The First Death

The man was around six foot three, but what stood out most was not his height, but his arms, which hung naturally at his sides and easily extended past his knees.

His reach was astonishing, to the point that it felt as though he could touch the ground with his fists by bending over slightly.

Judging by his proportions alone, Wen Xishu thought this last teammate looked more like an ape than Nissen did.

Of course, what drew the most attention was the man's mouth, which was sealed behind an iron muzzle. Wen Xishu had only seen that kind of outfit in anime.

Usually, once the muzzle came off, it meant the second phase was about to begin or something.

But Kane, Park Mihee, and Sita were all quite bold, and none of them paid much attention to his appearance.

"My name is... Zheng Zai." The man spoke with some difficulty.

"Sorry. I hope my appearance did not frighten you... I have to be like this. I am trying to quit a certain desire."

Zheng Zai's voice was rather gentle. Without that iron muzzle, he might have seemed like a towering man who inspired a strong sense of security, with a touch of simple honesty.

Wen Xishu noticed that Zheng Zai's gaze occasionally drifted toward Ah San bro, Sita.

"Is there some kind of scent on Sita that is attracting him?"

"He is trying to quit some kind of desire?"

Wen Xishu could not help asking,

"Are you sick?"

Zheng Zai nodded.

"I am sick. But it cannot be cured."

Wen Xishu asked again,

"There is a Level Six Hospital on the second floor now. Even it cannot cure you?"

Zheng Zai shook his head.

"After the pandemic ended, that hospital stopped accepting ordinary people... I need money. I have to earn enough money in the Strange Tower."

Wen Xishu suddenly thought of a possibility.

"Which tower did you go to last time?"

Zheng Zai rather enjoyed being asked questions. When that happened, one of his desires weakened, because part of his attention was diverted.

"In... the fourth floor of the Strange Tower. That mission... I completed it. Level Four Completion Level."

The Strange Tower, fourth floor, Level Four Completion Level.

The Strange Tower itself should have bonuses, and with a Level Four Completion Level, the supplies should have been extremely generous...

Considering Zheng Zai's physical condition, Wen Xishu said,

"What crime did you commit?"

Zheng Zai was slightly startled, as though his thoughts had failed to keep up with Wen Xishu.

He fell silent for two or three seconds before slowly speaking.

"My father... was arrested in an anti-corruption campaign. My family are all prisoners."

His fate was actually somewhat similar to Wen Xishu's own.

But with the words anti-corruption, along with collective implication... Zheng Zai's father was probably no ordinary person.

Wen Xishu asked one final question.

"How long ago was that?"

Zheng Zai looked around thirty now, but he already appeared somewhat weathered. He answered,

"Twelve years ago."

"Alright. Welcome to our team."

Twelve years ago. It appeared to have nothing to do with the Wen family.

Wen Xishu could not sense even the slightest malice from Zheng Zai, and that made him feel good.

As for Zheng Zai's illness, perhaps it was not an illness at all.

Of course, Wen Xishu could not judge that yet.

"How about you be the captain?" Wen Xishu suddenly looked at Park Mihee.

Normally, the odds that someone arranged by the higher-ups would happen to become his teammate were very low. But since Wen Xishu had constantly encountered unlikely events, he had never been lucky enough to let his guard down.

Having Park Mihee serve as captain was partly because he wanted to observe her, and partly because she might possess some intelligence.

At that moment, Sita objected.

"Why should a woman be captain? Women are meant to... No, I cannot accept this."

Wen Xishu looked at Kane.

"Do you also think this beautiful lady is unsuitable to be captain?"

Kane shook his head.

"Of course not. Men and women are equal. Hey, this beautiful lady must have extensive experience climbing towers. I am willing to learn from her."

Neither Zheng Zai nor Mendemuer said anything.

Park Mihee asked,

"Why did you choose me as captain?"

Wen Xishu seemed to change the subject.

