The door disappeared.

Unfortunately, Xing Ye couldn’t hug Lu Mingze, so he could only squeeze the mirror in his hand.

After listening to the mirror’s description, Guan Ling and Cao Qian felt a chill of fear. Fortunately, they had waited for Xing Ye to join them and believed the door might be just a false ending, so they didn’t open it but kept waiting for him.

“Wei Miao already went through the door,” Cao Qian said. “There were seven participants in this game, and the little mirror saw three. Could it be that only the three of us are left now?”

“No, there are five of us,” Xing Ye said, holding the mirror.

Cao Qian remembered how Linda had saved her life and took out the swan crystal, softly expressing her gratitude. Linda flapped her wings in response.

She could actually speak now, but she still refused to do so in front of Xing Ye and the others. Cao Qian mentioned that Linda would talk when they were alone, as she was shy.

Seeing that the two had grown closer, Xing Ye explained the effects of the three QR codes that the little mirror had obtained in the previous world.

He mainly informed Cao Qian that Linda could return to the real world and that their initial skills might merge in the future.

“However, you can abandon the QR code that merges skills,” Xing Ye suggested. “Not all skills are suitable for merging. I believe the true purpose of this QR code is to sow discord between players and their fated items, preparing them for the eventual erasure of their consciousness.”

Guan Ling shuddered and grabbed Xing Ye’s arm, saying, “Boss, I don’t want to turn into an item.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll keep clearing the levels. As soon as I find a way to leave the game, I’ll let you know,” Xing Ye reassured him.

“Okay, Boss!” Guan Ling said, trying to perk up.

But then he became dejected again. “I’m deeply in debt from gambling. My parents sold the house, but it only covered part of it. I still owe a million. In my small town, the housing prices are only five or six thousand per square meter. To win back my wife, I’d at least need to buy my parents a house and buy back my own house. On top of the million in gambling debt… I’d need at least five million. I thought that by reaching the advanced levels, I could exchange points for money. If the exchange rate is 1:100, then fifty thousand points would net me five million. But if I turn into an item in the advanced levels, what am I supposed to do…”

Cao Qian glanced at him and asked, “If you get the five million, will you gamble again?”

Guan Ling replied passionately, “Of course not!”

Cao Qian didn’t believe him. “A lot of people say that, but when they get the five million, they start thinking about gambling again, trying to double it and get ten million. Then, they end up losing everything.”

Guan Ling wanted to argue, but Xing Ye interrupted, “What job have you been doing recently?”

Guan Ling mumbled, “I used to work in sales, earning two to three hundred thousand a year with bonuses and commissions. In our town, that was a good life. We could afford to take the family on two vacations a year. But after the gambling debt was exposed, I was fired.”

Cao Qian remarked, “Even if you got the five million, paid off your debt, and bought houses, your wife still might not come back to you. In her eyes, you’re still someone without a stable job, who will gamble away any money he has. Don’t try to deny it. In the mental world, the personality you imagined was a gambler, which shows you haven’t really quit.”

Guan Ling turned pale, unable to respond.

Xing Ye spoke earnestly, “Instead of hoping to get rich quick through the game, it would be better to find a steady job in the real world. However, given your record, most companies won’t hire you, and even if they do, the salary might not be enough to pay off your debt. You could start with a small, low-cost business, gradually accumulating money to pay off your debts. Whether you reconcile with your wife depends on her, but at the very least, you should fulfill your responsibilities as a father and son, showing your elderly parents that you’re trying to make things right.”

Guan Ling fell silent, knowing Xing Ye was right, but taking the first step was incredibly difficult.

Xing Ye stopped there. He was only offering advice. This was probably the last mixed-world they would experience together. After this, there might not be another chance to have such a heart-to-heart conversation.

The three of them had a mutual understanding to keep the game and real life separate. No one would suggest meeting up in reality.

Guan Ling knew Xing Ye was wealthy, and five million was nothing to him, but he never said, “Since we’re teammates, why not lend me five million? I’ll follow your lead in the game if you do so.” He was mindful of boundaries, which was why Xing Ye had continued to team up with him.

The three of them sat silently in front of the door, hoping Wei Miao or the other two players might come out. But after chatting for an hour, no one appeared.

“Do you feel hungry, thirsty, tired, or need to use the bathroom?” Xing Ye asked.

The two shook their heads in unison. They had been in the game for seven or eight hours, but they didn’t feel any of those needs, although the pain was just as real.

"Waiting around like this isn’t going to help," Xing Ye said as he stood up. "Let’s start by counting how many doors there are here."

The first-floor hall of the building was strange. A staircase directly faced a row of doors, stretching endlessly into the distance, with no visible end.

