Chapter 162, Chapter 142857: The Möbius Strip, the beginning is the end...
Something's not right. At the players' speed, they should have all arrived in this world by the time Xue Chao was in the witch's warehouse.
At that moment, without any conscious effort, Xue Chao suddenly entered the next level of the world.
It's like deliberately keeping him off the same level as the players when relaying messages.
While exploring the new world, he was also waiting for the players to arrive. He brought the item "Third Eye," but he didn't detect anyone with attribute values in the places where players might appear.
The persistent problem of not enabling camera sharing weighed heavily on him, and he lost contact with the players.
He had a chance to make a voice call, and he decisively used the host panel to call Zhuo Yi, but the request failed and the panel showed that his signal was interrupted.
Someone has replaced him! Having been ambushed by Li Changying before, Xue Chao immediately realized this.
No wonder his identity as a host hasn't been revealed again.
He had no idea what was wrong with the player; he had to get out of there as soon as possible...
But his phone received a video call from Zhuo Yi. Could it be that Zhuo Yi and he are in another world?
After the call was connected, his screen was completely black, and he could only see Zhuo Yi's side of the screen. The image was shaky, like a camera strapped to Zhuo Yi's body.
This is a high-end prop similar to a camera position!
Zhuo Yi didn't say anything; he was busy smashing the screens and discs that had come from the beginning, one by one, in reverse order.
When the portal to another world is shattered in the opposite direction, he will be relegated to the previous world.
Suddenly, a pigeon flew out from Xue Chao's shadow. Halfway there, it vanished into thin air. However, Xue Chao swiftly snatched the letter tied to the pigeon, which was a special S-rank item.
Two photos were taken: one of Jiang Ming and the surveillance cameras behind him, and the other of Han Zheng's player panel screenshot. He had only glanced at the photos a few times when they were also torn to pieces.
This is the message Han Zheng conveyed.
The repeated 18 rows of surveillance cameras were a complete joke, a final mission that was a trap. The scenario was an escape room, Zhuo Yi's live situation, the golden apple that was completely different from his own world, and the ever-present ghost Jiang Ming... Xue Chao figured out the current situation.
He used a slingshot, a long-range attack tool, to launch it at the large screen. The screen shattered, but he did not retreat to the previous world.
He was sealed in this unique world.
What is Jiang Ming going to do next?
Xue Chao was not afraid of the evil god's guidance; in fact, he was happy to go along with it, knowing that there must be a deeper secret.
But now his mindset is different. The players are in dire straits on the other side, and sooner or later they will fall into a tragedy of mutual destruction. He can't help but feel anxious.
He went to key locations that were being monitored, but found no useful leads.
His world was like the zeroth world; everything was peaceful, and nothing strange happened.
The biggest disturbance was the large screen he smashed; police sirens blared through the streets as officers arrested the scoundrel who vandalized public property.
If players go back in the wrong order, they will be taken to a new world, making it even harder to find their way back.
But Zhuo Yi is, after all, a top 10 player, and so far, he has made no mistakes and is the first to return to the original world.
Then they fell into the same stalemate as Xue Chao.
Returning to the original world, the system did not notify Zhuo Yi to complete the main quest. He felt as if he had lost his only goal and could only wander around the city. Everything was so hatefully ordinary.
The people on both ends of the video call fell silent as they simultaneously realized the key point—the world they had entered, the initial layer of the dungeon, was actually the world of the disc, or rather, the world within the screen.
They thought they were on "Level 0", but in fact, they were on "Level 1" from the moment they entered the instance.
Zero, representing the origin, is the original world that the final mission requires us to return to. But where exactly is it?
"It's the world outside the instance."
That is, an infinite world.
This instance is messing with them again. It doesn't want them to go back to square one, but rather to break the instance and break the cycle!
How to do it? Activate the hidden boss battle; the boss's destructive power is most likely to destroy the entire dungeon world!
But from beginning to end, the hidden boss didn't reveal much of a trace, as if it didn't exist, hiding behind the scenes, perhaps watching them make a fool of themselves!
As players age, in order to survive until the moment when the game might break down, they must steal the lives of others as nourishment for themselves.
This is typical of games. Zhuo Yi sneered. He must be out of his mind to go to the trouble of giving Xue Chao a hint. What kind of game of unity and friendship is this? They can't even protect themselves, so there's no foolproof plan.
Xue Chao was being heavily interfered with. If the call continued, he would be targeted like the players with the chronic illness. So he decisively cut off the contact and took out the disc again to play it with a dark look in his eyes.
The fruits from NPCs are small, barely enough for a starving person to drink a sip of water, but the soul trees grown by players are much larger and contain much more nutrients. Otherwise, how could they be expected to scheme against each other?
Extracting gold and creating artificial beings—these two worlds are where they will meet, and the arena the dungeon has chosen for them.
Xue Chao did not stop him; when unable to offer a solution, persuasion is futile for someone struggling between life and death.
During the video call, he felt a sense of familiarity, indicating that there was an important clue hidden within, but he hadn't yet figured out the connection.
