WTNL Chapter 353

Xingwang Hotel
Chapter 353: Damn. Liar.

Wen Jianyan had been dazed for quite a long time. His teammates exchanged glances, momentarily unsure whether they should speak up and disturb him.

“Captain? Captain?”

Blond bent down slightly, cautiously looking in Wen Jianyan’s direction and calling out softly.

As if suddenly waking from a dream, Wen Jianyan shot to his feet.

“?!”

Everyone around him was startled, and the closest one, Blond, shuddered in fright and instinctively took several steps back. If not for Chen Mo supporting him from the side, he might have almost stumbled and fallen.

Without sparing a glance at the others, Wen Jianyan strode directly toward the hidden door.

“Wait.”

Seeing Wen Jianyan place his hand on the hidden door, Chen Mo frowned and spoke, “Captain, where are you going?”

Wen Jianyan’s movement paused as if only now realizing the presence of others. He turned his head to look.

Inside the dilapidated abandoned house, the lighting was dim. The rain pounded heavily against the roof, creating a dull, muffled sound.

Under the surrounding environment, the young man’s eyes appeared exceptionally bright, shimmering with fleeting light.

“Going out,” he replied.

“Going out?” Chen Mo frowned even deeper. “Where to?”

Wen Jianyan thought for a moment before answering, “To the well.”

This response was so unexpected that everyone were stunned, almost wondering if they had misheard.

Zhong Shan was the first to cry out in shock, “You—you’re crazy?!”

He pointed at the tightly shut hidden door beside them, stammering, “Didn’t you see? Those things that just crawled out of the well—”

Wen Jianyan’s eyes flickered slightly, and his gaze landed on Zhong Shan.

Zhong Shan’s voice gradually weakened, and his hand trembled as he slowly withdrew his finger, as if suddenly remembering who he was speaking to. “I-I wasn’t saying you’re crazy, just, just…”

As he was racking his brain for a way to salvage the situation, Yun Bilan stepped forward.

She stared unblinkingly at Wen Jianyan and asked, “Why are you going to the well?”

Wen Jianyan hesitated for a moment before replying, “I have a guess I need to verify.”

He was lying.

He didn’t need to verify anything—because his deduction was already complete.

This group of anchors had not entered a freshly reset instance but had directly entered from an old save file of Xingwang Hotel.

To prevent the anchors from noticing this, the Nightmare had constructed its greatest illusion.

The entire Xingwang Hotel that appeared before them was nothing more than a reflection in a mirror, an illusion conjured using a pre-existing Nightmare instance as a blueprint.

After reaching this conclusion, many previous doubts finally found their answers.

Other than the humans who had died in this instance, the anchors could not see any “ghosts.” There could be many explanations for this, but—if ghosts could not harm humans in the absence of a mirror image…

Wen Jianyan had previously speculated that this might be because ghosts and humans existed in overlapping yet separate worlds.

Now, he finally understood the truth.

It wasn’t that ghosts were trapped in the mirror—it was the opposite. The living were the ones inside the mirrored world!

This was why the entire instance felt so profoundly dissonant.

Unlike other instances, which were entirely connected to reality, this one had been artificially created by the Nightmare. That was why its rules were chaotic, filled with conflicts, internal strife, and endless traps and malice—while lacking the order and purpose found in other instances.

To be precise, the only purpose of this mirrored instance’s creation was to wait for his arrival.

This conclusion seemed arrogant and unbelievable. However, after eliminating all impossibilities, the seemingly most outrageous answer became the only explanation for everything that had happened.

Why were they immediately transported to the key character’s location the moment they entered the instance?

Why, after the Black Faction had gained an absolute informational advantage, did the instance also provide a hint about “the commercial street”? Although Wen Jianyan had been unable to locate it due to instance mechanics, he had used his teammates on the Red Faction to manipulate things behind the scenes and ultimately arrived at the same location—wasn’t that all too much of a coincidence?

Then, in the painting shop corridor, he saw the direction the woman in white was pointing, which finally led him back to this abandoned house.

The guidance was far too blatant for him to believe it was mere chance.

All of this had been orchestrated by the Nightmare.

Its goal was to bring him here—to the well.

Now that he had figured it out, Wen Jianyan’s unexpected decision made perfect sense.

The Nightmare had gone through such painstaking efforts to set up this elaborate scheme—an instance with hundreds of participants, a mirrored version of the Xingwang Hotel. Wen Jianyan didn’t believe it would go to such great lengths just to create a crude trap and kill him in a place like this.

Rather than saying Wen Jianyan was trying to “prove a hypothesis”, it was more accurate to say—

He was preparing to “kill himself”.

Wen Jianyan planned to follow the script the Nightmare had laid out for him—to go down the well and see what happened next.

Yun Bilan watched Wen Jianyan closely.

From the young man’s gaze, she saw a sense of absolute certainty, an unwavering conviction.

“…Alright.”

Yun Bilan said, “In that case, we’ll go together.”

“Since we’re going to the border to observe, the more people there are, the higher our success rate, right?” Yun Bilan analyzed calmly. “My talent makes it easier to protect myself, and I have more combat experience. Blond, Bai Xue, and Rui Rui—each of their talents is also highly advantageous.”

Wen Jianyan silently sighed in his heart.

What a pity.

The reasoning he had just done was something he could never say out loud.

