Escape the Infinite Chambers-Chapter 153 - The Corridor of Time (IX)
Chapter 153 - The Corridor of Time (IX)
Thank you so much ChrysAmans for your kind support–Bonus Chapter (1/2)
Editors: Kitty & Humu
“A beast without a heart is a wonderful description,” Luo Jian said to Clown, “The protagonist is hurt and abandoned by his beloved, so he defines the other party as a beast without a heart and thinks that his heart has been snatched away by him or her.”
Clown had just emerged from the endless darkness and was in a state of shock. He was still baffled when he heard Luo Jian’s talking. Clown took the letter in his hand and asked him, “Why are you so sure? Maybe it means something else.”
“Because the secret chamber has only given me this many clues that I can take into consideration.”
Luo Jian sighed, “But this protagonist is also a fool.”
“Why is he a fool?” Clown also held on tightly to the letter as he took a long time reading it.
“Because there’s something on the back of the letter.”
Clown froze momentarily and quickly turned around to look at the back of the letter. There was a strange list of addresses written on the back of the letter: XXX street, No. 10, 4th Floor, Red Door resident, Time: July 14, 12:00 sharp.
“What does that mean?” Clown did not understand the string of sentences which was the address, but he thought there was something wrong with it.
“It’s just telling us where the door to this secret chamber is.”
Luo Jian said, and thereafter, he searched through the corpse to check for other items. On the clothes he was wearing, inside his pants was a rusty key. Luo Jian gripped the key in his hand, observed it, and afterwards stuffed it into his pockets.
“Where is the door to this secret chamber?” Clown was still at a loss.
“Isn’t it written in the letter?” Luo Jian said that as he continued to look for something else on the corpse. He got an old-fashioned analog watch after removing it from the corpse’s hand, and that watch was still working. He looked at the time on the watch and said, “The door is at Building No. 10, 4th Floor, Red Door resident’s apartment.”
“But we are at the basement levels. Is the red door on the fourth floor the exit?” Clown felt that this was not that simple of a matter.
Luo Jian shook his head: “Of course, the door can’t be located in the basement levels. We have to go up to the positive levels and open the door on the fourth floor because the key that the corpse got can only be his house’s key.”
“It is obviously impossible for us to head there. We can’t get to a positive level at all. No matter how much we go up, we’ll always be at the Basement Floor 1.” Clown had tried to ascend previously, but he couldn’t go up the levels.
“Of course you can go up as long as it’s the right time to do so. For example, this strange stairway is a place similar to a space that exists in a different dimension. There must be an entrance and exit in this place. Naturally, the entrance and exit are the stairway from the first floor to the second floor. So what changes have taken place to turn this staircase into the entrance of hell?”
Luo Jian waved the old, worn-down watch in his hand, showing it to Clown. The time on the watch was 11:45 p.m.
As the hands of the watch slowly ticked by, Luo Jian continued: “The time written on that letter is the day when the gates of hell open. The time when the gates of hell open is 12:00 sharp on July 14. When the time is reached, the gates of hell would open.”
“Do you mean that when the gates of hell open, we’ll be able to go up?”
“The secret chamber should have set it that way.” Luo Jian thought, “The time limit given is three hours and half of the time has passed and we have triggered the conditions to open the gates of hell. If the player at this moment correctly understands the secret chamber’s message to the player, they can easily find clues, get out from the never-ending stairway, and escape from this chamber.”
“On the contrary, if the player doesn’t find the accurate clues and walks down the stairs aimlessly, he will never be able to get out. Is that right?” Clown touched his chin: “If you didn’t know how to summon spirits, we’d have to find the open door level by level. During this period, we would have to endure the harassment and attacks of various ghosts. We would waste a lot of time. We may have also found the door opened by the NPC only after most of the three-hour time limit given by the secret chamber had passed. After entering, we’d be stuck in the endless darkness illusion for quite some time. After that, we would be able to obtain the clues. And at that time, we would only have very little time left of the three hour time limit.”
“You’re almost correct. According to what an ordinary player would do usually, the secret chamber is actually very difficult.” Luo Jian said that, as he couldn’t help scratching his head: “But with me joining, it seems that the chamber is too simple. I hope it won’t lead to any bad consequences.”
“It’s really too simple. When I met you, from the start to the end, it was a smooth process. This speed! It’s inconceivable!” Clown exclaimed, “You must know that it’d take a layer of my skin for me to escape from the secret chamber previously.”
“If we escape too early, we’ll allow the secret chamber to discover an inkling of what occurred.” Luo Jian frowned. In fact, he had affected the result of the secret chamber escape to a certain extent. Given the secret chamber’s character, it was never willing to see players escape from the secret chamber too easily and comfortably. The secret chamber’s will gave him a feeling that it could not wait for every player to die in the secret chamber.
“Can’t escape too early?” Towards that, Clown did not have any opinion. “As long as we don’t delay until the time when we won’t be able to escape.”
Luo Jian said with a smile, “Let’s do something interesting.”
It was not known if Luo Jian’s tone was ambiguous and would cause someone to misunderstand, but Clown suddenly blushed. Although it could not be seen because his cheeks were dabbed with white powder and stained with blood, he embarrassingly swung his hips and stated to Luo Jian in a delicate voice, “Towards that, I don’t have any opinion, but you…… are you really fine with that?”
