Thanks you @pandorasproxy for the Kofi. (1/5)
Yuying University
Chapter 462: Flaw
In the “Integrity First” live room chat, the viewers who had watched from the beginning had already started their analysis:
[If you ask me, the place they should go back to now is the swimming pool. The swimming pool is the core of all the events. Plus, Wang Ni was killed in the swimming pool in the end, and it’s also where her body was hidden. That final kiss between them was also very problematic. I don’t get why they wouldn’t go back there…]
[What swimming pool? It’s obviously the library that’s more critical. Don’t forget that both Wang Ni and Richard went to the library. Richard also had a library card in his bag. The library’s level of secrecy in the instance is clearly unusual. It has to be the key to breaking the deadlock!]
[Haha, are the people above me idiots? Haven’t you realized? The lecture hall was the only place where a key protagonist was missing! With so many scenes filled to the brim, don’t you find a single empty spot strange?]
In the live room chat, viewers with different ideas were arguing heatedly.
But outside the live room, it was unaffected.
A dead silence reigned.
Wen Jianyan stood silently, feeling chills run up his spine. The echo of the system’s voice still seemed to reverberate in his ears, creating cold ripples in the darkness.
—It had said, there was one last chance.
What if he used up this chance and still hadn’t completed this so-called “task”?
What would happen?
Wen Jianyan couldn’t help but shudder.
He shook his head, forcing himself to calm down.
Think, think.
In this seemingly tight, flawless, fake world, where was the crack?
Suddenly, a scene that had just occurred flashed through his mind.
In the mirror, a pair of bloody eye sockets “stared” at him, smiling grotesquely as it asked:
“Did you find me?”
“…”
Wen Jianyan froze for a moment, then his eyes shot open.
“You have an idea?”
Beside him, Hugo seemed to have noticed the change in Wen Jianyan’s expression and asked.
“…Perhaps.”
“How sure are you?”
“Not very.”
Emotion flickered in Wen Jianyan’s eyes. He pressed his lips together and said slowly, “But it’s worth a try.”
Hugo clutched his side with one hand and pulled out a cigarette, holding it between his lips.
“Alright, I’ll listen to you then.”
Next, Wen Jianyan squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath.
Then, he opened his eyes, stared straight into the darkness before him, and solemnly gave his answer—
The moment the words left his mouth, the surrounding darkness began to dissipate rapidly. Light and shadow shifted quickly, and colored threads were pulled and twisted. In the blink of an eye, the surrounding scene had changed.
The dizziness began to fade. Wen Jianyan looked up, surveying his surroundings.
That’s right, he had indeed returned to the scene he had chosen.
The clamor of voices echoed in his ears. Young college students formed a stream of people, flowing past him and into the building ahead.
Not far away, the low, oval-shaped building stood, exuding a vibrant, lively atmosphere.
—This was the cafeteria.
They had once again arrived outside the cafeteria.
The two stood still, letting others come and go around them, like the only two unmoving pillars in a ceaseless river.
“…You chose here.”
Hugo slowly raised an eyebrow, a somewhat surprised expression on his face.
Wen Jianyan: “…Yes.”
In the “Integrity First” live room chat:
[…]
[…??]
[Uh… I don’t get it. Why did he come back here??]
[The cafeteria? Huh? Is there a problem here?]
“So, what are you looking for?”
Hugo scanned the surroundings.
“…”
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath. Although he showed no sign of nervousness, his body was tense. He said slowly:
“…Wait a little longer.”
The crowd flowed endlessly, the sounds of laughter and chatter incessant.
“Um… excuse me?”
A voice sounded from behind.
Wen Jianyan turned his head. It was a young-looking college student. Seeing Wen Jianyan look over, he quickly averted his gaze, seemingly a bit embarrassed.
“Um… can I get your contact info?”
Whether it was his shy demeanor or his tone of voice, it was identical to before.
Wen Jianyan narrowed his eyes and suddenly smiled.
“Of course, you can.”
In the “Integrity First” live room chat:
[?]
[???]
[??!!!]