"The keyword for this mission is parrot. Since you have climbed Desire Tower many times, do you have any impressions related to parrots?"

Park Mihee frowned.

"This is also my first time climbing the Strange Tower. How could I possibly know what a parrot represents? Although the highest floor of the Bunker promoted Huaxia language as the official language back then, your language... is obscure."

"Your writing is complicated just for the sake of being complicated."

"Alright, alright, Ms. Park. I do not expect you to understand the beauty of Chinese, but what I mean is, do you have any memories involving parrots from the Desire Tower?"

Park Mihee seemed to hear that Wen Xishu's words suggested there might be a connection between Desire Tower and Strange Tower.

She actually took Wen Xishu's words rather seriously.

After all...

Unlike the others, Park Mihee had indeed come here for Wen Xishu. His intuition had not been wrong.

The six had already formed their team, and they had less than an hour to prepare.

Park Mihee naturally wanted to survive as well. Only by surviving could she have a chance to obtain a better life.

For this mission, the Bunker's higher-ups—primarily the Government Affairs Bureau—had arranged 244 female agents. Although these women usually operated only on the lower floors of Desire Tower, each had her own abilities.

The Bunker Security Bureau had also arranged many men without academy backgrounds to infiltrate the Strange Tower, totaling 450.

Students who graduated from academies were connected to Three Towers Academy and could not be persecuted. But every year, the Security Bureau recruited people from the lower classes to do "dirty work," even training death squads.

Nearly seven hundred people had been sent into the Strange Tower just to team up with Wen Xishu and obtain his secret to clearing the Strange Tower. All of these people might die, and both the Bunker Security Bureau and the Government Affairs Bureau had prepared to pay enormous compensation for it.

And that was only the officially registered personnel. No one knew how many unregistered people, true criminals, had been arranged as well. Even Park Mihee did not know some of the figures.

All of it showed just how important the secret hidden within Wen Xishu was.

Park Mihee said,

"You all know Wen Renjing, the greatest climber of Desire Tower, right?"

Everyone nodded. The name was known to everyone.

Park Mihee continued,

"Wen Renjing once had regrets too. As for parrots, all I know is what Wen Renjing wrote about a colorful bird on the fourth floor..."

"Colorful birds can have regrets too. What she wanted was not love. I gave her the wrong thing. Back then, I was greedy for a shortcut and used the wrong method. That was one of the few Level One Completion Levels in my life."

"Even now, I regret why I viewed her so shallowly. What the bird wanted was true freedom."

Park Mihee said,

"My study of Huaxia language is indeed insufficient, but I can still tell from this that the early Wen Renjing deeply regretted that bird's final fate."

"You asked me about parrots... The only thing I can think of is that colorful bird."

Wen Xishu nodded.

"See? You are very suitable to be captain. After all, you have experience none of us have. Perhaps some things you occasionally remember during this team mission will be of great help to us."

Park Mihee did not refuse.

She believed she had not exposed herself, and only by staying hidden could she obtain as much information about Wen Xishu as possible.

Otherwise, if he became wary, it would be troublesome.

So she nodded.

"If you mean these two birds... are connected? If that is true, I hope my memories can really help everyone."

Park Mihee became the captain of the six, and they also briefly got to know one another.

Aside from Wen Xishu and Zheng Zai, everyone else was exploring the Strange Tower for the first time. They had previously belonged to other tower systems.

Time passed quickly. Once they had finished preparing... they activated their Login Devices at the same time.

The world of the parrot descended.

Wen Xishu was not surprised. This was indeed not some birdcage. It was a special room... with doors on all four sides.

Aside from the four doors, there was only a chaotic vortex in the room. There was nothing else.

This room really did carry the feel of a parrot cage.

Because in Wen Xishu's eyes, the doors on all four sides were like an open birdcage, yet the bird dared not fly away. Just like everyone here, lingering in place as they waited for someone to issue an order.

