Soon enough, the sea of blood is already submerging half the interior space of elevator Two, and still rising fast. The three Missiontakers, struggling the entire time, splashing about in the blood, has finally managed to get the elevator door shut. The rate of blood inflow has quickly diminished.
They are all currently neck-deep in blood.
Jiang Shuangmei’s expression is quite horrid. She feels extremely uncomfortable her whole body over. The sea of blood that has barged in out of left field has their clothes fully soaked. The cold, sticky feeling is making her imagine that there are as if countless vipers crawling on her skin.
Currently, elevator Two is a box of sloshing blood with three heads poking out of its surface, and all three have an expression of abject horror on their faces.
Jiang Shuangmei is commenting with a stiff tone, “why is this elevator Two only heading for floors that are so…”
Fei’s mouth remains shut. She does not want to try opening her mouth at all.
It feels like the blood stuck to her face would flow into her mouth the moment she does.
Shen Yünjü suddenly asks, though, “could the blood on the ground of the 21st floor, have come from the blood permeating down from this floor?”
Jiang Shuangmei, listening to the young man proposing the idea with a frigid tone, is feeling the chilliness descend her spine. She quietly affirms it, “perhaps… it is possible.”
Although that still doesn’t answer the question of what the body parts on the 21st floor are for.
… Decoration?
Jiang Shuangmei finds the morbidity of that thought amusing, but she is unable to smile at all.
A moment later, she asks, “now where do we go? All these… blood, in the elevator, needs to go somewhere.”
The three Missiontakers glance at each other, and Fei says, “the 21st floor.”
They still do not know where button one leads to, so heading to the more familiar 21st floor would be a better idea. It’s a pretty revolting place in its own right, but at least, there doesn’t seem to be any danger.
Jiang Shuangmei nods, and then looks over at the panel of buttons currently completely submerged in blood. She furrows her brows in disgust while moving her hand over, and tries to feel for the button leading to the 21st floor, which was twenty-five, and pushes on it.
A few agonising seconds later, the elevator stops, and the door opens.
The sea of blood in the elevator immediately drains out, until it has formed a thin layer across the whole floor.
Looking at this scene, Jiang Shuangmei can’t help but shudder and ask, “hey, do you guys feel like…”
“Don’t,” Fei, biting her lips, with her face in a deep, contrastive pale against her blood-soaked clothes, is staring straight into the floor. Her tone is colder than ever, almost like the desperate last gasps before death. She repeats, “don’t say it…”
Shun Yünjü glances at the two Missiontakers with soulless eyes.
He knows what they mean.
Look──Doesn’t the blood on the ground of the 21st floor, resemble what has happened after they ‘transported’ blood down from the upper floor?
This makes no sense. This makes no sense at all. They have been to the 21st floor already. They have seen how the blood on this floor has been there all along. But now, they have returned from where they went next, and poured blood onto this floor.
The act itself could have been said to have paved blood onto this floor in the first place.
It is a sense of logic that suggests a Möbius strip, making all three Missiontakers present feel seriously disoriented, in addition to fear.
Finally, the elevator closes automatically, and in a sense, also isolating and leaving their fears in the floor beyond.
Jiang Shuangmei suddenly turns to Fei to ask, “what were you going to say earlier?”
Fei, confused, asks, “huh…?” Then, hesitant, she asks, “The most Nightmare-like… Nightmare? …Nightmare?”
She suddenly realises what Jiang Shuangmei is getting at, and is looking at her with this shocked face.
Jiang Shuangmei, perhaps merely muttering to herself, quietly ponders, “in a sense, we could also be playing the part of a person in this Nightmare, to some degree.”
“That is impossible!” Fei retorts, “how could Nightmares possibly control what we do…”
She suddenly comes to a stop.
Jiang Shuangmei says, “you’ve got it,” she pauses, and then explains, “our action so far could only rely on either the elevator or the stairs. In short, there is a manipulability.”
Fei, knitting her brows, asks, “but then what’s the point? Even if we can be made to do things that affect the Nightmare’s scenes, so what? We are still only after the truth of this Nightmare, ultimately.”
Jiang Shuangmei looks like she still wants to say something.
But Shen Yünjü cuts her off, saying, “assuming that we really did cause the floor to be covered in blood on the 21st floor…” He stops momentarily, as he notices the two other Missiontakers’ faces going pale at the same time, but he still decides to continue, “but shouldn’t we still first consider the factor of time?”
Both Jiang Shuangmei and Fei stop to think.
Then, Jiang Shuangmei starts asking, confused, “so we first went to the 21st floor, where there was already blood on the floor; and then, we travelled up the elevator, and brought the blood from up the floor down to the 21st floor… Does this mean we travelled to the past?”
Shen Yünjü shakes his head to show that he doesn’t know either. He is merely throwing out suggestions.
Fei sighs, going, “don’t overthink things. The blood on the 21st floor might not even have had anything to do with us.”
The other Missiontakers can only nod.
Then, they finally look towards the panel in elevator Two, and Jiang Shuangmei finally pushes down, on that button she’s been mentally reminding herself of. The button reading one.
While the three Missiontakers in elevator Two have stopped discussing the issue with the origin of the blood on the ground of the floor, the stream is still currently host to a heated debate.
No matter what, the fact that the blood flowed down onto the 21st floor would perfectly resonate with what the Missiontakers encountered earlier. This would cause a mismatched sense of cause and effect –
Could it be, that their decision to dump the box of blood onto the 21st floor, is what caused the ground of the 21st floor to be covered in a thin layer of blood in the first place?
The audience are holding opposing views, and the arguments are flying through the barrage.
“im!po!ssi!ble! they already went and saw the blood on the 21st floor beforehand! it was already solidified! solid!”
The viewers debated lots of possibilities, but they can’t even settle on fundamentals like whether these instances can be attributed to coincidence or not.
Finally, the detective dalao concludes and shuts down everyone, “We will have to wait and see, when more elevators are found for them to head to other floors. Too bad Beibei is busy, or he’ll be able to help us out.”
That’s right, right now, Xü Beijin is busy dealing with other things.
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