Chapter 2290: Time Slices
Doors opened rapidly one after another, and after opening, they did not close in time. Since the doors on both sides of the rooms were opposite each other, the subsequent rooms formed a straight line from the doorways. A single room was less than twenty meters long, and fifty rooms stretched a thousand meters. At a thousand meters, even a player with the best eyesight could no longer clearly see objects at that distance, let alone rooms that were completely identical. Standing at any door and looking forward, it all resembled a bottomless, endless well.
Xu Huo opened five hundred rooms in one breath before stopping again. Looking back, because each room had a three-hundred-sixty-degree light source, the end of his field of vision had turned into a tiny white spot of light, like a narrow tunnel... The rooms were perfectly straight, with no angular deviation, and there was no circular repetition.
Seeing this, he couldn't help but turn to look at the other door. Behind this door, were there absolutely non-repeating, similar rooms?
Or did it require the player to invest enough time and energy to reach the end?
"Click!" He opened the next door and saw two players lying on the ground.
Sensing someone's arrival, the two lifted their eyelids, glanced at him, and then closed them again.
"Have you gone any further ahead?" Xu Huo asked.
The player on the left had his hands folded over his abdomen, lying peacefully. Without opening his eyes, he said calmly, "I turned back from ten thousand. At the very least, I can tell you that in the first nine thousand rooms, there is nothing except corpses."
"Ten thousand?" Xu Huo seemed startled by this number.
"It should be ten thousand, maybe a few less, but not more." The other said, "Every thousand rooms, I dropped a bead I carried with me. Although I couldn't find them when I came back, I did drop twelve... My bracelet is gone too."
Xu Huo looked at the other person. "In the rooms ahead, are the corpses all the same?"
The player on the right had long hair. For some reason, while lying on the ground, he had separated his hair into strands and spread them out on the floor, making him look a bit like a sliced sea urchin.
"The degree of decay is different each time. The difference is like fresh meat from yesterday and meat from today that has spoiled but doesn't look it yet." The long-haired player also answered with his eyes closed.
Xu Huo didn't leave. Instead, he asked them, "Aren't you planning to go back?"
"Whatever happens, happens." The player on the left said, "Dying here isn't much different from dying in the first room."
"At least it's quiet here." The long-haired player on the right added.
The two just lay there, with no intention of getting up.
Seeing that they weren't going to say anything more, Xu Huo sat down on the spot to rest.
"Aren't you going anymore?" After a long silence, the player on the left asked.
"These rooms are going to refresh soon. I plan to wait for the refresh before continuing." Xu Huo told them truthfully.
Then the room fell into another silence.
After an unknown amount of time, the player on the right spoke up faintly, "You seem full of energy, so you must have just come in. Do you have any food you can share with me? I'll trade you some items for it."
"If he trades, I'll trade too." The player on the left immediately said.
Xu Huo didn't carry much food with him. Originally, Mr. Dong had prepared some high-energy emergency rations for him, just in case he encountered a copy without food. Although the game could bring the player's personal belongings along, it didn't hold much.
He took a sugar cube from his backpack, broke it in half, and gave it to the two of them.
"You wouldn't happen to have brought a lot of water, would you?" The two, who had sat up abruptly upon seeing the food, stared intently at his small backpack.
The backpack itself was an item, with no special effects. The fabric was fireproof and insect-proof, and not easily cut by sharp tools. Since items couldn't be used, some storage containers that could hold small amounts of food and water hadn't been brought out, so water was still honestly brought in plastic bottles.
When they saw him take out the water, the two players' eyes froze. Not letting them get close, Xu Huo used the small cup that came with the plastic bottle to give each of them a cup.
"A little more." The long-haired player licked his lips.
"Can't do it." Xu Huo said, "I don't have much water either. Without food, I can last two more days, but without water, I can't."
The two gracefully stopped pressing.
Players from Buliucheng would usually prepare some food and water on them, but due to the experience of the first game, most players had relaxed a bit in this regard. However, given the situation here, no amount of food and water would be enough.
"Never mind food and water, there isn't even a bathroom here." The long-haired player said, "If it weren't for the refresh every twelve hours, I don't know how bad the stench would be. It's like they don't treat players as people at all."
"If they wanted to kill you, why would they care about your eating and drinking?" The player on the left sighed, "But treating advanced players like this is a bit inhumane. Killing someone is just a matter of a single blow."
"I can't figure out the purpose of this game either." Xu Huo looked up at the hanging corpse beside him. "Is it just to make players die without dignity?"
"I have a bit of an idea about that." The long-haired player took out a small comb he carried with him and said while combing his hair, "The material of the rooms is very special. The ceiling, floor, and walls all look like they're pieced together from square materials, but there are no gaps. They're not easy to scratch, and even harder to damage. What's outside the walls is unknown, but the rooms stay bright. It's not that these materials emit light on their own; it's that all the rooms should be in a bright environment."
"Since there's no difference between the rooms, the only key must be those gradually decaying corpses."
"The degree of decay of the corpse in each room is different. It looks like different states of the same corpse over time. This is clearly related to time power."
"If you ask me, each room is like a time slice, like a movie paused on a single frame, only this frame has turned from an image into an actual existing space."
"It's a bit like using time as the fourth dimension. We're trapped on this timeline, so we can never reach the end, because for this room, time itself has no end."
"So there's no way out?" Xu Huo interjected.
"The change in the corpse should be some kind of hint." The long-haired player said, "Letting us understand that we're on another dimension. But as for what exactly the hint is, I haven't figured it out yet."
He finished speaking and tilted his chin towards the player on the left. "What do you think?"
"I also think the third game isn't that boring. To be honest, if you have this kind of power, why go to such trouble to kill a few players? Using it here feels like overkill." The player on the left sat cross-legged. "It must have a purpose. Looking on the bright side, its existence might itself be a kind of guidance."