Please select a door and find the item behind it that needs to be purified. Each item will allow two people to leave. The final rating will be determined by the number of purifiable items obtained.

"It looks like we need to enter the rooms and find something... There are six of us. As long as we find three items, everyone can leave." Mendemuer was the one who spoke.

Though timid, he had not been so frightened by the setting that he could not think.

Sita walked over to one of the doors.

"I... I smell something I like!"

Black vortices filled every corner of their vision. Wen Xishu and the others could not see what lay beyond the doors.

Wen Xishu had to admit that pooling their thoughts helped. His first instinct was that the doors led to other spaces.

So if they could not see, they could only enter blindly.

But Ah San bro's logic truly could not be predicted. Sita's first thought had actually been... to take a sniff.

Who knew what scent he had detected that felt so familiar and pleasant to him?

Still, it gave Wen Xishu an idea.

"Then this door? It will not help to stand here doing nothing. It seems the four doors lead to four different scenes, and those scenes... will ultimately form the birdcage that makes the 'parrot' fall."

"There are four different items in the four scenes, and we need to find them. If we find one, two people should be able to leave. Those who leave may achieve a Level One Completion Level."

"Whoever finds it can leave, and can designate one person to leave with them. Any objections?"

Upon hearing that they only needed to find things, everyone felt the difficulty did not seem too high.

Sita said,

"No problem. Hurry and go in. I cannot wait anymore."

Zheng Zai slowly said as well,

"No... prob... lem."

After entering the Strange Tower area, Wen Xishu felt that Zheng Zai was becoming increasingly strange. Whenever he looked at Sita, his gaze grew more terrifying and savage.

Sita himself did not notice at all. His mind was wholly occupied by the scent behind the door that he liked.

Park Mihee had no objection to Wen Xishu's instructions, but she was not blindly obeying him either.

"If we stand here without moving, would we be forcibly returned safely after seven days? This is not Desire Tower. There is no rule saying we die if the mission target does not obtain happiness."

It was a good suggestion. In Wen Xishu's view, raising it somewhat reduced his suspicions toward Park Mihee.

Because it was reasonable.

No one knew the danger beyond the doors, so waiting in place for seven days was not impossible.

But before Wen Xishu could explain why they could not do that—the changes in the room had already made everyone realize that they could not.

Because... Sita felt the door move.

He was the closest one to it because he had leaned close to smell it with his nose.

So Sita was the first to sense the door's subtle movement.

"The door is moving. It is coming toward us!"

Wen Xishu glanced at Park Mihee.

"Captain, it seems we cannot stay here. Assuming each door contains a scene, and there is something strange within each scene that can harm us..."

"Then if we keep staying here... it may cause all four doors to gather together, forcing us into all four scenes at the same time."

"At that point, the danger and uncertainty will be fourfold... No, if they can combine, it will be more than fourfold."

Park Mihee nodded.

"My oversight. I will follow your lead."

The surrounding black chaos had already made Park Mihee uncomfortable. She was afraid of this kind of setting.

She wanted to survive, which meant she had to make good use of Wen Xishu.

Wen Xishu did not expose her thoughts. He no longer hesitated and entered through the door first, even faster than Sita.

When the others saw the chaos swallow Wen Xishu's figure, they felt a little fear as well, but recalling his words, they entered through the door one after another.

Books were scattered everywhere.

From above, one would see workbooks and exercise books placed atop a desk taller than a person. On the open workbook were marks where fingernails had torn through the pages.

Wen Xishu was the first to enter. The moment he arrived, he discovered that this was a study.

An enormous study.

When he realized that books originally no bigger than his palm were now half his height, he understood that either he had been shrunk, or everything in this study was larger than the furnishings of an ordinary human study.

To Wen Xishu, the desk was as high as a surrounding wall.

When he looked up, he felt that the ceiling was dozens of meters above him.

The room was filled with all sorts of things. Pen holders, trophies, books on the shelves, a study desk, an office desk, chairs, certificates, music boxes...

