Chapter 366

Chapter 366

“You mean the different accounts of Qi Xu’s death?” Qin Nan managed to pick out a little of what he meant.

In the first episode of Escape Room, Qi Xu had died at the hospital. In the second, he had died at the office building. And in the third… well, perhaps they could not be completely certain yet, but he had acquired another way to die. They did not know where, but it should have been death from overwork, as in the autobiography. Three different deaths. But could one person die three times?

Of course, the first two deaths might both have been false. In the autobiography, Qi Xu’s final cause of death was overwork.

So why had Jian Fan decided none of it was real? And how had he concluded that Qi Xu was still alive?

Qin Nan voiced his questions.

“Let’s make it simpler. Where do you think we are?” Jian Fan asked.

“The Realm of Death,” Qin Nan answered without hesitation.

Jian Fan: “…”

Seeing his expression, Qin Nan belatedly realized what he was asking. He cleared his throat. “We’re filming a variety show.”

A glint passed through Qin Weiyi’s eyes. He understood completely.

“The answer was right in front of us from the start,” he said with a smile.

Lu Jing scratched his head. “Xiao Qin, what are you all talking about?”

He had finally managed to keep up a few times, but now he was lost again.

“This was only ever a virtual world projected through technological means,” Qin Weiyi said.

In the Realm of Death, they sometimes experienced shifts in time and space, returning to the past to see what had happened. Those were established facts. This time was different.

They had been sent into a variety show world. Did that mean everything they saw and everything that happened within the show was fact?

It was merely a predetermined Script arranged for the program.

That Script might be based on reality. It might just as easily be fiction.

As for how they could tell it was not real, that came back to Jian Fan’s first point: the facts were incompatible.

Could one person have three different deaths?

Thus, the first episode, the second, and even the third might all be false. Or perhaps only one was true.

Of the three, the first two were clearly fictional. Otherwise, the third storyline could never have happened. And the reason the third was false too…

“The cameraman.” After going over the whole sequence, Qin Nan finally put his brain to work and understood.

Jian Fan nodded. “The entire clip was recorded deliberately.”

That was a clue.

If Qi Xu really was dead, really a ghost, would he need to make that recording deliberately? Or shouldn’t the footage have been a mess of corrupted data? And the corpse had been controlled from behind the scenes by Qi Xu, posing as the cameraman. It looked much more like Qi Xu had orchestrated everything, made a corpse resembling himself, controlled it, and recorded the video.

But that raised another question.

What about the corpse stretching its head and hands and eating NPCs before their eyes?

If it was not a ghost, how could it do those things?

The answer was plain.

This was a virtual world to begin with. Everything could be achieved through technology.

Not every supernatural event had to involve a ghost. It might simply be a special-effects production created with modern technology!

And didn’t Qi Xu research computing?
Ghosts could appear and vanish without a trace and perform all manner of bizarre feats. In a virtual world, a skilled programmer could also let people experience all sorts of things impossible in reality.

“Then what did you mean when you said you’d done something unnecessary?” Qin Nan asked.

Jian Fan said helplessly, “That four-headed ghost could never have killed us.”

Qin Nan: “?”

“It was a predetermined sequence. We would have ended up in that world even if we’d done nothing,” Qin Weiyi said, sounding rather helpless himself.

That meant he had never needed to avoid those NPCs.

He had not needed to search for a way out. If they had simply followed the storyline, they would naturally have moved into that scenario.

In the normal course of events, the four-headed ghost would have caught Jian Fan’s group and sent them into the mourning hall world where Qi Xu was. Qin Weiyi and Lu Jing would likewise have been caught by the seven guests and sent there.

All their efforts had achieved was letting Qin Weiyi and Lu Jing see the other three first, with an extra transfer along the way. As for Jian Fan’s group, without the four-headed ghost, the image in the camera had to intervene. And the reason for the countdown…

It had to wait for all the Players to arrive so they could be transported together!

Originally, once all five had been caught, they should have been sent from two different scenarios into Qi Xu’s mourning hall. The story could only begin once everyone was there. They could hardly have some experiencing the plot while the others were left out in the cold.

After surviving the Realm of Death repeatedly, however, the five were far too alert. Nor would they simply surrender in the face of danger. That was why they had ended up doing something entirely unnecessary.

Lu Jing understood at last.

“I was wondering why those ghosts had suddenly become so easy to beat,” he remarked.

Qin Weiyi belatedly realized that too.

“So we made our own task harder?” Mu Xin asked helplessly.

Qin Weiyi twitched his mouth. “Not exactly harder. We probably just wasted a little time.”

Everyone sighed.

Jian Fan’s mouth twitched with a hint of embarrassment too.

Most of the time, he had everything under control. Occasionally, however, he guessed wrong and miscalculated. Clearly, this was one of those rare blunders.

“Never mind that. What do we do now?” Qin Nan asked.

There was no need to dwell on the past. What mattered now was finding a way to clear the world.

“We should have entered the third episode of Escape Room. But clearly, we aren’t in the normal filming process,” Qin Weiyi said.

That gave Lu Jing something to contribute.

“I chose Escape the Ancient Castle,” he said.

Jian Fan was not surprised.

The question, then, was why they had come to this world.

“Think of them separately,” Jian Fan suddenly said.

Qin Weiyi: “Hm?”

“Separately?” Qin Nan was puzzled too.

Jian Fan nodded and explained, “The Realm of Death, and the virtual variety show world.”

Qin Weiyi understood.

“What we’re experiencing now is the virtual variety show world. We need to analyze it from that world’s perspective. In other words, it still comes back to Qi Xu.”