Yu Xing Suddenly Felt a Chill Crawl Across His Scalp

After these two very clearly directional words appeared on the paper, three seconds later, Time Imprint, as if obsessively, stubbornly wrote the last word.

Island.

Yu Xing: "..."

It's quite rigorous.

"What exactly happened?" Yu Xing didn't close the bedroom door when she entered. Zhao Mou leaned against the door frame, neither showing indifference nor coming in.

The refined-looking man reached out and pushed up his glasses. The thin frames made his eyes, which were almost identical in shape to Zhao Yijiu's, appear even more delicate and sharp, only the lenses concealing their brilliance.

"Wait a moment, there's a new development, quite interesting." Yu Xing felt the trembling of the brush in her hand hadn't subsided, and she slightly tilted her head to respond to Zhao Mou, also using this opportunity to tell Zhao Mou and the other teammates outside that what was happening wasn't something serious that needed to be dealt with.

As he responded, the soft bristles of the brush spun on the paper, the tip touching the paper and then separating. It seemed that he had gotten used to it after writing a few words, and the newly written characters looked quite nice.

"Sink."

"Cat."

"See."

After writing those three words, the Time Imprint seemed to suddenly lose all its power, becoming lifeless and completely still in his hand.

Yu Xing squinted and examined it for a while, understanding the meaning the pen was trying to convey in just a few seconds.

He said calmly, "It seems we can't go to Town of No Light. We'd better go to Dead Silent Island instead."

The three people who had been in the living room saw that Zhao Mou hadn't been kicked out, so they gathered around. They heard Zhao Mou ask, his tone unchanged, as if he were asking what he wanted for breakfast the next day, "Reason?"

Yu Xing stood up from his desk, poked at the Time Imprint with his finger, causing the calligraphy brush to roll to one side. He laughed, "Because something very interesting will happen on Dead Silent Island."

"It's this pen..." Zhao Yijiu had good eyesight and a decent memory; he recognized the pen at a glance. He seemed slightly bewildered, probably not expecting the noise in Yu Xing's room to be caused by a pen. "That woman gave it to you."

Woman?

Carlos was taken aback, and his usual gossip-loving manners immediately came into play. A glint flashed in his emerald green eyes, and he was practically asking, "Any gossip?"

"If I understand correctly, just now, I received a message from the tester." Yu Xing, of course, ignored Carlos's desire to gossip. There was really no gossip to begin with; the Witch was just a beautiful woman with very peculiar abilities whom he had met once before.

"Experience tester?" Zhao Mou tilted his head, his gaze shifting between the calligraphy brush and Yu Xing's face. "You actually have a prop here that can directly contact the experience tester? You've kept this information very well under wraps, not revealing a single detail to me."

A sly glint flashed across his face. "Even my divination abilities didn't yield this result, which means the experience tester you contacted is, to some extent, a very powerful individual, at least someone who has come into contact with the rules."

"My respected captain, do you have any explanation for this?" Zhao Mou smiled very kindly.

Generally speaking, all his plans that terrified his enemies were made under this kind smile.

"Don't misunderstand, I didn't mean to hide this. If they hadn't sent a message earlier, I wouldn't have known that the 'corpse-lying pen' was for this purpose." Yu Xing clicked her tongue twice, indicating she wouldn't take the blame. "Let's talk about it later. First, let me tell you what the message from over there was."

"This message must have come from a female experience tester known as the Witch. She told me, and perhaps us, to choose Dead Silent Island." Yu Xing glanced at the words on the paper. "She also said that Yu Fengchen and she are both waiting for us there. We can meet and then cooperate."

Since "Shen" has been written out separately by the time seal, it means that the other party is sure that Yu Xing can understand its meaning. Yu Xing has come into contact with people who can be associated with "Shen", and the only one he has seen is Yu Feng Shen in the tomb.

The cat represents the little black cat named Bad Luck that was seen in the Witch's Time Cabin last time. It may be more suggestive than the word "Witch" because there are many Persona Mask related to Witch among the deducers.

To put it more clearly, it means the person on the other side is inviting him to meet on Dead Silent Island.

When he saw the Witch in the Time Cabin, he was a little puzzled by Witch identity; she didn't seem like a predictor or an NPC.

After learning of the existence of experience testers, he was already quite inclined to believe that the Witch he had met was one of them.

