Chapter 1397: Ji Shanqing is Long When He Stretches
The exit was just an ordinary iron door. It slid open easily when the handle was pressed downward.
Lin Sanjiu stood behind the door, taking a deep breath.
Even without looking up, she knew the words on the wall above the door read, "Game Over" in an indifferent tone. Everyone discarded their backpacks, tools, and the remaining scattered food b.a.l.l.s. The items that were as precious as life itself just days ago now lay unattended and unappreciated.
She turned her head, her gaze pa.s.sing over everyone, scanning past the unconscious elephant and settling on the three bodies covered with blankets in the corner. She no longer had the strength to take them along. Let them vanish with this game.
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"Let"s go," she said hoa.r.s.ely, holding onto the doorframe.
Rather than saying they walked through the door, it felt more like they tumbled through one by one. The moment they pa.s.sed the threshold of the Elephant in the Room, everyone felt as if a mountainous burden had been lifted from their shoulders. Their bodies suddenly felt weightless and limp, and one by one, they slumped to the ground.
The strength suppressed by the game began to flow back, trickling into their parched bodies like a stream thawing in the spring. However, the sensations of weakness and hunger still burned intensely. Lin Sanjiu hurriedly dug out a box of food without even looking up to check her surroundings.
"Help yourselves," she said, grabbing a handful before looking around.
The underground room"s walls and ceiling were coated with cement. It looked similar to the previous rooms besides having a few more doors. The most significant difference was its size. It wasn"t as large as a playground or an auditorium, but it could probably accommodate a small residential area.
It was Lin Sanjiu"s first time in such a vast, empty single room. Staring at the distant walls that appeared as small as thumbnails, she felt momentarily disoriented. She roughly tore open a lunchbox and said with confusion, "Is it just us here?"
Even the previous volunteer was gone.
"Sis," Ji Shanqing said, "You shouldn"t eat like that; it"s not tasty. Let me help you."
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"It seems so," Silvan replied, rummaging through the food in the box. "Since there are no volunteers and no announcements for a new game, this place might be for resting."
That made sense. Those who survived the elephant game would surely need rest and replenishment.
"That"s great," Lin Sanjiu said and looked up at Horst and Louisa. "You two should also grab something to eat."
They both looked somewhat awkward, silently moving closer, each grabbing some beer and bread. Many times in the elephant game, Lin Sanjiu thought about parting ways with the newcomers as soon as they left the game. But now, when it actually seemed like they might part, seeing their embarra.s.sed and dejected expressions made her feel pity for them.
"Oh well, let it be for now. Who knows what the next game holds?"
"Here," Ji Shanqing said, having prepared something for her: a ham and cheese cracker sandwich. "It tastes better when you layer them like this."
It did taste great, but the only issue was that it was too small. Lin Sanjiu could probably eat ten of them in a single bite.
The body that the grand prize had coded for himself had the least need for food. The weakness and hunger he felt was mostly because of the game. So, he was the only one among them who was calm and unhurried. He wasn"t in a rush to eat and even had the leisure to keep layering sandwiches for Lin Sanjiu.
Silvan tore off a piece of beef and sighed. "The last time I was this hungry, I must have been eight or nine."
"You went hungry when you were young?" Lin Sanjiu asked, her mouth full, crumbs spilling out. "How come?"
"I don"t know," Silvan said, tilting his head thoughtfully. "It hasn"t happened yet."
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"Huh?"
Taken aback, Lin Sanjiu tried to gauge from his expression if he was joking. He didn"t offer an explanation but instead picked up a can of beer, drank half in one gulp, and then exhaled. "Someone"s coming."
Everyone immediately straightened, glancing around the room. They seemed to hear faint footsteps. In a matter of seconds, the door near them was pushed open, and several men and women filed in. Silvan"s keen hearing wasn"t what surprised Lin Sanjiu; what truly astonished her was that the door through which these posthumans entered was the very door they had just come through.
Did they access it through the elephant game from another room?
"Oh, you have food!" a pale-faced girl cried out, her voice raspy and parched, almost unbearably so. "Please... can you share some? I can trade something for it..."
"There"s no need to trade."
