Ke Shaobin scratched his head and said, “Since the <Mona Lisa> hanging in the entrance hall on the 2nd floor is a switch of the illusion world, it will return to the original world after it becomes normal. We’ve been waiting here, how long should we wait for them?”
Yue Xingwen asked, “How long has it been since our groups separated?”
Ke Shaobin looked at the time display on top of Xiao Tu and said, “It’s already been half an hour.”
Jiang Pingce frowned and said, “With senior brother Zhuo Feng’s vigilance, he should have discovered that the world that are in is an illusion and looked for an exit as soon as possible or found a way to contact us, it doesn’t make sense that he still can’t be contacted after all this time.”
Yue Xingwen said, “Wait another 10 minutes.”
Everyone anxiously stood guard at the entrance.
Time passed minute by minute, but there was still no one coming out from the next room, and the chat channel still did not have a reply. Liu Zhaoqing and the others seemed like they were swallowed by this strange ancient castle without a trace.
After 10 minutes, Jiang Pingce suddenly said, “Xingwen, is there no time limit for this course?”
A chill suddenly rushed out of Yue Xingwen’s spine and he said, “That’s right! In the past, there were time requirements for taking any course, how many days to survive or how many days to solve the case. However, there is no time limit for this course at all, it only allows us to solve the mystery in the painting.”
Ke Shaobin said, “There is no time limit, which means there’s a possibility that we’ll be stuck here forever?”
Jiang Pingce’s face was serious, and he was silent for a moment before he whispered, “In the end, senior brother Liu and the others are in an illusion, or is it that what were are in is the illusion in the painting?”
Yue Xingwen thought for a while and said calmly, “When we entered the castle, there were four abstract paintings on the 1st floor, and the garden outside the castle was full of black roses, and we dug up the garden to find three corpses. We can take that world as world A, and the inconsistent with there as world B, not counting which one is an illusion world, and the only way to meet up with another group is to find the intersection of the world changes.”
Xin Yan said lightly, “I guess, the clues found by the two groups are different, and we can only continue to analyze them after summarizing.”
Ke Shaobin nodded in agreement and said, “When the mechanism rotates, the world will change. We have to find out the location of the mechanism and the law of the change of the mechanism, so that it’s possible to meet senior brother Liu and the others?”
Yue Xingwen said, “En, let’s go downstairs first.”
Jiang Pingce opened the window on the 2nd floor and directly used the coordinate system to let his classmates fly downstairs.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
The courtyard in front of the castle was full of black roses, and the layers of black petals bloomed in the moonlight, to everyone’s surprise—— the three corpses they dug up were gone.
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Aljcu Ulcumf rjlv vfmlrlnfis, “Wljb Rljc, vlu j qla jujlc lc atf bglulcji ibmjalbc ab ajxf j ibbx.”
Zhang Xiaonian immediately summoned an excavator and dug a large pit where the body was first found—— he remembered well that the location where the body was buried was right in the center of the rose garden.
However, his excavator dug all the way down, and the pits were dug to a depth of three meters, but he still did not touch the white bones and did not find anything unusual.
Yue Xingwen stood next to the big pit, pondering.
Jiang Pingce walked to his side, gently placed his hand on his shoulder, and asked in a low voice, “What do you think?”
Yue Xingwen was silent for a moment before saying, “Did we really come out of the illusion?”
Jiang Pingce said, “I remember that the skill description of ‘Golden Cicada Shell’ is just releasing control and a team displacement. At that time we were surrounded by those long-haired women, and you used the Golden Cicada Shell to take everyone to teleport to the entrance on the 2nd floor. The illusion world doesn’t belong to control skill, so ‘Golden Cicada Shell’ doesn’t allow us to directly leave the illusion world.”
Yue Xingwen nodded and said, “Yes.”
Jiang Pingce continued, “Although the hanging paintings on the 2nd floor have returned to normal, we have not returned to the original world. The intact garden, the disappearing corpses, all prove that we are not in the same old castle at the beginning.”
Yue Xingwen nodded. “Assuming that the castle at the beginning was the real world, we found a pool of blood on the carpet in the living room, and dug up the body buried by the murderer at the crime scene; After that, the moment we reached the 2nd floor, we had actually entered the world of illusions.”
Jiang Pingce said, “Yes. At that time, you saw that the corners of the woman’s mouth in the painting were moving, it wasn’t the illusions, but the person in the painting could really move. The difference between reality and the illusion world is that the painting in reality is dead, while the painting in the illusion world is alive.”
The others listened to their analysis and were confused.
Xin Yan pondered carefully for a moment and said, “That is to say, when we came to the 2nd floor, Xingwen said that he saw the corners of the painting’s mouth moving, and I thought that it was an illusion caused by the light of the spirit lamp, in fact, the painting was really moving. At that time, everyone had already entered the illusion world?”
Yue Xingwen said, “Yes. When everyone walks up to the 2nd floor, the first time they see the <Mona Lisa> hanging painting, it’s no longer the original world.”
Ke Shaobin scratched his head in confusion and concluded, “That means there are three worlds here?”
Jiang Pingce walked to the side, casually took a branch and began to draw on the ground, explaining while drawing, “There are not just three. We take every change in the painting as a sign of changing the world, then, in world A, there are four abstract paintings on the 1st floor, and the body is found in the garden, which is the scene of the crime.”
He wrote down an arrow and drew a circle ‘B’ behind it, and said, “After everyone went up to the 2nd floor together, Xingwen found that the person’s mouth in the painting moving, this is world B.”
Two more branches were drawn behind world B, writing C and D, and Jiang Pingce continued, “We are separating group in world B, we enter the left room and are teleported to world C, and senior brother Liu enters the right room and is teleported to world D.”