The moment Wen Jianyan finished speaking, everything around them seemed to fall silent. Not far away, the smile on the male student’s face suddenly vanished.
No, it melted.
His facial features rapidly melted and distorted, eventually leaving only a blank face.
“…”
Faced with such a horrifying and bizarre sight, Wen Jianyan seemed to have expected it. He was expressionless, silent, his eyes fixed on the other person.
At some point, all the college students around them had disappeared.
Under the cold sunlight, only three lonely figures remained.
Hugo started to step forward but was stopped by Wen Jianyan’s outstretched hand.
Wen Jianyan’s breathing was slightly ragged. He shook his head, his shoulders tense, as if to say—wait a little longer.
“—You found me.”
The faceless person said in a familiar voice, mixed with the tone of Richard.
The next second, like a snowman under the scorching sun, the entire figure began to dissolve rapidly, turning into a bloody mud mixed with flesh and blood. In just two short seconds, it had taken the shape of an eyeball, and then evaporated completely.
Looking around, only Wen Jianyan and Hugo were left in front of the cafeteria.
The silence was deathly, like a tomb.
“…It was him?” Hugo asked, gazing in the direction the puddle of flesh had disappeared. “How did you figure it out?”
Wen Jianyan lowered his hand. He didn’t know when, but his palm had become damp with sweat.
“Just… some simple logical deduction.”
There were no dead ends in Nightmare.
In the “movie” they were in now, everything that had once been abnormal was erased, leaving only ordinary, common, and even falsely “normal” things.
In this situation, people would subconsciously focus on the things that had truly changed. But there were too many truths that had been “replaced,” “blurred,” and “supplanted.” Their attention was scattered.
They forgot…
When everything is changing, the one thing truly worth paying attention to is the only thing that remains unchanged.
The opposite of falsehood is truth.
And in this false world, the one thing that seemed “real,” that hadn’t changed from beginning to end, was the true “falsehood.”
“The flaw was obvious enough.”
Wen Jianyan said slowly.
“Previously, in the ‘movie,’ the reason I was hit on was because of what I was wearing.”
“But it’s different here.”
This wasn’t a movie, and he wasn’t wearing any particularly eye-catching clothes, yet he still encountered the exact same “come-on.”
This deliberately created sameness, on the contrary, betrayed its false nature.
“What’s next?” Hugo looked around.
Logically, after finding the key to the falsehood, this scene should have ended.
Even if they were wrong, something should have happened, instead of nothing at all.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath and said, “Wait a little longer.”
He had a gut feeling.
As if to confirm his guess, a familiar figure appeared not far away.
Wen Jianyan recognized her almost instantly.
It was Wang Ni.
She staggered in their direction, her blank face lowered. Suddenly, she seemed to stumble, as if she had bumped into someone in the empty space. She muttered distractedly, “…Sorry.”
After saying that, Wang Ni continued to walk forward.
Witnessing this, Wen Jianyan seemed to realize something. He took a sharp step forward and reached out to grab Wang Ni’s arm.
However, his hand seemed to grasp at air, passing straight through her arm without touching anything solid.
Wen Jianyan glanced at his empty palm, then looked up at Wang Ni’s back, a strange light flowing in his eyes.
“She’s real.”
In the “Integrity First” live room chat:
[? Real? What’s real?]
[His hand passed right through her. It can’t be any more fake!]
[Wait a minute… I think I get it.]
[?]
[Haven’t you guys figured it out yet? Before, whether it was the potentially dangerous Film Appreciation class or the previous falsely peaceful scenes, they were all actually processed by the instance. They weren’t completely real… But it’s different now. After the anchor found the flaw, all the previous processing, whether dangerous or harmonious, has been removed!]
[Holy crap, so you mean… this is actually a playback of the past?!]
[No wonder he said it’s ‘real’!]
“Come on, let’s follow.”
Outside the live room, Wen Jianyan had already acted swiftly.
He beckoned to Hugo, and the two quickly followed the staggering Wang Ni not far away.
They followed Wang Ni back into the cafeteria.
