For Xu Beijin, today was supposed to be an ordinary day of work.
He habitually referred to playing a role in a nightmare as going to work.
Nightmares were the dungeons that the mission enforcers were talking about.
Nobody knew when it started, but humans suddenly became players in the game "Escape." But this was a real escape game. Players could feel pain and death.
Everything didn't end after death. Players would be resurrected, and nightmares would start again. Until … they either escaped or fell into an eternal, endless cycle of nightmares.
Because of this, they became less and less fond of being called players. Instead, they called themselves mission enforcers. Their mission venues were these game dungeons called nightmares.
In the game setting, nightmares were real nightmares. The main scene of this game was a tall, narrow building called the Narrow Building. The residents of the Narrow Building were the owners of those nightmares.
Most of the residents of the Narrow Building were muddle-headed. They were extremely hostile and resistant to the mission enforcers. It seemed that to them, the mission enforcers were more like a group of outsiders who broke into the Narrow Building.
These outsiders were active in the Narrow Building during the day, inquiring clues about nightmares from the residents. At night, they sneaked around the residents' houses and went to challenge the residents' nightmares.
From the sound of it, it was understandable that the residents were hostile to outsiders.
But what the mission enforcers didn't know was that the residents of the Narrow Building were actually humans who were struggling in nightmares.
They played various roles in nightmares and in the Narrow Building. Without exposing themselves, they secretly gave outsiders clues about nightmares and promoted the development of nightmares. This was their mission.
Many residents were very enterprising, but Xu Beijin wasn't one of them.
In the Narrow Building, Xu Beijin's identity was the owner of a bookstore. In the nightmares, he often played such an identity. But in the nightmares, he was basically a useless extra.
The extras occasionally needed to provide some clues and say a few words to the mission enforcers in the nightmares. But that was the most they could do.
Xu Beijin had been an unidentified corpse lying on the ground many times. As the nightmares cycled, Xu Beijin, who was lying on the ground like a corpse, felt that he was really going to die …
On this day at work, the situation was not bad. He was acting as the owner of a bookstore.
Moreover, he had entered this nightmare many times to act. The owner of the nightmare was the owner of the doll shop next to his bookstore.
The shop owner was very enterprising. He always took the initiative to let the mission enforcers enter his nightmares. He gave them all kinds of clues in hopes that they could solve this nightmare once and for all.
Once the outsiders resolved a nightmare, they would be able to head to the higher floors of the narrow building. The owner of the nightmare would also be able to head to the higher floors if he secretly pushed the outsiders to resolve the nightmare.
However, he was defeated time and time again.
However, there was one advantage. Every time this doll shop owner opened a nightmare, Xu Beijin could also enter his nightmare and slack off.
Just like this time.
Xu Beijin slowly poured himself a glass of water. There were not many supplies in the narrow building, so it was the same in the nightmare. Then, he yawned. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he looked like he didn't get enough sleep.
In the eyes of the outsiders, the owner of the bookstore in the narrow building was indeed a monster who didn't know how to sleep.
Many outsiders wanted to enter his nightmare, but no matter if they talked to him during the day or poked their heads outside his bookstore at night, no one succeeded in obtaining any useful information.
Instead, they spread the news that Xu Beijin didn't sleep.
Since then, most of the utilitarian outsiders ignored this strange bookstore owner. Of course, there were still some who continued to pester him.
Xu Beijin felt that this was a very troublesome matter, but he didn't know how to use a blunt and polite way to make the outsiders back off. Therefore, this matter was in a deadlock.
Acting in the nightmare became a relatively easy thing to do.
No matter how many days they spent in the nightmare, only one night had passed since they returned to the narrow building. As an actor who always slacked off on the edge and had a deep knack for slacking off, Xu Beijin was even more satisfied.
He happily reached out and wanted to drink a mouthful of water.
The next second, his eyes flashed and he reached out to grab empty air. He was stunned.
The scene in the bookstore didn't change, but the water he poured was gone.
… What's going on! Was the nightmare restarted just like that?! Are this group of outsiders so lousy?!
I haven't even drunk my water yet!!
*
For the game streamer Ou Lai, this was undoubtedly a day to test his luck.
As a new streamer, he promised the audience that he would randomly pick a game from the huge game library to broadcast. When the name of the game appeared in front of his eyes, his heart skipped a beat.
"Escape".
This, no matter how he looked at it, was very malicious!
Ou Lai was undoubtedly a timid streamer who never dared to challenge any horror games.
However, the audience liked it very much, especially when they saw the streamer screaming and crying because of the horror game. Therefore, in Ou Lai's broadcast room, the small number of audience members urged Ou Lai to fulfill his promise and not be a coward.
Ou Lai could only agree and was prepared to bite the bullet. However, before the actual broadcast, he planned to try it out in private and mentally prepare himself.