Everything was larger than he had expected.

Wen Xishu walked over to an enormous, tattered page.

It was the first time he had seen a page so huge. It was like an exercise-book page covered in problems had been blown up to fill a massive sixty-five-inch screen.

"Is this... a first-year middle school worksheet?"

The setting was Jiangcheng City.

Wen Xishu regarded the Three Towers World as a parallel-universe version of the world from his previous life.

He guessed this place might be somewhere like Suzhou or Shanghai.

There was nothing unusual about the room's decor, but the scattered pages and discarded books made it seem as though a fight had taken place here.

Before Wen Xishu could analyze what the contaminant might be or how to find it, he heard Ah San bro Sita's voice:

"I smell it! That smell, that smell!"

Sita began charging madly toward a corner of the room.

At normal proportions, the room would have been around twenty square meters. Even running diagonally across it would have taken only a few steps.

But with the altered scale, Sita had been running for quite a while, practically sprinting at full speed.

At that moment, Wen Xishu, Kane, Mendemuer, and Zheng Zai all looked toward the destination of Sita's charge—

What lay there brought a mysterious smile to Kane's face, while Wen Xishu frowned slightly.

They were women's clothes.

Magnified as they were, the lace panties were enough to cover Sita's entire upper body. And that was indeed what Sita intended.

Like a pervert, he desperately wanted to press his whole body against them.

When people were hungry, their sense of smell became sharper.

But perhaps only Ah San's kind experienced such changes in that regard as well.

Sita could actually smell the scent on women's clothing through a door, from a real distance of dozens of meters away. Wen Xishu had to admire him.

But then Wen Xishu saw the scrolling comments.

They came from Zheng Zai.

"Meat... I want to eat meat!"

Wen Xishu suddenly felt that something big was about to happen.

Not long after Sita took off running, Zheng Zai finally lost control. His reason was trying to stop his body from moving, but his limbs had already begun to twist involuntarily.

He looked exactly like a zombie.

At the same time, Sita had already reached the enormous clothes.

But suddenly, Sita stopped.

Because a message appeared in his mind:

You have found an item bearing traces of sin. Purify it?

There was a contaminant in the room that needed purification. As long as they found this item, they would have a chance to leave the Strange Tower and receive at least a level-one Completion Level reward.

The moment Sita saw that it bore traces of sin, coupled with how overstimulated his brain was by the scent of women, he chose purification without thinking.

In that instant, the study, which had previously looked merely messy, changed.

An eerie aura descended in that instant. The enormous music box Wen Xishu had noticed from the beginning suddenly began to play.

Wen Xishu seemed to have anticipated this development. He had even guessed why Sita had stopped, because he had received the same prompt when he touched the page.

Wen Xishu had simply chosen "Refuse Purification."

This game was about finding objects. If it had been in the Desire Tower, perhaps there would have been no penalty for making a mistake. But this was the Strange Tower. Once they picked the wrong thing, there would definitely be punishment.

That was why Wen Xishu refused purification.

He could have warned Sita, but he did not.

His gaze was as cold as polar ice, yet the mockery deep in his pupils made him seem like someone simply enjoying the show.

As the music began, everyone heard a prompt in their minds.

Good little girl, you're really good at hiding. So you were here. Today's lessons are quite packed!

The voice was full of greasy sleaziness, making people feel sick. Park Mihee in particular immediately thought of those fat senior executives.

Not long after the voice fell silent, everyone witnessed a horrifying sight. The bizarre thing hidden among the objects finally revealed itself.

Wen Xishu began searching for a place to hide. He did not look at what was happening.

He merely inferred from the prompt that they would have to hide next. Nor did he share that information with anyone.

"Sorry, Officer Liu. Of course I want to be a good person, but only if good people can survive to the end under the rules of this game."

Sita did not know what he was encountering and let out a shrill wail.

The first teammate met his death.