Lin Sanjiu tossed over a packet of compressed bread. The girl reached out to catch it, but her excessive weakness caused her to lose her balance and fall onto the ground with a "thud." However, she didn"t seem to realize as she clung to the bread, tearing open the package with her teeth and nails before desperately shoving the bread into her mouth.
There were six people with her, and almost all looked pale and half-starved to death, except for a well-fed, energetic man. When Lin Sanjiu nodded, the other five rushed forward like a swarm of locusts. In just a few minutes, they emptied out the box of food. Only the energetic man stood aside, his expression s.h.i.+fting uncertainly, lost in his thoughts.
"Which game did you come from?" Lin Sanjiu asked.
"A farming game," the first girl replied, having already devoured half the bread. "It was exhausting. We were never full, and it was endless... I joined late; some of these guys had been playing for seven or eight months."
Lin Sanjiu exchanged glances with the grand prize.
"What kind of farming game?"
"There was division of labor. I was a farmer, while others were inspectors, workers, tax collectors, and so on..." She paused to bury her face in the bread again, making Lin Sanjiu wonder if she looked the same when eating earlier. "We had to pay a ton of taxes every day and couldn"t figure out how to end the game."
As expected, it was a variant of the Elephant in the Room game. It appears this girl never noticed the elephant until the game ended.
"How did you get out?" asked Louisa, who had been pretty quiet. She stared intently at the girl and her companions, antic.i.p.ating a particular answer.
"Actually... I"m not too sure. I just heard someone say a door had appeared on the other side... I dropped my hoe and ran. Soon everyone scrambled out, and then we saw all of you," the girl explained after finis.h.i.+ng an entire loaf of bread. She turned her eyes to the energetic man, asking, "Could you explain what happened?"
"It"s too complicated," the man said, waving his hand dismissively. "We"ll discuss it later. For now, we need to look forward and prepare for our survival."
"Yes, yes," a short, emaciated-looking man said, nodding eagerly. "It"s simple, really. It"s all thanks to you discovering the door that we could get out."
The leader had clearly mastered the art of not showing his emotions. He didn"t look pleased at the conversation. While everyone else sat down to rest and chat, he stood a few steps away, occasionally glancing back at the door leading to the Elephant in the Room game.
"What"s going on?" Lin Sanjiu whispered to Ji Shanqing. "What do you think happened to them?"
"The workers and farmers probably didn"t know they could leave," the grand prize whispered back. "It seems like the leader didn"t actually want to leave either. Maybe because of some unforeseen event, the elephant closed its eyes, creating an exit. Even if he forgot about the elephant"s existence, when he came out to take a look, it was considered as exiting the game."
Lin Sanjiu was lost for words, unsure whether to consider these people fortunate or unfortunate.
The room was vast. After both groups chatted for a while, the leader called his group over to rest some distance away, about several tens of meters. Half a day pa.s.sed with no news in the room. Even Lin Sanjiu gradually let down her guard. She took out some mats and blankets and distributed them among the group. Then she nestled the freshly groomed grand prize deep into the pillows, hoping he could rest a bit more and, thus, stay with her a little longer.
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After Silvan, Horst, Louisa, and the others fell asleep, Lin Sanjiu lay beside the grand prize. She heard him hum softly and stretch. Although he appeared small, he was quite long when stretching out his body.
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The two of them always chatted and whispered before sleeping. Nothing could stop them.
"Sis," he murmured in her ear, "This world feels so familiar to me."
"What do you mean?" Lin Sanjiu asked. "Have you seen the data of this world?"
"No," Ji Shanqing said. He turned, revealing a face as luminous as moonlight. "This world is too far from the Data Stream Library. Even the Veda didn"t realize they exist only on a certain layer in the Onion Universe, so there"s no data on this world. But... the way this world is structured feels so familiar to me."
Before Lin Sanjiu could ask, he sighed and said, "If they say an elephant is coming, an elephant appears. If they say there"s a Blue Wall Watcher, there is a Blue Wall Watcher. There"s another group of people continuously existing in a s.p.a.ce we"ve clearly occupied... Sis, do you get it?"
Lin Sanjiu had already lifted her head.
"Isn"t this very similar to the Veda?"