Chapter 112: Yusheng's Room

Wang Wenbo touched his thinning bangs—a receding hairline that constantly broadcast his status as a top-tier expert. "The author of this post is incredibly bizarre. The original text is in Sanskrit, encrypted using the irreversibility of a one-way hash algorithm. Even brute-forcing it with AI has only spit out meaningless gibberish. So far, we only have two short paragraphs confirmed to hold any actual value."

To think Xu Yuan had been so learned while alive, knowing both Sanskrit and cryptography.

Gao Tian asked, "Roughly how long will it take your AI to decrypt the entire post?"

Wang Wenbo checked the time. "Seven or eight hours."

They didn't have that kind of time.

By then, they would already be on the Bus, entering the Inner World.

"Read the two paragraphs you've already decrypted," Gao Tian said.

Wang Wenbo read, "The first paragraph:

'There might be a living person residing on the sixth floor.

'I have never been up there, so I know nothing.'

The second paragraph:

"'Some stars that shouldn't exist have appeared in the starry sky.'"

That was it.

It was abrupt and completely baffling.

Perhaps the rest of Xu Yuan's post would provide context for these two sentences, but their four-man team had no time to wait.

Gao Tian stood up. "Let's head upstairs to Yusheng's room and see what kind of surprise he left for us."

Wang Wenbo remained on the sofa, typing intently on his keyboard. He seemed to be trying to decrypt as much of the bizarre post as possible before they had to leave.

He had absolutely no interest in Yusheng's room upstairs.

The remaining three walked down the Third Floor corridor to Room 321, where Yusheng used to live. The electronic passcode was four 4s. Since Yusheng had agreed to let him open the door, Gao Tian naturally didn't stand on ceremony.

With a click, the door swung open.

Jiang Yang stepped in first, followed by Gao Tian.

The monk's room gave an immediate impression of utter simplicity. Any furniture that could be spared had been omitted; aside from the bare necessities, there wasn't a single superfluous item in sight.

A bed, a desk, and a few gray monastic robes for changing. Other than that, there were just physical books—piles upon piles of them stacked on the floor, on the bookshelf, and under the bed.

Upon entering, Jiang Yang's first thought was that he had seen a very similar scene in Lin Nan'an's room on the fourth floor.

Both men devoured massive amounts of specific texts, as if trying to uncover the truth of the world before they died.

Gao Tian crouched down and casually flipped through a few.

Aside from essential Buddhist scriptures, Yusheng's collection consisted of only two categories:

Astronomy and physics.

He seemed particularly interested in the starry sky overhead.

As for physics, Yusheng didn't read just anything; he was fixated on one specific field:

Time.

Among the books, Yusheng had collected everything from basic popular science reads like "A Brief History of Time" to the fully English text "Quantum Gravity and the Arrow of Time".

Every book was worn from heavy reading. Many pages had underlined passages, their margins filled with Yusheng's handwritten notes and annotations.

While Jiang Yang and Gao Tian searched the space, Lan Zhu's gasp drifted over from the adjacent bedroom. "Ah, I found a slip of paper under the little monk's bed!

"It looks delicious. I'm hungry anyway, so I think I'll just eat it."

Startled, Jiang Yang immediately dropped what he was doing and sprinted to the next room with Gao Tian. In the nick of time, they snatched Yusheng's note right out of Lan Zhu's mouth.

Lan Zhu giggled. Of course, she hadn't actually been about to eat the note; she just wanted their attention.

Unfolding the paper revealed lean, elegant handwriting that matched the margins of the books. It was definitely written by Yusheng:

I shouldn't have looked up at the stars.

The stars in the Inner World seem to be getting fewer and fewer.

(The words "Inner World" showed signs of being crossed out.)

(The black lines crossing them out had then been erased.)

(Then the black lines were drawn over them again.)

(Repeatedly scribbled out and rewritten.)

—

The note left by this strange monk seemed to echo the post Xu Yuan had made thirteen years ago in some bizarre way.

They both mentioned the keyword: "stars."

However, their attitudes toward the starry sky were completely different.

One felt that stars had appeared, while the other felt they were disappearing.

