The Midnight OwlCh6 - Touching Base

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The four of them jogged out of the park, into the night. Right outside the park was North Andeli Street; both the plazas lining the street and the residential communities in the area were all in deep slumber. There were only dim streetlights aglow, beaming down at the fallen leaves on the pavement.

“Now what?” Kuang Jinxin asked, panting as he wiped a layer of sweat off his face. His skin was flushed from wearing a thick winter coat and their impromptu night run. lO3IFx

Wu Sheng checked the time on his phone and raised his eyes. “There’s three more hours until daylight. Let’s find somewhere to sit down, we need to go through this thing from top to bottom.”

“What else is there to go through?” Xu Wang was already feeling a lot better with his feet back on solid ground, away from that enigmatic place and back in good, old reality. He was keen on lifting his head to the sky and wiping his mind clean of all the unnatural events that had transpired. “Let’s just call the cops!”

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“It’s no use.” This interjection came from Sun Jiang, who was digging around in his pockets. His hands came up empty, so he turned to his teammates. “Anyone got a cigarette?”

Two of them shook their hands, and the other said, “No.” 3BDdr7

Sun Jiang’s already-grim face clouded with a tinge of vexation.

Meanwhile, Xu Wang was still mulling over what he said. “Sun Jiang, what do you mean, it’s no use calling the cops?”

Sun Jiang let out an involuntary yawn, his exhaustion apparent, then pointed at himself and Kuang Jinxin. “Yesterday the two of us called the police, but as soon as the call went through, our heads started hurting. I thought my head was going to explode, I’ve never had a migraine that bad before. Never mind talking, I could barely hold on to my phone!”

“Both of you were like that?” Xu Wang felt like he was listening to a ghost story as he turned a questioning look towards Kuang Jinxin, who gave him a sad little nod.

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“What about you?” he asked Wu Sheng, unwilling to give up. “Were you in pain too?”

Wu Sheng shook his head.

Xu Wang, thinking he’d finally found somewhere to start, was about to keep questioning him, but then Wu Sheng clarified, “I didn’t call the police.”

“Why not?” afA3DY

“The two of them were in so much pain they were practically rolling on the ground, which was enough proof that calling the cops is a death sentence. Why would I make the same mistake?”

Xu Wang: “…”
Sun Jiang: “…”
Kuang Jinxin: “…”

If yesterday, each of them still harboured a vague hope that this was “all just a nightmare, everything will be better once I wake up,” their second trip to the snowfield made it clear to them that this business was not over. If a fight was unavoidable, then acting like sitting ducks was a foolish thing to do.

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.

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Cii bo atfw kfgf rtba vbkc ys Qe Vtfcu, ktb rjlv, “Rbcf bo atbrf klii kbgx. Qf cffv jc fzagfwfis delfa jcv fzagfwfis rfmgfalnf qijmf. Helfa, yfmjerf kf tjnf ab yf jyif ab atlcx mifjgis, jcv qglnjaf, rb kf mjc ibkfg atf mtjcmfr bo beg rlaejalbc ufaalcu bea.”

Xu Wang stared at him, eyes wide. “Bro, we’re victims here. Why would we help the perpetrator protect their actions?!”

“I can’t explain with simple words,” he replied, eyes sweeping their surroundings as if looking for something. Then, “Who do you live with?” dHX lR

“I live alone,” Xu Wang answered without thinking.

Wu Sheng nodded, relieved. “We’ll go to your house.”

Story translated by Chrysanthemum Garden.

Xu Wang: “…” This was a pit, it was definitely a pit, and he had to get the hell out!

Kuang Jinxin said, “I live nearby, but I have roommates…” fVOIz5

Sun Jiang said, “I also live nearby, but my wife and kids are asleep.”

Wu Sheng said, “I live at the office and it’s close by, but if we talk until morning and my coworkers see us, I won’t be able to explain things to them and it’ll raise unnecessary gossip and assumptions. It’ll damage my cold and aloof persona.”

