Chapter 249
Chapter 249
No one had expected Shi Chen to appear out of nowhere.
Jian Fan had dodged purely on instinct, and he felt no guilt whatsoever about failing to catch Shi Chen.
Qin Nan and Yellow Hair, however, hurried over and helped Shi Chen up.
“Shi Chen, are you all right?” Qin Nan asked. Then his gaze caught the blood on the floor. He froze, swept his eyes over Shi Chen, and quickly noticed the mangled mess of his hand. He sucked in a sharp breath. “What happened to you?”
The pain of the fall had restored a sliver of Shi Chen’s awareness.
Instead of answering Qin Nan, he looked at Jian Fan and said, “My consciousness is fading.”
Jian Fan frowned.
“What’s going on?” Yellow Hair pressed.
Lu Jing stepped forward as well and braced Shi Chen with one arm.
Shi Chen’s mind was already incapable of forming any other thought. All he could do was send Jian Fan a desperate plea. “Save me…”
The moment the words left his mouth, his vision went black and he passed out. If Lu Jing had not been supporting him from behind, he would have crashed to the floor again.
But just before he lost consciousness, a voice sounded in his head.
“Ding! Character Quest triggered. Awaken with the Prince’s true love’s kiss before the ball ends at midnight. Success will earn you one World-Clear Hint. Failure will result in erasure.”
Shi Chen: “???”
He was already unconscious. How was he supposed to complete any quest? Was the Realm of Death playing a joke on him? Shi Chen wanted to reveal his quest to the others, but he never got the chance.
He passed out the very next second.
The others were at a loss.
Shi Chen had appeared without warning, said only a few words, and then fainted.
“What… do we do now?” Yellow Hair asked, staring blankly at Jian Fan.
“Sleeping Beauty,” Jian Fan said.
Qin Nan caught on at once. “Shi Chen’s character is Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty is supposed to be asleep. It was strange that he’d been awake before. Does this mean he’s only now entered the real story?”
“But if he’s already asleep, how can he trigger his quest?” Yellow Hair asked, baffled.
Jian Fan replied, “He may have already triggered it.”
Everyone stared at him in confusion.
Qin Nan’s quest had been triggered by a line of dialogue, Lu Jing’s by encountering the little boy, and Zhou Jingying’s by lighting a match. In other words, a quest required an event or an important statement to trigger it. Was Sleeping Beauty falling unconscious itself the crucial event? Shi Chen might well have received his quest at the moment he passed out.
Jian Fan, however, had no intention of explaining this to everyone.
Even if his guess was correct and Shi Chen’s quest had already been triggered, the unconscious man could not tell them anything.
Simply put, Shi Chen could do nothing now but wait for the other Players to save him.
Qin Nan looked at Shi Chen with a trace of sympathy.
In the previous world, Shi Chen had spent nearly the entire illusion waiting to be rescued. Well, this time was even more foolproof: he knew absolutely nothing and still had to wait for someone to save him.
Tsk.
Qin Nan could not decide whether to envy Shi Chen or pity him.
“Zhou Jingying’s quest is our most urgent problem,” Jian Fan reminded them.
Everyone snapped back to their senses and looked at the basket in Zhou Jingying’s hands again.
Quite a few more matches had burned away in that short span of time. Fewer than half remained in the basket now.
“What are we supposed to do about this?” Yellow Hair groaned.
Whether it was Zhou Jingying’s quest or Shi Chen’s condition, Yellow Hair did not have the faintest idea what to do.
No one else was faring much better.
Worse, they could not stop watching how many matches had burned. It added an oppressive sense of urgency and distracted them from thinking clearly.
Zhou Jingying had evidently noticed that.
She tugged at the blanket around her and draped one corner over the basket, hiding it from view.
Her action made Jian Fan’s eyes narrow.
“Have any of you noticed something strange?” Jian Fan suddenly asked.
Mu Xin shook her head. “There really aren’t any clues connected to the story of The Little Match Girl.”
“The matches,” Jian Fan said.
Qin Nan slapped his palm. “Right! Aren’t the matches themselves the biggest problem?”
Everyone looked at the basket in Zhou Jingying’s hands again.
The blanket was still covering it, blocking their view.
“The matches are burning. Under normal circumstances, the basket should’ve caught fire long ago. Not just the basket–the whole ballroom might have gone up in flames. Our clothes, the wine… all of it is flammable…” Qin Nan rattled off. Then he shuddered.
Damn.
If those matches really set something alight, could they burn down the entire villa?
But Qin Nan quickly shook his head and dismissed the thought.
They were not idiots. If a real fire broke out, wouldn’t they put it out immediately? How could they possibly stand by and watch it spread until the whole villa burned down?
“Then… why?” Jian Fan asked.
“Why what?” Qin Nan looked at him, puzzled.
Jian Fan pointed at the basket in Zhou Jingying’s hands.
His question was obvious.
Why had the burning matches failed to ignite anything else?
“It’s probably just part of the setting, isn’t it? The matches are igniting on their own, after all,” Qin Nan said.
Jian Fan’s gaze settled on the basket once more. No one knew what he was thinking, but he fell silent.
No one dared disturb him for fear of breaking his train of thought.
Talking had at least offered a distraction. In the silence, every second dragged, and anxiety gnawed at them all.
As for Jian Fan?
He was silently counting the seconds.
After a while, he suddenly said to Zhou Jingying, “Move the blanket.”
Zhou Jingying paused, then did as he asked.
Jian Fan continued staring at the basket while everyone else watched in confusion.
Four more matches burned away. Then Jian Fan spoke.
“Ten seconds,” he said.
“What?” Yellow Hair asked.
Jian Fan lifted his eyes, his tone certain. “Every match burns for exactly the same length of time. Ten seconds each.”
“You’re saying their burn time is fixed?” Qin Nan picked up his line of thought, then exclaimed, “How is that possible? Matches can’t be manufactured with that kind of precision. There can’t really be no difference at all.”
“Ten seconds per match. There must have been at least a hundred in the basket,” Jian Fan said.
Mu Xin immediately understood. “Meaning Zhou Jingying had only sixteen or seventeen minutes to complete her quest? That’s…”
“That’s far too cruel,” Lin Junruo said, her brow furrowed with worry.
What kind of quest gave them so little time? They had not even figured out what was happening, and most of that time was already gone.
More than half the matches had burned by now. At this rate, only five or six minutes remained before Zhou Jingying’s time ran out.
This was…
Yang Zhen could not bear it either. She turned to look at Zhou Jingying.