64 Tokyo Dream 05

◎The person with the black mark on his forehead, there is another me◎

Zhu Heng opened his eyes and woke up to find that the sky outside the window had turned into a quiet black with a hint of blood red at the edge. A few stars hung low under the sky and seemed to be about to go out. That was a signal that dawn was about to break.

He rubbed his forehead, thinking how deep his sleep was that he slept from daytime till almost dawn.

"Awake?" Helan Dao's voice came in his mind.

Zhu Heng asked, "How long have I slept?"

"You slept for..." He Landao checked the time, "two minutes."

Zhu Heng paused rubbing his head for two seconds and asked, "How long?"

Helando let out a long "hmm" sound, "It's not quite accurate yet. To be specific, it's a total of 1 minute and 46 seconds."

Zhu Heng felt a sharp headache and groped his way off the wooden bed. Suddenly, his head spun, and he stumbled. He felt as if he had slept through the end of the world, but in reality, he had only slept for less than two minutes.

"Don't worry." Augustus understood what was happening with Zhu Heng. "Just continue lying down and explain to us what you were planning to say. After all, during those two minutes you were asleep, Xiao Zhao was left hanging by your hand."

After being half dead for two minutes, Xiao Zhao immediately rebounded after hearing these words.

Zhu Heng didn't react for a moment: "What?"

Xiao Zhao took advantage of the opportunity to chime in: "I just asked who the murderer was, and you snorted."

"Oh." Zhu Heng sat back on the bed and touched the back of his neck. "I forgot."

A question mark slowly appeared above Xiao Zhao's head.

"Forgot? You actually forgot such important content!" Xiao Zhao was a little excited. As soon as he finished speaking, he felt a chill on his back, as if someone was watching him secretly. The air pressure around him dropped instantly.

"Do you really want to hear it?" Zhu Heng, unaware of Xiao Zhao's sudden silence, said calmly, "The mark the deceased left on the murderer might be a black mark on his forehead."

Xiao Zhao immediately denied it: "How is that possible!"

Liu Qiao'er, who had been silent for a long time, spoke up. "How could it be impossible? The deceased's spirit only roams in this restaurant and can only mark guests who enter. She cursed the guests with the black mark on their foreheads to jump into the well. Isn't this seeking revenge on the murderer? Once the murderer dies, her grievance will be redeemed."

Zhu Heng let them talk in his mind, but his mind was now filled with the dream he had just had. What did that dream, and the woman in it, want to tell him...

He touched his right chest—the mirror image. He himself was also a mirror image. Because he remembered that in the previous episode of "Silk Road", Helan Dao accidentally said that he was left-handed, but from his own perspective, he was clearly right-handed.

Zhu Heng didn't understand at that time, but now he understands it very clearly - what else could it be except the mirror man? The only difference is that he doesn't have the ability to predict the future.

Zhu Heng raised his head, his gaze fell to the window, and suddenly frowned: "When did it get dark? Within two minutes?"

"Almost. Kind of close," Augustus explained. "Not long after you lay down, the sky outside went dark and then light, then light and then dark again, alternating faster than the blink of an eye. Until... you woke up, and then the sky stopped changing."

"How many times has it alternated between day and night like this?" Zhu Heng asked.

"I've counted." He Landao took all the credit for the system's counting. "No more, no less. It's exactly the hundredth day now."

The moment the sun rises, the 99 guests downstairs will die.

Zhu Heng said nothing and ran out the door: "Hurry to the backyard!"

Xiao Zhao blinked and said, "Go to the backyard?"

Isn't that like watching a murder scene in person? When he thought about the ninety-nine guests and players downstairs being killed one after another by the deceased, his scalp began to tingle, so he said, "Hey, who are you? Why are you looking forward to seeing this kind of thing?"

Zhu Heng: "...It's just a replay of the past, why are you being so pretentious?"

Augustus fanned the flames: "And they might all be murderers."

Xiao Zhao muttered quietly: "That's what I said, but the murderer hasn't been confirmed yet..."

As he was speaking, a beam of sunlight shone in from the window, and the sky finally brightened.

Everyone went downstairs one by one. Xiao Zhao didn't want to move but had no choice but to drag his feet and be forced to move with everyone.

They came to the open space in the backyard. At this moment, the ninety-nine guests had gathered around the well in three layers, looking gloating.

“Come on… Come on… Who’s going to die… Hiss.”

“Who will die…”

"Hiss... No one has died in the past ninety-nine days..."

"Who will die... I am Black Forehead..."

"You also have a black forehead... We all have black foreheads..."

"Death...die..."

Xiao Zhao sighed softly. He saw a black fog sweeping past. These players seemed to have lost their souls and jumped into the well on their own initiative, falling like dumplings one after another.

Xiao Zhao said to Zhu Heng, "They jumped down on their own. I didn't see the murderer... They are just ordinary players. How could they have been involved in such a murder?"

Zhu Heng did not respond to this.

Xiao Zhao: "What's wrong? Why aren't you talking?"

