Chapter 93 Red Rose Manor 3
Xia Bai sat down at another desk and opened the diary in the drawer of another desk.
[The moon is very round and bright tonight. I opened the door of my study at eight o'clock and read twenty pages of "Introduction to Macroeconomics". I want to study hard, live well, and live well.
——Day 1
Xia Bai stared at the diary for a few more seconds.
"The moon is very round tonight" - Xia Bai looked up and saw that it was indeed very round.
"Push open the door of the study" - when Xia Bai entered the study, the door was already open and there was no need to push it.
The study room rules also said that the door should be closed after leaving. The person who entered the study room before him did not close the door when he left.
Did I forget, or is the current study rule fake?
"Introduction to Macroeconomics" - Did you just pick up a book and read it, or did you read it based on your identity?
"Live well" - this is the task prompt at the beginning of the game system. The person who wrote this diary may be a player, using this method to give other players a hint.
And the notes in this diary are somewhat similar to the previous diary and the handwriting on the rules.
Xia Bai took a pen and wrote a reading note on the textbook. His handwriting was somewhat similar to the handwriting on the rules, like a combination of his handwriting and the handwriting in the rules. It also looked somewhat similar to the notes in the two diaries.
What does this mean?
Is the game erasing their individuality and assimilating them?
So, this study room rule is not deliberately imitated by others, but it just looks very similar when it is written?
The rules explained how to write a diary, but there was no explicit requirement to write a diary every day, so Xia Bai did not write one.
He began to rummage in the study. The survival rules of the castle stated that the room should be kept clean and garbage should be cleared away at all times.
If the rules posted on the door of the study room have been replaced by someone, then the original rules that were torn off may be regarded as garbage, and people may not dare to carry them with them and have to clean them up "at any time".
There is no mention of leaving the castle in the rules of life, and cleaning up garbage at all times should mean throwing it into the trash can.
The rules of the game may not be like this, but under these rules, it is easy for people to subconsciously throw potentially dangerous garbage into the trash can.
Sure enough, Xia Bai found a crumpled piece of cardboard at the bottom of the trash can.
Rose Castle Study Room Rules
1. Study hard in the study room and don’t touch your mobile phone.
2. Keep the study room clean and tidy and avoid scribbling on it.
2. There should only be positive and healthy books in the study. Choose the books that suit you and read at least twenty pages each time.
4. The diary should record things truthfully and not make up stories. If you find any false records or nonsense, it may be a sign of mental problems. Please make adjustments in time.
5. Write your diary as a summary of your day’s study and life. Leave immediately after finishing it.
6. You don’t need to close the door when you leave. Remind yourself to go into the study room to study at any time.
Xia Bai tore off the rule sheet on the wall, threw it into the trash can, and pasted this one back on the wall.
After changing the rules, Xia Bai searched for clues in the study for a while.
He was not allowed to read random books, so he just read his junior high school textbooks. There were some notes on the Chinese textbook that he spread out on the desk.
Both the study room rules and the bedroom rules prohibit scribbling, but the bedroom rules prohibit writing, which is not included in the study room rules. It only says that diary records must be truthful.
The handwriting on the notes in the Chinese textbook was a little childish. Xia Bai knew that these words were not left by the players. These players looked like adults, so their handwriting would not be so childish.
Of course, if you haven't been to school for a few years and haven't written for a few years, your writing may be immature, but there is also the issue of handwriting assimilation. The handwriting of players will be very similar to the rules, but this is not the case.
Most of these notes are study notes. If you look carefully, you can find some other things from them.
[I like my brother so much.]
[I want to be with my brother forever.]
[Happiness is now.]
Xia Bai changed another math textbook.
[My little brother is so cute.]
[I secretly left a candy for my brother.]
The two textbooks had the same childish handwriting and looked like they were written by the same person.
Xia Bai changed another English textbook.
There are no records related to the clues, only the pronunciation of words spelled out in Chinese pinyin.
It was nine o'clock, Xia Bai left the study, put his hand on the door, and was about to close it, but he came to his senses and held himself back.
In his daily life, he has the habit of closing the door when entering or leaving. This habit, which he has developed over more than ten years, is as natural as breathing.
Only then did Xia Bai realize the danger of such trivial daily rules. If he was not careful, he might be dominated by habit and violate the rules.
I don’t know what the punishment will be if I violate the rules.
Letting go of his hand, Xia Bai returned to the bedroom and closed the door.
Before going to bed, he turned on his phone and set an alarm for himself. He was not allowed to play with his phone in bed, and he could not lie in bed for more than eight hours.
After setting the alarm, he put his phone where he couldn't reach it while lying in bed - he was afraid that when he was woken by the alarm, he would subconsciously reach out for the phone in bed, which would violate the rules.
