Humanity had entered the Bunker only a few short decades ago.
The elderly in the Bunker still remembered the world where humanity had once lived, and they had told the younger generation about that world of skies and seas.
But people could not imagine something they had never seen out of thin air.
Only after entering the Desire Tower and looking up could they understand what it meant for the sea of stars to be vast and boundless.
But that was not why people loved the Desire Tower.
People loved the Desire Tower because the Slaughter Tower was bloody and brutal, while the Strange Tower was terrifying and bizarre, making the Desire Tower's pursuit of desire... seem incomparably gentle.
There was no need to fight or kill here, nor were there any strange rules. As long as one made those pursuing their desires feel happy, one could obtain a certain amount of survival supplies.
The moment Wen Xishu entered the Desire Tower, he saw a special dialogue box.
Welcome to the twenty-first floor of the Desire Tower, Moen City. The Desire Tower is a place of love. Please climb this tower with love and responsibility.
How loving. How heartwarming. Its style was completely different from that of the other two towers.
Wen Xishu did not know, however, that the complete rule was as follows—
Welcome to the twenty-first floor of the Desire Tower, Moen City. All acts of violence are prohibited within the Desire Tower. The Desire Tower is a place of love. Please climb this tower with love and responsibility.
The rule prohibiting all violence had not taken effect on Wen Xishu. Even the prompt itself had been erased.
More precisely, it had been erased by the chaotic Madman's Dice. Wen Xishu was unaware of this.
What appeared before his eyes was a bustling city.
Towering skyscrapers, smartly dressed pedestrians on the streets, exquisite cream cakes in the display windows of food shops, dazzling billboards, and the scent of women's cosmetics.
All of it felt deeply familiar to Wen Xishu, as though he had returned to the world before his transmigration.
But this world was not entirely real.
For example, the area boundary formed by red lines in the distance—or rather, an invisible wall—and the information visible to Wen Xishu:
Jennifer's current happiness: 0. Mission status: Incomplete. Time remaining: 47 hours, 54 minutes, 16 seconds.
This information pulled him out of the haze of returning to his original world and gave him a sense of crisis over the lack of time.
Ordinary Tower Ascenders had seven days, but Wen Xishu had entered the Desire Tower through an Invitation Letter and had only two days.
In a very short time, he had to find clues sufficient to unlock the Strange Tower's hidden content and make Jennifer happy.
There were many ways to make someone happy.
People had been climbing the Desire Tower for decades. Whether they earned money in this world and used it to provide material value, or offered emotional value instead.
Back when the qualifications for entering the Desire Tower had been much looser, some overly blunt brutes with no social awareness had died inside it.
And a handful of geniuses who made absurd jokes like "Nighye Impact" or "Xuanxuan, I'm about to use my ultimate on you" had also died in the Desire Tower.
Fortunately, such cases had steadily decreased.
The overall caliber of those entering the Desire Tower had grown higher and higher, because the competition had become increasingly intense.
They had learned more and more ways to please people, including but not limited to "how to quickly advance a relationship until they reveal leverage against themselves."
These days, the Desire Tower's survival rate was nearly one hundred percent.
But that was only below the twentieth floor. Above the twentieth floor, the difficulty increased wildly, and the conditions became ever harsher.
Still, for the overwhelming majority of people, the exploration of the first twenty floors was enough to cover an entire lifetime.
Wen Xishu was on the twenty-first floor, and he could already sense the true difficulty of pleasing Jennifer.
As he walked toward the slums, Wen Xishu considered what he should do next.
Making Jennifer happy would be easy.
Whether he comforted Jennifer or pursued Yulia, he could smoothly complete the mission.
But in the end, he would only be able to take away food for the "family of three" at the lowest Completion Level.
That was not what Wen Xishu wanted.
"The greatest difficulty of this mission is that, no matter what, Jennifer's happiness will be reset to zero."
"Because before long, Jennifer will face disaster. All her current happiness will only serve to highlight the misery that follows."
"It all begins with Jack."
Wen Xishu was no saint. Naturally, he had considered killing Jack in the Desire Tower.
Without Jack, everyone Jennifer was attached to in that old building would survive what was about to happen.
But killing Jack was likely an even more mistaken choice.
Jennifer cherished Jack deeply. Killing him would only leave the little girl in unbearable pain.
Most importantly, Deception Jack actually had every reason to exist.
Wen Xishu still remembered what Jack had said to Jennifer—
"Can you handle the outside world on your own? This is only the beginning."
Outside the old building, things would only be more dangerous. Jack was merely the boss of a certain area on the twenty-first floor.
There were countless beings of the same level in the Strange Tower.
"To survive in that world, Jennifer needs a powerful backer."
"And something is worth noting: I saw two Jennifers in the game prompts."
"Desire Jennifer and Ghoul Jennifer."
"If the two Jennifers are the same person... then why deliberately distinguish between them?"
"Was it merely because one Jennifer was in the Strange Tower, while the other was in the Desire Tower?"
Wen Xishu shook his head slightly.
"How stupid would the designer of the Three Towers Game have to be to come up with such a redundant setting?"
"Assuming there is another reason—then Desire Jennifer must undergo some process to become Ghoul Jennifer."
"The same applies to Jack."
His intuition told Wen Xishu that the difference in Jennifer's prefixes was an extremely crucial clue.
"In the Desire Tower, Jack thought he would die because he had stomach cancer."
"But in the Strange Tower, not only was he still alive, after experiencing a day of despair, he even became Deception Jack."
Walking down the street, Wen Xishu suddenly paused for a second. He felt that he was about to find the key.
"First he gets stabbed in the back by coworkers, deceived by friends, and rejected by the person he admires. Then he turns dark, becomes ten times stronger, and kills everyone. That kind of catharsis is absurdly unreasonable."
"If the world were that driven by subjective will, wouldn't it just become a competition in who had it worse?"
In this mad world, people rarely stopped to think about why it had become this way.
Most people were still trying to adapt and survive.
Wen Xishu was adapting too. But he felt that the Strange Tower's emergence and Jack's transformation both needed a reason.
Only by investigating that reason could he decide what to do next.
Half an hour later, Wen Xishu arrived in the slums.
Having lived in Chongqing, Wen Xishu had always felt that the world on the internet was like a peacock spreading its tail.
Behind those beautiful feathers lay an entirely different sight.
It was like a subway train passing through a building: on the left were modern attractions where influencers competed to take photos, while on the right stood a decaying cluster of dangerous old buildings that seemed to belong to the previous century.
Of course, one could call it old Chongqing charm, call it nostalgic.
But that would certainly be a condescending attitude. When that aged atmosphere surrounded you, all you would want was to escape.
Moen City was the same. Its bustling CBD intoxicated people, but it also had impoverished districts.
Wen Xishu stood at the entrance to that old building.
In the Desire Tower's world, there was nothing strange about this building. It looked like a massive, decaying tomb covered in dust.
At that moment, Jack had just returned to his room, preparing to write something to declare that, in the final days of his life, he wished to be a good person.
By observing the medical report in Jack's hand, Wen Xishu deduced the point in time:
"Next, Jack will go apologize to Remian, but he will quickly discover that Remian has not changed his ways."
"After that, he will suffer a brutal dose of truth from his good friend Anderson."
"Finally, he will beg Yulia to let Jennifer watch his performance, but that will fail as well."
"Is this the Invitation Letter's special effect? This really is a... point in time that can change everything."
Before you continue