will crumble and disintegrate from the depths, and all the bad things you have done will come back to you.
***
After parting with Chen Mo and the others, Wen Jianyan went back to the destination he had decided on from the beginning.
He had one thing to confirm.
Wen Jianyan deftly navigated around the map and finally stopped in front of a familiar door.
1326.
He stretched out his hand and slowly pushed the door open.
In the original world at the beginning, it was located directly opposite 1304. As long as one went out and crossed the corridor, they could enter the room where the massacre had occurred.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and walked into the room.
The familiar smell of incense and ashes came, and the cramped, messy, and narrow room opened before his eyes. The scarlet electronic candle was lit in front of the small Buddha statue, barely dispelling the heavy darkness.
The rocking chair let out a creaking sound.
When the door was pushed open, the sound of the rocking chair paused for a moment, and an old voice sounded from the depths of the house: “Xiuqing, is that you?”
“It’s me.”
Wen Jianyan walked toward the depths of the house and replied.
As the distance drew closer, the figure of the old woman was already close in front of his eyes. Just like before Wen Jianyan left, she was leaning back on the rocking chair, her lower body covered with a thick blanket.
She raised her cloudy and loving eyes, looking in the air for the figure of the person coming, and then slowly stretched out her hand tremblingly to Wen Jianyan: “Why have you been out for so long? Xiuqing, spend more time with your mom.”
Wen Jianyan stood there without moving, his eyes lowered, sweeping his gaze lightly across the opponent’s body.
His voice was gentle and soft:
“Of course.”
Wen Jianyan looked around the hall as if looking for something.
Soon, his eyes fell on a corner of the hall, and his eyes could not help but light up slightly.
“I’m busy with work after all.” Wen Jianyan leaned over to pick up the clothes pole in the corner and replied with a normal and even smiling voice.
He weighed the heavy metal pole in his hand, squinted his eyes, glanced at the distance between him and the opponent, and then swung his arms silently:
“But don’t worry, I will definitely accompany you more in the future.”
“Whoosh—”
He waved the clothes pole in the air.
“……”
The old lady on the rocking chair stood up slowly, her face changed at a speed visible to the naked eye, and she changed into the appearance of Granny Wen in the blink of an eye.
Her eyeballs were covered with white clouds, and her wrinkled, loose skin trembled with the frequency of her speech. Although the smile on her face was the same as before, it had a particularly sinister and gloomy meaning no matter how one looked at it:
“Young man, don’t you know what it means to respect the old and love the young?”
Unfortunately, it didn’t hit.
Wen Jianyan threw away the clothes pole regretfully.
“Old lady, to be so old and not die is thieving*; have you heard of it?” He said with a smile: “Birth, old age, sickness, and death are natural laws.”
[*T/N: used to scorn an old person that lacks morality or proper behavior.]
The wrinkles on Granny Wen’s face trembled again, and a pair of eyes covered with white clouds stared at the young man in front of her.
The hatred for the other party for breaking into her house and destroying the Bodhisattva statue was superimposed, making her expression look extraordinarily ferocious.
Granny Wen asked coldly:
“How did you find out?”
“You mean, how do I find out you’re an imposter?”
Wen Jianyan leaned his back against the door and said with a smile: “You stayed in the rocking chair all this time, but your posture hasn’t changed. Your right hand is always placed below your chest, just five centimeters above the blanket I tuck in. It’s no different from when I left.”
Wen Jianyan’s gaze swept across the blanket that fell on the ground
“As long as it is a living person, isn’t it impossible not to move for such a long time?”
“This is the first point.”
“…and the second point?” Granny Wen narrowed her eyes slowly.
Wen Jianyan nodded: “Naturally.”
He leaned loosely against the door panel, looking frivolous and carefree, “Because this isn’t really the outside world, right?”
“……”
When he said this, Granny Wen’s expression suddenly became gloomy.
At first, Wen Jianyan was just guessing.
After all, even after she realized that he was playing tricks behind her back, the other party continued to import new anchors into the inner world. Wen Jianyan didn’t think that Granny Wen would be so clueless.
On the contrary, the other party’s mind was much more sinister than that.
It could be seen from the fact that she tried to sacrifice all the anchors from the beginning.
It was Granny Wen’s consistent way that betrayed her.
Desire and massacre—only these two could be refined into a soul-locking altar, and the betrayal of those anchors to their teammates by writing their names on yellow paper in order to survive was itself a ruthless self-inflicted massacre.
Regarding the map they were currently in, Wen Jianyan had initially thought that the external world and the internal world had been merged, but after discovering the abnormality in Granny Wen’s behavior, Wen Jianyan began to re-analyze his previous conclusions and then realized that things were not so simple.
