Chapter 44
Chapter 44
Outside the second door, the darkness receded, but the thick fog remained. Within the fog, an old woman with cloudy eyes appeared.
“Excuse me, have you seen my grandson? Have you seen my grandson?” the old woman murmured. Her cloudy eyes stared blankly ahead, hollow and lifeless.
At the sight, everyone let out a long breath of relief. This door was the same as the first door-there was an Eerie Entity outside. That proved the third door Wei Sen had chosen had to be safe!
“Is she Yu Ming’s Grandmother?” Huang Xinze asked, looking at Wei Sen.
“Yeah.”
Huang Xinze frowned, his gaze heavy, and carried the bones in his arms to the second door.
“We found him,” he said, holding the remains out.
The old woman froze. She slowly looked at the skeleton and stared in a daze for a long, long time. Then two streams of tears slid from her hollow eyes. Trembling, she reached out and carefully cradled the bones in her arms.
“Xiao Ming, Grandma’s here to take you home.” The old woman’s voice choked. “Xiao Ming, don’t sleep anymore. Open your eyes and look at Grandma.”
Everyone fell silent.
They did not know why this Instance existed, but these Eerie Entities all seemed to have once been living, breathing people.
No one knew how long Yu Ming’s Grandmother had been waiting here. She had always believed her grandson would be like before, walking out of the school gate with the other students after the bell rang.
But after waiting day after day, her grandson had never appeared again.
“My Xiao Ming was such a good, good child…” The old woman lifted her head, and human pupils had somehow returned to those once ghastly white eyes.
Tears streamed from her aged eyes as she looked at the people inside the door and said through sobs, “He worked so hard at his studies and never made this old woman worry. He was so filial, too. Every day after school, he was always the first one to rush out, because… because he had to come home and help this old woman sell apples… Fifty cents for a pound of apples. He saved up his tuition by selling one pound after another.
It’s all my fault. It’s all because this useless old woman had no ability. My Xiao Ming was such a good child, how could he never come back? How could…”
“Please take him home. That was his wish,” Huang Xinze said, taking a deep breath. He lifted his head toward the gray sky, and a few glistening tears nearly fell from his eyes.
“Home. Home. Good boy, we’re going home.” The old woman held the tiny skeleton in her arms and slowly turned away, her figure gradually vanishing into the fog.
Just as Chen Lin’s nose stung, she suddenly realized, “Does that mean we can go back too?”
“Right! The first two doors aren’t safe exits! That means Sister Sen’s choice has to be right!” Lin Xiaoxue jumped up excitedly.
Xu You looked at Wei Sen in admiration. “You really are lucky!”
“It wasn’t all luck.” As Wei Sen spoke, her gaze shifted to Principal Zhang.
Principal Zhang’s head twitched left and right several times, as if he were very confused.
“Isn’t the chance of surviving one in three no matter which door you pick?” Lin Xiaoxue asked in confusion.
“The three-door problem, also called the Monty Hall paradox. Switching doors at the end raises the original one-in-three chance of choosing correctly to two-thirds.” After Wei Sen finished, she looked at Huang Xinze and held out her hand. “Give me the key!”
“Here!” Huang Xinze tossed the key in his hand to Wei Sen.
Wei Sen caught it in one hand. Victory was already within her grasp.
“Are you really going to leave this place?!” Principal Zhang suddenly erupted into a shrill question.
Wei Sen’s movements stiffened. She looked at Principal Zhang warily. They had not violated any rules, so he should not be able to hurt them!
“You finally came back after all that effort. Why are you leaving again?!” Principal Zhang stared straight at Wei Sen. His body began to twist, and waves of black mist visible to the naked eye started pouring from him.
Wei Sen froze.
What did he mean, she had finally come back?
Why “back”?
“Sister Sen! Don’t let him erode you!” Xu You warned sharply.
Wei Sen took a deep breath.
Right. The most urgent thing was to get out of here!
Eerie Entities only spouted ghostly lies! She could not take them seriously!
They had chosen the correct door from a one-in-three problem, and this principal was trying to erode her mental strength again!
Wei Sen frowned, hurriedly unlocked the iron lock, and shoved the door open.
Outside this door was pitch-black darkness so deep they could not see their own hands.
Everyone gathered around, only to stop in their tracks one after another.