Yu Fengchen's identity is beyond doubt. When Chen and the cat appeared at the same time, Yu Xing instantly recalled what the Witch had said: the cat named Bad Luck was not hers, and the cat had a previous owner.

It's probably Yu Fengchen's. Yu Fengchen in the tomb is definitely worthy of being the owner of that strange black cat.

"Want to cooperate with you? Can these people be trusted?" Zhao Mou remained leaning against the doorframe, unlike his usual impeccable manners in front of strangers. In front of acquaintances, he was a bit unserious and occasionally even a little roguish.

Before Yu Xing answer, Zhao Mou crossed his arms, his eyelashes lowered, as if he were thinking as he spoke:

"The information from the experience testers is very scattered on our end. Although the deducers and experience testers have been in contact for more than ten years since the first contact, there are too many deduction worlds, and it is rare to encounter the same person. It is basically impossible to meet the same experience tester twice, so the information we summarize still does not achieve the desired effect."

He was naturally referring to the anomaly research studio. As someone skilled in intelligence gathering, he had his own methods for obtaining inside information. Even though his hard skills were only average, he was always at the forefront when it came to certain secrets.

"Perhaps the Research Institute and Yan Ming have tools or even sacrifices that allow direct communication with the experience testers, but this information has been kept tightly under wraps and hasn't leaked out at all. You just said that it was this pen that moved first, and that's how you found out the other side could contact you with a pen?"

Yu Xing nodded slightly. "This kind of contact is one-way. I tried it a long time ago. If I wanted to write something, it wouldn't leave any trace at all, so it can't be called communication. You can think of it as a notification."

"If that's the case, how can you be sure that what you just heard was a conversation between the experience testers, rather than the pen itself having some kind of prophetic function, guiding you based on the prophesied events?" Zhao Mou's mind worked quickly. In this situation, the team assumed that he and Yu Xing would be the ones to discuss it, so the other three just listened from the sidelines.

"There are many factors to consider in this judgment. First of all, I guess you don't know the Witch. Let me tell you about the occasions in which I have interacted with them." Yu Xing had mentioned Yu Fengchen to Zhao Mou before, after all, this person directly mentioned their Broken Mirror Squad's name, which clearly means that he knows them at some point in the future.

Of course, after his deduction of the tomb palace, he signed a "confidentiality agreement" with the system, so much information has never been revealed to him, including information about the Ghost Tree.

He only mentioned indirectly when chatting with Zhao Mou about experience testers that he had encountered a certain experience tester in a certain simulation, and that experience tester seemed to have seen them in another timeline.

Zhao Mou was a smart man; he didn't need to explain things too clearly. He could guess the general idea himself. So, from beginning to end, Yu Xing only had to fool the system.

But he hadn't thought there would be any connection between the Witch, so he hadn't mentioned it.

Even more coincidentally, whether he encountered the Witch or Yu Fengchen, he entered the deduction with a teammate in both instances: Zhao Yijiu in the former and Carlos in the latter.

As for Zhao Yijiu, who prefers to remain silent whenever possible, don't expect him to offer any explanations. Yu Xing resignedly recounted all the necessary experiences in Alice's Park in a rambling manner.

"In short, this Witch possesses the power of the time law. I could clearly feel it just by getting close. Her power is extremely strong and very strange. If we convert it into our power system, it would be at least at the Despair level," Yu Xing summarized. "It seems she doesn't have any abilities related to prophecy. The questions she asked us in the hut were all about the past, things she could see and judge from a time perspective."

"Of course, my instincts tell me that even if she did see some things in the future, it was because she had used the power of time to travel to that future, rather than seeing the future from where she was, like this pen."

"The gift she gave to Brother Jiu was very practical. You must have helped her set that bead into the offering, right?" Yu Xing looked at Zhao Mou. Among those present, only Zhao Mou had the connections to find a special talent in the deduction system who could set things in.

"Based on my speculation, given Brother Jiu's personality, he only told you that this was a special item he obtained during his deductions, and he didn't mention the Witch to you at all." Yu Xing ignored the pen and walked out of the bedroom. "Anyway, I think she's very mysterious. This pen she gave me hasn't served any purpose since I got it, until today."

"I tend to think that, like Yu Fengchen, she has met me and some other members of our team in a future timeline, which is why she gave me this item—to contact me when necessary and facilitate our encounter in this timeline."