The three of them began counting from the staircase, but after counting for what felt like an eternity, it seemed they had walked miles along the staircase. However, when they turned around, they were still standing under the staircase as if they hadn't moved an inch.

"What’s going on?" Guan Ling asked, bewildered. "I clearly counted up to 500!"

"This means the hall has no spatial boundaries," Xing Ye explained. "With our current knowledge, we can't explain this phenomenon."

"Then how do we figure out where we are?" Cao Qian asked. "Where exactly are we, and how do we get out? Why did that player who escaped earlier say there’s no real ending?"

Xing Ye stated, "According to the little mirror’s speculation, there’s no apparent or false ending, meaning the players lost the easy option. But that doesn’t concern us since our goal is the true ending."

Guan Ling asked, "Why would the player who escaped through the door rather commit suicide, losing points and QR codes to return to the beginner world, than die inside the door? In most games, even if you fail, you only lose half your points, right?"

Xing Ye glanced at Cao Qian, thinking she should be able to answer this question. After several worlds, she had made significant progress.

Cao Qian replied, "The game’s task is to figure out what this place is and successfully find a way out. If the door doesn’t lead to the false ending’s exit, then it leads to another, more dangerous world. Based on the little mirror’s description, the door the suicide player entered must have been terrifying, and it’s a place where you can’t die. If he didn’t commit suicide, he would have been trapped there forever, unable to leave."

Guan Ling said, "Then Old Wei and the other two players we haven't seen..."

"They’re stuck in there," Cao Qian confirmed, pointing to the row of doors behind them.

Guan Ling fell silent. He didn’t particularly like Wei Miao, who shared a certain social ruthlessness with him. Wei Miao had likely rushed to open the door, hoping to win before they all regrouped, without any good intentions. But such an outcome was truly tragic.

"It’s okay," Xing Ye reassured. "As long as someone wins, the others will automatically be considered losers and return to the game space. If we want to save them, we have to work hard to clear the level."

Guan Ling perked up immediately, looking eagerly at Xing Ye.

Seeing that both of them were ready to listen, Xing Ye began to explain, "First, the mental world we initially entered is different from the one behind these doors. The reason is that we fell from the ceiling, while the player who committed suicide escaped through a door.

"The other two players, according to the little mirror, emerged from beneath the floor, not from behind a door, which further supports this.

"Second, the game task mentions that winning earns 100 points, indicating that a false ending does exist. After jumping from the building in the mental world, we should have reached the false ending. The first player to jump should have won. But instead, he was placed in this space and encountered a trap, a false promise of victory by simply opening a door.

"Third, in the previous mental world, we searched almost the entire building for clues to the true ending, but all we found were clues to the false ending, just like the players on the 20th floor.

"Finally, the phone."

Xing Ye held up his phone for the others to see.

"What’s wrong with it?" Cao Qian frowned. "And besides, the points you mentioned don’t seem to be connected at all. It’s just a mess."

Xing Ye replied, "Haven’t you noticed that this is a medieval European castle? Which means we’re in a non-modern setting, just like in Puppet City. So why do we have phones? Shouldn't we have wristbands instead?"

"Get to the point, boss," Guan Ling said, giving up on trying to figure it out.

Seeing that Cao Qian was also confused, Xing Ye sighed. "Have you ever considered that the game might have a bug?"

"What!" Guan Ling jumped up. "Can our game have bugs too?"

Xing Ye said, "Where there is existence, there are flaws, and the same applies to this game. The four points I just mentioned all point to a common characteristic: this world originally had both a true and false ending, with a points system in place, but something hijacked the process midway!"

"But the game on my phone still shows as ongoing, and the system hasn’t detected any interruption," Cao Qian noted.

"It’s not that the system hasn’t noticed—it has noticed but hasn’t intervened," Xing Ye corrected. "Do you remember the background note mentioned in the story? Initially, there was only one line: ‘This world is unbearable, isn’t it? Don’t be afraid, there are even worse things ahead.’ But when I checked my phone a second time, another note had been added: ‘The longer you stay in this strange world, the less sanity you’ll retain. Fear, anxiety, sorrow, depression, pain, irritability—all these negative emotions will haunt you. How long can you hold on without going mad?’ Why wasn’t this note there from the beginning?

"In the games we’ve played before, the background information usually covers all the issues. For instance, in the last hospital world, the system hinted at a lot of information in the background, and there was never any additional note afterward. I haven’t played as many worlds as you two have, but have you ever encountered something like this?"

Cao Qian and Guan Ling both shook their heads. They hadn’t encountered this either, and they hadn’t even reached a true ending before.