“What’s going on?” Chen Lin asked in confusion. “The other two doors were wrong, so shouldn’t this door be right?”
“Stay! Stay!” Principal Zhang’s voice was like some kind of sharp, grating noise, attacking everyone’s mind like a weapon.
Wei Sen was the first to step forward. “Stop hesitating. If the rules are right, then this door is safe!”
With that, Wei Sen walked into the darkness.
When the others saw her body disappear, they exchanged solemn looks, then made their decisions one after another.
Xu You followed her in first, then Huang Xinze, Lin Xiaoxue, and Chen Lin.
Boundless darkness swallowed everything. At first, Wei Sen tested the ground as she moved forward. Then she broke into a random run in every direction, but this pitch-black space seemed to have no end.
“Daoist! Security guard!” Wei Sen shouted with all her strength. “Xiaoxue, Chen Lin!”
But what answered her was absolute silence. She could not even hear her own voice.
She pressed a hand to her chest. Fortunately, her heart was still beating powerfully. Otherwise, she would have wondered if she was already dead.
The third door… Could it not be the safe exit either?
Wei Sen fell into thought.
Just then, a beam of light descended in the darkness, shining down on Wei Sen like a stage spotlight.
She looked up along the soft light but saw nothing. The beam seemed to have appeared out of thin air in midair.
“Congratulations. You have officially passed the Trial and become Order Keeper No. 32001 of the Eerie World.”
The voice filled the entire darkness. It sounded warm and benevolent.
“Who are you?!” Wei Sen stood in the center of the light and looked around. At that moment, she could hear her own voice again.
“I am-God.”
Those three short words left Wei Sen frozen in place.
God?
Did such a thing really exist in this world?
But if it did not, then how could the Eerie World be explained?
How could everything she had just experienced be explained?
“What does Trial mean? What does Order Keeper mean? And why me?” Wei Sen asked too many questions in one breath.
“The Eerie World needs Order Keepers. Otherwise, the residents of this world will become walking corpses. I call them Chaos Bodies. And you, like the other chosen Order Keepers, all have an obsession in your hearts. That is why I chose you. I want to make a deal with you.”
“Heh.” Wei Sen calmed down. She looked around at the empty surroundings and said, “Making a deal with God? If you’re truly omnipotent, then why don’t you become the Order Keeper yourself?”
“Because I am the one who makes the rules.”
If the person who created the rules of a game personally entered the game, then the game would lose all meaning.
What this God said was probably the same principle.
Wei Sen thought for a moment, then asked, “What deal?”
“After becoming an Order Keeper of this world, you will complete missions in the Instance World, just as you did in the Trial. In return, you will receive Merit Points from me. When you have accumulated enough Merit Points, I will come to see you again. The day we meet again will be the day your term as an Order Keeper ends, and I will grant you one wish. Any wish.”
“How many Merit Points are enough?”
So Merit Points were granted to everyone by this “God.” They were similar to game points. Once the points met the requirement, God would grant a wish.
Then what was the deal with her System?
It seemed even this God knew nothing about it.
Wei Sen thought this to herself and did not take the initiative to mention the System.
God replied, “When your Merit Points are enough to match the weight of your wish.”
“What if an Order Keeper dies in the Instance World?”
“You only have one life. If you die, you die.”
Wei Sen lowered her eyes.
Death in the Instance World meant true death. So if she wanted to fulfill the wish in her heart, she had to gamble with her life.
After thinking it through, she slowly raised her head and looked toward the place where the light fell. Then she said solemnly, “Deal!”
“Beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep! Beep, beep, beep!”
Wei Sen abruptly sat up in bed and instinctively reached out to turn off the phone alarm showing 7:30.
She looked around. Outside the window, dawn light spilled in through the gap in the curtains.
The sound of morning rush-hour traffic outside was terribly familiar.
This was… her own home.
Wei Sen slowly looked toward the old-fashioned freezer that clashed completely with the natural wood style of the bedroom.
She climbed out of bed barefoot and slowly came to the freezer. She took a deep breath, furrowed her brows, and lifted the freezer door.
Inside the freezer, an unrecognizable corpse was curled up. Ice crystals had already formed all over its body.
She really had come back.
Everything in the Eerie World… had it been a dream?
No!
Wei Sen saw the Black Round Watch on her left wrist.
Everything she had experienced was not a dream!
And now, she truly had returned to her own world!