Lucky Cruise Ship
Chapter 589: The Fragment
The factory doors stood wide open. The bright, daylight-like illumination from the outside seemed unable to penetrate the interior at all, making the entrance resemble a silent, gaping black maw. In the blink of an eye, it swallowed Wen Jianyan’s figure, and he vanished without a trace.
The remaining few quickened their pace, hurriedly following suit.
When the factory was not in operation, the inside was empty, making entry meaningless.
Once the factory began operations, anyone attempting to enter would be immediately taken away by the Tin Soldiers that appeared and thrown into prison. Because of this, prior to Wen Jianyan, no one had ever entered the factory while it was in operation.
But this time, Wen Jianyan had played a nasty hand involving a time lag. The factory had paused operations because the puppet was destroyed, but the Toy Merchant who should have arrived to take over was locked in prison, unable to complete the transfer of ownership. As a result, the factory was stuck in a limbo between “operation ended” and “operation restarting.” It couldn’t continue to function, but it also couldn’t revert to its initial state.
Because of this, their entry was unimpeded; no Tin Soldiers appeared to stop them.
The inside of the factory was extremely dim. There were no light sources, and visibility was incredibly low. Irregular shadows seemed to undulate and spread in the distance, covering corners that the eye couldn’t reach.
Even worse, there was a cold, fishy stench in the air. Mixed with dust, it transformed into a very bizarre, stagnant odor. The smell was pervasive, sticking to the nasal cavity and the back of the tongue, making one’s stomach churn with nausea.
Chen Mo turned on his flashlight and immediately spotted Wen Jianyan’s back.
The factory’s floor area wasn’t actually that large. Wen Jianyan was standing not far away with his back to them, head tilted up, his gaze fixed on a corner in the darkness, looking at something unknown.
“President?”
Wen Ya called out to him, but received no response.
The group exchanged glances. Unable to suppress their curiosity, they quickened their steps to reach Wen Jianyan’s side. As the flashlight’s beam illuminated the edge of a conveyor belt, everyone’s breath hitched involuntarily.
It was a paused conveyor belt, resembling a simple assembly line, upon which wooden puppets were placed one after another.
The puppets sat neatly on the belt with their heads tilted askew. The shadows that had been blurred contours extending to the edge of their vision finally revealed their true form—they were massive hills made of piled-up puppets. Densely packed and layered upon one another, they stacked all the way to the factory’s ceiling.
The turbid beam of light fell upon the small faces of the puppets, illuminating their identical, eerie smiles.
The quantity was incalculable. Just looking at it was enough to make one’s scalp tingle and hair stand on end.
No one had expected that this so-called toy factory was actually producing these toys… and in such terrifying numbers!
“This is…” Wen Ya made a suffocated sound.
“Dolls.”
Wen Jianyan continued,
“And not just ordinary dolls, but dolls that could revive at any moment, each possessing terrible power.”
He raised his eyes, his gaze moving over the massive mountain of toys before him, his eyes flickering slightly.
“From the moment the factory started operating, it began producing them endlessly. What is sold to us ‘Toy Merchants’ is merely a fraction; the real numbers are hidden inside the factory.”
So little consumed, yet the total is so vast. What exactly does this dungeon intend to do with such a massive quantity of dolls?
The thought of the possible answers to that question was chilling.
“So,” Chen Mo took a deep breath and spoke slowly, “Is this the true purpose of this ‘Monopoly’ game?”
To lure “Toy Merchants” into fighting and killing each other, using their internal strife to expand and endlessly produce these terrifying “dolls.”
While they were speaking, Ma Qi suddenly sensed something. She turned her head and walked slowly forward into the depths of the darkness, following the halted conveyor belt.
She suddenly stopped, her face turning pale, her voice trembling slightly:
“Hey… look at this.”
The others were startled. They instinctively turned their heads, looking in the direction Ma Qi was pointing.
The flashlight beam dispelled the darkness in the corner of the factory, illuminating the end of the conveyor belt.
It was connected to a huge, funnel-shaped container. The container was filled with a strange, viscous liquid.
Above the funnel was a long, thin pipe that extended far out of the factory, leading to an unknown destination.
“Is this…” Wen Jianyan frowned, “The raw material for the dolls?”
As if to distance herself from those things, Ma Qi trotted back to her teammates, hurriedly hiding behind them. She nodded and whispered, “I think so.”
“I’m not sure if it’s my imagination…” Ma Qi paused, then hesitantly voiced her guess, “The feeling it gives me… is very similar to those ‘passengers’.”
“Diluted a lot.”
“But… very similar.”
Hearing Ma Qi say this, Wen Jianyan’s heart skipped a beat.
Similar to those “passengers”?
He couldn’t help but press, “What do you mean?”
“It’s just…” Ma Qi racked her brain, finally managing to organize her thoughts into specific words, “The feeling I get is very similar, as if they come from the same source? —But I’m not sure. After all, this is just a medium’s intuition, there’s no concrete evidence…”
“…”
Wen Jianyan lowered his eyes without a word, falling into deep thought.
There were still too many unanswered questions.
First, what exactly are these “passengers”? Why are they locked in the negative eighteenth floor on the Lucky Cruise?
Second, what is the purpose of releasing them? And what is their connection to these dolls?