Luo Jian suddenly felt that he could not maintain his apparent calm. The corners of his mouth twitched, and his weapon morphed into a rod again. He continued to beat Clown’s head fiercely several times, and only when several bumps on Clown’s head surfaced and Clown hugged his head as he shrieked out loud did he stop.
“Stop putting on a show to amuse me! I just want to test your current fighting prowess!” Luo Jian shook the rod in his hand, and with great momentum, he pointed one end of the rod at Clown. He said, “How strong are you? Let me see it.”
“Ah? But I can’t see anything, so wouldn’t I be very weak?” Clown said innocently.
“Don’t talk nonsense. This place is pitch dark. Even if you can see, it may not be useful.” It was not known what Luo Jian thought of. He said to Clown, his tone carrying deep meaning: “You can rank first in the ranking list. It seems that your abilities are not bad.”
Clown suddenly stopped talking. He was silent for a moment. He seemed to want to explain: “You got it wrong. It’s just someone with the same name and surname as me.”
“There wouldn’t be so many people in the world whose names are merely one character and are called ‘Hong.’ The probability is too low.”
Luo Jian suddenly shook the rod in his hand and struck it towards Clown. Clown jumped up to avoid it and jumped to the back. He raised his hands to indicate his surrender and said, “Don’t do this! I can’t beat you in this state at this moment!”
“Not necessarily.” Luo Jian said that as he twisted his neck and felt that his body was too small. Compared with the body of an adult, firstly, he felt that he was too short, which led to a serious drop in the things he could see. In addition, his physical strength was relatively weak and his strength was too small, making his body feel strange and uncoordinated. Although Luo Jian’s ability would not decline, he was not used to the inconveniences this body brought about when battling.
However, Luo Jian did not back down. He felt that he needed a fight, an ebullition, to forget those bad memories and to use blood and battle to help his inner self push all the darkness out of him. That was what Luo Jian urgently needed now. It did not matter who would give it to him, but Luo Jian needed it.
Clown, standing over at the other side, had no choice but to sigh and said aggrievedly, “Student Abyss will only bully me.”
After he finished speaking, he felt around his body for a long time before he found a scalpel. He shabbily postured for a while, but after quite a long time, he couldn’t get his battle posture right. When he was posing, it felt like he was up to his monkey tricks, and he swayed here and there, as if he was about to fall down anytime. Even the corners of Luo Jian’s eyes began to twitch. He said, “Are you trying to bluff me?”
Clown, standing over at the other side, cried, “I really can’t fight!”
“How the hell did you live to this day?” Luo Jian shook the Shaolin rod in his hand and stabbed him with the rod.
Clown shook his body weakly and went on to say pitifully, “To tell you the truth, it’s me on that list, but it’s also not me.”
Luo Jian withdrew his Shaolin rod and frowned: “What do you mean?”
“My skills…… uhm, or my weapon, it’s a little strange.” Clown touched his scalpel in distress. He said bitterly, “I am a student studying in an ordinary medical school, majoring in surgical matters. In the future, I will be a surgeon who will work on the operating table. So I don’t think it strange to give me a scalpel as a weapon…… But… ”
Luo Jian saw that he stopped speaking, so he asked, “Is there anything strange about that knife?”
“Look! It’s like this…” Clown suddenly changed his tone. He raised his scalpel and stabbed at his own temple. This happened so quickly that Luo Jian was caught unprepared. He had no time to stop Clown. He was surprised to see Clown stab the knife into his head.
The blood gushed out, just as Luo Jian expected. The sight of a knife stuck in Clown’s head made one feel that it was hard to look at. Although Luo Jian was surprised, he thought that Clown should not be so reckless, so he did not feel too surprised. He calmed his mood down and silently abided.
Clown fell to the ground with a knife stuck in his forehead. After about ten minutes, Clown quickly got up by himself. When he got up, his skin began to turn blue. Luo Jian lit up his netherfire lamp and looked at Clown’s current appearance. Clown’s face had become very stiff. He slowly reached out and grabbed the knife in his head, and the knife was pulled out by him.
“It’s amazing that you’re dead, but you don’t seem to be dead.” Luo Jian reached out and touched Clown’s exposed skin. It was already cold.
“That’s it. As long as I kill myself with this knife, I won’t really ‘die.’ Therefore, whenever I encounter danger and am on the verge of death, as long as I kill myself, I can survive.” Clown said that as he tilted his neck, and his bones made a clicking sound.
“And it’s strange that I’m very strong in this state. Sometimes I feel that my brain is occupied by another consciousness, and I think it’s the consciousness of the weapon that’s trying to devour me. I don’t know whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing, although it does make me stronger.”
Luo Jian licked his dry lips and whispered, “So that’s all because of this weapon, right? Don’t you know the specific capabilities of your weapon?”
“It’s a scalpel,” Clown said. When he said those words, he sounded like he was in a trance, and his face had no expression. It was like he was simply reading it from the script. “The scalpel has many functions. It can bring my patients back to life. Similarly, it can also cause some changes in others. It can transform the human body, improve the physical quality of the body, reconstruct someone’s personality and memories, and hold the ability to transform. It can change someone from weak to strong; that’s its strongest ability.”
“To transform…… it?” Luo Jian’s voice became lighter: “Will you transform yourself?”
“Maybe, in order to better survive,” Clown said mechanically.
