Chapter 208
Chapter 208
“Like what?” Qin Nan asked, with Qin Weiyi echoing the question immediately afterward.
Jian Fan said nothing. He looked up at Qin Nan, then stepped backward and began walking in reverse.
Everyone froze.
Walking backward?
Jian Fan offered no elaborate explanation. His actions alone showed Qin Nan and the others what he meant.
Qin Nan’s joke had genuinely reminded him of something.
There were two doors, yet they always emerged from the same exit. If the doors themselves could not change, why couldn’t the people passing through them change instead?
There was no need for kneeling and kowtowing, but another possibility had occurred to Jian Fan.
Walking forward and walking backward were diametrically opposed directions.
He had said before that the anomaly here combined illusion and space. With the additional information they now possessed, he could define that more precisely.
The illusion existed outside the greenhouse. The mingled scents induced it, and the smell of soil broke it.
The spatial anomaly, meanwhile, existed within the greenhouse.
The greenhouse connected two settings. Those two spaces overlapped, and the overlap forced them to emerge from the same exit regardless of which door they used.
It was the distortion created by overlapping space.
If walking forward led to the villa, then walking backward through the same door might place them in an entirely different space–perhaps the amusement park.
People had been standing behind Jian Fan. As soon as he started backing up, everyone moved aside.
He continued step by step until he reached the door.
“You’re there,” Qin Nan warned when he saw him approaching it.
Jian Fan stopped at the same moment. He reached behind himself, quickly found the handle, turned it gently, and opened the door. Then he took another backward step.
Jian Fan passed through.
The instant he crossed the threshold, he vanished.
Qin Nan froze, then sprinted to the other door and flung it open.
No one stood outside.
“It worked!” Qin Nan exclaimed in delight.
Who could have imagined that this was how they had to use the other exit?
No one had time to analyze it now. They quickly copied Jian Fan, lining up and backing through one by one.
They had found nearly every clue available around the villa, so their next destination was the amusement park. Jian Fan had already gone ahead, and they needed to catch up with him quickly.
As for Jian Fan–
He now stood in front of a greenhouse. The building looked identical to the one beside the villa, but the scenery beyond it had changed.
Jian Fan surveyed the area.
It was an amusement park.
He stood in a rest area. A small path nearby led toward the rides, and when he looked up, he could see a Ferris wheel in the distance.
No one was in the park, yet all the rides were operating.
Jian Fan’s brows drew together.
It seemed both locations shared the same condition.
The villa had been covered by an illusion, and so was this place.
Jian Fan turned, intending to reenter the greenhouse, when a person suddenly appeared before him.
It happened too quickly for Jian Fan to prepare. Qin Nan hadn’t anticipated it either. He stepped backward through the door and felt as though he had struck a wall of flesh.
The two men were roughly the same height, and Jian Fan’s face collided squarely with the back of Qin Nan’s head.
Pain shot through his nose, and a quiet curse slipped instinctively from Jian Fan’s lips.
Qin Nan was dazed too, purely from the impact.
When he recovered, he heard Jian Fan swear.
Qin Nan: “????”
What had just happened?
Jian Fan actually swore? Qin Nan wondered whether he had imagined it.
While Qin Nan stood there stunned, Jian Fan quickly retreated and put some distance between them. The entire incident lasted only a few seconds.
His face was dark as he rubbed his nose.
The back of Qin Nan’s skull was rather hard, and Jian Fan’s nose hurt from the collision. The pain soon eased, but he suspected his nose had turned red.
Without a mirror, he couldn’t be sure.
When his thoughts settled, he glanced at Qin Nan again.
Qin Nan was still standing motionless. Jian Fan frowned. Remembering that more people would soon emerge, he stepped forward, grabbed Qin Nan, and pulled him aside.
Barely a second after Jian Fan moved him, Yellow Hair suddenly appeared.
Qin Nan finally came back to himself. He instinctively looked at Jian Fan, cleared his throat awkwardly, and said, “Thanks.”
Yellow Hair had no idea what had happened. He emerged to find Qin Nan thanking Jian Fan and looked puzzled. “Since when are you so polite with Jian Fan?”
Qin Nan: “…”
He had no desire to explain.
“Huh? Jian Fan, why is your nose so red?”
Jian Fan: “…”
Well. Now he knew for certain.
As Yellow Hair spoke, he quickly moved aside.
The others emerged in succession: Lin Junruo, Mu Xin, then Qin Weiyi.
As soon as Qin Weiyi appeared, their surroundings began to change. Just as before, the scene slowly peeled away.
The familiar sight made Qin Nan and Jian Fan immediately look at Qin Weiyi’s hand.
He was holding a fistful of soil.
Qin Weiyi stepped aside. Soon afterward, Lu Jing appeared last.
“I figured there’d probably be an illusion here too, so I scraped up some dirt before I left,” Qin Weiyi said. He released the soil and dusted off his hands.
Jian Fan gave a quiet “Mm.”
Qin Weiyi’s foresight saved him a trip back.
The seven of them stood together in the entirely new setting.
“It really is an amusement park,” Yellow Hair marveled. Then he looked at Jian Fan. “This place looks pretty big. What do we do, search it bit by bit?”
Jian Fan thought for a moment. “Find Shi Chen and the others first.”
He certainly hadn’t come to rescue Shi Chen. He needed to know what the other Players were doing so they couldn’t strike from behind. Still, Shi Chen was no fool. Given how much time had passed, he might have discovered something. If he was willing to share information, all the better.
No one objected.
They could search for clues while looking for Shi Chen, after all.
As they spoke, the entire amusement park transformed. It became an abandoned park, and all the rides that had been running ground to a halt.
None of them found that troubling.
Shi Chen, however–
As he stared down from where he had suddenly stopped in midair, he couldn’t help swearing aloud.