Countless plausible yet vague guesses swirled in his mind, fighting and contradicting each other. Although there was no specific reason, Wen Jianyan inexplicably felt a strange sensation—he had taken another small step closer to the truth.
But the connections between the clues were still too fragmented, preventing him from forming a complete picture.
Wen Jianyan’s head hurt from thinking; his temples throbbed under the excessive mental pressure.
He couldn’t help but feel a twinge of regret. If he had saved one of the questions from that piece of parchment, it might have served as a thread to guide him through this mental labyrinth—
…Wait.
Parchment?
No, to be accurate, it should be Human Skin Parchment.
Wen Jianyan suddenly jolted, as if a bright bolt of lightning had streaked across his mind, illuminating the pitch-black night sky.
In that instant, he seemed to suddenly realize the answer to a certain problem.
He opened his backpack, his eyes shimmering slightly with nervousness. His movements were swift, as if he were eager to prove something.
The people around him looked at him in confusion, having no idea why Wen Jianyan had suddenly become so agitated.
In the blink of an eye, a thick, heavy ancient book appeared in Wen Jianyan’s hand. The pages were yellowed, and the cover was covered in dust, making it impossible to see exactly what was on it. However, Wen Jianyan’s teammates guessed almost immediately what the object was.
Wen Ya was the first to react. She glanced discreetly behind her—the other Toy Merchants were standing some distance away, studying the mountain of dolls. The visibility in the factory was low, and with the distance between them, the others couldn’t see what was happening here.
“Is this…”
“Yeah,” Wen Jianyan responded briefly.
[Dead Sea Scrolls].
It was not only his ultimate goal for boarding the ship this time but also the true reason he had risked auctioning himself off.
“The intelligence from Orange Candy’s side shouldn’t be fake. This Dead Sea Scroll should be the only way for me to solve the scroll puzzle from Yuying Comprehensive University.” Otherwise, the Nightmare wouldn’t have tried so hard to obstruct him, even ordering the Oracle to bid on the item in advance.
“However, after getting my hands on it, I tried many methods, but I couldn’t find a way to use it at all.”
Inside was nothing but gibberish; it was no different from an unreadable, ordinary ancient book.
Wen Jianyan took a deep breath, opened his item inventory, and took out one of the items.
S-rank hidden item, Human Skin Parchment.
Source: Ping’an Asylum. By sacrificing a human soul, it can answer any three questions from the asker.
Wen Jianyan brushed his fingertips against the irregular edge of the Human Skin ParchmentParchment. Then, he opened the Dead Sea Scrolls in front of him, found the missing page within, and slowly aligned the piece of paper in his hand with it.
Every tear and protrusion fit perfectly.
The moment the paper was pressed into place, Wen Jianyan felt as if his palm had been scalded. The book, which had been lying quietly in his hand, seemed to abruptly release a terrifyingly cold aura. He shivered and nearly threw the Dead Sea Scrolls away.
This sensation lasted for less than a second before vanishing. When he looked closely again, he found that the Human Skin Parchment had returned to where it belonged. There were no gaps or traces of tearing, as if it had never been ripped out.
Whether it was an illusion or not, the incredibly ancient book seemed to look slightly newer than before.
Wen Jianyan’s gaze fell on the single remaining jagged edge of paper, and he said:
“…No wonder.”
The [Dead Sea Scrolls] weren’t unusable; they were simply incomplete, and thus could not display any effects.
“So, as long as you fill in the last piece, the Dead Sea Scrolls can be used again?” Wen Ya asked.
Wen Jianyan: “I’m afraid so.”
“Where are we going to find the last missing page?” Ma Qi looked worried.
Wen Jianyan: “The good news is, the item isn’t hard to find.”
He knew very well whose hands that page was in.
—”But it’s very hard to get.”
As luck would have it, that half-page belonged to the Vice President of the Oracle, ranked ninth on the Nightmare Leaderboard—
Gentleman.
Inside the Prison.
Lucy’s face disappeared from the screen, and the cramped solitary cell fell into a deathly silence.
Lion Heart King sat cross-legged on the floor, his eyes unfocused. He hadn’t really listened to what Lucy just said—after all, this wasn’t his first time in prison, and he was tired of hearing the rules.
He counted the time in boredom, waiting for the moment of his release.
Just then, he heard a clang. It sounded like something had hit the door of his cell. The sudden metallic impact startled him. Just as he lifted his head, he saw a stone roll to his feet. It was wrapped in a crumpled piece of paper, obviously thrown in from the outside.
He paused slightly, realizing something almost immediately, and looked up in the direction the sound came from.
Two Tin Soldiers stood with their backs to him at the cell door, seemingly unaware of the strange noise, or perhaps their programming simply didn’t account for such an occurrence.
Through the bars, the outside was pitch black; nothing could be seen clearly.
However, such darkness was likely nonexistent to the All-Seeing-Eye.
Lion Heart King bent down, picked up the stone, and unwrapped the paper. On it was written a very brief line of text:
Total of four Tin Soldiers in this corridor and five outside. Patrol Tin Soldiers rotate every seven and a half minutes; rotation duration is one minute and twenty-five seconds.
Is this… the guard patrol pattern of the Tin Soldiers?!
Lion Heart King sucked in a cold breath, seemingly realizing something suddenly.
Wait a minute, is that cowardly yellow-haired kid planning a jailbreak?!
