Wu Jiu stopped, knowing that such a critical choice could only be made by Bai Wu.
Bai Wu seed to enter a trance, his eyes fixed on the three boxes, motionless.
"The Manor is watching . As soon as I touch one, it signifies a choice. Even though Dwarf and I are here, I guess we won’t get a second chance."
"The note from the eyes is the question itself. Cain’s cryptic symbols, as seen before at the Ninth Hospital and Twisted Jungle, seem to be a kind of ability that the eyes can’t provide specific information about, perhaps related to the talent of The Deceiver?"
"I must deduce what’s inside these three gift boxes based on their size and the things I’ve encountered these days, before making my choice."
Fifteen seconds later, Bai Wu walked up to the first box, the six-inch one.
"It’s a cake. The thing most resembling a gift that cos to my mind, and the right size, is a cake."
Bai Wu’s right index finger was pressed against his chin, nearly leaving an imprint of his nail.
Wu Jiu was completely bewildered throughout.
He indeed heard the little girl’s remark about choosing a gift, but he had no clue what was inside these three things.
"If it’s a cake, it just so happens I heard today that Lin wanted to eat cake. Sothing must have happened on the little girl’s birthday that caused her to miss out on the birthday cake, leaving a permanent regret."
"Given the data at hand, the cake should be the most likely correct choice, but this could also very well be misleading guidance."
Seven hundred years of regret, in a Manor where food supplies were of no concern and parents were almost at her beck and call, wouldn’t she be able to make it happen?
Bai Wu quickly decided that the cake was a false lure.
His gaze then fell on the second gift box, long and rectangular.
"Of things I’ve seen in the Manor, there is one that fits perfectly with it. I can’t be a hundred percent sure that this thing is that thing, but if I choose the cake, I’ll probably be trapped here forever, and if I choose this, I might et it tonight..."
Wu Jiu noticed Bai Wu’s gaze shift to the last, palm-sized square box.
"What are the first two things?"
"A cake, and a saw."
Bai Wu was quite surprised that he said it so directly. Wu Jiu hadn’t expected these to be considered gifts at all.
Without offering Wu Jiu any explanation, Bai Wu continued to ponder the last item.
"The cake and the saw could represent selfishness and revenge. If the master of the Manor really wants us to stay here forever, it shouldn’t leave a correct answer."
"If this palm-sized thing truly is what I think it is, then does it an that little brat does have regrets?"
In the end, Bai Wu’s hand still chose the box the captain had initially thought of touching, the most delicate gift.
At the mont of contact with the box, both he and Wu Jiu heard a sound of crying.
Bai Wu unwrapped the box bit by bit, not tearing off the wrapping violently.
Wu Jiu asked:
"What is it? Did you pick the right gift?"
"You could say that I did."
It was only when two objects resembling folded paper appeared that Bai Wu was certain he had passed this challenge.
One piece of paper was thick but had been torn into many pieces, then patched back together bit by bit.
The other paper was regular stationery containing a ssage left by Cain.
Wu Jiu and Bai Wu had different experiences; Wu Jiu had had more significant contact with the man with the electric saw, while Bai Wu had received information given on the television.
Still, Bai Wu had more information about the man with the electric saw than Wu Jiu, of course, including the most important piece of news—
The citizens protested they couldn’t board the ship.
To board, naturally, one needed a ticket. And the final gift was the ticket.
This ticket was not large, only the size of a palm, like a card, yet it was what countless people desperately fought over before the apocalypse.
Bai Wu had originally guessed that this might be the ticket, and now he had confirmation.
The past of the family of three was almost pieced together by him.
In 2023, on the daughter’s birthday, this seemingly perfect family finally began to fall apart over sothing.
The woman or the daughter, or perhaps both together, tore up the ticket, an act which infuriated the man and then he caused an irrevocable tragedy.
Without the ticket, the family of three would probably have to stay here forever, but the outside of the Manor might already have been taken over by the Evil Fallen...
They were about to face the predicant of food shortages...
The deductions in his mind were subconscious, and Bai Wu did not delve into the many issues.
There were still many details that did not match up.
But if these details really matched up, the truth might be cruel beyond imagination for everyone.
Bai Wu wouldn’t mind, he had given up delving into it because Cain had left a letter.
...
...
"The fact that you found this place is truly impressive. You solved a puzzle that I didn’t solve at the ti, so as a reward, I want to tell you sothing—I have been alive since the Pre-Tower Era."
