Chapter 105: Narrative Cage (Two)

Hey, hey, hey—what's going on here?

Cold sweat seeped from Li Cheng's forehead.

The so-called scripted mission is inseparable from the word "role-play." After a player is teleported to another world, they are usually given the identity of some native-world NPC. The Killing Field also intervenes at the right moment so that other NPCs won't notice anything off.

But—what's the deal with the two characters "Li Cheng" on this prison uniform?

【Phase One Mission Objective: Escape the single-occupancy cell】

【Mission Time Limit: None】

【Mission Failure Penalty: None】

【Mission Briefing Sent】

The system notification chimed in his ear at just the right moment. Li Cheng's expression sobered, and he listened intently.

【To combat the increasingly rampant smuggling, illegal fundraising, organized terror attacks, anti-civilization acts, genocide, and other criminal activities across the cosmos, the Multi-Plane Residential Committee (abbreviated as the Plane Committee) has invested massive resources, employing reality-distortion engines and narrative-ladder array technology to construct a super-prison called the "Narrative Cage."】

"Huh?" The corner of his eye twitched. Why are smuggling and illegal fundraising listed alongside organized terror attacks and genocide? Has the P2P model really spread from Earth to the entire universe?

Aliens play the financial markets too?

And what the heck is the Multi-Plane Residential Committee? How do those two words even go together?

【The prison's detainees include, but are not limited to: war warlords who have slaughtered over ten billion sentient lives, planetary lifeforms that take pleasure in devouring civilizations, star pirates who pilot warships to plunder across the stars, and native deities who revel in the blood sacrifice of their ignorant faithful.】

【But so-called heroes to one are enemies to another. The cases involving these super-criminals are overly complex, spanning vast stretches of time, and not lacking in massive followings. Even the Plane Committee's "Three Pillars" tribunal procedure cannot render a swift verdict.】

【Therefore, super-criminals often must be detained in the Narrative Cage for a thousand years or more before they can await their own trial.】

【Where, then, lies your own ending?】

The mission briefing ended here. Just a few short paragraphs, yet they revealed a flood of information.

"It's the Plane System again, and the Three Pillars—what's with all this Gao Da Shang nonsense?"

"If I remember right, I'm only level 8 right now. What virtue or ability do I have to be ranked alongside war warlords and planet devourers?"

Li Cheng painfully rubbed his brow and looked around again at the ten-square-meter cell. "Also, how is this plain, unremarkable cell supposed to hold those great beings?"

The Phase One mission objective's time limit and failure penalty are both "none"—that's not a good sign. Either it's hinting that not escaping in time will be very bad, or it's hinting that if he doesn't escape, he'll be locked up till death.

He turned around, sat along the edge of the bed, and looked down at the handcuffs.

These handcuffs weren't much different from common twenty-first-century models, using a chain-link structure and a double lock—in their initial state and when first cuffed, they're single-locked; after locking again, the catch closes, and at that point they can't be picked with tools like wire and must be opened with a key.

Li Cheng tried struggling, but even with his current strength, the handcuffs didn't budge an inch.

"Now I'm really Cheng the Prisoner. Lucky for me I'm pretty good-looking—even in a prison uniform, I'm still a pure-prison-style god among men."

He muttered this as he stood up, first glanced at the mirror, confirmed that the reflection was indeed himself, then paced over to the door in the corner of the room.

The door was two meters tall, alloy material, with no handle on the inside—only a keyhole. Above the keyhole was a baffle fixed in place with a chain.

The baffle could be tilted; once lowered, it revealed a short, wide gap, presumably for delivering meals.

Through the gap, he could see a fairly spacious gray-white space outside. The cell was separated from the wall at the far end of the space by roughly fifty-plus meters. At each end of the wall was a corridor, but due to the angle, he couldn't see where they led.

"Anyone there?"

Li Cheng called through the gap: "Hello, ohayo, Bonjour? There's an innocent person locked up in here. Hey, is there a guard around? Can you hear me?"

"My faucet is leaking all over the floor, and the light bulb has burst, and the live wire has fallen into the water and is going zzzt-zzzt with electricity—if nobody comes, I'm going to get electrocuted to death!"

His voice echoed through the space, with no response.

He thought it through clearly: escaping the single-occupancy cell is only the Phase One mission objective. The system will very likely assign him follow-up missions like escaping the 【Narrative Cage】, which will inevitably cause a huge commotion.

So he might as well use this time to figure out the operating rules of this prison—such as whether there are guards, patrol schedules, and so on.

Li Cheng called out for a while, with no feedback.

Just as he was about to take further measures, a cold, inhuman mechanical electronic voice came from the cell on the right: "…Stop being noisy. There are no guards here."

Hmm? So there are other people locked up in this prison.

Li Cheng's spirit lifted, and he asked in a clear voice: "Might I ask who you are—"

That voice said coldly: "Before asking someone else's identity, you should introduce yourself first. That should be your humans' social etiquette, yes?"

"Your humans"? In other words, the source of that voice either isn't human, or doesn't consider itself human?

Li Cheng paused briefly, quickly formulated a response in his mind, and immediately laughed aloud: "Hahaha, this one changes neither his name while walking nor his surname while sitting. I hate that heaven has no handle and earth has no ring. I am the pillar of jade upholding the heavens, the purple-gold beam spanning the seas, the one who turns back the raging tide when it falls and props up the great hall as it totters. Second-in-command under Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, known to all as the Black Duke, the Dark Lord, the Sith Lord Darth Vader!"

After finishing this speech, Li Cheng held his breath and waited for the reaction from the next cell—and this time it really wasn't a fit of mischief on his part. It was just that this 【Narrative Cage】 was set up so Gao Da Shang, and the ones locked up here are super-criminals like war warlords, star pirate captains, and evil gods. He couldn't exactly give his real identity, could he?

Other people's crimes—genocide, slaughtering billions, burning civilization ruins, abusing planet-busting weapons to wreck the cosmic environment.

He, an ordinary second-year high school student—his crime: using a VPN to browse foreign sites, and harassing law enforcement personnel while riding the subway (meaning petting the bomb-sniffing dog on the subway).

That would be way too embarrassing to say out loud!

"…"

After hearing this bewilderingly impressive patter, the voice from the right cell was silent for a moment, then said slowly: "No matter who you are, once you're in this prison, don't even think about escaping. Their power far exceeds your imagination."

"By 'they,' do you mean the prison's designers?"

Li Cheng's eyes lit up, and he lowered his voice: "Don't be fooled by my current predicament—out in the world, I'm a pretty big deal, a really big deal."

"How about we team up? You tell me whatever you know about this prison, and I'll help us get out."

"Heh."

The cellmate on the right let out a light laugh—whether out of contempt or bleak despair, unclear: "The last prisoner in your cell said the same thing. You'd better escape your own single-occupancy cell first before you talk."

"Alright."

Li Cheng didn't waste any more words. He immediately placed his right thumb on the door-frame baffle and pressed down hard with his upper body weight.

Crack!

With a crisp snap, his thumb dislocated on cue. He repeated the trick and dislocated his left thumb as well.

The cellmate on the right heard the sound: "Thumb-dislocation method? The great Dark Lord knows that trick too?"

"Mm, learned it from my partner when we were dating." Li Cheng laughed brightly and slipped free of the handcuffs without a hitch.

(End of chapter)