Xu Wang was fairly certain Wu Sheng was very mistaken about the kind of impression he gave others. But nevertheless, he relented. “Come on, everyone follow me. It’s dark and the road is slippery, so watch out…”

Half an hour later, they group arrived at Xu Wang’s house. He rented a one-bedroom flat in an old neighbourhood. Even though the community was old, it couldn’t beat the fact that it was in a prime location, and anyway, the interior of the flat had been remodeled. Rent was not cheap, although Xu Wang, who didn’t have anyone else to worry about, could afford it without too much difficulty. 4rg 18

“Wow, Brother Xu.” Kuang Jinxin walked in first, and even just standing politely in the living room without barging into the bedroom, what he saw as he peeked left and right was enough to shock him. “Your house is so clean.”

The compliment made Xu Wang happy. He meant to respond, but Wu Sheng, who was the last to come in, let out a breath. “Goodness, I’m back in 222.”

“222?” Displaying a rare moment of acuity, Kuang Jinxin’s eyes flashed in understanding. “The two of you shared a dorm in high school?”

“Oh no,” Wu Sheng corrected him in a serious tone, “it was your Brother Xu’s own dorm. The other three of us guys were just borrowing it apparently, because we tossed our clothes all over the place, scattered our things all over, avoided clean-up duty, never remembered to take the rubbish downstairs; we didn’t have a concept of making the dorm our home.” s9GYrL

There was a clattering sound as Xu Wang tossed a pair of slippers at his feet and followed the offering up with an eye-roll. “You don’t have to be so vengeful. Did you write down everything I ever said into your little black book?”

Wu Sheng didn’t reply, only laughed as he changed into the slippers. He laughed with relish, his eyebrows raised high. Xu Wang couldn’t be bothered to mind him — he turned and went to pour four glasses of water, and when he returned, the other three men were already seated on the couch. He placed the glasses onto the coffee table and retrieved a chair from his bedroom.

The water glasses were filled with hot, steaming water, evoking a sense of warmth and comfort. At last, the four people who’d spent two consecutive days being tormented could settle down and talk.

Wu Sheng was the first to speak. Bickering was one thing, but now he was serious. “We can be sure of four things right now. One, everyone who is selected gets sent to that place at midnight whether they want to or not. Two, any injuries we receive over there come back with us to reality. Three, if we try to call the police, we get assaulted by a splitting migraine. Four, the location coordinates there and in the real world are parallel to each other. Distances are the same, and the coordinates are all the same. For example, when we land there from our house and then travel two kilometres there, when we come back to reality, the place we find ourselves is about two kilometres away from our house.” 9vaKfz

Suddenly, everything made sense. This was how Xu Wang ended up at the intersection near his apartment building yesterday when he bounced back into reality, and why today, he’d ended up further away in Qingnianhu Park. They had ridden some distance on the sleigh.

“What’s the use of knowing all this? What I want to know is what kind of place that is, and who is behind all this!” Sun Jiang interrupted, voicing his own desperate questions.

Of course, Xu Wang, Kuang Jinxin, and even Wu Sheng were also wondering these things.

But “wanting to know” was different from “capable of knowing.” an5ySP

“I don’t know. Nothing that we can deduce from what we’ve experienced answers those questions. But if we just let things go on like this, we’ll never figure it out.” Wu Sheng spoke so calmly that he sounded like he was asking the rest of them if they wanted to drink porridge.

Sun Jiang collapsed into the sofa in defeat, staring up at the ceiling. The veins in his eyes were red from fatigue, having not had any sleep for two nights. Xu Wang knew that the man was aware there weren’t any answers, but he still had to get them out of his chest, because their existence snuffed the air out of him.

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It was the same with all of them, including Wu Sheng, despite his outwardly serene disposition. The situation was certainly upsetting him, otherwise he wouldn’t look as he did back in the day when he was stumped by the last, most difficult question on their mock exam.

His competitive side was raring up, Xu Wang could tell. bULdp2

All in all, being flung into such catastrophic events would piss anyone off.

“We know those four facts, and there are four more things that are yet to be determined.” Wu Sheng continued laying out his observations, not put off by Sun Jiang’s interruption. “One, whether that place truly has control over our minds, for example, preventing us from calling the police. Two, if that place has some kind of protection mechanism in place, so that if one of its victims faces extreme danger, they’ll be bounced back into reality to minimise their chances of injury. Three, today when Sun Jiang and Kuang Jinxin landed back over there, their Stationery Box was empty. ‘Fish Tornado’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ were gone even though they hadn’t used them. Was it punishment for the two of them calling the cops? Or was there another reason for it? And finally, whether there are others who’ve been brought there along with us.”