Not only because these matters involved the confrontation between him, the Nightmare, and the fragments of Wu Zhu, but more importantly, he couldn’t let the Nightmare know that he had already vaguely figured out the hidden dark threads in all this. That was why he had to act naturally and follow along with the script. Otherwise, all his previous efforts might be in vain.

Since that was the case, he absolutely couldn’t tell the rest of the team what he was truly planning to do—to be dragged into the well rather than just standing by to observe.

The words of refusal circled on the tip of his tongue.

Wen Jianyan finally let out a breath and said, “Alright, we’ll go together.”

Going together didn’t make much of a difference.

Earlier, the hands that had reached out from the well had all been very clear in their target.

They had all directly reached for Wen Jianyan. Even though the others moved more slowly, and some were even behind Wen Jianyan, none of them had been attacked. That meant that from the very beginning, those things had only intended to drag him into the well, with no interest in any of the other anchors.

After receiving Wen Jianyan’s confirmation, Yun Bilan let out a long breath of relief. Ever since the appearance of the blood-red vines, her face, which had rarely shown a smile, seemed to clear up slightly.

The hidden door was pulled open, and the group cautiously approached the well once again.

The drizzling rain fell, splashing up small droplets beside them.

The dark, ominous well stood motionless in front of them, exuding an eerie, bone-chilling presence. Even just standing at a distance and looking at it was enough to make one’s back break out in cold sweat.

Step by step, they walked toward the well.

This time, whatever was inside didn’t give them any time to react.

Pale, slender little arms and hands surged out like a tide, ferociously lunging toward them like sharks smelling blood!

But unlike before, it seemed to have learned its lesson. Instead of attacking Wen Jianyan directly, it went after the others!

Yun Bilan faced the ghastly white hands head-on, gritting her teeth. A faint dark-red glow flickered in her eyes, and the blood-red thorns on her pale face seemed to sway slightly.

It seemed that this time, she had no choice but to use her talent.

But before she could activate it, the next second, a sudden force yanked her backward.

“?!”

Someone had grabbed her arm and violently thrown her toward the other teammates!

Yun Bilan’s eyes widened in shock, and she turned her head toward the source of the force.

Wen Jianyan seemed fully prepared for this. There was even a slight, composed smile on his lips as his thin lips moved soundlessly, forming a phrase that looked like—

“Don’t worry.”

“Bye.”

He blinked.

In the next second, Wen Jianyan was firmly seized by the ghastly pale hands that came swarming from all directions. They latched onto his ankles, arms, and legs like hunters capturing their prey. Those countless small hands dragged him toward the well at an astonishing speed, and in just the blink of an eye, he was completely swallowed by the dark abyss.

Everyone’s pupils shrank, staring at the well in disbelief.

“Captain!”

“……”

The one who should have reacted the most, Yun Bilan, remained silent.

She shook off the hands supporting her, her face dark and unreadable as she stood up.

Gazing at the now-empty well, Yun Bilan’s mind flashed with the expression Wen Jianyan had when he agreed to go with them and the final look on his face before being dragged in. Recalling his so-called “last words”, her expression turned even darker.

She spat out a mouthful of blood—blood from biting through her own tongue.

Damn it.

Lying bastard.

He had planned this from the very start.

---

Wen Jianyan was yanked downward.

The damp, rotten stench filled his nose, and the well walls blurred past him at a terrifying speed. The countless pale, tiny hands gripping him tightly made his stomach churn with nausea.

As he fell into the unknown, he clenched his fingers.

The Ouroboros ring pressed against his palm, its presence a faint but sharp sting.

Before being dragged down, Wen Jianyan had already bitten his finger open. Although he didn’t think his assumptions were wrong, he was still afraid of dying.

If everything turned out to be different from what he imagined—if the Nightmare had truly done all this just to kill him—then his last resort would be his final option.

—Unseal the Ouroboros, expose his trump card, and abandon his control over Wu Zhu. If he couldn’t reap the benefits, then he might as well drag everyone down with him and turn the entire game upside down.

He had no idea how long he had been falling—

“Bang!”

Wen Jianyan finally hit the bottom.

He crashed onto the ground in a disheveled heap. The surface beneath him was damp and mushy, making a squelching noise upon impact. It didn’t hurt, but he didn’t have the courage to look down and see what exactly had cushioned his fall.

The countless hands that had been holding onto him disappeared.

Wen Jianyan struggled to his feet.

He fumbled around and found his phone, then lifted his head to look up.

The small, round opening of the well was impossibly far away. Beyond that, there was nothing but darkness.

The air around him was freezing, and the eerie silence pressed in from all sides, filling him with overwhelming unease.

The pitch-black surroundings swallowed everything, leaving only the dim, trembling light of his flashlight illuminating a tiny portion of the well’s brick walls.

For the first time since entering this instance, Wen Jianyan was truly alone.

He swallowed, feeling his heartbeat race wildly, a creeping numbness spreading across his scalp.

Even though he understood everything rationally, that didn’t mean he wasn’t afraid.

It was like watching a horror movie—you knew there was a ghost in the film, but that didn’t stop you from getting scared.

And in his case…

He was the protagonist of this horror movie. The ghosts here were real.

Alone, trapped inside a well filled with corpses.

Wen Jianyan shuddered, instinctively touching the Ouroboros ring on his finger.

It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine. Worst case, I’ll just go all out.

He gritted his teeth, as if finally making up his mind.

Then, he took a step forward.

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