Jiang Pingce paused and continued to paint. “After we came out of world C, we found that the Mona Lisa in the entrance had changed its face, the roof began to drip blood, and the people in the painting attacked us, this is world E; We escaped from the people in the painting, and when we returned to the 2nd floor, the painting returned to normal, but there were no bodies in the rose garden at this time, this is world F.”
“After senior brother Liu and the others came out of world D, I didn’t know what they saw, but the world they were in musth have changed as well, treating it as world G…” Jiang Pingce’s drawings became more and more complex, almost like a serial maze.
Looking at the three-dimensional world branching map he drew on the ground, everyone finally came to a realization.
Lan Yarong said, “That is to say, except for the world A at the beginning, where we found clues to the body and determined it was the crime scene, the worlds we entered after that were actually an illusion in the painting? Is it even possible that we’re in one painting after another?”
Ke Shaobin laughed bitterly, “Then it’s like a comic, continuously matryoshka, and world C is divided into E and F, and world D is divided into G and H. Won’t it be endless, more terrifying than walking the maze?”
Judging from the branch map drawn by Jiang Pingce, there had been a total of 7 different worlds of A~G, only world A was the scene of the crime, and the rest were all illusions in which ‘the people in the painting moves’. As they continued to walk back, they divided more worlds, and the two groups of classmates would not only never meet, but might also go further and further, then end up trapped in the painting.
Yue Xingwen thought of this possibility and immediately made a decision, “We can’t continue backward, we have to return to the original world.” He looked at his teammates beside him, “Do you remember what changed around you when we first went up to the 2nd floor?”
Zhang Xiaonian whispered, “We came up the stairs, and then senior brother Xingwen said that he saw the corners of the mouth of the person in the painting seemed to move. Could it be that the stairs leading from the 1st floor to the 2nd floor are portals to world A and world B?”
Ke Shaobin’s eyes lit up. “Xiao Nian, are you thinking of the <Endless Stairs> course from the Faculty of Architecture?!”
Zhang Xiaonian nodded. “Yes, the original <Endless Stairs> maze course, after passing through a flight of stairs one would be transported to another dimension, the Penrose Stairs, which could not be realized in the 3D world, could be easily realized in the library. On the surface, the stairs on the first and second floors are connected, but in fact, when we walk through that staircase, we have entered another spatial dimension.”
Yue Xingwen patted his little junior brother’s shoulder appreciatively and said, “It makes sense! The painting in the entrance on the second floor is not the switch to the illusion world, the stairs leading from 1st floor to the 2nd floor, and every door in the corridor, are the teleportation points to the different worlds!” He looked at Jiang Pingce and said, “If we want to return to the original world, do we follow the original road and walk backwards?”
Jiang Pingce agreed and said, “This is a serial maze made up of illusions in the painting, in order to find the original point, we must go back the same way and not take a wrong step.”
Jiang Pingce was very clear about the path that everyone had traveled since entering the castle, and there was even a clear path modeling in his mind, and meeting Xingwen’s gaze, he immediately summoned the coordinate system, flew back to the window on the 2nd floor with everyone, and then came to the entrance and entered the door on the right.
The painting in the room was still <The Last Supper>, and Jiang Pingce led everyone back to the entrance and walked backwards to the 1st floor.
In everyone’s eyes, the blood all over the ground and the long-haired women floating out of the painting appeared again!
Blood was constantly dripping from the ceiling, and the long hair of the women who came out of the painting was like tentacles, and when they saw them, they began to attack wildly! Yue Xingwen was almost strangled by the hair instantly, Jiang Pingce’s eyes sank, his right hand raised quickly, and a sharp triangular ruler shot out from his palm, cutting off the hair in two swipes!
He stepped forward to hold Yue Xingwen’s hand tightly, and whispered, “Go!”
Everyone followed Jiang Pingce and flew directly to the 2nd floor. The painting at the entrance on the 2nd floor, sure enough, changed her face. The woman in the painting shed a string of blood and tears, Jiang Pingce took everyone back to the room on the left, and found that the familiar hanging painting on the wall was Van Gogh’s s <Starry Night>, and it was the same as what he saw at the beginning.
When he came out of the room again, the painting at the entrance returned to normal, but the woman in the painting seemed to raise the corner of her mouth slightly.
The corner of the woman’s mouth rose in a light arc, exactly as Yue Xingwen had seen it in the first place. At the time, he thought it was an ‘illusion’, but in fact, this was the clearest hint that the library gave them to ‘enter the illusion of the painting’!
Yue Xingwen took a deep breath and said, “Wait a minute.”
This was ‘world B’ marked by Jiang Pingce, and it was also where they were separated from Liu Zhaoqing’s group.
Yue Xingwen quickly tore off a piece of paper from the dictionary and handed the colored brush he had taken from the drawing room to Jiang Pingce. Jiang Pingce immediately redrew the world branch map he had just drawn on the paper. Yue Xingwen took it and wrote down a line: “Serial maze, return to the original path. The staircase is the portal, where world A converges—— Xingwen & Pingce here.”
He posted the paper next to the <Mona Lisa> painting in the entrance.
The two looked at each other and led everyone down the stairs back to the 1st floor.
On the 1st floor was the familiar hall, and the carpet next to the sofa in the living room had a pool of blood that Xin Yan found. Jiang Pingce asked Xu Feixue, “Are the four abstract paintings the same as what you saw at the beginning?”
Xu Feixue walked over and took a closer look, nodded, and said, “It’s exactly the same.”
Zhang Xiaonian walked to the window and looked outside, and said excitedly, “There is a big pit I dug in the middle of the garden, and there are three human bones next to it—— We are finally back!”
Thanks for the update 😍
So interesting
Complicated, but fun
Thank you for your translation 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