However, as soon as he logged into the game, he felt like he was about to suffocate.
The character he was controlling was standing in a cramped little room. According to the introduction he saw when he logged into the game, this should be a doll shop.
However, this dark, damp, and shabby little shop didn't look like a warm and childish doll shop at all.
The dim, gloomy, and narrow shop was filled with all kinds of cabinets and boxes. They were stacked up shakily until they reached the ceiling. Dirty dolls were stuffed in every corner of the shop.
There were so many of them that it was enough to make one develop trypophobia.
There were other people standing around Ou Lai, but he didn't care. He stared at the dolls in front of him … who were also staring at him.
The dolls really looked like living people. The dark, soulless eyes stared straight at you. If the eyeballs were made of good material, they might even have a transparent reflection — for example, your figure would be reflected on them, just like a real eye.
The others seemed to be talking about something, and Ou Lai nervously looked at this strange doll shop. He was so panicked that he didn't even think to greet the others.
Suddenly, his eyes fixed on one of the dolls.
It was a doll in a glass display window. This doll shop had a display window. Perhaps it used to be very beautiful, but now it was full of dust and cobwebs.
In one of the display windows, the scene was decorated as an exquisite princess room. Although the cloth was yellow and even moldy, one could still imagine the beauty of the past. There, a doll was staring at Ou Lai.
She was sitting on the edge of the bed. She was about 50 centimeters tall and her hair was neatly combed. She wore a red dress and looked like a beautiful and delicate girl. She even innocently tilted her head.
Ou Lai stared at her as if he was possessed.
He obviously wanted to move his body, but because of fear and an unknown nervousness, he stared at the girl doll. He didn't even dare to blink.
He anxiously thought, Hurry up and look away! Why do I have to look at that doll! That doll … is so strange and tattered. What's there to look at!?
… But the doll suddenly blinked.
She stared at him and then, mischievously, blinked her eyes.
Ou Lai: "…"
He wanted to scream, but suddenly someone patted his shoulder from behind.
"Hey, you …"
Ou Lai's body trembled, and a strange sound came from his throat. Then, his body went soft, and he fell down.
The character he was using stopped breathing. Because he was frightened, the game equipment detected that his nerves were fluctuating too violently. For safety reasons, it forcibly disconnected him from the game.
… And this incident, of course, also frightened the person who patted him on the shoulder.
Or rather, the human mission enforcer.
The mission enforcer looked at his hand doubtfully and thought, Am I that scary? Did I just scare someone to death?!
But he didn't have time to think too much. Once someone died in the nightmare, the nightmare would restart in a short period of time. In less than three seconds, the scene in front of them changed, and they returned to their original state.
Ou Laix, who had left the game, was also a little angry. Although he was a noob, he didn't think he was a noob! How could he be so scared that he quit the game just because the doll blinked at him and someone patted him on the shoulder!
That was too embarrassing!
Thus, after a moment of panic, he angrily logged in again. He immediately turned around and ran out with his eyes closed.
He couldn't provoke him, but he could hide!
The moment Ou Lai stepped on the threshold of the doll store, he suddenly heard someone angrily shouting at him from behind.
Almost instinctively, he turned his head to take a look. Then, he saw that many of the dolls in the doll shop had all stood up. Then, with their short, furry, or plastic legs, they chased after him!
In an instant, Ou Lai was scared out of his wits. He screamed and didn't listen to the other mission enforcers' anxious and irritable shouts as he ran out of the store.
He panicked and instinctively ran to the nearest house to take refuge.
It was a bookstore and the door was half closed. Ou Lai pushed the door open and ran in while saying hurriedly, "Outside … outside —!"
His voice suddenly caught in his throat.
Inside the door, there was a fair-skinned man with dark circles under his eyes. He was very handsome, and his dark brown hair was slightly messy. Behind him was a deep and gloomy store with mysterious and old books stuffed messily in the bookshelves.
When the man heard the commotion and raised his head, he looked straight at the person who had come. His eyes were empty, like a demon that had walked out of hell. Because O 'Brien had disturbed his leisure time alone, he silently stared at O' Brien.
That pale skin, dark red lips, inhumanly handsome facial features, and those pitch-black pupils … They seemed to overlap with the eyes of the dolls that had scared him out of his wits.
Ou Lai: "!!!"
Ou Lai's eyes rolled and he fainted — his figure disappeared. He was scared out of his wits again and directly logged out of the game.
However, after he left, a certain area on the ground suddenly flashed, and a distorted area similar to a mosaic appeared. A few seconds later, the nightmare restarted and a spot of light inexplicably appeared on the distorted ground.
Sitting alone in the bookstore, Xu Beijin's expression was blank. He blinked and looked at the scene blankly.
What just happened?
He looked at the spot of light on the ground.
What was this?
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