After making these preparations, Xia Bai finally lay down on the bed with peace of mind and began to analyze the game using the clues he had just found.
He couldn't see clearly outside, but he knew from the rules that he was now in an ancient castle called Red Rose, but he didn't see any other players.
This castle has many rules, and you need to abide by them when living here.
The main task of the game is to live well. The game system prompts that the owner of this place no longer has the same requirements for the people who move in as before, and only requires them to live well.
So, all he has to do is follow the rules here, that is, these regulations, and live safely for the time required by the game?
Following the rules for a period of time sounds simple, but it is not that simple. Because of their past habits, they will always be controlled by habits and do things that violate the rules if they are not careful.
The rules plus the possible existence in this castle, such as the "ghosts" or other monsters mentioned in red on the rules, can indeed make the difficulty level of two stars.
So, why did the first two batches of players die?
Is the reason that he still hasn’t seen any other players coming up?
So why didn't the other players show up?
Are they in some other closed room in the castle?
In fact, they have traces. The diary in the second diary he just saw should have been left by a player.
Xia Bai thought a lot without realizing it, and he didn't fall asleep even when he was supposed to.
The exact time was unknown, but based on Xia Bai's perception of time, several hours must have passed, but he still didn't sleep. After realizing this, Xia Bai looked at himself and found that he seemed to be tense.
It was strange that he didn't feel nervous at all, nor was he very afraid of the game, even though he had seen the rules saying there might be a ghost under the bed.
But why was he so tense? Even with his eyes closed, his ears were always listening to the movements around him. He didn't know how many hours had passed. When Xia Bai thought that the alarm should be ringing soon, he finally fell asleep.
When he woke up again, even Xia Bai was startled. It was still dark, but it was definitely not the night he fell asleep. He might have slept for a whole day, which was already more than eight hours.
Xia Bai immediately sat up, got out of bed and picked up the phone he had placed on the table.
Breathing rapidly, I opened my phone to check the time. It was just one minute past eight o'clock in the evening.
Sure enough, it was already the second night, and it was past nine o'clock when he went to bed yesterday.
Xia Bai looked around. This time the bathroom door was closed and it was pitch black under the bed, like a bottomless pit.
There was no sound in the bedroom except his heavy breathing.
He violated the bedroom rules and there should be some punishment.
He tensed up and waited for the punishment to come, but after ten minutes, there was still no sign of punishment.
No punishment?
After his body slowly relaxed, Xia Bai realized that his chest was a little painful and his breathing was obviously not smooth. Every breath was difficult and loud, like the last gasps of a dying beast in this castle.
Is this the punishment?
Xia Bai put down his phone, looked at the bedroom rules, and saw that the rules had changed again.
The original rule of not lying in bed for more than eight hours has changed to "ensure eight hours of adequate sleep every day."
The fourth rule, "Please close the door immediately after using the bathroom, as spilled items in the bathroom will affect your sleep," has been changed to "Please do not close the bathroom door, keep it ventilated and dry."
Xia Bai pressed his forehead. When he woke up from bed last night, the bathroom door was indeed open. After reading the bedroom rules last night, he closed the bathroom door.
Which one is correct?
Did he actually break several rules? Or maybe he broke none?
With difficulty breathing, Xia Bai was more inclined to believe that the bedroom rules from last night were correct. The handwriting of that rule was the same as that of the castle life rules. At the same time, he found the study rules with the same handwriting in the trash can of the study.
So, he violated the rule of "not lying in bed for more than eight hours", and his punishment was the difficulty breathing at this moment?
If he violates one rule, his body will have some problems. If he violates too many rules, his body will become useless and he will die?
“Hoo~Hoo~Hoo~Squeak!——”
Xia Bai's heart suddenly skipped a beat and he turned his head sharply to look behind him.
It was just the sound of the night wind blowing against the windows.
When his ankle felt cold, Xia Bai immediately thought of the red words "There's a ghost under the bed" on the rules and jumped.
Nothing, maybe just the cold wind blowing in through the cracks in the window.
Xia Bai rubbed his face and tried to relax himself.
He once again clearly realized that something was wrong with him, and it was not the obvious difficulty in breathing.
At first he didn't realize it last night, he was being cautious and keeping an eye on everything, he thought it was because he was cautious about this unfamiliar game. He was indeed cautious, but he shouldn't be so nervous.
The strange feeling is that he is not that nervous, but very tense. This tension is manifested in that his five senses are always on guard. To put it in a very vivid way, his ears may be erected at any time, tensely capturing the movements around him.
What's even more strange is that if he was so tense, he shouldn't be in a relaxed mood either, but he felt that not only was he not nervous, he seemed to be in a good mood.
This is so contradictory.
