Congratulations on Your Successful Escape

Chapter 119

Mo Yi frowned slowly, staring solemnly at the changed corridor in front of him.

The air was filled with the smell of old carpets and rotten wood. It mixed with the faint smell of blood coming from the room behind him, spreading out into the long and dark corridor.

He took a few steps out into the corridor. The broken carpet under his feet could not hide the desperate groan from the floor.

The cracked ground was covered with spider web-like marks, extending from the door to the dark end of the corridor, looking just like deeply-carved tentacles protruding from the shadows, slowly coming out from under the carpet on the dusty ground.

Mo Yi roughly swept through the corridor with his flashlight, the cold beam illuminating every bit of detail.

He pursed his lips, and the crease between his brows became deeper.

It was unlikely that he had entered an illusion—the purpose of an illusion was to deprive the players of their sense of reality and make them unknowingly follow the guidance of the illusion onto a road of no return. Therefore, the illusion in this instance would try to make the player feel as if they were not inside an illusion, instead of making drastic changes to the environment in the instance as it was doing now.

So, if it was not an illusion causing such a drastic change in the instance without warning…

Another possibility jumped into Mo Yi’s mind, causing his pulse to quicken and his breathing to hitch—

It was the start of a side storyline.

This was the most optimistic and most likely guess right now.

Jiang Yuanrou was an experienced player. If she could comprehend the prompt Mo Yi gave her when she was in the corridor just now, and realise that the key clue of this instance was her experience in her previous instance, then she would be able to start the side plot rather easily.

Coupled with the traces he’d found in the room just now——Jiang Yuanrou may have entered that room and found the key clues in it. Furthermore, she had met the Edwin who was locked in the room before too, so she definitely had more, and not fewer, clues than him…

Wait, the Edwin locked in the room!

Mo Yi’s brows and eyes twitched. He frowned and stared at the appalling situation in the corridor on this floor, feeling an indescribable uneasiness in his heart.

He subconsciously clenched his hand tighter around the flashlight, rubbing its hard metal shell with his cold fingertips.

Mo Yi took a step forward, and walked in the direction he had just come according to the route in his memory. His steps were hurried, and the sound of his footsteps echoed in the empty corridor. The surrounding walls reflected the echo of his steps, mounting the feeling of restlessness in one’s heart.

He walked down the long, dirty and dusty corridors, and manoeuvred through the branching roads in the corridors.

The further Mo Yi walked, the more frightened he became.

The walls in the corridor seemed to have been shaken by something and have all become distorted and skewed. Shocking cracks spread like spider webs above the head. The state of the entire corridor seemed to be one of a toy twisted by hands, and the ground was terribly uneven.

Finally, he came to the part of the corridor from earlier.

The originally lit wall lamp in the corridor had been extinguished, and there was a bottomless darkness in front of it. There is a palpitating silence in this darkness, making people feel as though there might be something hidden in the depths of the darkness.

Mo Yi took a deep breath. A thin layer of cold sweat appeared in his palm. He adjusted the flashlight in his hand, then walked towards the depths of the corridor without hesitation.

Everywhere where the light landed on was a mess, and it seemed that the further he looked, the worse the situation in the corridor was—the floor was scattered with bricks and dust which might have fallen from the ceiling, and the dirty wallpaper was rolled up to reveal the cold grey wall plaster beneath, and the whole corridor was filled with a smell akin to that after a disaster.

Mo Yi’s gaze lingered on the wall to his right for several seconds.

There was a large mirror there, the blurred and dusty mirror surface covered with a messy and dense number of cracks.

And in the corner of the mirror, through the thick dust and dense cracks on it, one could see an incomplete and blurred palmprint printed on the surface of the glass—this should be the ‘window’ that Edwin let him see through before.

He looked inside, and there was no other corridor or any blood-red doors. Only his own reflection was shown in the centre of the cracked mirror, and the light in his hand was the only light source in the corridor, reflected into countless blinding spots on the shattered mirror.

Mo Yi’s Adam’s apple bobbed. His throat felt dry, and there was a burst of burning pain accompanying his movements.

He exhaled slowly, then turned his head to glance at his side—

Although he was mentally prepared, Mo Yi still gasped when he saw the scene in front of him.

The wall of the room that Edwin had been locked in was completely twisted. The door was squeezed out of its frame and several pieces were scattered on the ground. The iron plate was lying in the dust not far away, leaving only half of the original wooden plank still attached to the lower door hinge, hanging unsteadily in mid-air.

The black and twisted door frame grinned at Mo Yi, revealing a silent and mocking laugh.

Mo Yi only felt that his breath was stuck in his throat. his head was a little dizzy, and he was a little suffocated for a while.

…the door opened.

Before his confused mind could react to the situation in front of him, he saw a pale hand stretching out from behind the door without warning, grabbed Mo Yi’s arm suddenly, and pulled him into the room!