Xing Ye speculated, "So I think the original design of the game wasn’t like this. In that building, we had many unanswered questions. For example, the erased name on Xiao Hei’s medical record, how Xiao Hei got into the CEO’s office, and why he chose to jump from the 34th floor. We also faced two crises on the 17th floor, where I worked, involving lizard people far stronger than we expected, yet we found no clues at all. Everything felt unreasonable, as if a lot of information had been deliberately erased."

Cao Qian pondered, "So you’re saying we were only supposed to go through that one world. Jumping off the building would be the false ending, and the true ending would be uncovering the truth behind Xiao Hei’s suicide. There might be something deeper behind it, possibly involving the mental worlds of two or even three people combined. That would be the true ending.

"But all of this vanished, and a new setting was forcibly added, where the longer we stay, the less sanity we retain, and the system didn’t stop it—instead, it allowed it. What kind of power could interfere with the system like this?"

Cao Qian’s question mirrored Xing Ye’s own thoughts, but he couldn’t answer it. However, he had a vague suspicion that the increased difficulty of the game was related to him.

This was his last game before entering the advanced world, and he had progressed too easily. In the previous world, he had managed to take 39,000 points from the system. Completing five worlds so quickly and advancing to the advanced world was something the system didn’t want to see.

That’s why, at the beginning of this game, the black-and-white Rubik’s cube had tried to persuade Xing Ye to choose the hard mode. The system must have designed an insurmountable difficulty in the hard mode, but Xing Ye hadn’t fallen for it.

As a result, this unexpected situation occurred in this world.

"I think the game is allowing this bug to occur to prevent us from clearing the level easily," Xing Ye concluded.

"Can we still get out?" Guan Ling worried, feeling a bit scared. If it was just a game, Xing Ye’s intelligence would surely help them find a way, but now wasn’t within the game, and the rules didn’t apply here.

"There should be a way," Xing Ye replied. "I believe there is."

After a brief silence, Xing Ye suggested, "Let’s go upstairs. The little mirror said upstairs is also full of doors. Maybe we’ll find some clues."

Guan Ling and Cao Qian nodded repeatedly. In the seemingly limitless first-floor hall, they felt a deep chill—not a physical coldness, but a chill in their hearts.

Before heading upstairs, the three checked their items and basic skills, which were all functional. Cao Qian’s two initial skills were still active, with 13 hours and 47 minutes remaining.

After hearing Cao Qian’s report, Xing Ye breathed a slight sigh of relief. "That’s good news; it means time still has meaning here. Space has lost its boundaries, and if time also became meaningless, we’d be in real trouble."

The time on their watches and phones had stopped, but the remaining time on Cao Qian’s skill told them how long they had been in the game.

The three of them ascended the stairs, which creaked under their feet as if they were old and poorly maintained. It felt as though the stairs might collapse if they stepped too hard.

The staircase between the first and second floors was divided into three segments, each with 13 steps. This was considered very unlucky, as few people would build staircases with 13 steps unless they worshipped the devil.

Unlike the boundless space of the first floor, the second floor opened into a wide but dimly lit corridor. At the end of the corridor was a glass window covered in ivy, through which faint daylight seeped in, indicating it was daytime.

But the corridor itself was dark, lit only by oil lamps hanging on the walls. The lamps seemed to have been burning for a long time, yet the oil inside never seemed to run out.

On either side of the corridor were ten rooms, five on each side, with a door on each. Each door had something hanging on it.

One of these doors had the mirror that Lu Mingze had mentioned. The three of them approached the mirror, which reflected their images. Oddly, the door with the mirror also had a sign hanging on it that said "Out" in Chinese.

The remaining nine doors all had "Do Not Disturb" signs, indicating that someone was inside, resting.

The first door on the left had a drawing taped to it. It wasn’t a famous painting but a crude crayon drawing, like something a child might draw, depicting a lone figure looking up at the sky under the sun.

The second door had a beautiful hairpin on it, with a lock of hair still attached. Xing Ye boldly tugged on it, but the hair wouldn’t come off.

The third door had a men’s messenger bag, simple and elegant in style, large enough to hold a 14-inch laptop, like something a business professional would carry.

The fourth door had a necklace on it, stunningly beautiful, with a large gemstone embedded in it, clearly very valuable.

The fifth door was the one with the mirror and the "Out" sign.

For some reason, Xing Ye felt very uncomfortable looking at this mirror. He had an urge to smash it, but his rational mind restrained him.

The five doors on the right were simpler, each adorned with a weapon. There was a knife, a gun, a traditional Chinese long sword, a military dagger, and a hand grenade. The grenade’s pin was hanging on the door, which startled Guan Ling.

