Chapter 119

Li Cheng raised his gun and complained, "There's one thing I still don't understand—Pishi-Shuai brand vending machine, Pishi-Shuai corn juice, Pishi-Shuai laser weapon—why is this brand everywhere?"

"Because their company is the largest sponsor of the Narrative Prison. With the economy in decline, we must do everything to retain our major investor—every corner of the prison must reflect our sincerity."

The warden said matter-of-factly, "This is how our prison operates. Inmates need only fully devote themselves to serving their sentence, accepting fate, and rotting in their cells. But prison staff have far more to consider—investment attraction, maintenance, personnel, logistics. Every aspect must run smoothly to better support inmates' incarceration."

??? Even in the space age you still need investment attraction? And why does this sound so weird?!

Li Cheng's eyebrow twitched; he said nothing more, stepped back steadily while holding the Death Redemption gun, and retreated from the room with Grey Rain.

The wooden door slowly closed, and from the crack came the warden's mechanical voice: "Mind your time! Hesitate any longer and the entire prison will reset!"

Boom!

The door slammed shut. Li Cheng did not lower his guard until he had left the corridor and turned behind the wall, then he slightly lowered the Death Redemption and sprinted toward the lower-right cell.

Isaac One—or rather, the original Elsa—lay on the ground, hugging the rabbit doll, utterly lifeless.

Grey Rain stood beside it, staring blankly at the corpse ravaged by the Iron Plague virus. "She's dead?"

"Mm."

Li Cheng slowly nodded. "After she got the rabbit doll, there was nothing left worth clinging to."

"." Grey Rain's expression was deeply complex. She realized this corpse was herself—or once had been part of her—but memory gaps and blanks prevented her from fully identifying with Elsa or Isaac. Only an inexplicable, overwhelming sorrow welled up inside her.

"What do we do now?" She took a deep breath and turned to Li Cheng.

Li Cheng was slightly surprised. He had expected Grey Rain to remain lost in self-doubt much longer, but she was decisively resolute.

When reading books in the past, Li Cheng often indulged in wild thoughts, pondering what constituted self-awareness. For example, interstellar teleportation technology disassembles every atom composing the human body and reassembles them at the destination with identical quantities—after such teleportation, is one still oneself?

Or in a near-future where neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and neuroinformatics are highly advanced, if one uploads consciousness to a network cloud, is that uploaded self merely a reflection—or a copy of the self?

Such questions often appeared alongside: 【Is a centaur pregnancy human pregnancy or horse pregnancy?】

【The equator is so warm—why not build one up north?】

【I know the cute move of sitting and tilting one's head is adorable, but does Hawking really need to do it every day?】

He'd ponder them while using the toilet, killing vast amounts of time.

"Wait a moment."

Li Cheng flipped his palm and pulled out the 70∑ coin, stepped out of the cell, and returned minutes later—now wearing a Pishi-Shuai male outfit purchased from the vending machine for 70∑.

The tags hadn't even been removed; they bore extravagant slogans—The most breathable, most comfortable, most stain-resistant, most durable male apparel in the entire universe. Effectively adapts to extreme environments: vacuum, deep sea, radiation.

"According to the warden's logic, either we kill Isaac in Room Three, or we get reset and can never escape."

Dressed in the new outfit, Li Cheng shook it off and asked seriously: "If it comes to that, what will you do?"

"." Grey Rain shook her head very slowly. "I don't know. But I won't stop you. If things worsen, just escape on your own—don't worry about me. Everything here was caused by 'me'—it has nothing to do with you."

"Don't worry—it won't get that bad. Just do this, then that, and follow my lead."

Li Cheng smiled slightly, gave a few instructions, then straightened his chest and strode purposefully toward the warden's office.

Li Cheng smiled faintly, gave a few instructions, then squared his chest and strode toward the Warden's office.

He kicked the wooden door open with brute force. The warden inside jumped, and hundreds of mechanical eyes lit up simultaneously, charging high-energy lasers. "What are you doing? I warn you—"

Li Cheng fired his Bat Hook Gun, drifting through the air at an impossible angle, closing the distance rapidly, and pressed the Death Redemption against the warden's head, ignoring all the charged high-energy lasers.

Li Cheng fired the bat-hook spear, drifting through the air at an impossible angle to rapidly close the distance, and lunged in front of the Warden, holding 【Last Rite Salvation】 against the latter's skull. Treating all the high-energy lasers as nothing.

The warden's laser weapons, when aimed at Li Cheng's Pishi-Shuai outfit, automatically ceased charging and shut down.

"As I said before, if we treat the entire escape process as a puzzle game, then this Death Redemption is equivalent to a chance to reveal the answer—it can alter the solution sequence."

Li Cheng spoke mockingly: "For instance, I could use this gun first to break into the lower-left cell, obtain an 80∑ coin, buy a 10∑ rabbit doll and a 5∑ corn juice."

"Or I could use this gun to directly attack the vending machine and steal the doll, the corn juice, and this outfit."

"In the normal solution path, I'd have 70∑ left—exactly the price of this outfit. It resists vacuum, deep sea, radiation, and most crucially, it resists Pishi-Shuai-brand lasers."

