Chapter 202
Chapter 202
Qin Weiyi arched an eyebrow.
Yellow Hair supplied the answer from beside him. “You said there’d be a twist, then another twist, then another.”
Qin Nan: “…”
“By that logic, are we supposed to get an illusion, then another illusion, then another?” Qin Nan shot back.
Silence fell. Qin Weiyi, Yellow Hair, and the others regarded Qin Nan with indescribable expressions, as though looking at an unreasonable child. Jian Fan, meanwhile…
“There is a certain logic to that,” Jian Fan said.
Qin Nan: “?”
“The first layer of illusion was the villa in its ordinary, inhabited state. The second is the abandoned villa. The third would be the world where the female lead lives,” Jian Fan said.
Qin Nan: “…”
To Qin Nan’s dismay, he couldn’t find a single way to refute him.
It was appallingly reasonable.
Seeing Qin Nan rendered utterly speechless, Jian Fan’s lips curved soundlessly. Qin Weiyi laughed too, then steered them back to the matter at hand. “Enough nonsense. We were joking, but what Jian Fan said is entirely possible. Since we’ve all rejected killing our teammates, our next move should be to identify what’s wrong with this world and break the illusion in front of us.”
“We’re restricted to the villa, so the search area isn’t too large. That’s good.” Qin Weiyi nodded. Their present circumstances were actually fairly favorable.
Seven of them had now regrouped. Two Players had died at Mu Xin’s hands, leaving Shi Chen, Xia Zeqin, and the unidentified woman.
Shi Chen wasn’t much of a threat by comparison, so only two people remained for them to guard against.
Besides, they had already gathered a fair amount of information. They were still some distance from solving the mystery, but at least they weren’t starting from nothing.
After a moment’s thought, Jian Fan added, “The greenhouse and courtyard should belong to the first layer of the illusion.”
“Then the cause of the second layer should be somewhere inside this villa?” Qin Nan immediately followed.
“The first illusion was caused by scent. What could be causing the second?” Following their earlier train of thought, Qin Weiyi offered several possibilities in succession. “Sound? Touch? Or sight?”
No one could answer him yet.
Jian Fan thought briefly, then turned to Mu Xin instead. “Tell us exactly what happened with Xia Zeqin again.”
“When I ran into him, he was standing at one window. Later, he moved to another and kept watching the grounds outside. He didn’t seem surprised at all when our surroundings changed. That’s all I know. As for his skill, I felt dizzy and weak at the time, almost as though I’d fallen ill,” Mu Xin said.
Lin Junruo picked up the thought. “Then his card face probably shows the male lead caring for the female lead while she’s sick. So his skill puts someone into a sickened state for about a minute?”
Mu Xin nodded. “Possibly.”
Listening to them, Qin Nan added, “The exact nature of Xia Zeqin’s skill doesn’t matter. So far, these skills all work differently but produce the same result: they leave a Player unable to resist for one minute.”
He then looked at Jian Fan. “Xia Zeqin hasn’t done enough for us to tell what he’s really after.”
Jian Fan nodded, then asked Mu Xin, “Which two windows?”
Mu Xin understood what he had left unsaid.
He wanted to take a look himself.
Naturally, Mu Xin had no objection.
She stood at once. “I’ll show you.”
Mu Xin led the way, with everyone else following close behind. The group quickly made its way to the fourth floor.
Once there, Mu Xin took them to a window at the rear of the villa.
She stopped beside it. “This is where Xia Zeqin stood later. I don’t remember exactly how long–at the time, I wasn’t watching the clock–but I’d estimate at least twenty minutes or so.”
Jian Fan said nothing. He stepped up to the window and looked outside.
Qin Nan, Qin Weiyi, and the others gathered around it too.
One glance was enough for them to understand what Xia Zeqin had been watching.
“The greenhouse.” Qin Weiyi’s expression turned grave.
From this window, they had a perfect view of the greenhouse’s entire exterior.
It looked different now. A small section of the greenhouse stood within the courtyard, but the greater part of it actually passed straight through the courtyard wall and extended beyond it.
Simply put, before the illusion vanished, they had seen only the portion inside the courtyard. Now they could see the rest of the greenhouse outside the wall.
One exit opened into the courtyard. The other… led somewhere unknown.
“The greenhouse is still the problem?” Qin Nan exclaimed.
They hadn’t tried its other door before. They’d assumed both doors led to the same place, their positions overlapping because of the illusion. But viewed from above, the scene before them revealed a simple fact.
The greenhouse really did have another exit.
“Should we go to the greenhouse now?” Yellow Hair asked the group, though his gaze was fixed on Jian Fan.
Jian Fan quickly looked away from the window. “No hurry.”
“We’ve already searched the greenhouse. The exit may be there, but that doesn’t mean the key to this is,” Qin Weiyi said, voicing the same conclusion Jian Fan had reached.
Jian Fan nodded. “We should still search the villa first.”
Once Jian Fan had spoken, no one objected.
Before searching for the greenhouse’s other secret, however, Jian Fan was more concerned about Xia Zeqin.
“Where’s the other window?” he asked Mu Xin.
“I’ll show you,” Mu Xin replied quickly.
She led the group to the second window.
Jian Fan stood before it and looked outside. When he saw the view, his expression darkened, yet there was also a trace of grim confirmation on his face.
The window faced the villa’s back door and the row of single-story buildings beyond it.
And Jian Fan was extraordinarily familiar with the scene.
Wasn’t that precisely where he had been when he first arrived in this world?
Xia Zeqin hadn’t been studying their surroundings through the windows. He had been tracking Jian Fan’s movements.
It seemed Xia Zeqin had known where he was from the very beginning. He had watched Jian Fan’s route from the window, then followed his movements to the greenhouse.
Interesting. How very interesting.
Jian Fan’s lips curved into a smile.
But that smile held an indescribable fury.
Perhaps that anger was directed at Xia Zeqin. Or perhaps it was directed at himself. Jian Fan silently clenched his hand, forcing down the rage in his chest.