“About that… task submission,” Kuang Jinxin brought up hesitantly, “when we got bounced back did you guys hear someone congratulating us on successfully submitting a task?”

Xu Wang nodded vigorously. “Not only that, yesterday I saw a notification of another team submitting a task in <Score>.” Yesterday, his brain had still been in a muddled state when it happened, but now, he was connecting the dots. o9NBTa

“Yes, I saw that too!” A brief burst of excitement flashed across Kuang Jinxin’s face, but then he quickly suppressed it. One could tell he was a child of manners and not accustomed to loud bursts of emotion. But he was clearly also a thinker. “I remember that team had 3/23 tasks submitted or something. There was someone called Yue Shuai… and another, Ah Nan or something…”

Xu Wang glanced at Wu Sheng. “Regarding the fourth thing, I think we can confirm that the answer is yes.”

Wu Sheng picked up a glass of hot water and blew on it a couple times, then took a sip. “That’s not enough,” he shook his head. “They might be people, or they might not. They might have been forced there like us, or they might have gone in voluntarily. Maybe we share that space, and we might bump into each other any time, or maybe they’re in some separate dimension and we’ll never meet.” Putting the glass back down, he sighed. “Without confirming those things, we can’t make any assumptions.”

After a few beats, Xu Wang acknowledged his own defeat. “It’s been so many years, but your pragmatism is always impressive.” zYanxp

Wu Sheng’s brows creased as if he found that unbelievable. “Just that?”

Resisting the urge to lunge forward and punch him, Xu Wang asked his last question, “Yesterday, that team submitted 3/23 tasks. Today when we cleared that stage, it announced we submitted 1/23. What do you think about that?”

“Same as you.” Wu Sheng shrugged as if he’d long since accepted reality. “It means we still have 22 stages waiting for us.”

Over on the couch, Sun Jiang sat up with a start. This time, he managed to keep himself from screaming, but the tragic, hopeless look on his face was more than enough to deliver his message. uS0wYI

Their discussion continued until 5 AM. Xu Wang learned that when he’d been bounced back into reality the first night, the remaining three had used Wu Sheng’s <Fish Tornado> and <Jingle Bells> to circumvent the bears and reach the coordinates, except then they hadn’t come in contact with the icefall, resulting in being forced to escape down the mountain. Before they’d even reached the bottom however, they were all shot back to reality, and at that time it’d happened to be 5 AM.

Based off that, it could be surmised that the other three landed back in real life about an hour after him — naturally, by then, Xu Wang was long gone, which was why Wu Sheng spent the entire next day painstakingly searching the city of Beijing for him.

That very night, Wu Sheng, accompanied by Kuang Jinxin, parked his car randomly in the last location where they searched for him, near West 5th Ring Road. Meanwhile, Sun Jiang had made up an excuse and left his house to take cover in a KTV — the man had never been in a KTV in his life — except when midnight came, the strange entrance had appeared again. One in the backseat of a car, the other on the wall in the KTV room. They’d appeared so casually and without any inhibition, like two dark shadows. And two minutes later, all three men went through the same motions to resist as Xu Wang that very night, but ended up sucked in anyways.

Hearing them recount their experience sent a chill through Xu Wang and completely dashed any hopes he had of “running away.” YEkxzV

At the end of their conversation, Kuang Jinxin suddenly said, “It’s kind of awkward to keep calling ‘that place’ ‘that place’. Why don’t we come up with a name for it?”

“Are you playing house here, trying to give that messed up place a name?!” Sun Jiang cried, speechless.

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Neither Wu Sheng nor Xu Wang cared. Or rather, it was more accurate to say that the name was already obvious to them—-

Xu Wang: “Its name was under the image of the owl head. I bet that’s what it’s called, so let’s just call it–” CZKkzs

Wu Sheng: “Owl.”

“Can. You. Not. Interrupt. Me.”

Wu Sheng: “Let’s start over. There was a name beneath the image of the owl head. I bet that’s what it’s called, so in the future, let’s call it–”

Xu Wang: “Owl!” lzcmuj

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