"What’s all this?" Guan Ling asked. "Can we open this ‘Out’ door? Should we try?"

"Not yet. Let’s go to the third floor first," Xing Ye said, stopping Guan Ling. The three continued to climb the stairs.

Compared to the dim and oppressive atmosphere of the first and second floors, the third floor was unexpectedly bright and open. As soon as they ascended the stairs, they were greeted by a large chair, and in front of it was an ornate desk. On the desk were a few items: a book, a pen, a coin, a dagger, and a small figurine kneeling before the chair. The figurine had no facial features, clothing, or gender traits, simply symbolizing a human figure.

Xing Ye picked up the book, but there was nothing written in it. The style of the book reminded him of the ones on the Reincarnation Bookshelf, and the quality of the paper was similar too. He tried writing in the book with the pen, but no words appeared.

"Is the pen out of ink?" Guan Ling asked.

Xing Ye shook his head and continued to observe the luxurious room on the third floor. He noticed that, unlike the other floors, the windows here were free of climbing plants, and the bright sunlight streaming through them cast a golden glow over the chair.

When Xing Ye looked out the window, he saw a garden outside. The garden was empty, but the flowers were in full bloom. Although Xing Ye wasn’t knowledgeable about flowers, he recognized some roses and lilies among them, while the rest were unfamiliar to him. There were many different types of flowers.

Looking farther into the distance, a layer of mist obscured the view, making it impossible to see anything beyond.

From the third floor, he could see that the first floor did have a door, but it was closed at the moment.

The castle was large, and this building was only the central part of it. There were other buildings and land outside, but they were all shrouded in fog.

This building had only three floors, and above the third floor was an attic.

As the three of them were about to head to the attic, they heard the sound of something large and slow crawling above them. The attic door was secured with a heavy lock, keeping it tightly shut.

Whatever was inside banged against the door a few times. Despite the door being wooden, it seemed very sturdy, as the creature’s powerful blows couldn’t break it down.

Eventually, the creature stopped, and the noise from above ceased.

"What is this place? How are we supposed to get out? There’s no door on the first floor! And what’s up there? Are we supposed to defeat the monster inside?" Guan Ling asked, his fear evident.

To his surprise, Xing Ye laughed at Guan Ling’s questions and said, "I think I understand now."

Guan Ling, utterly confused, asked, "Boss, what do you understand? Do you know how we can get out?"

Xing Ye shook his head. "I haven’t figured that out yet, but I do know why the game system allowed this bug to invade its mission. Even if it was to deal with me, allowing such a bug to infiltrate its system is quite risky."

"Why’s that?"

Xing Ye glanced at Guan Ling. "What you said reminded me of something. You asked what this place is, and that question aligns with the original intent of the game’s mission. This space has a certain similarity to the tasks we need to complete. The game can increase the difficulty of the world it originally set up, which is why it opened the door for the bug."

"Is that supposed to be good news?" Guan Ling was on the verge of tears. "Boss, please tell me something good. I’m really struggling to hold on."

Having just gone through the mental world, the ordeal of jumping off the building, and now learning that the game had a bug, it was only his blind trust in Xing Ye that kept Guan Ling from collapsing.

Cao Qian was also barely holding on, trying her best to stay strong.

Xing Ye nodded. "It is good news. The fact that the game can accommodate the bug means that the bug can increase the difficulty without violating the original intent of the mission. This suggests that there is a way out. There must be clues within the castle; we just haven’t found them yet."

Cao Qian asked, "How do we get out? I’ve been recording everything we’ve seen here on my phone, but it’s all so confusing. And what if that thing upstairs comes out?"

"For now, we don’t need to worry about the monster in the attic. I think everything in this castle has meaning; we just haven’t deciphered it yet. Especially on the second floor—did you notice that the items hanging on the doors on the left side seem similar to compliant props?" Xing Ye asked.

This idea came to him because of the little mirror. The mirror hanging on the last door marked "Out" reminded Xing Ye of the Western-style mirror he encountered in his first novice world. Although one was a hanging mirror and the other a handheld one, the patterns and materials were very similar.

Cao Qian asked, "Why do you think that?"

Xing Ye replied, "Do you remember what happened when we didn’t open the door in front of us?"

Cao Qian and Guan Ling had been distracted at the time, listening to the little mirror recount its experiences, so their attention had wandered. Since all the doors looked the same, they took a few steps and couldn’t find the door they had originally stood in front of.

"The door disappeared," Xing Ye noted. "Even during the excitement of reuniting with Lu Mingze, I didn’t forget to observe the surroundings. When the door vanished, another one took its place. When we noticed it, it looked exactly the same as before."

 

Translator : DarNan