Chapter 275: Flower is Not a Flower

Click.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe released his thumb, and the lighter in his hand extinguished with a sound.

In the darkness, he bent down to pick up the corpse oil lamp on the ground, lifted a corner of the leather cover, and splashed the golden light onto the wall. On the surface of the wet stone bricks, a line of Chinese characters was clearly visible.

【Below is a dead end.】

A short sentence, with only 5 characters and 1 period, left Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe in doubt.

"If this line of text is regarded as a hint from an old player who has explored the underground area to a newcomer, then this hint is too short."

It is much shorter than the messages Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe found in wardrobes and on corpses before.

If this line of text was carved in a hurry when the person involved was in some dangerous situation and time was insufficient, then why is there such a redundant period at the end of this sentence that serves no purpose and cannot convey any information?

Besides this, there is another point of doubt.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe put down the leather cover, covered the corpse oil lamp again, and relit the lighter with his right hand.

Under the illumination of the lighter, the wet stone bricks on the wall became dry, and the color of the dust accumulated in the brick seams became lighter, but the carved Chinese characters 'Below is a dead end.' remained there, showing no signs of disappearing.

It is known that 【the Old Vanishing Castle destroyed by the flood】 and 【the New Vanishing Castle after renovation and reconstruction】 are two independent parallel worlds. The players are in the New Vanishing Castle, and the corpse oil lamp illuminates the Old Vanishing Castle. So what is going on with this line of Chinese characters that can be clearly seen whether illuminated by a lighter or a corpse oil lamp?

Does this line of text exist in both worlds simultaneously?

Click...

The lighter extinguished again.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe lifted the leather cover, looked down at his feet with the light of the corpse oil lamp. On the wet ground, some broken brick fragments were scattered. The candlelight was dim, and the handwriting on the wall was clearly identifiable.

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe stared at the period at the end of the Chinese characters and suddenly realized that he seemed to have ignored one thing all along.

"Whether it is the Old Vanishing Castle destroyed by the flood or the New Vanishing Castle after renovation and reconstruction, they are essentially the same castle. The main structure of the building is not significantly different from before. The stones are still those old stones, and the building is still that old building, without any Ship of Theseus-style replacement."

In other words...

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe held the unsharpened blade of the handicraft straight sword and, with the light of the corpse oil lamp, poked the tip of the sword onto the wet wall.

Cha cha... cha cha...

In the halo of the light, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe carved a line of text on the wall of the Old Vanishing Castle. Then the corpse oil lamp extinguished, replaced by the light of the lighter, which lit up again. The orange flame danced in the darkness, reflecting Aurore's soft-lined side profile and the two lines of text engraved on the stone bricks:

【Below is a dead end.】

【Really?】

The former was originally on the wall, and the latter was carved by Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe just now.

"The text I carved in the Old Vanishing Castle appeared synchronously in the same position in the New Vanishing Castle."

So there are no parallel worlds; is there only one castle here?

No, that's not right...

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe frowned slightly. The situation here made him feel inexplicably familiar, as if he had seen it somewhere else... but where? "... So that's it." A flash of inspiration passed, and Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe figured it out.

He had indeed seen strange phenomena similar to Vanishing Castle elsewhere. To be precise, he had personally used the granted items made using that kind of strange phenomenon—those two notebooks of Xia Yubing.

"The new and old castles are like the two notebooks that Xia Yubing and I each hold. The two castles will synchronize each other's states. One of them is located on the Apennine Peninsula in the real world, while the other is hidden in the strange world, forming a state similar to a 'surface and inner world'."

"The Vanishing Castle in the surface world has been renovated and reconstructed by the Europa government, while the Old Vanishing Castle in the inner world has not received any maintenance and still maintains the appearance of being destroyed by the flood... Assuming this is indeed the case, why hasn't the fully renovated state of the Vanishing Castle in the surface world been synchronized to the inner world?"

And why did the words he just carved appear on the walls of the castles in both the surface and inner worlds simultaneously?

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe recalled the message written in lipstick he found in the wardrobe at the beginning, and he had the answer in his heart:

"When I used Cynthia's identity and carried the corpse oil lamp to observe everywhere in the room at the spawn point, I didn't find the lipstick handwriting in the wardrobe. It wasn't until I blew out the oil lamp and used a flashlight to illuminate it that I saw the lipstick handwriting in the wardrobe."

That was a message that only existed in the surface world. The information left by the player who wrote with lipstick did not appear in both the surface and inner worlds simultaneously.

And the reason, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe had already guessed roughly.

"—Because the wardrobe was replaced."

Just like the chairs in the living room cannot be placed in the same position every time you eat, Vanishing Castle underwent renovation and reconstruction. The wooden furniture was soaked in the flood, either rotted and replaced with new ones, or repaired and put back. But even if put back, it wouldn't necessarily be accurately returned to its original position in its original room.

Just like tearing a page out of a notebook and sticking a new one back in, even if you continue to write on this new page, you cannot synchronize the handwriting to the other notebook.

Because this piece of paper doesn't belong to this notebook.

The renovation project of the Europa government's engineering team on the Vanishing Castle in the surface world, the new furniture replaced, the new paint applied, the new stone bricks patched... are all new paper stuck back on.

"And the stone bricks here are old. The load-bearing structure in the deepest part of the clock tower hasn't been replaced. The stones are still the original stones, at most an iron pipe for heating was replaced."

Precisely because of this, the text Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe carved appeared on the walls of the castles in both the surface and inner worlds simultaneously.

Wandering in this castle until now, Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe finally began to approach the truth in the mist.

But after figuring this out, a new problem followed:

"Those two notebooks were granted items that Xia Chan obtained through the Xia family's channels and connections. Then what about the two Vanishing Castles here?"

Are the two Vanishing Castles located in the surface and inner worlds also granted items like those two notebooks?

Or is the source ghost that caused that strange synchronization phenomenon lurking here?

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe remembered the hint he received when he first arrived here, the first of which was: 【Cannot be found by 'it'】

Does 'it' refer to those wandering ghosts in the inner world, or specifically to the source ghost that caused the synchronization phenomenon of these two castles?

If so, where is it now?

Seeing Seeing Ning Zhe looked up at the two lines of text carved on the wall, took a deep breath, carried the corpse oil lamp to the broken heating pipe, and jumped in without hesitation.

【Below is a dead end.】

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 276 =====