Chapter 170

Chapter 170

Everyone felt rather conflicted.

But after that moment of conflicted emotion…

Yellow Hair looked at the document and complained, “After all that, it doesn’t really help us at all.”

What was the use of knowing the story’s background? Besides making them feel a little more sympathy for Zhao Yingguo, did it serve any other purpose? Besides, Zhao Yingguo had written that she wanted some kindhearted person to kill her, but had she ever considered the fact that she was a vengeful ghost and they were a group of ordinary people? Who was going to kill whom here?

Sympathy was one thing. Staying alive was another.

Mu Xin sighed as well and said, “The document doesn’t say how to kill her either. Don’t tell me we have to keep looking for more clues?”

“No. She did write it,” Jian Fan suddenly said.

Everyone looked at him and asked, “What?”

“I don’t know what the answer is, but it has to be in the document.”

Everyone: “…”

He might as well have said nothing.

Jian Fan seemed a little embarrassed too. After thinking it over, he added one possible answer. “Water.”

Jian Fan’s answer was so simple that everyone was left completely confused.

“Zhao Yingguo was burned to death. She probably needs water at regular intervals,” Jian Fan said. “She can’t maintain her human form forever. My guess is that every so often, she has to enter water.”

This was something he had inferred from the document.

At this point, Jian Fan looked up at everyone and said, “Do you still remember the bloody water in the bathroom of Dormitory 6103?”

“Holy shit.” Qin Nan understood what Jian Fan meant.

Their first encounter with Zhao Yingguo hadn’t been the layer of Red Mist, but when she was in the toilet?

Zhao Yingguo could indeed teleport through blood, but at the time, there had only been a small amount of blood on the balcony. There hadn’t been nearly as much as in the bathroom.

The reason there had been so much in the bathroom was because Zhao Yingguo had been inside the toilet at the time!

Qin Nan felt like his entire head was about to explode.

The others understood as well.

And back then, it was only after they flushed the water away that Zhao Yingguo turned into Red Mist and appeared.

“What do we do?” Qin Nan asked.

For a moment, Jian Fan had no way to answer him.

He knew water was the key, but as for what exactly they were supposed to do with that information, Jian Fan actually still had no clear idea.

Shi Chen frowned slightly and said, “Don’t tell me Zhao Yingguo has to die before we can return to the real reality space?”

Everyone thought about it and realized, hey, that really was possible.

Qin Nan began following Jian Fan’s line of thought, but no matter how much he considered it, he couldn’t come up with anything useful. He didn’t think of a plan, but he did remember someone else.

“Xia Zeqin… has he seriously been invisible for this entire world?” Qin Nan said.

Shi Chen, however, was a little puzzled. He said, “He still hasn’t shown up by now. Maybe he’s already dead?”

Qin Weiyi let out a laugh and said, “He’s not that easy to kill.”

Shi Chen didn’t know Xia Zeqin well, so he still had his doubts.

Qin Weiyi had no intention of explaining it to him. Instead, he looked at Jian Fan. “What do you think?”

Jian Fan shook his head and said, “I don’t know. This is the first time he’s been away from the team for this long.”

In the past, Xia Zeqin would also suddenly disappear for a while, but this was truly the first time he had been gone from beginning to end like this. Even Jian Fan wasn’t quite sure what to make of it now.

If even Jian Fan wasn’t sure, then the others, who understood Xia Zeqin even less than he did, certainly wouldn’t have an answer.

“Who cares about him? The most urgent thing right now is to hurry up and figure out how to leave,” Yellow Hair said.

Jian Fan nodded.

No matter what Xia Zeqin wanted to do, as long as they could leave this place, then whatever plans Xia Zeqin had would come to an end here.

“Actually, there’s one more thing I don’t understand,” Jian Fan said, bringing the topic back to the matter at hand.
Everyone turned to Jian Fan.

“That password-125274. Why would Zhao Yingguo suddenly shout that string of numbers when she was being abused?” Jian Fan asked, looking at the others.

It was one question he still had no answer to. Or perhaps it was the key.

Qin Nan frowned.

“Looking at the timeline of the entire incident as we understand it, Zhao Yingguo discovered Li Xiting was being bullied and stepped in to help her. But Li Xiting misunderstood, thinking Zhao Yingguo was mocking her, and decided to destroy Zhao Yingguo instead.”

“Li Xiting pushed Zhao Yingguo forward to take her place and become the victim. Then she framed Zhao Yingguo in the dorm, causing her relationships with her roommates and everyone else to gradually fall apart. During that time, Zhao Yingguo tried to save herself, but the appearance of the dorm supervisor drove her into complete despair. After that, she chose to take everyone down with her.”

“During the Fire, Zhao Yingguo regretted it after her eyes were gouged out. After death, she became a vengeful ghost and was trapped inside this abandoned dorm building. From the document she left behind, we can see that she killed quite a few people. During the brief moments when she was still lucid, she wrote all of this down. She wanted to die, but she was unwilling to accept it, so after writing it, she locked the Memory Card and the dorm supervisor’s Diary inside the Metal Box and placed it in the dorm supervisor’s suitcase.”

“The password was probably set by Zhao Yingguo too. 125274-those numbers definitely mean something. As for the video on the television, there’s no doubt that was Zhao Yingguo’s doing as well. The problem is, why did Zhao Yingguo say those numbers back when she was being bullied? At that point, she was either in despair or had already developed the idea of mutual destruction. Could she really have been thinking ahead about leaving behind the password to the Metal Box? That doesn’t make sense.”

The more Qin Nan spoke, the more confused he became.

He had thought that once they finished reading the document Zhao Yingguo left behind, all their doubts would be resolved. But now… it seemed the problem had not been solved at all.

“Could it be because all of this is fake?” Shi Chen suddenly suggested.

“Fake?” Qin Nan said in surprise.

Jian Fan looked at Shi Chen and affirmed his guess. “If it’s fake, then everything makes sense.”

“How so?” Qin Weiyi asked. He had already formed a vague idea, but he still wasn’t completely certain. He kept feeling as if one piece was missing, and perhaps he needed Jian Fan to supply it.

Jian Fan looked at Qin Weiyi and replied, “The place we’re in was never the real world to begin with. It’s a parallel virtual space-or rather, a virtual space under Zhao Yingguo’s control.”

“I get it now.” Qin Weiyi laughed.

At last, he had connected everything.

“Xiao Qin, what the hell is going on?” Lu Jing asked.

Qin Weiyi looked at Lu Jing and smiled. “This really is an Escape Room. But what we truly need to escape isn’t this dorm building. It’s Zhao Yingguo’s mind.”

“Her what?” Lu Jing felt that the environment he was physically standing in and what Qin Weiyi was describing were two completely different things.

Her mind?

Lu Jing felt he was not suited to be here. This was not something he should be listening to.

“To put it simply, after Zhao Yingguo died, she used her own power to create this virtual space and threw us into it. She wants release, but she’s unwilling to let go, so she decided to let other people make that decision for her. In other words-us.”

As soon as Qin Weiyi finished speaking, Jian Fan added, “Everything in this place depends on Zhao Yingguo’s thoughts.”

“Simply put, whatever Zhao Yingguo wants this virtual space to be like, that’s what it becomes,” Qin Weiyi continued, picking up where Jian Fan left off.

Lu Jing: “???”