Chapter 438 - 382: Chaisi: Going for Broke?

Chapter 438: Chapter 382: Chaisi: Going for Broke?

Even though he had caused a "significant change in the situation," Chaisi honestly still didn’t know what kind of situation the two of them were in.

The faces in the darkness outside the door, upon meeting his gaze, suddenly rippled like a wind-disturbed surface of water, revealing a wide range of expressions. Some seemed to smile, others looked startled. Some faces frowned in apparent confusion, while others remained impassive...

A soft CLICK from the safety of the pistol beside him snapped him back to his senses.

Chaisi turned his head and immediately grabbed Han Liuyue’s gun. "Don’t shoot," he said. "It’s useless."

"They’re from a Nest, aren’t they?"

Han Liuyue stared intently at the dense mass of floating faces outside the door, frozen in place. Strands of pinkish-silver hair clung to her forehead. In her state of high alert, her entire being was like the tip of a crystal dagger, shimmering with the sharp, translucent light of life.

’...Good. I managed to bring her back again.’

’My life isn’t completely worthless after all.’

"Bullets can’t kill Residents, but they can at least knock them back," Han Liuyue said in a low voice, yet her finger still hadn’t pulled the trigger. "I just don’t understand... How can there be Residents in Blackmoor City?"

Chaisi gently took her gun and engaged the safety.

Under the unblinking gaze of countless faces, he was grateful to have something to do with his hands. It was a welcome distraction, keeping him from suddenly starting to tremble.

For a good while now, those faces had been watching them.

Sometimes, a space would suddenly open in the depths of the stacked faces, as if someone had disappeared, revealing a small black hole like a dental cavity. But a new face would quickly appear to fill the gap.

’There must be at least a hundred faces, right?’

Hundreds of faces, layered and packed together, blocked the narrow elevator doors. They floated in the darkness, each one staring intently at the two inside, as if they were some kind of entertainment program. Ordinarily, seeing such a sight, Chaisi should have been the one most eager to open fire.

"...Perhaps I shouldn’t judge by appearances," he said in a low voice. "But from the looks on their faces, it seems the ’Observers’ don’t mean us any harm."

Han Liuyue opened her mouth to speak, but then hesitated.

Unwilling to face the crowd of faces directly, she stood in a corner of the elevator. After carefully scanning them a few times, she finally nodded.

Clearly, she had noticed it too. Far from malicious, some of the faces looking at Han Liuyue even wore expressions that could be described as "affectionate."

"They might not be Residents. And the place where they are—no, where *we* are—might not be Blackmoor City anymore."

As Chaisi spoke, he narrowed his eyes, carefully studying the faces in the darkness.

Occasionally, when his gaze met a pair of eyes, he could almost feel a flicker of light in theirs—as if they too found the situation quite marvelous.

Their disposition and their reactions were both vastly different from those of Residents.

"If they’re not Residents, what are they? They can’t be human, right?" Han Liuyue whispered. "And this place doesn’t feel like a Nest..."

A face suddenly smiled, seeming to say something, but it was inaudible.

"Brother Chaisi, if I walked over and reached out to touch them... do you think I’d be able to feel them?"

"You stay right where you are and keep your hands to yourself," Chaisi couldn’t help but snap.

Han Liuyue obediently put her hands behind her back.

"Whatever they are, as long as they’re ’Observers,’ it means they can’t harm us directly." He glanced around the elevator. "And don’t forget, we’re still inside this elevator. We haven’t been able to get out."

"Oh, right."

Han Liuyue jolted, remembering their most critical problem. "Brother Chaisi, how did you find the ’Observers’? Can we use the same method to find a way out?"

"It was a conjecture I arrived at by cross-referencing two sets of information," Chaisi said, pushing his wind-blown hair back. "The elevator is very dry, isn’t it?"

1. Moisture doesn’t easily collect in ventilated areas, which are more likely to be dry and safe.

2. The elevator is windy and very dry.

"An elevator car is a relatively enclosed space. I’ve looked, but I couldn’t find a fan or a vent. A place like this shouldn’t be ventilated—in fact, it should be prone to moisture buildup. Yet it’s this dry, and there’s enough of a breeze to mess up my hair a few times... Where’s the wind coming from?"

Chaisi lifted his chin towards the elevator door. "With that question in mind, the other set of information started to make me doubt what we were seeing."

1. Any premise accepted without question will immediately become the reality one inhabits.

2. Reached the first floor. Do not force the door. Moisture is invading.

"The heavy rain in Blackmoor City is definitely strange, which is something you found out when you went to scout for information. So, when we heard ’moisture is invading,’ we never questioned its authenticity."

As he spoke, Chaisi looked at the faces, and the faces looked back.

"The first part, ’Reached the first floor. Do not force the door,’ implies the doors are closed, right? But just because a premise is presented alongside a fact, does that automatically make the premise true?"