Yu Xing. Carlos, who had met Yu Fengchen, curled the corners of his lips and sighed, "It seems there's nothing wrong with it. That person in the tomb does seem very powerful; he might really be able to do these things. If that Yu Fengchen knows the equally mysterious Witch you mentioned, I have to suspect that the experience testers our team has encountered were all arranged by some kind of force."

Upon hearing this, Yu Xing suddenly recalled the destiny that the Lingren had told him at the Blood Pool Middle School.

The Yu Fengchen is related to the Ghost Tree.

The cursed power within him is also inextricably linked to the Ghost Tree. In fact, he might even develop new talents through contact with the Ghost Tree, which is how his elusive Spiritual Sense came about.

However, the Ghost Tree will also stimulate his alienation level. Last time in the tomb palace, his emotional fluctuations became a bit uncontrollable at the end, and his alienation level increased by three percent directly after the deduction.

Is this what the Lingren wanted to see?

To find out the origin of the curse, he had to contact Yu Fengchen, who was related to the Ghost Tree. Although Yu Fengchen had not shown any malice and had even been friendly to them based on their previous interactions, as if the two teams had some kind of relationship, the malice did not lie with this person, but the consequences could not necessarily be avoided.

The more he comes into contact with it, the stronger the power he gains, but he will also be "corrupted" until his mutation level can no longer be sustained, turning him into a true monster.

Many years ago, when he first escaped from the research institute, Yu Xing was at that critical point. So he knew very well how terrifying he was in that state. He would ignore all human emotions, and anyone standing here, whether it was Qu Xuanqing or Zhao Yijiu, Carlos or Zhao Mou, would very likely not survive in his hands.

He also remembered what Zhao Yijiu had told him about that elder of the Zhao family. Wasn't the ghost that had been fused into Zhao Yijiu's body the one that had corrupted that elder and then used Zhao family elder's body as a vessel to escape from the Absurdity System?

This is not an isolated case; it's just that others haven't encountered such intelligent ghosts. It has nothing to do with the container. Once their mutation crosses the line, they will become true monsters.

Yu Xing suddenly felt something was strange.

Although his thoughts were a bit far-fetched, it was at this moment that he suddenly realized that although every deducer knew the consequences of exceeding the mutation limit and understood what kind of monster they would become, whether they controlled themselves not to go too deep into the deduction and only solved the surface problems to survive, or bought items in the store that could suppress the mutation level in order to maintain their own personality, it seemed that they had all overlooked one thing.

The accumulation of alienation degree is not announced in advance. If a person encounters something that is extremely damaging to their personality during a deduction, it is not uncommon for the alienation degree to increase by 15% or 20% at once. At least one-third of the deducers who die in deductions each year are due to the collapse of alienation degree.

All this data is publicly available, so why has he never encountered a monster that has broken down?

Where did those people go after they turned into ghosts?

Were they left in the simulation, or did they return to reality? If they returned to reality, why is it so peaceful there, with so little related news?

Don't talk about covering it up. No matter how well something is covered up, you can't deny the traces of its existence.

Only normal deducers can perform deductions, so every time he enters a deduction instance, he will encounter fellow deducers with whom he can communicate. This applies to everyone, not just him. Therefore, the "monster after the collapse" seems very distant to them, so distant that they cannot reach it and have inexplicably forgotten about it.

Yu Xing felt, in that instant, the same discomfort that always seemed to creep into the attic during exam simulations.

Realizing this, even Yu Xing suddenly felt a chill run down his spine, and a long-lost sense of dread welled up from the depths of his heart.

Wasn't the director of the Fear Hospital someone who, after experiencing too much, slowly drove himself insane, transforming from an ordinary mental patient into a monster capable of destroying an entire building?

Even Yi Qing, isn't the same kind of Sheqing Ghost that enters the coffin while still alive, allowing itself to "evolve" from human to ghost, forcibly transforming itself into a ghost?

Aren't these exactly the same as the collapse of the deducer's alienation degree?

The bosses, NPCs, curses, and those pathetic passersby who seem like mere background figures in the simulation dungeon...

Many large-scale chain-reaction scenarios are recognized as another form of real world. But what about the smaller, independent scenarios? Are they really just fake simulation worlds?