Xia Bai pulled his hair and thought of the "dreaming", "hallucination" and "mental problems" mentioned in the two rules. Could he be a mentally ill person?
Or is he now in the body of a mentally ill person?
Or in the consciousness space of a mentally ill patient?
Xia Bai put down his phone, sat on the bed, plugged his ears with his two index fingers, and quietly sorted out and analyzed his feelings one by one.
First of all, it is a fact that his body is tense, which is a relatively objective representation of the body.
Secondly, is it true that he feels he is not nervous? This is indeed a relatively subjective feeling.
So, let’s first objectively analyze whether he will be nervous.
He downloaded five games in total. Lin Xiang once asked him during the game if he was nervous. He said he was a little nervous. It was true that he was a little, but it was really just “a little”.
When he was first drawn into the game, he was only a little nervous, but in the subsequent games, he really wasn't that nervous.
If he tells others about it, they might think he is lying, but it is true. Inexplicably, he was not nervous at all in the later games. There was no difference between the game and reality. Even in that mentally polluted Harmonious Cinema game, he had emotional ups and downs, but no nervousness.
Therefore, he should not be nervous in this game.
This feeling is accurate. He should not be nervous, but his body is very tense. This is indeed a real contradiction, and the contradiction may be where the clues are hidden.
Seeing that it was almost half past eight, Xia Bai immediately lay down on the bed. After half past eight, Xia Bai got up, put his cell phone in his pocket, and left the bedroom.
His breathing became louder and more erratic. He covered his lungs, which felt a little like burning, and went to the living room to take a look at the rules of life in the castle.
The rules of life have also changed. The seventh rule, "Don't go to the attic," has become: "Except for the attic, don't go to other non-public areas."
There is also an eighth rule: "Television is like a mirror, it has a mirrored surface, so don't watch it casually."
In order to narrow the scope of dangerous activities, Xia Bai didn't look at anything and immediately walked towards the study.
The study room rules had also changed, and the wrinkled rules he had originally posted on the wall had been replaced again.
The difference between this set of rules and the previous one is that the first one is about whether to close the door, but this time it is changed to close the door at all times, and the second one is about reading, the new rule is "combine work and rest, and read no more than 20 pages at a time."
Nothing else has changed.
Xia Bai had heard from his seemingly unreliable grandfather that if one wanted to deceive others by telling a lie, it was best to tell a mixture of truth and lies; it would be easier to deceive others if it was a mixture of truth and lies.
Do not exceed 20 pages each time.
Xia Bai did not delay, for he was certain that what he found in the trash can must be the real rules. This time he took two textbooks and read them in two batches, reading only 19 pages each time, for a total of 38 pages in total.
If you violate even one of them, your body will have some problems. It’s better to avoid it if possible.
While flipping through these 38 pages of the book, Xia Bai found some words that were not notes.
[It was so cold in winter, my feet were numb from the cold, so my brother put my feet in his arms and warmed them up.]
[My brother’s arms are so warm. I want to stay in his arms forever. That way, even if there is a strong snowstorm, he won’t be able to find me.]
Why don’t you write these words in your diary?
Because the rules say that diaries can only record true things? Are these words true?
Xia Bai opened two diaries. After a day, two more entries were added.
[The clock shows seven in the morning, and I get up. I am the only one in the empty bedroom, but the sky is blue.
The reason why the sky is so blue is because it is a sunny day today.
I looked around and there was still no one there. It was such a pity to waste such a good environment.
--the next day. ]
This diary is written in a bit strange ways, but the writer may have intended it to be written in a strange way so that readers would take a closer look and discover the hidden message in it.
The first words of each sentence in this diary are combined to form: Ring of Time and Space.
To attract attention, there are two "times" in the first sentence, two "spaces" in the second sentence, and two "rings" in the fourth sentence.
This diary was written by Ling Changye and was written for him to read.
Xia Bai felt inexplicably relieved.
Ling Changye was also in this ancient castle and appeared in the study. He woke up at seven in the morning and appeared in the study in the morning.
It can be seen that Ling Changye is very likely to wake up during the day and sleep at night, which is the opposite of his but normal schedule.
Why are their times different? Is Ling Changye sleeping in a closed room in the castle at this moment?
Xia Bai dealt with this issue first.
Possibility one: Ling Changye was sleeping in a room in this castle, and they were in the same time and space, but their schedules were completely different, so they had never seen each other.
This might be a problem. If it were just him and Ling Changye, it would make sense, as they could split the day and night equally, but they have nine players.
Possibility two: Ling Changye is in a room in this castle, but they are not in the same time and space, but in a parallel time and space, or in the yin and yang world like the Dihao Apartment, so they cannot see each other. This study, or to be more precise, these two diaries, are like the altar of the Dihao Apartment, a place that connects different parallel time and space.
