Chapter 642: What was Pinocchio most afraid of?
In the next second, the earth shook, and the mountains trembled.
The entire world started to quiver—walls toppled, the ground tilted, as if a hurricane had swept through.
Orange Candy’s voice was drowned out.
The whole world seemed to fall into silence.
At the center of his wavering vision, the child stood alone amid a floor full of corpses, staring this way from afar.
The instant before darkness swallowed everything…
That tear hit the ground.
Drip.
A drop of fresh blood seeped from a crescent-shaped wound, ran down to the fingertip, and fell—making a soft drip in the dark.
Wen Jianyan snapped back to himself, only then realizing that at some point his fingernails had torn open his palm.
“Hiss.” He drew in a quiet breath.
“Hey! Are you all okay?!” As the shaking stopped, Blond’s anxious voice came from up ahead.
“…I’m fine!”
Not far away, Chen Cheng grit his teeth and answered in the darkness.
Wen Jianyan steadied himself against the wall and stood up, turning to look at the heavy door behind him that had slammed shut.
He reached out and pushed.
The door that had been open just moments ago had somehow closed again. The doorleaf looked as if it had been welded into the frame—no matter how he shoved, it didn’t budge.
“What’s going on?” Chen Cheng, a few steps away, seemed to realize something. His voice turned grim. “The door closed?”
“Yeah. I can’t open it.”
Wen Jianyan paused, then said,
“I think a loop just ended on their side.”
Otherwise, it was hard to explain why a door that had been open could now be sealed so tightly.
Obviously, Orange Candy’s side had restarted its loop, and the building’s state refreshed along with it.
“This is bad…” Blond muttered.
Among the three of them, aside from Wen Jianyan—who could barely be considered mostly intact—both he and Chen Cheng were already overdrawn, almost useless in a fight.
Bai Xue, the only one who could open communications, had left with Qi Qian. Here, they couldn’t get in touch with either side.
And Qi Qian’s situation wasn’t looking good either…
A building refresh also meant all the doors they’d opened earlier had closed again. They would have to maneuver against the “passengers” in an ever-tightening space; the difficulty was obvious.
“…We can only keep going forward,” Wen Jianyan said.
In this instance, Wu Zhu still seemed to be the furnace core that kept everything running. If Wen Jianyan could find him, he could end everything early—whether it was Orange Candy’s side, or theirs.
Chen Cheng pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath. “…You’re right. Let’s go.”
So the three of them continued forward in the dark.
The fourth floor was far bigger than they’d imagined.
There was no corridor on this level. In its place was a wide, empty expanse.
No matter which direction they felt, they couldn’t touch a wall; they could only grope ahead in darkness. The air carried an increasingly heavy stench of blood. The iron-rust smell pressed thickly into their noses and over their tongues, suffocating.
Even Chen Cheng—someone used to dealing with blood—frowned in discomfort.
“Why does it smell so strong here…”
And the smell was very fresh.
The whole building looked so ruined, like it had been abandoned for decades, yet it still held such a dense, fresh blood stench… it made no sense.
The darkness was so thick that walking through it made you irrationally feel like you weren’t alone.
“So, where do we go next?” Chen Cheng asked.
“…I’m not sure,” Wen Jianyan paused, answering.
“You’re not sure?” Chen Cheng’s voice rose. “Weren’t you the one who brought us to the fourth floor?”
“That’s true, but…”
As he spoke, Wen Jianyan lifted a hand to touch the heart hanging at his collarbone. Ever since the tremor ended, that heart—which had been faintly warm—had gone quiet, without the slightest reaction.
“!” Suddenly, Blond sucked in a sharp breath.
“What?” Chen Cheng asked.
“Up ahead… something flashed by.” Blond swallowed. His voice trembled slightly. “I couldn’t see clearly, but… it felt like a… ghost shadow.”
Because his talent had been overused, his eyesight had fallen badly. And the light here was so dim that he couldn’t be sure what he’d seen.
“A ghost shadow?” Chen Cheng’s expression darkened.
Bai Xue had once said that the building they were in wasn’t the instance’s main body, only an extension beyond it, so there should be no danger—but that was before they reached the fourth floor.
And this place was clearly wrong.
“Which direction?” Chen Cheng asked.