Mo Yi only felt a sense of dizziness exploding before his eyes. His back hit the cold and hard wall heavily, and the twisted and uneven surface dug into his back, bringing a burst of unbearable pain.

A pair of hands clenched his arms tightly like an iron vice, pinning him against the wall and rendering him unable to move.

Mo Yi wanted to struggle subconsciously, only to hear a familiar voice in his ear.

“It’s me, don’t make a sound.”

Jiang Yuanrou?

Mo Yi’s eyes widened slightly due to surprise. For a moment he even forgot to resist. A force pulled his flashlight away and with a ‘click’, the beam of light disappeared instantly, plunging his vision into darkness.

And in this darkness, only the messy and intertwined breathing of the two people remained.

Jiang Yuanrou’s breath trembled slightly. She leaned close to Mo Yi’s ear, and said quickly in a low voice.

“Now I finally understand the connection between this instance and my previous instance…”

She paused, then added in a low voice. “Thank you very much.”

Mo Yi held his breath in the dark. He raised his eyebrows slightly and asked in a breathy voice, “Have you opened the side plot?”

Jiang Yuanrou’s breathing hitched. After a pause, she said hastily, “Yes… but I didn’t actually want to at that point in time…”

Halfway through her sentence, she suddenly stopped, then added in a serious tone.

“This is not the time to be talking about this. We have more important things to tackle right now.”

Then, before Mo Yi could say anything, Jiang Yuanrou continued speaking at a faster pace.

“The boss of this instance is the same person as the boss of the previous instance, both of whom are Edwin. Edwin’s father was a serial killer. He locked his victims in his basement for torture. Edwin was also the object of his father’s perverted desires when he was a child. Later, his father was arrested and locked up in a mental asylum, he was also sent to a foster family to grow up.”

Mo Yi listened quietly, his gaze staring into the darkness thoughtfully—

According to the prompt that ‘up is down’, then although this floor is the highest floor, it should be the deepest level of Edwin’s consciousness, which was the corridor the child knew his father used to conduct murders on, so the boss on this level was Edwin in his childhood.

He heard Jiang Yuanrou continue.

“Edwin’s foster family didn’t treat him well. His foster mother didn’t abuse him as directly and violently as his father did, but treated him in another cruel and covert way…”

She paused, then added, “I think it is precisely because of this extreme split between patriarchal and matriarchal rights that Edwin later developed those two personalities, one male and one female.”

Mo Yi leaned against the wall and listened quietly. The cold touch of the wall penetrated through the texture of his thin clothes, and he could almost feel the trembling of Jiang Yuanrou’s palm next to him, only to hear her speeding up again as she continued.

“What I said just now was a summary of the clues of my previous instance, and the further information I unearthed in this instance complemented my understanding of Edwin’s subsequent experience—”

Mo Yi frowned slowly and interrupted her in a low voice.

“Wait a minute. You are able to tell me about your experience in your previous instance now?”

Jiang Yuanrou’s facial outline looked a little blurred in the darkness. She glanced at Mo Yi, then shook her head hastily, only to nod again.

“It is a little ambiguous… What this game doesn’t allow players to communicate is the instances that players have experienced before, but after opening the side storyline here, the two instances have been merged by default, and the game will naturally not prevent players from discussing the clues in their current instance.”

She paused, and continued, “This is the only advantage for me to open the branch line in advance.”

After finishing this explanation, Jiang Yuanrou didn’t wait for Mo Yi’s reaction and immediately moved back to the earlier topic. “Edwin was later admitted to medical school. The methods he chose to use to treat mental illness was very extreme and was stopped by the hospital, so he chose to go back to his father’s old house and conduct experiments in private—”

Mo Yi pursed his lips. He recalled the pile of corpses in the room just now.

He heard Jiang Yuanrou continue.

“For some unknown reason, Edwin later changed from using extreme methods to treat mental patients to conducting murders, and later, he was arrested and diagnosed with split personality.”

Jiang Yuanrou just finished speaking, only to hear the familiar robotic voice coming from his ear.

“Dang dang dang dang! Congratulations to player No. 02 Mo Yi for unlocking the hidden plot of this escape game. The side missions are open. Completing the side missions will reward you with generous points. Please keep working hard!”

Hearing the robotic sound in the air, Jiang Yuanrou seemed to relax a bit. With a deep breath, she let go of Mo Yi’s palm, took a few steps back, and then said in a deep voice.

“In this instance, up is down. We seem to be close to the ground now, but we are actually going deeper.”

She stopped abruptly, then turned to look at Mo Yi with a deep look.

“If we want to leave Edwin’s spiritual world, we have to go back—”

Go back?

A ridiculous idea flashed through Mo Yi’s mind.

Before he could ask, Jiang Yuanrou stared at him in the dark and said in a low voice.

“Yes, go back to -3F.”