Is there anything else?
There is another possibility.
Possibility 2: Ling Changye is in this castle, and in this body. They wake up and control their bodies at different times, so they have never met. Similarly, other players also control bodies at other times. They are all in this body, and different people wake up at different times.
Is there anything else?
Xia Bai thought hard.
There is another possibility.
Possibility 4: An extension of Possibility 2, Ling Changye is in this castle, but it is not a parallel world. They appear in different life stages of "this person". The nine players may correspond to the nine life stages of one person. His body is smaller, which corresponds to the life stage of middle school, so he is reading a middle school textbook.
Read different books at different stages of life, which corresponds to the rule of the study room: "Choose what suits you". The person who wrote a diary yesterday wrote that he was reading economics, which may have been during college or during work.
Any further extensions?
Also, according to the code, there are "hallucinations" and "mental problems".
Possibility five: An extension of possibility two, he and Ling Changye are both in this castle, but neither they nor even the castle exists in reality, they are all the fantasy of a mentally ill person.
This mentally ill patient may be very lonely and fantasize about having many people to accompany him, corresponding to the "older brother" and "younger brother" written in the textbook but not in the diary.
There are other more exaggerated possibilities, but there is no evidence to support them at present. Xia Bai analyzed it here and looked at another diary.
[Two windows, but I only see myself, lonely.
I chose this one out of ten books. I was lucky. It's a very relaxing illustrated story. I was learning for forty minutes.
I memorized every word carefully in my head.
Watch it more seriously than yesterday.
I used the last two minutes to finish reading the last page. It was a perfect day.
--the next day]
Xia Bai: “…”
If Ling Changye's diary entry wasn't that obvious, this one is very obvious.
Could it be that the person who wrote this diary understood Ling Changye’s diary, so he imitated him and wrote this diary?
Did he understand the [Time and Space Ring]? Maybe he didn't know the [Time and Space Ring], but did he see that this method was used to transmit messages?
Xia Bai connected the first word of each sentence in his diary and clearly captured the message he wanted to convey.
Twenty-four Billy.
This is a book that Xia Bai has not read, but he has heard of it.
After the first game came out, two beds became vacant in his dormitory and two new roommates moved in.
One of them is Zhong Zicang, and now there is a new person occupying his bed.
The other one was Wu Chu, who studied psychiatry and was very interested in multiple personalities in mental illness.
He had a copy of "Twenty-Four Billy" on his desk at the time, and he said it was an early novel about multiple personality cases.
As the title suggests, twenty-four people live in a body called Billy.
The person who wrote this diary was giving a hint that they might be different personalities of the same person. This guess matched the second possibility he had just thought of.
Xia Bai did not deny this possibility. This was one of the possibilities he had just thought of, but he could not confirm that this was the case at the moment.
There was also doubt, he was tense even though he should not be nervous.
Is he tense because he has to be on guard against other players taking control of his body all the time?
Xia Bai looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost nine o'clock.
He had originally planned to write a diary tonight. His conflicting feelings made him think of things related to mental illness. He was afraid that he would not be able to remember the rules that he currently thought were correct. Yesterday's diary was still there, which meant that what was written in the diary would always exist and would not be changed. He planned to use the diary as a memo to write down these things.
Also, write down how he feels at this moment, about the difficulty breathing and tightness.
After seeing the second diary entry, he decided not to write anymore.
He didn't know how many players had read this diary, and how many players had seen the message conveyed in this diary and the speculation about multiple personalities.
If other players have thought about it and preset the game to set up a "kill each other" condition for them, then this multiple personality is the competition point for players in this game. If you want to truly control the body, you have to kill other personalities.
By then, the game will become Kill Billy.
Killing other personalities is the key to the main mission of "living well". Multiple personality disorder is considered a mental illness by many people. Having a mental illness cannot be considered "living well". Killing other personalities is "curing the disease". After the disease is cured, you can "live well".
Even if no one thinks about the main quest, once they accept the hypothesis of multiple personalities, they will want to kill other personalities. Obviously, the fewer personalities there are, the longer they can control the body, and they may find more clues.
When there is hostility between players, it is not advisable to expose too much of yourself, especially your weaknesses.
Xia Bai closed the diary.
He left the study shortly after nine o'clock.
After leaving the study, he summoned his sister Xue Mu before entering the bedroom, and when he saw some hair growing out of the phone, he went into the bedroom.
Before going to bed, he glanced at the bathroom. He had been to the bathroom for two days.
Did someone go in his place?
“…”
Is it really multiple personalities?
Xia Bai looked down again and touched his abdomen. There was no muscle.
Just like last night, Xia Bai set the alarm on his phone, put the phone on the table, and lay down on the bed.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