This time, the cafeteria was silent. Except for Wang Ni, all the distracting options had disappeared. However, from her winding path, it was clear that in the space Wang Ni occupied, there were many people around her, so much so that she had to weave through the crowd to get to the food service area.
After a brief exchange, Wang Ni ordered a bowl of noodles.
She carried the noodles and found an empty table to sit at.
Wen Jianyan and Hugo made no intervention, only following her from a distance, observing her every move.
Wang Ni looked to be in very poor spirits.
Her expression was listless, her attention completely off the food before her. She was just mechanically shoveling the food from the bowl into her mouth.
Her chopsticks stirred the cloudy broth. Soon, the tip of the chopsticks seemed to poke something.
“…”
Wang Ni seemed to freeze.
She lowered her head and looked into her bowl.
The tip of the chopsticks lifted bit by bit, and at the end of them—
was a bloody eyeball, speared through.
The white of the eye, covered in blood vessels, and the dilated, black pupil, stared up at her motionlessly from the broth.
At first, Wang Ni made no sound, as if completely stunned. She stared blankly at the eyeball. After a few short, or perhaps long, seconds, a sharp scream finally erupted from her throat.
“Ahhhhhhh—”
She frantically threw away her chopsticks, the force sending her flying backwards. The chair, the table, everything was knocked over. Dripping broth and food scraps flowed all over the floor.
And Wang Ni was still screaming.
She struggled, her legs kicking on the floor, pushing herself backwards, as if trying to get as far away from something as possible.
Although the other people in the cafeteria did not appear in this scene, even so, Wen Jianyan could still clearly imagine how astonished the other students in the cafeteria were as Wang Ni had her hysterical outburst.
Suddenly, without warning, Wang Ni’s screaming stopped.
She twisted her head, her whole body trembling. Her “gaze” seemed to be drawn to something behind the food service window.
Wen Jianyan turned his head, following her line of sight—
Behind the window, through the blurry, dirty glass, a figure could be vaguely seen, standing stiffly, looking eerie and terrifying.
In an instant, Wen Jianyan felt a shiver run down his spine.
…Who is it?
When did it get there?
Before he could think of an answer, a chaotic noise came from behind him.
Wang Ni fumbled to pick up her schoolbag from the floor. Without bothering to clean up the mess she had made, she stumbled away, as if she had seen a ghost, fleeing the cafeteria. The moment she stepped out the door, her figure immediately became ethereal, disappearing like smoke.
Without a second thought, Wen Jianyan turned and ran towards the kitchen.
“This way!”
With no students or school staff in the cafeteria to block him, Wen Jianyan rushed unimpeded to the iron door of the back kitchen. He grabbed the door and yanked it open.
The moment the door was pulled open, a blast of high-temperature steam mixed with the smell of blood rushed towards him.
But Wen Jianyan didn’t stop, instead striding in.
Like the cafeteria outside, the back kitchen was also empty. The figure they had just seen was gone.
Wen Jianyan looked down at his feet.
The floor was covered in sticky blood.
It was as if a massacre had taken place here. There were traces of blood everywhere, but the bodies had disappeared at some point. The entire back kitchen was in chaos, but there was no trace of the killer.
Wen Jianyan panted slightly, standing in the steam-filled back kitchen and looking around.
In the “Integrity First” live room chat:
[Damn, we’re too late.]
[Ahhhh, isn’t this a total bust then!]
[Such a precious opportunity was wasted, I really…]
Just as the viewers were lamenting in distress, suddenly, Wen Jianyan seemed to think of something. He stepped over the still-wet bloodstains on the floor and, in a few quick steps, arrived at one of the stoves.
In the “Integrity First” live room chat:
[?]
[Wait, isn’t this the cabinet he crawled into before?]
[Oh, oh, oh, it really is!]
However, this time, Wen Jianyan did not open the cabinet again and crawl in. Instead, he reached straight for the pot that was gurgling on the stove.
The lid was lifted, and a cloud of steam mixed with a heavy smell of blood instantly billowed up.
“Cough, cough, cough!” Wen Jianyan was choked and started coughing.