“Over there…” Blond pointed to the front-right.
Chen Cheng clicked his tongue. “Fine. Then we go that way.”
“What?” Blond froze.
By normal logic, shouldn’t they avoid places with ghost shadows?
“What’s the point of avoiding it? We’re already trapped on this floor.”
Unless Orange Candy’s side could enter the fourth floor again in the new loop, they had no way out of here.
Chen Cheng downed all the painkillers he’d gotten from Bai Xue. He clenched the blood-soaked bandage on his wrist between his teeth, then turned his head and spat out a mouthful of bloody froth, flashing a sharp, chilly grin.
“Either way, it’s one slash. Might as well go take a look.”
“Besides, with the level those Darkfire guys have outside, they won’t last long…” Chen Cheng’s tone was mocking. Luckily, Qi Qian wasn’t nearby, or it would’ve turned into another fight.
He nudged Wen Jianyan with his elbow. “Right?”
“…Huh?” Wen Jianyan seemed to come back from somewhere far away.
“Yeah,” he answered softly.
“What is it?” Chen Cheng frowned, catching Wen Jianyan’s oddness. “You’ve been really quiet since earlier.”
Not just earlier.
In fact, ever since they entered the fourth floor, Wen Jianyan had been off.
As though… his whole mind was sunk into something.
“…It’s nothing.”
In the dark, his voice was calm, giving nothing away. “Your judgment is correct. Since we’re already trapped here, following up is the best choice… Let’s go.”
“Fine then.” Chen Cheng shot a suspicious glance in Wen Jianyan’s direction, but in the end didn’t press further.
The three moved forward in darkness. Their nerves tightened as the blood stench thickened. The fourth floor remained empty. The shadow Blond had seen seemed like a hallucination that had never existed, never appearing again.
“Wait.”
Suddenly, Chen Cheng stopped. He narrowed his eyes and shone his flashlight forward.
“…What is that?”
The dim beam barely pierced the darkness, illuminating a crookedly ajar door. It looked as old and decayed as the building itself—like a dying old man. A tilted metal plaque was stuck to it, coated in black dust, its writing unreadable.
Blond stepped forward, wiped away the dust, and squinted at the words.
“Dir… ec… tor…’s… Office?”
“Huh.” Chen Cheng let out a short sound of surprise. “Looks like we really came to the right place on the fourth floor… Come on, let’s go in and see.”
The director’s office was spacious. The walls were black, and dust covered everything. Twisted, warped wood and bricks were piled together like rubble. Yet in this hurricane-after scene of chaos, there was a single old wooden desk standing perfectly upright in the center.
Its surface was glossy—so red it looked as if it had been soaked in blood—completely intact, utterly out of place.
You could tell at a glance it was abnormal.
“Both of you stay back. I’ll check it,” Chen Cheng said.
He walked up and examined the desk carefully—but nothing happened.
The desk stood there quietly, as if it were just an ordinary piece of furniture.
Chen Cheng scanned the room, then reached out and pulled open a drawer, trying to find the reason it was so special.
Suddenly, he froze.
“You find something?” Blond called from not far away.
“A box.” Chen Cheng paused, his voice edged with confusion. “A weird box.”
Wen Jianyan finally spoke: “…Let me see.”
Chen Cheng shifted aside, letting Wen Jianyan step forward.
It was a very familiar box.
Exactly the same as the one from Yuying Comprehensive University that held the strange text, and the one from Ping’an Asylum that held the ouroboros ring.
No dust clung to it. Its black surface was sleek and new, yet it radiated an ominous, unsettling aura.
It clearly came from Nightmare.
And only something important enough would be sealed in a box like this by Nightmare. Without exception, what was inside was always tied to the instance’s root cause.
Wen Jianyan paused. Like every time before, he slowly opened it.
At the bottom lay a shard of glass. Its irregular surface caught and scattered a faint glimmer.
Sparkling.
Just as clean and beautiful as when he’d found it in the dust of the orphanage as a child.
The shaking ended.
Orange Candy opened her eyes and quickly realized she was once again lying on that narrow wooden plank bed in the orphanage.
Overwhelming weakness mixed with rage fermented in her chest. She slammed her fist viciously into the bedboard. The wound that hadn’t yet healed split open again, blood dripping and quickly staining the sheet red.