Earlier, Li Cheng had ordered Grey Rain to stay put while he went to buy this outfit, then rushed back to the initial reversal room.

The ceiling of the reversal room bore a Pishi-Shuai laser identical to the warden's. Perhaps due to material, or perhaps because Pishi-Shuai Company deliberately designed its own lasers to be unable to penetrate its own apparel, the outfit remained intact under laser exposure.

Li Cheng could use the Death Redemption to obtain this outfit early, easily bypassing the laser trap in the reversal room—and now, he could ignore the warden's death threats.

Li Cheng could use Last Rite Salvation to obtain this outfit in advance and easily pass through the laser traps in the Reversal Room. He could also, as now, ignore the Warden's death threats.

If the warden had sweat glands, his forehead would surely be slick with sweat. "I'm the warden of this sector! Killing me will trigger an early reset—I'll revive, but your self-awareness will be damaged—"

"If you could truly revive, why panic? Judging by your demeanor, you probably didn't install sensitive pain receptors."

Li Cheng's index finger lightly rested on the trigger of the Death Redemption. "Let's retrace this escape cycle."

Reversal—Misdirection—Protagonist Effect—Continuity—Flashback—Warden's Office.

The fourth room—the Continuity room—contained nothing but a single button. That's strange, isn't it?

The Narrative Prison's logic is to set up a path to a successful escape, offering inmates a phantom hope while maximizing escape difficulty.

No matter how you look at it, it wouldn't just leave a button there and leave the engine room useless.

Unless—that wasn't Continuity at all, but Reversal or Misdirection.

He grinned. "Every engine room's sign is firmly nailed to the wall, giving the impression of 'absolutely correct.' But once doubt takes root, everything becomes subtle."

"Room One—with gravity traps, laser traps, and the anglerfish stool monster—appears to be the Reversal room, but is actually the Flashback room."

"Room Two—where I was made to hallucinate I was a comic character—appears to be the Misdirection room, but is actually the Protagonist Effect room."

"Room Five—showing the transport shuttle scene and depicting Isaac's final mission before retirement—appears to be the Flashback room, but is actually the Continuity room."

"Room Four—empty, with only a button—appears to be the Continuity room, but is actually the Reversal room."

"And this warden's office—you're in the Misdirection room."

"Wait," Grey Rain, standing behind Li Cheng, realized: "If this is the Misdirection room, then Room Three—the Protagonist Effect room—must be the real warden's office?"

Li Cheng smiled. "Exactly. If we use this gun to kill Isaac in Room Three, that's when the entire prison will truly reset."

Li Cheng smiled and said: "Exactly. If we took this gun and blasted Isaac in Room Three, THAT would truly trigger a reset of the entire prison."

The warden — or rather, the Hundred-Eye Mechanism of the Misleading Chamber disguised as the warden — said stubbornly: "Where's your proof? This is all your delusion."

"The first piece of evidence is in my head — too bad you can't see it."

Li Cheng shook his head; the quest log interface still displayed 【Phase Two Objective: Enter the five engine rooms, press the buttons, then proceed to the Warden's Office】.

He and Grey Rain had already pressed the buttons in all five engine rooms in a row and entered the 'Warden's Office,' but this objective still hadn't marked itself complete.

The quest log wouldn't lie to the player — which meant someone else was the one lying.

"As for the second piece of evidence—"

Li Cheng suddenly swung his left fist, slamming it dead-center into the Hundred-Eye Mechanism, right onto that unusually shaped red eyeball.

Bang!

The glass shattered, revealing a red button buried beneath the eyeball's shell.

This was the true Misleading Room button.

Without a moment's hesitation, Li Cheng slapped his palm down. Every small television on all four walls of the room exploded at once. The Hundred-Eye Mechanism itself also burst out with massive showers of electric sparks. All the eyeballs flickered violently, firing high-energy lasers.

The seemingly sturdy walls and floor, wherever the lasers swept across them, all bore deep, melted-through scars. If such a beam struck a person, it could easily slice their body clean in two.

A single dashing-handsome men's outfit simply couldn't block all the lasers — fortunately—

Hum—

Grey Rain, following the plan, liquefied her arm, reshaping it into a mirror-like surface, and held it in front of Li Cheng to help reduce the lasers' power.

Li Cheng, meanwhile, fired out his bat-claw grappling hook, carrying her with him as they fled the room, and with a slam shut the wooden door, sealing the high-energy light inside.

"We made it out."

Grey Rain let out a breath of relief, turned her head to look at Li Cheng — only to find him staring fixedly at her with a strange look in his eyes. Her expression instinctively stiffened. "What are you looking at?!"

Grey Rain's act of blocking the lasers was not without cost — her already-not-tall stature had subtly shrunk by another few centimeters; presumably a fair amount of her liquid metal had evaporated. At the same time, in order to dissipate the heat she had absorbed, her body surface was still beaded with half-melted droplets of metallic sweat.

She looked... a lot like an ice-cold cola taken out of the fridge on a hot summer day, with condensation beading on its surface.

(End of Chapter)