Granny Wen in the instance did not know the existence of the instance or the Nightmare system, and it was even more impossible for her to know about the alienation of the instance. Then, if this premise were removed and we looked at it from the other party’s prospective—he destroyed the statue inside the other party’s room, found the key letter from the base of the statue, and then turned around and fled into the mirror.
As the instigator behind all this, Granny Wen, who was not prepared to enter the mirror from the very beginning, what would she do?
The most efficient way, naturally, was to take advantage of the trend and continue refining the soul-locking altar according to the original plan.
She didn’t even need to change the entire map; just a few changes in many details toward the real world to fool the anchors into thinking the two worlds had merged, and then make them kill and betray each other just like now.
This was also why Granny Wen couldn’t affect the area where Wen Jianyan was before—according to the content of the paper that Wen Jianyan found in the other party’s room, the dimensions between the two mirrors were superimposed on each other rather than merged like matryoshka dolls. Granny Wen could only affect the layer closest to her and could also send the anchor into a deeper layer, but she couldn’t directly exert control over the second layer.
Of course, these were just Wen Jianyan’s guesses.
He didn’t have any very tangible evidence and only had some doubts about the logic of Granny Wen’s behavior, but this was enough for him.
After entering 1304 and seeing Granny Wen disguised as the old lady, Wen Jianyan was completely sure that his thoughts were correct.
If he was really located in the outermost layer of the superimposed worlds right now, no matter whether the inner and outer worlds overlap or not, the people in the room would not change. Granny Wen didn’t have that much power to control the real world.
Since the old lady was not here, this was by no means the outermost layer.
Granny Wen stared at the young man not far away; the wrinkles on her face trembled slightly, but there was no excess emotion on her old face:
“Pity.”
“You are a bright young man.”
The moment Granny Wen’s voice fell, the scene around her changed in an instant. Although the inside of 1326 was chaotic, it was full of warmth. The internal environment gradually disappeared and faded, like a faded oil painting. All kinds of weird magic weapons and many items that were very evil at first glance appeared in the narrow space.
A brass Bodhisattva statue as tall as a person appeared in front of Wen Jianyan.
In the dim light, only the two scarlet, blood-like electronic candles in front of the Bodhisattva statue remained unchanged and were still dimly lit.
Granny Wen showed a loving, even happy smile at Wen Jianyan:
“—You still stepped into my room.”
“Since you have already guessed a lot, it doesn’t matter if I reveal a little more to you.”
Leaning on the walking stick, Granny Wen walked slowly to the table and sat down, staring fixedly at the young man not far away with her eyes covered with white clouds, and the smile on her face gradually deepened: “Indeed, my influence in this world is limited, but as long as you step into my room in this world, you have entered my world—no matter how smart you are, you can’t step out of here without my permission.”
A sinister smile appeared on Granny Wen’s old and ugly face: “What a pity, you are so close to the truth, but you still—”
The rest of her words were stuck in her throat.
The young man in front of him didn’t seem to notice what she was talking about at all. He looked left and right, and finally walked to the side of the tall Bodhisattva statue. He leaned over to look closer, and even stretched out his hand and curled his knuckles—
“What are you doing?!”
Granny Wen’s voice suddenly sharpened.
Wen Jianyan paused, withdrew his hand without any shame, and turned to look at Granny Wen: “Ah, it’s nothing. I just want to make sure that I didn’t break it before.”
A regretful expression appeared on his face:
“Modern craftsmanship can make it so finely, but there are really not many.”
Granny Wen: “……”
She was so angry that her nose was crooked, her facial features shifted under the intense anger, and her voice contained terrible anger that seemed to be able to burn everything: “You have to pay the price for your disrespect——”
Before she could finish her sentence, she saw the young man slowly taking something out of his pocket.
“Thud.”
A pitch-black pottery jar was placed on the table and made a slight sound.
At that moment, Granny Wen’s neck seemed to be stuck by an invisible force; her eyes trembled slightly, and she looked at the soul-locking altar in front of her in disbelief.
“Is this enough?”
Wen Jianyan asked with a smile.
He pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Granny Wen: “You should know, this is the last soul-locking altar. As long as it is destroyed, the evil spirit will be released—and, since there is only the last step left, I can release it now if I want to.”
Wen Jianyan gently tapped the mouth of the altar with his fingertips; his amber eyes narrowed slightly, and a smile flickered in his eyes:
“Guess why I took the initiative to enter your territory?”
“Naturally, it’s because I don’t want to see that happen either.”
Wen Jianyan leaned over slightly, with a sincere expression on his face:
“Why don’t we make a deal?”
The author has something to say:
#Kind and benevolent old Granny
#Honest and trustworthy Wen Jianyan
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