The search of Yusheng's room continued for three hours.

Aside from a massive pile of books and academic manuscripts that no one could understand, they found nothing at all.

Going into the fourth hour, Jiang Yang was still flipping through Yusheng's vast sea of books, hoping to dig up some useful item or clue.

Gao Tian had already left Yusheng's room and returned to his own.

—

Before they set off, he had a much more important matter to attend to.

Checking the Future Urn to examine the future of this upcoming task.

Upon entering the Mirror World and picking up the Future Urn, he saw that Master Yunshan inside had fully stood up from the rock and walked to the center of the urn.

The skeleton figurine seemed to have taken on a life of its own. But right now, Gao Tian had no time to worry about it; he could only hope the gray mist that displayed the future would surge out quickly.

Swaths of gray clouds did indeed gather within the urn. However, the future they revealed was disjointed and fragmented:

On the stone-paved floor of a temple, a "Gao Tian" sat cross-legged, his entire body stained with blood. His expression was utterly exhausted. His face was ashen, and he remained completely motionless.

Everyone else who had entered Longshu Temple with him was gone. At this moment, this "Gao Tian" seemed to have withered away, stripped of all will to fight.

Beside him, there wasn't a shadow of a single enemy, let alone a ghost.

What kind of future was this?

Gao Tian couldn't comprehend it at all.

The useful information he could extract from this fragment was close to zero.

Just as Gao Tian was about to close the Future Urn and leave the Mirror World, the gray clouds inside suddenly churned. The previous snippet of the future was wiped away like filth, and a new fragment formed in the urn: a "Gao Tian" lay flat on the freezing floor, bisected at the waist. Blood and internal organs spilled from his upper half. He was completely still, seemingly dead for a long time.

There was no resurrection. It looked like this future "Gao Tian" had drawn his final Ghost Card.

In the same scene, another "Gao Tian" gripped an empty Luck Jar. Having exhausted all his stored Ghost Luck, his eyes were filled with absolute despair. Without hesitation, he drew the Terror Blade and plunged it viciously into his own chest.

Another "Gao Tian" bled from both eyes, his sockets pitch-black; completely oblivious, he slowly walked down the central avenue of Longshu Temple.

—

—

This future "Gao Tian" had turned into a ghost.

Under the blood-red trees lining the road, a "Gao Tian" slipped a rope he'd found who-knew-where around his neck, swinging his own corpse from the branches like a pendulum.

The ground beneath his feet was littered with dead crows.

One future after another unfolded before Gao Tian's eyes.

What exactly was going on?

His scalp went numb. Gritting his teeth, Gao Tian watched until the very last future played out. Only when the gray mist dispersed did Master Yunshan's skeleton resurface at the bottom of the Future Urn.

Nothing like this had ever happened before.

Gao Tian could accept dying in a Fierce Ghost incident. But what he couldn't understand was why, if Longshu Temple was just a single incident, he had to die so many times—and in such a rich variety of grisly ways.

Just what kind of terrifying place was Longshu Temple?

Or perhaps the Future Urn was an imprecise instrument that had suffered some interference and malfunctioned.

Gao Tian racked his brains but couldn't find a reasonable explanation.

Regardless, he had spent enough time in the Mirror World, and he could already hear Jiang Yang and the others coming upstairs to find him.

It didn't matter whether the prophecy was auspicious or ominous.

It was time to hit the road.

The old man in the military greatcoat blew out his Smoking Pipe, pushed open the glass doors in front of him, and walked into the Living Apartment.

Waiting for him was an empty first floor and a laptop sitting on the living room table.

—

—

The AI program on it was still running automatically, seemingly cracking some encrypted text.

The old man couldn't understand these trendy gadgets. Chuckling dryly, he found a sofa and sat down with the practiced ease of someone returning home.

It seemed his luck tonight wasn't too good.

He had arrived at the apartment less than half an hour after everyone in the lobby had left.

"I wonder if Lin Nan'an is still alive."

The old man relit his Smoking Pipe. Puffing on it, he looked around the entirely empty first floor and pondered, "Forget it. Seven years have passed; he must have died long ago."