Currently, Xü Beijin is still searching for what is practically one grain of sand among tens of thousands, while also checking on the rest of the Missiontakers’ progress.

He can feel that his body and soul is approximately a quarter gone.

It’s an estimate only.

Even if many Missiontakers have managed to group back up and understand the truths underneath these strange scenes, and are heading for new Cell Nightmares increasingly quickly, but they’re still yet to stumble upon the one Xü Beijin needs.

While Xü Beijin is disappointed, he was mentally ready for this result.

Entering his Nightmare was itself a gamble, after all.

Even if he’s the Nightmare’s owner, all he can do is look for a particular Cell Nightmare, while also seeing where everyone is. He cannot dictate where the Missiontakers end up next.

Put more simply, he has the right to read these Cell Nightmares, but not to create, update or delete.

Well, he can enter the Cell Nightmares if he wants, but he can never break out of them ever again. No one can, unless…

There are two ways to exit his Nightmare.

First, reaching an Ending in his Nightmare.

These Missiontakers entered the grey fog via his Nightmare, unlike those who practically committed suicide by leaving the Tower and venturing into the grey fog.

In other words, these Missiontakers a literally dreaming – having entered the grey fog as some kind of metaphysical representation.

What occurs in the grey fog does not extend to their real selves, assuming, they can leave here alive.

Xü Beijin’s Nightmare has no resolution——Technically, anyway, but Xü Beijin has countermeasures he’s not too unconfident about.

He has a way of forcing an Ending in his Nightmare, if they can find the Cell Nightmare he needs.

Second…

Swaying NE.

Only NE can retrieve the Missiontakers from the trash heap. Maybe. NE has absolute, unchecked control over the entire game, but that is not really the case for the trash heap.

The great amount of useless data clogged here is also quite the burden on NE itself.

Asking NE to retrieve someone from here means asking it to find a short piece of useful data among a pile of useless garble.

Never mind a needle in a haystack, but this is more a needle from somewhere in the entire world’s oceans.

Xü Beijin can’t think of a third option.

Outside intervention? Modifying the logic of the game ‘Escape’?

Yeah, let’s stick to counting on NE, thanks.

Xü Beijin chuckles at his own derisive thoughts. Then he shuts his eyes for a single moment to relax a little.

Overstretching his mental capacity is tiring him out. Sleep should be a relaxing experience, even more so for Xü Beijin, who has not fallen asleep for a simply absurd amount of time. The moment of deep sleep he achieved just after he fell asleep and before he was pulled into his Nightmare, is quite the experience for him to savour once again.

Well, he opens his eyes back up soon enough, to deal with the troublesome reality.

Xü Beijin lets his mood simmer out for a little, then sighs slowly, and refocuses himself on the Cell Nightmares in which there are Missiontakers.

Other than Lin Qin, Mu Jiashi, Fei, Shen Yünjü and Ye Lan who he’s paid attention to, the rest of them are making good progress as well.

Mu Jiashi picked Missiontakers both following Xü Beijin’s requirements and also in terms of how capable the Missiontakers themselves are.

A-One and A-Two are already the crème de la crème of the top Golddigging organisation, but the performance from the rest of the Missiontakers are no worse compared to them at all.

Even the ‘Zombie’ Shen Yünjü is extremely experienced. It is simply that he does not participate in other Missiontakers’ discussions, or generally care about whether the Nightmare is resolved well or not.

In any case, the capable Missiontakers have discovered the relationship between Cell Nightmares and the ‘doors’ soon enough.

They have understood that, for the door to appear which lets them on their way, they need to figure out some sense of the ‘truth’ behind the Cell Nightmare;
And usually, when they’ve figured out the truth, they’d have a good idea of where to find such a door already.

Also, even if they have all suffered amnesia so severe they cannot even recall where they come from, but they are all able to perceive some form of… hint from their instincts, perhaps?

They are not irrevocably handicapped, because occasionally, they find themselves spouting information that can only come from the memories they have forgotten by instinct or coincidence; maybe it’s an effect of the grey fog, or maybe, NE is helping them along?

Xü Beijin isn’t too sure which one it is, since he has never been in his own Nightmare before. All he knows is the mechanism by which it operates, but not how the Missiontakers will fare inside, and he has never let anyone inside up to this point.

He suspects it’s the latter, to be honest.

Even the Missiontakers know to suspect NE for having manipulated their brains and memories, naturally Xü Beijin would know and question even more.

Rubbing his chin, he wonders if it is actually true that NE is completely on their side.

But why? What could change NE’s unwavering stance after all these years?

NE is an artificial intelligence. He is no human, who would be home to countless contradictory thoughts fighting for dominance in their minds.

Artificial intelligences have a simple, straightforward mind. It has one objective, set from the very beginning of its manufacture…

Here, Xü Beijin’s thoughts grind to a halt for a moment.

He has a guess. For how farcical and laughable this guess is, Xü Beijin feels just as much deep sorrow thinking about it.

And, his mind knows, that this guess, may actually… be the circumstance that changed everything.

Here, Xü Beijin sighs in sadness. As he’s alone in the grey fog, he simply lets his disappointed, defeated self show freely. Humans. Ha, what a joke of a species.

They live in a theatrical act, go through dramatic melodrama, until they meet a laughable end.

No. To live, to survive, is never laughable.

It’s hard. It’s fake. It’s tedium. But living, means one holds hope. When all of them, all of humanity, are living in a fictitious game, a game where one cannot die, and cannot exactly live…
Does a fake reality have any meaning to it?

Xü Beijin once again asks himself the pointed question – does he think a constructed, artificial reality, has any bearing to anything?

He has no answer.

Especially when… it’s highly possible, he will never be able to leave this artificial reality.

Once again, he remembers what Lin Qin told him.

Lin Qin told him, that if Xü Beijin cannot leave, he will stay with him.

But… Xü Beijin thinks, and wants to tell Lin Qin no, he cannot. He cannot stay with him.

This is a slow, gradual way of killing oneself——As slow as an eternity feels like. Death awaits him, beyond a finish line he will never be able to reach.

They will get closer, but they will never reach it.

For as long as this game exists. For as long as NE still has a source of energy. For as long, as signals would fire in their brain’s nerves.