He waved away the steam and looked into the pot.
In the murky soup, a dark head was bobbing up and down.
As the water boiled, the head slowly turned, gradually revealing a face that was boiled soft, red, and twisted—
It was a grotesque face, its lips turned high up, as if still smiling. But its features were very familiar. It seemed to be…
The moment he recognized this face, Wen Jianyan’s heart skipped a beat.
“You know her?” Hugo asked.
“…Yes.”
Wen Jianyan swallowed, moistening his dry throat, and said slowly.
He was very familiar with this face.
It was the only person who had not appeared in this illusion, nor had she made a formal appearance in the movie plot.
Chu Chu.
Suddenly, without any warning, the system announcement, which had been silent for a long time, sounded again:
[Three minutes remaining until the scene ends]
Wen Jianyan put down the pot lid and turned to look at the cutting board to the side.
Blood was everywhere.
Wen Jianyan observed the direction of the blood flow for a moment, then reached out and picked up the bloody knife from beside the pot.
The blade was full of nicks, as if it had been chipped by something hard. He rubbed the chipped edge with his fingertip, then raised his hand and tested it against his own neck.
“What is it?” Hugo asked. “Did you find something?”
Wen Jianyan looked over and said, “She cut off her own head.”
Whether it was the footprints on the floor, the direction of the blood spatter, or the wear marks on the blade, they all told the same shocking fact:
She had stood in front of the boiling iron pot, pressed the knife to her own neck, and even slowly ground, cut, scraped, and pried with the blade… finally severing her own head and letting it fall into the boiling pot.
As soon as these words were spoken, a chill went through the viewers in the live room.
[What the hell?]
[She cut it off herself??]
[Damn, that’s way too f*cking ruthless… was she possessed?]
[Wait a minute, there’s another problem. If the eyeball in Wang Ni’s bowl just now came from the head in this pot, then who was that figure standing behind the window?]
[One minute remaining until the scene ends]
“So, this is the unprocessed, original state of the incident?” Hugo said slowly.
Although it seemed to provide more clues, the real core question had not been answered.
“Not just that.”
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes and said.
“Chu Chu has a face.”
And in this scene, even Wang Ni and Richard, who were the protagonists of the movies and whose names were in the movie titles, had lost their faces. But Chu Chu’s face had not disappeared. More importantly, it was exactly the same as he had seen in the movie before.
This was very wrong.
After all, the reason each “protagonist” was faceless was because their faces would be replaced by new ones every time the instance opened. So, none of them had a real face of their own. But Chu Chu was not like that.
She had a face, and it had never changed.
Plus…
A scene from the lecture hall flashed in Wen Jianyan’s mind—Richard was lying on the table, and the seat beside him was empty.
[Thirty seconds remaining until the scene ends]
“I have a theory.”
He licked his lips and said slowly, “I suspect Chu Chu never existed from the beginning.”
Wen Jianyan looked up. “Or…”
Hugo: “Or?”
“In short,” Wen Jianyan stepped to the side, backing up a little, and pointed at the pot. “You come and see.”
Hugo stepped forward and looked down in the direction Wen Jianyan was pointing.
“What am I looking at…”
Before he could finish his sentence, a tearing, muffled sound was heard. The next second, his voice was forcibly choked back into his throat.
Hugo’s eyes widened in horror as he looked down.
The chipped, bloody knife had, at some point, been plunged into his body from behind. Viscous blood gradually seeped from the wound, spreading quickly like a huge black hole.
He stared at Wen Jianyan, his hoarse voice seeming to be squeezed from between his teeth:
“You—”
“Why did you do this?”
Wen Jianyan still held the knife handle tightly, his body leaning slightly forward, pressing the blade deeper.
At some point, the smile on his face had completely disappeared, leaving only a deep, profound tranquility. He stared expressionlessly at his companion before him and said softly:
“I already told you.”
A faint reflection of blood light appeared in the young man’s eyes.
His voice was gentle and calm, without a trace of fluctuation.
“—The flaw was obvious enough.”
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OMG kkkdkdkkdk eu teria morrido, sinceramente