Han Liuyue, quick-witted as she was, instantly understood. "We were misled from the very beginning!"

"Right," Chaisi said. "My previous reasoning wasn’t entirely accurate. The premises we accept don’t become a true ’objective reality,’ but rather a kind of ’subjective reality’ that we create—one that is real only to us."

Just like the elevator doors. They believed the doors were shut, so that’s how they appeared. When Chaisi knocked on them, he could even feel the cold metal and hear the rapping sound.

Only when they temporarily set aside or altered their "subjective reality"—like when Han Liuyue rushed out of the elevator, believing it had reached the third floor and the doors had opened—did "subjective reality" once again yield to objective reality.

In other words, that’s why Han Liuyue didn’t crash into the elevator doors.

"The doors we saw... they were doors we ’created’ ourselves after being misled by the information..." Han Liuyue murmured. "So this entire time, the Observers have been standing right at the entrance, watching us?"

Chaisi nodded.

The reason he guessed the "Observers" were at the elevator door was because when he faced the door, for a brief moment, he had an extremely strange feeling—it was just like seeing himself as he appeared in someone else’s eyes.

’But even if Observers had been outside the elevator all along, it was hard to explain why he would suddenly ’see himself through another’s eyes.’ After all, from the moment you’re born, you can only ever see the world through your own eyes.’

’Why had he briefly seen himself from an ’Observer’s’ perspective? How did that make any sense?’

’...What in the world is this elevator?’

"Brother Chaisi, what do we do now?" Han Liuyue asked. "You said there’s also a ’third will’ here that’s hostile to us, right? That it can act against us directly? Was it the thing that almost deleted me?"

"Yes," Chaisi said, then thought for a few seconds.

No matter how adaptable a person is, it’s hard to get used to the unblinking stares of a hundred faces, a hundred pairs of eyes.

He subconsciously took a step to the side, positioning himself in front of the elevator’s button panel. The multitude of faces turned to follow him, as if they too were waiting for his next move.

"That ’third will’ is dangerous, but it seems to have to abide by some kind of game-like rules. It can’t just do whatever it wants, or it would have deleted us both in one fell swoop by now."

’Aside from the Observers, who couldn’t interfere, neither they nor the ’third will’ could act outside the bounds of the situation and its rules...’

Chaisi gently pressed the "6" button.

As the elevator hummed and began to ascend, Han Liuyue let out a surprised, "Huh?"

"A moment ago, we were about to be deleted, so we couldn’t rely on going upstairs to change things. It’s different now," Chaisi said with a cold laugh. "Isn’t this what elevators are for?"

Within this ruleset, people ride elevators to go up and down. Just as he’d thought, the ’third will’ couldn’t stop them from using the elevator for its intended purpose.

The darkness outside the doors began to recede, and the countless faces faded like a dissipating nightmare. By the time the floor indicator changed to ’2,’ not a single face was left in sight.

The elevator had returned to the hospital building.

The building’s reinforced concrete frame slid past the elevator doors. As the car rose, the second floor came into view—its stark white lights, the floor, the sound of footsteps and conversation... only to be left behind as the elevator continued its ascent.

Chaisi said nothing—he didn’t have to. He and Han Liuyue, in a moment of unspoken agreement, scrutinized every floor they passed as closely as they could.

When the elevator finally stopped at the sixth floor, there were only a few scattered people in the waiting area outside.

Just like downstairs, no one gave the elevator a second glance.

They didn’t look like patients. They seemed more like passersby who had run in to take shelter from the rain. Everyone’s hair was soaked and plastered to their scalps. Their clothes were sopping wet, clinging to their limbs, and their waterlogged skin was deathly pale.

"...Well?" Chaisi asked.

"The sixth, fifth, and third floors all have moisture," Han Liuyue said. "The fourth and second floors... at least from what I could see from the elevator, they’re dry."

Chaisi nodded. "What are your thoughts?"

"According to the rule we heard, the fourth and second floors should be safe havens. Because they don’t have any moisture."

But as she said this, Han Liuyue frowned. "But I feel uneasy..."

Chaisi glanced at her.

"The ’third will’ seems to have it in for us, setting all these traps to get us deleted. ’A dry floor is a safe haven’... so we just find a dry floor, walk in, and that’s it? We’re safe? Is it really that simple?"

"That’s just you being paranoid. For me to make a decision, I need a better reason than just ’paranoia’."

Han Liuyue was silent for a moment.

"Brother Chaisi," she suddenly let out a breath and smiled. "When you ask me to find the answer, it’s usually because you already know it."

Chaisi shrugged, noncommittal. "We have less than two minutes before the elevator starts descending again."

Han Liuyue nodded. "I understand."

The words had barely left her mouth when she stepped out of the elevator and onto the sixth floor, its ground covered in wet footprints.