"Having seen Dandelion’s notes, you might scoff and say, ’Is this supposed to be a secret?’"
"Well then, I’ll give you another secret as a bonus. In the fifth level, there live many people as healthy and long-lived as I am. We are perhaps the strong proof of ’the scourge living for a thousand years’? Compared to , they are far more evil."
"You’re wondering if I’ve wandered off-topic? But I haven’t. Regarding what happened back then, I won’t tell you all the answers. You have to figure them out on your own. However, since you found the ticket, you at least can leave this place, but how you leave will depend on your performance. Anyway, don’t make wait too long inside the High Tower."
"I’d really like to know whether you and that man, or woman, did certain things together; it’s a pity, really. The physical rules of the Manor are not the sa as those outside the High Tower, so so of my tools can’t be used to monitor you. But tornting you sure is interesting. Or perhaps you don’t see it as tornt because you enjoy it? After all, when it cos to physical appearance, that woman in your team is quite beautiful, isn’t she?"
"The role you are playing is that of the one who loves won the most~ His fervor for toying with won far exceeds what you and I can imagine. Ah, I’ve said so much. There is sothing I need to tell you—in the Director’s office on the twentieth floor, in the largest room in the corner, there is a safe. Don’t worry, it’s not very secure anymore. However, the contents inside are still there."
"It’s a bottle filled with a strange solution, marked with numbers from nine to forty. The one with nine—was completed the day before a certain child’s tenth birthday."
At this point, Bai Wu’s eyes suddenly widened.
"Guess who the child is?"
There was no anger, just pure surprise, but there was still a feeling of disgust in Bai Wu’s heart.
Cain was The Deceiver, he held a skeptical attitude towards Cain’s words, not completely disbelieving, yet not wholly accepting either.
But Bai Wu was always wondering what the tipping point for family breakdown was, and now it seed the tipping point had been found.
"My husband sses around with other won outside, as a wife, is it not reasonable for to have an affair in the empty villa?"
"Ah, this damn whore dares to cheat? I find won because I’m wealthy, I provide for her, how dare she disgrace my na? But it doesn’t matter, I’m about to board the ship anyway, so I might as well give her one last gift."
"Maybe she has been cheating with other n outside already? Maybe this brat who annoys all day isn’t even my own flesh and blood?"
"But I can still make her mine."
Cain’s words almost confird Bai Wu’s suspicions.
Only the most vile of people could do such a thing. Even in many cases Bai Wu had co across in his past life, most evildoers still held the belief that ’even tigers do not eat their young.’
But the "father" he was pretending to be now was a character even more corrupt than the apocalypse itself.
Bai Wu hoped Cain’s words were false, but reality is often cruel.
Especially considering—why would such a small child know to coax their parents to sleep together? He was almost certain that at least in this letter, Cain wasn’t lying.
The master of the Manor, the largest chairman of the company, had done sothing extrely cruel and twisted.
"There’s also another piece of news, since after all, I am recruiting you. As for your future partner, this news is even more explosive. Do you think the apocalypse would descend with unstoppable force to destroy the class system that humanity has built and shattered and reinforced over thousands of years?"
"Think about those young people marching in Food City Comrcial Street, they protest, they’re angry, they party, they die~ In the end, they never got to see a ticket to board the Ark."
"But so people are different, like the role you’re playing, who had a ticket to the Ark three years ago, when the plan was first proposed. Until one morning at ten, when the woman brought the child to this floor, and all the conflicts suddenly exploded in that instant."
"To tear one’s face off doesn’t just an breaking off a relationship; it has a literal aning too, and the woman’s face was torn. Upon learning that the woman had torn up the ticket he brought the child the second gift—do you know what the scene looks like when a chainsaw cuts a head?"
"Those hairs fell on the little girl’s neck, tickling, and those sensations were as if frozen in ti."
Bai Wu no longer continued to read Cain’s letter. He took out the cara, and the exact ti was down to the minute—not 10:22 but 10:23.
Only in the next minute, bloodstains could be seen.
The photo quickly appeared; in the room at the end of the corner with a purple style, blood seeped from inside the door... although that door itself was also left ajar.
There were also many people around, naked, looking at the room in horror.
Bai Wu walked to that room, and the ti on the cara was adjusted to September 4, 2023, at 10:22.
At the mont he pressed the shutter, another photo popped out.
