In the previously empty air, specks of golden light converged, and a black-and-gold hard paper card materialized out of thin air.
It hovered quietly before Fu Songcheng, waiting for him to open it.
In the earlier stages, whenever things reached a deadlock, this card would appear, offering clues or some special authority through questions.
The card slowly turned over, waiting for Fu Songcheng’s answer:
[For something doomed to fail—do you choose to give up, or to go your own way?]
Fu Songcheng stared at the line, his fingertip lightly resting on his chin, sinking into thought.
He was used to calculating gains and losses, finding a way out of desperate straits. As long as the probability wasn’t 0%, he’d do his utmost to raise the chance of success to infinity.
Yet this card asked about “something doomed to fail.”
Choose to give up.
Fu Songcheng wrote his answer.
However, the black-gold card remained dead in midair, the golden script flickering faintly, as if silently rejecting Fu Songcheng’s answer.
“Still no?”
He thought of Yu Huaiting. If that idiot were standing here, he probably wouldn’t need to think at all—he’d just yell “the word ‘give up’ isn’t in my dictionary” and ram straight into the wall all the way to the end.
“Fine, since you want—” Fu Songcheng reined in his smile and, going along with it, changed his answer, writing [Go your own way.]
The card nimbly flipped over in the air, then vanished.
Before Fu Songcheng could even register what that red light had brought, a sharp metallic grinding sound came from behind him.
Creak—boom!
Fu Songcheng whipped around, his pupils contracting sharply.
The elevator he’d ridden up, along with the entire elevator shaft area, had vanished.
He was trapped on the 99999th floor.
No elevator, no way back.
“So damn treacherous.” Fu Songcheng cursed under his breath, helplessness surfacing on his cold face.
Meanwhile, in the first-floor hall.
The atmosphere seemed somewhat restless.
“Have you found Mr. Yu’s room yet?” Bai Mu walked to the front desk and asked Xu Qingyao, who was head-down flipping through the register.
Xu Qingyao and Xu Zhun had been flipping for nearly an hour. The register seemed to have self-multiplying ability—the pages already turned shrank rapidly behind them, while the unknown pages extended infinitely ahead.
“No. Not at all.” Xu Qingyao, voice hoarse, rubbed her temples weakly. “Every floor has so many room numbers, and there are so many floors… searching like this is no different from fishing a needle from the sea.”
Xu Zhun also put down his pen, dejected. “Everyone’s anxious to clear now, but we’re still short the two most crucial people.”
Not far away, Lin Feng and Chen Yu were examining the clock at the center of the hall.
Lin Feng’s expression was extremely cold. He’d clearly overheard the conversation and the corners of his mouth were full of schadenfreude.
“Why look for him?” Lin Feng sneered, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “A scourge like Yu Huaiting—whoever’s person he is, they can save him.”
He hadn’t forgotten the sorry state of being chased around the Dawn training room by Yu Huaiting.
Chen Yu helplessly tugged Lin Feng’s sleeve, signaling him to say less.
“A-Yu, look quick—my long saber icon lit up.” Seeing Chen Yu a little unhappy, Lin Feng changed his expression, looking at Chen Yu dotingly, teasing him happy.
Chen Yu played along. “Very handsome, very handsome.” He turned to look at the dial. “What was mine again?”
Through elimination, the two identified among the twelve icons a white, round, chubby weather doll.
Chen Yu reached out and lightly touched the weather doll. The originally dim doll lit up with a warm white glow, even swaying playfully in the air.
“What’s this.” Chen Yu pursed his lips somewhat disappointedly. “It looks like it has zero lethality—all soft and squishy.”
Lin Feng was amused by his expression, reaching out to ruffle Chen Yu’s hair. “It’s fine. I’ll protect you. It has no lethality—I do, and that’s enough.”
Bai Mu noticed the movement here and leaned over curiously. “Can you touch these icons now? I remember Mr. Fu said before that when he touched these things, he’d get bounced off.”
Lin Feng shot Bai Mu a sidelong glance, without any courtesy. “Let him think about his own problems. All these years—has he ever grown a brain?”
Bai Mu rolled her eyes in anger, but remembering it was Lin Feng—and that she’d been chased and beaten by him—she held it in.
The twelve icons ringed the dial, and by now ten had been pointed at by the pen-shaped hand.
The two remaining were a greatsword radiating sharp killing intent, and a slender, cold dagger.
No need to guess—the greatsword corresponded to the missing Yu Huaiting, and the dagger to Fu Songcheng, still wandering the high floors.
Bai Mu took out a love letter and sent Fu Songcheng a message:
[Mr. Fu, all ten icons in the first-floor hall are lit. Do you want to come take a look? Maybe if you come, we’ll know Mr. Yu’s exact whereabouts.]
The 99,999th floor.
Fu Songcheng looked at the message he’d received.
Go back?
He stood by the corridor window looking down; below were layers upon layers of clouds and mist. He’d ridden the elevator up to an absurdly high floor, and now the elevator was gone—to go back, he’d have to walk down floor by floor.
But going up, who knew when he’d find Yu Huaiting.
Fu Songcheng was silent.
“Alright.” He said quietly to himself. He couldn’t sense the distance to Yu Huaiting closing, but at least the 99,999 floors of stairs were finite. It would just cost more stamina—it looked like the option with greater returns.
He hadn’t even finished the recovery potions Yu Huaiting had given him at the start.
He walked toward the stairwell hidden in the darkness, descending floor by floor. Every step he took, his footsteps would echo in the empty stairwell for a long time.
This kind of solitary walking was the easiest way to break a person’s spirit—especially when your heart held someone.
With every floor he descended, his breathing grew heavier by a fraction.
His vision seemed to see only endless, gray stairs.
As he walked, he reviewed the entire instance in his mind.
Hotel, register, floors, dreams…
If every player corresponded to an icon, and the condition for an icon lighting up was “being awakened” or “returning to position.”
Then Yu Huaiting hadn’t been awakened—because he’d sunk too deep? Or because he simply wasn’t in a room at all?
Who knew how long he’d walked—Fu Songcheng’s leg muscles had begun trembling slightly from the intense load. Sweat slid down his temples, blurring his vision, but he didn’t stop.
He halted, braced on the handrail to catch his breath, and drank a recovery potion. Earlier he’d still had the presence of mind to review the instance; now he had no strength left at all.
He instinctively looked up.
The spiraling, overlapping stairs stretched endlessly upward. Fu Songcheng shook his head and, dizzy and heavy-headed, continued walking down.
Meanwhile, everyone in the first-floor hall quickly noticed something different about the clock.
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