Speaking of which, this instance has quite a few metaphors...metaphors?
He suddenly remembered the screen he had glimpsed during the video's shaky footage: the Witch Channel's logo wasn't just a simple infinity symbol; it was a three-dimensional Möbius strip made of videotape.
He had seen this pattern before! He scanned the stars with his telescope, and the brightness of the stars changed at different angles. When he turned the telescope vertically upwards, the brightest stars among the complex constellation formed a looping Möbius strip.
It's very similar to the lock pouch that Boss Tang gave him; from a different angle, it's the key.
This ring likely indicates that this is the true shape of the copy.
On the star ring, there is a star that is larger than the others; that is its position in the ring.
Xue Chao received another message by carrier pigeon, but this time the pigeon and the message disappeared even faster.
As expected of someone who has always fought alone and is ranked number 1 without any guild, his progress is indeed fast.
The image is a star map, and coincidentally, the largest star in Han Zheng's world is in the exact same position as Xue Chao's star.
Did Han Zheng find his world? But if they were on the same level, information transmission wouldn't be so difficult.
The carrier pigeons have been destroyed, and the video calls have been cut off. Unless special abilities or other targeted S-class items are used, it will be difficult to break into the world that Jiang Ming is isolating.
Han Zheng might be able to do it, but it would be a losing proposition.
She should have returned to the first layer of the world, just like Zhuo Yi.
The first layer of the world basically overlaps with the world he is in... He is on the other side of the first layer of the world!
A Möbius strip starts at the same point as its end. Xue Chao had an idea.
He walked through the hall of the science museum, where the jade-carved characters on the ceiling shone brightly as the dark clouds once again obscured the stars, as if hiding from them.
They ascend from the earth to the heavens, and then descend from the heavens, gaining the power of both above and below.
This is the power of all forces, capable of destroying the strong and uprooting the weak.
This is how the world was created.
Miracles can be achieved through this.
Xue Chao paused, thinking that Minghe and the witch, who was probably the boss, both hated stars.
In the dungeon, the Philosopher's Stone refers to a corpse. He had also seen the artificial dwarfs. There are two kinds of panaceas for immortality. One is the player's golden apple. In Norse mythology, Idun, the goddess of youth, possessed the golden apple that kept the gods young. After Loki tricked her away, the gods began to age.
Another is his Dionysian wine. There is a lesser-known version of the story about this god of wine in ancient Greek mythology: he was the son of Zeus and Persephone, the queen of the underworld. The Titans were ordered by Hera to kill the newborn Dionysus and destroy his body, but Zeus rescued his heart and his soul was reborn in Semele's body.
Although not a perfect match, the "golden apple," "aging," and "heart" are somewhat reflected in the dungeon.
Where does the alchemist's treasure trove, the Jade Book, lead?
Boss Tang's voice seemed to flow through his nerves, reaching his mind, and then vanished in an instant: "The door."
Sure enough! Step by step, we've come this far, and finally arrived at the legendary "door" to the final victory.
The final victory in the company's game is just a hoax. And can this door, hidden and guarded by countless players and hosts, truly lead them back to the real world?
Suddenly, the building's screen went out, plunging all the city's electronic screens into darkness.
The person who isolated him here seemed to be venting their dissatisfaction at someone tipping him off, cutting off all possible communication.
Xue Chao clutched the pearl in his pocket. He had taken it from the necklace hanging on the bottle in the witch's warehouse. The pearl was stuck in the bone of his palm, causing him pain that felt like it was about to bleed.
He remained calm, but his emotions were hard to control; he recognized the owner of the jewelry at first glance.
The car was parked in the villa area where he woke up.
Pushing open the villa's door, however, reveals a style that is not the initial modern minimalist style. Instead, it is classical, luxurious, and dimly lit yet stylish, like an ancient castle belonging to a witch.
The moment the door closed, the old-fashioned television in the living room suddenly lit up, showing the Witch Channel.
A tall figure appeared on the screen, wearing a cloak, yet seemed to be staring at him.
Xue Chao also stared intently at the people on the television.
He has no parents and has lived with his sister since he was a child.
He knew that he and his sister were not related by blood; she had picked him up, just like she had picked up a pretty little stray cat from the roadside on a whim and kept it by her side to amuse her.
He didn't like to reminisce because there was nothing he could hold onto in his heart. His sister was an exception, but he was also unwilling to think about her out of spite.
Looking back now, that period of time felt both short and long, with gaps in his memories after his sister's disappearance, like an isolated island of time and space carved out for him.
His memories were hazy, but when he stepped into the villa again, they came back to life.
He has a long history with this game; his childhood was hidden within this instance.
The master of this instance, the hidden boss witch, is his sister Ivy.
He was almost expressionless, his taut nerves pounding as he waited for the person on TV to speak.
But his heart pounded wildly a few times, like a warning, which made his brows relax, his tension dissipate, and a sense of helplessness rise reflexively.
He imprisoned him, impersonated him, and yet dared to swagger in front of him—he deserved to be stabbed!
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