Looking at this photo, Bai Wu felt as if the plot had been spoiled, and he also felt a sense of disgust.
Everything was as Cain had said.
She widened her eyes, unable to understand why her father would kill her mother over a paper slip no bigger than a palm.
Fear, anger, sorrow—negative emotions crazily surged in the child’s mind at that mont.
She just stood there motionless, even after the man left with the chainsaw, she still hadn’t co back to her senses.
Daddy loves mommy, Daddy loves too, I have a happy and beautiful family.
Those facades presented to the world had beco the obsessions in her mind.
After a few seconds of silence, Wu Jiu spoke softly,
"The Pre-Tower Era was chaotic, but the actions of this person cannot be excused by re chaos."
Bai Wu was not clear on how much the captain actually knew about the incident; he just nodded in agreent.
Being unable to feel sadness, anger, or fear made Bai Wu’s reaction to the truth ultimately very indifferent.
But every ti he felt that hollow sensation surge within him, he knew that if he were "complete," he would be in distress at this mont.
He didn’t feel the distress, and quickly began to ponder again.
"I fear the outco of this matter may be worse than I had anticipated," Bai Wu said.
"What do you an?"
Wu Jiu could also sowhat conjecture a bit; the Evil Fallen rged with the Manor, driven by obsessive thoughts, and began forcing people entering the area to engage in a make-believe family of three. After seeing the photograph, Wu Jiu’s deduction about the entire incident beca a little more complete.
In the end, the daughter likely transford into an Evil Fallen, and the father was killed by his daughter.
That was what Bai Wu had thought initially.
But after seeing the ticket, he changed his mind, and upon seeing Cain’s deliberate leaving of a letter, he beca more convinced—
The original owner of the Manor was still alive.
Especially since Cain ntioned that the fifth level was inhabited by many who never seed to die.
Cain’s true intention must have been to make the captain detest the rulers of the High Tower, so despising a dead person from the Pre-Tower Era was aningless.
Bai Wu read the last few paragraphs of the letter and found confirmation.
"From this mont, she has beco an Evil Fallen, and this grand Manor will soon be her own personal playground. Nevertheless, throughout this process, she kept staring blankly, just staring... Forgive , but in seven hundred years, I haven’t mastered all the knowledge about the Evil Fallen mutation; like the phenonon of a scene rging with an Evil Fallen, I have witnessed it only twice."
"The father was just like that guy who walks away after getting what he wants, leaving with a calm face once ’masks were torn off.’ The ticket? Hahahahaha, you don’t really think there are such things as tickets in this world, do you? They’re just to deceive those wretches who can’t board the ship."
"Already in the year before the Manor’s mutation, the Ark project had been altered. Only flights could reach the High Tower, and that giant ocean-going Ark cruise ship—was an illusion. Many people exhausted all their life’s resources to obtain a ticket and boarded the cruise ship. However, I guess by now, that cruise ship has beco an Evil Fallen’s Land of Bliss, right? Just imagine everyone in the entire Ark feeling smug about getting their ticket, only to be suddenly inford—they are rely pawns, and the whole cruise ship is a lie to pacify the world..."
The Ark project was fake?
Or rather, was the publicly known plan actually fake? Just a performance for the world to see?
Bai Wu was surprised again.
"The money paid for tickets by these ordinary citizens was split fifty-fifty, whereas the wealthy had their ticket money returned in full. After the High Tower erged, they already had a new way to access it. Today, the father you are impersonating is on the fifth floor of the High Tower. His luck is truly extraordinary, surviving to this day—he might even live longer than I will?"
The letter ended there. Cain didn’t tell Bai Wu how to leave the Manor, but after tearing open the gift wrapping, Bai Wu had already gleaned the clue through his eyes.
[Although it’s cobbled together, only with this ticket in hand do you qualify to enter the cruise ship; otherwise, you’ll be thrown off and lose the mory of boarding. Of course, this ticket has another function, please go in with it before ten twenty-two, and you will have the chance to ’communicate’ with the ’Manor.’]
The father’s work had to start in the morning, right after breakfast he needed to get busy. Bai Wu and Wu Jiu had been investigating from just after nine and only over thirty minutes had passed in total.
There were still about ten minutes left before ten twenty-two, and Bai Wu felt fortunate that this ti he had found the right floor.
Otherwise tonight... he might have had to deal with sothing involving Yin Shuang.
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