“Damn it, again?” Zhao Ran cursed from the bed beside her.
Another loop had begun.
All progress reset. They had to start over.
This kind of endless, Sisyphean labor was enough to drive anyone to despair.
“N-not quite the same,” Wei Cheng’s voice was low from the bed next to hers. He pointed toward the ground not far away. “Captain, look.”
Orange Candy startled and followed his finger.
Near the doorway, there were traces of fresh blood left on the floor.
With that single glance, Orange Candy immediately understood what it could mean.
“…Wait. We didn’t go back to the first day we arrived at the orphanage?!”
“Yeah, I think so.” Wei Cheng nodded slightly.
Their loop restarted, but unlike every previous time, they didn’t return to the earliest time point. They returned to the day Pinocchio got dragged to the dog cage.
“Strange,” Wei Cheng frowned tightly. “Why would it be like this?”
“Maybe the instance is about to collapse and can’t sustain a new loop,” Zhao Ran guessed. “Last loop we clearly touched the core. As long as we keep digging using the clues from last time, this time we’ll definitely—”
Before he could finish, Orange Candy had already moved like a cat—swift and silent—throwing off the blanket and leaping down from the bed.
“Hey—”
Before he could finish, Orange Candy’s figure had already slipped into the darkness, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
The two left behind: “…”
Sigh. Whatever. They were used to it.
Orange Candy moved quickly through the hallway. Every guard post along the way, every possible hazard—she knew them by heart. She seemed to melt into the dark, advancing close to the ground without a sound.
Soon, the familiar door appeared.
And Orange Candy knew exactly what scene would appear behind it.
She subconsciously reached into her pocket—but grasped only emptiness. The candies that had once filled it had vanished with the loop reset, leaving it hollow again.
What had happened just minutes ago already seemed like an illusion.
Candy you could never get.
A cycle you could never leave.
A fate you could never change.
“…”
Orange Candy’s eyes were dark as she withdrew her hand.
With a creaking “ga-zhi,” the door slowly slid inward. Endless darkness spilled out.
She smelled blood in the air.
Orange Candy stepped inside.
Not far ahead was the narrow, crooked iron dog cage. The child was curled up inside, silent, like someone forgotten by the entire world.
The iron-rust smell was even heavier.
Orange Candy couldn’t help frowning.
Last loop, she’d been too focused on his condition to think deeply. But this time, because she remembered what happened before, she noticed new details.
Little Wen Jianyan’s injuries were indeed brutal, but strictly speaking, there weren’t many wounds that would truly cause heavy bleeding—so why was the blood stench here so thick?
Orange Candy’s steps halted.
This time, she didn’t immediately approach the cage. Instead, she turned and walked several steps farther away.
Before she got far, her foot suddenly stepped into something slick.
She turned her flashlight to full power and shone it down.
Under her feet was a pool of blood that hadn’t dried.
The beam lifted inch by inch, the light suppressed to its limit by the darkness as it stretched slowly into the distance—
“…!”
Orange Candy’s pupils shrank violently.
This time, she finally found the source of that overpowering blood stench.
Across the entire floor was sticky, rust-red gore. In the blood lay children’s corpses, scattered in every direction—pale faces, empty eyes, expressions of despair.
Each face was so familiar.
The near-catastrophic scene before her was exactly the same as what she’d seen on the fourth floor last loop.
Orange Candy suddenly realized something.
She whipped her head around, staring toward the dog cage.
Here, everyone who was locked in this place would face their greatest fear.
When she’d entered and encountered no danger, Orange Candy had thought little Wen Jianyan might be an exception.
But she was wrong.
Weak light illuminated the remains.
And the child’s figure, curled silently at the center of the blood pool.
“Why are you here too?”
That was the first thing little Wen Jianyan had asked her last loop when he saw her.
…Too.
So that was why it had taken him so long to be awakened.
So that was why he’d been so confused when he saw her.
“Are you leaving? Won’t you stay a little longer?”
The child asked softly.
Even though he was young, he still knew how to hide his fear and unease.
“…”
Orange Candy opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
What was Pinocchio most afraid of?
Lightless darkness, the death of his friends—
And endless loneliness.