Zhu Heng spoke after a long while: "You just said that they jumped into the well?"

"Ah, yes."

Zhu Heng said slowly: "But no one has moved on my side."

"W-what do you mean?" Xiao Zhao stuttered.

"What I mean is, there is a person with a black mark on his forehead, and there is also me." Zhu Heng said in a very calm tone.

"What's going on?" Xiao Zhao couldn't believe it. "Why do you have it and we don't... Wait, is it the same over there?"

Xiao Zhao asked the other three people.

Helandao and Augustus were in a similar situation to Xiao Zhao, except that his team leader Liu Qiaoer had not responded yet.

"Team...leader? Speak."

"Yes, that's right." Liu Qiao'er finally spoke, her voice calm and her tone sounding like she had been prepared for this situation. "I have a total of 100 people on my side, and all of them have black marks. So, they and I will die here together tomorrow."

Zhu Heng listened to this conversation thoughtfully.

Why her?

Why is it that Liu Qiao'er, who has the power of prophecy, is in the same situation as him, who has the black mark?

After all, he had just learned that he had the same body structure as those who possessed the power of "prophecy".

Could it be that the standard for the deceased to mark the murderer is people with rare structures like them?

Zhu Heng had many questions that could not be answered. He only had one day left. After one day, he and Liu Qiaoer would die with these ninety-nine guests.

He unconsciously placed his hand on the right side of his heart. It was this action that made Zhu Heng unexpectedly discover that he could not feel his own heartbeat.

Zhu Heng frowned and slowly extended his hand to the left—something was beating beneath his chest.

But Zhu Heng was obviously shocked. Why did his body structure suddenly follow the physiological laws of ordinary humans?

Zhu Heng had a guess, and he immediately asked Helan: "Touch your heart."

"What's wrong?" Helan Dao asked him, while consciously touching his left chest.

After about three or four seconds, Helan Dao said in a hoarse voice, "The heart is not there."

"Try the right side. That's where my heart used to beat..."

After a few long seconds, Helan Dao replied, "Yes, it's on the right."

It is true.

Zhu Heng took a deep breath, as if a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders.

"It's not growing to the right side. Your heart has never moved." Zhu Heng corrected him, "We were flipped over."

Flip? Helan Dao frowned.

"When did we..." Helan Dao paused, then immediately realized, "At Hongqiao? The Möbius strip?"

"If I'm not mistaken," Zhu Heng said, "it's the Möbius strip that turned our bodies upside down."

To verify his hypothesis, Zhu Heng asked Xiao Zhao and the others to check the position of their hearts. The results were consistent with Zhu Heng's assumptions. Just like He Landao's situation, their organs were also inverted.

Xiao Zhao was surprised: "Why is this happening?"

Zhu Heng explained, "That is, if an ant were walking on a Möbius strip, it could pass through the knots on the strip, moving from the outer surface to the inner surface. However, if, like us entering this replica, the system reduces its dimensionality to a plane and becomes part of the Möbius strip's knot, everyone would be flipped horizontally when they pass through the knot. You can try making a model to see if this is the case."

Xiao Zhao said, "It seems that this difficulty increase is also related to this method of entering the dungeon world."

Zhu Heng was contemplating with his eyes closed when he suddenly opened them upon hearing Xiao Zhao's sentimental words. "I remember you saying on the boat that players who had previously entered the 'Tokyo Dream' dungeon simply crossed the bridge to enter the dungeon world. Only a few of us entered through the Möbius strip, correct?"

Xiao Zhao: "Yeah, what's wrong?"

"He probably meant," Helan Dao took over, "that the players who came in before us had never had their bodies turned upside down."

Xiao Zhao asked again: "What happens if it's inverted? What happens if it's not inverted?"

"Players who have not been inverted, that is, those with normal body structures, have black marks on their foreheads. As for us who have been inverted into mirror images, we don't have any." Helan Dao expressed his own thoughts.

"That doesn't make sense. My team leader and Zhu Heng were also inverted. You can't possibly tell me that they were originally mirror images and were turned back to normal by the Möbius strip..." Xiao Zhao paused for a moment. He wanted to hear the response from the two people at the center of the topic, but they didn't say a word until they died.

"Fuck." Xiao Zhao's face turned green.

Augustus was well-informed and wasn't surprised by this. He pondered for a moment before saying, "So, the marked spectators and players are all people with normal body structures."

"Rather than saying that it's normal people in the physiological sense who are marked," Zhu Heng said slowly, "it's better to say that everyone except the guests with mirrored body structures will be marked. Don't forget, the deceased is the mirrored person."

"The deceased is being punished by association here, killing everyone who's different from her." Xiao Zhao complained, and as expected, Liu Qiao'er scolded him again: "You're not the deceased, why are you so angry? Didn't they create a Möbius strip specifically for you to exclude you?"

Xiao Zhao uttered an "eh" and asked, "Team Leader, was this Möbius strip made by the deceased?"

But Liu Qiao'er didn't say anything else. After all, she just realized that Zhu Heng was the same kind of person as her.