Varying Degrees of Memory Confusion

"Twenty players took part in that game, and a full third of them were newcomers. Ning Yan always said she hated newcomers who couldn't survive on their own, but if there wasn't a more experienced player than her on the team, she'd still look after them to the very end. She did it every time."

As Sister Yao spoke, Su Bai recalled how thoroughly Ning Yan had scorned him and Feng Ling when they first met. Yet after inviting them to sit on the sofa in Room 204, she had carefully poured them coffee and even packed up the bread she had made and pressed it into their hands.

In particular, after Su Bai handed the bag of bread Ning Yan had given him to the Cat Owner, it had turned into chunks of less-than-fresh meat in his left eye's vision, becoming a delicacy those cats loved.

Su Bai had already found Ning Yan strange back then.

Perhaps there had been something wrong with the ingredients in Room 204 to begin with, but food made normally by humans couldn't interest ghosts. After all, food that appealed to supernatural beings either had to be filled with despair and fear or possess some special power.

Ordinary players had very little of the Red Moon's power within them. It couldn't possibly end up in the bread they baked. Unless the "person" baking that bread had long since mutated into something else.

Thinking back later, the way Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie interacted was strange too. At first, Su Bai had assumed they had also met for the first time in this game, but later, it became obvious that Fang Xiujie knew Ning Yan well.

When Ning Yan dealt with Fang Xiujie, she acted like a young lady meeting a stranger for the first time.

But when Fang Xiujie dealt with Ning Yan, he acted like an old friend who knew her inside out.

If those had been the only two things, Su Bai would merely have found Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie somewhat odd. It wasn't until the scores on the wall of the first-floor lobby showed that two players had died that he realized something was wrong.

There were already seven players in the lobby of Building 1, and some of them knew one another and could confirm each other's identities.

Logically, the remaining three players were Feng Ling, Ning Yan, and Fang Xiujie. By that calculation, the two players killed by ghosts earlier had to be among those three.

Before learning about Lan Xingchen's past, that deduction had been perfectly reasonable. Even if Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie were veteran players, they could still meet their end in the Nightmare World. That was perfectly normal in the nightmare game.

The only problem was Feng Ling. Since he had heard Ning Yan's Ode to Joy when leaving Building 3, Su Bai believed Feng Ling should have been with the two of them when those players met their end.

The first time he encountered Feng Ling in the lobby, Su Bai had already recognized her. He had even rudely laughed aloud because her outfit was so different from what he remembered.

The second time Su Bai met Feng Ling, he noticed that she seemed to have recovered her memories. She even remembered that she was a player in the Nightmare World, along with the rules and hints the "administrator" had given when she entered the game.

But to Su Bai, who had ten years' worth of knowledge she lacked, Feng Ling hadn't fully recovered her memories. She still hadn't remembered who she really was.

She had even unconsciously used the term "administrator," a title no newcomer who had only just completed a beginner game could possibly know.

That also confirmed something for Su Bai: some players or supernatural beings mistakenly believed they had recovered all their memories from before entering the Happiness Residential Complex, but they were still under its influence. Just as the "administrator" had said when they entered the game, everyone, human or supernatural, would experience varying degrees of memory confusion.

"Varying degrees" was a subtle phrase, and "confusion" was a subtle word.

If Su Bai's guess was right, this meant the players and supernatural beings in the Happiness Residential Complex hadn't simply lost one layer of memories. They might have lost two, three, or even four layers, and one of those layers might even have become confused because it had been tampered with.

This was a place where memory and perception were utterly scrambled!

Because he trusted Feng Ling, Su Bai believed that even if her memories hadn't fully returned, she couldn't possibly let the teammates beside her die so easily.

And so Su Bai had come up with a theory-

If the two dead players weren't Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie, there were only two possibilities. Either something was wrong with the total player count, or... Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie hadn't been normal players from the start.

Su Bai still remembered the fourth-floor corridor he had seen through his left eye. Those clean, beautiful white security doors had become enormous tombstones in its vision.

As far as Su Bai knew, the only place where "people" might mistake tombstones for their front doors was a cemetery where the dead rested.

Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie had clearly once been players, which was why they knew so many details about the real world. Fang Xiujie had even given Su Bai and the others a contact number they could use to reach him in the real world.

But just as the "administrator" had said when they boarded the Route 444 Last Bus, anyone who died in the nightmare game would remain in the Nightmare World forever.

So Su Bai suspected that Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie had once been players, but had become trapped in a cemetery in the Nightmare World after dying. Then, for some unknown reason, that cemetery had become the Happiness Residential Complex, and they had naturally become its residents.

Because their memories were confused, Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie treated each other differently.

Because their memories were confused, they remembered being players but forgot that they were already dead.

Because their memories were confused, even though they were dead, they still instinctively wanted to help Su Bai and Feng Ling, who claimed to be newcomers...

But a theory was only a theory. Even Su Bai hadn't expected that Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie not only had unusual identities, but had died in the nightmare game three years ago while helping Lan Xingchen. Their deaths were even the real reason Lan Xingchen called himself a sinner and kept trying to atone by helping others!

It was as though a pair of unseen eyes had deliberately scripted this game, then eagerly awaited whatever twists might come next.

That thought suddenly reminded Su Bai of a few small incidents from his previous life.

In the eyes of the veteran players Su Bai had known in his previous life, the Red Moon in the sky was like the eye of the Nightmare World, and might even have been its consciousness. The Red Moon had brought so many humans into the Nightmare World as players and created one game scenario after another. Countless so-called wise minds on humanity's side had analyzed whatever patterns might govern "its" behavior, and their conclusions had been strikingly consistent-

For amusement.

Whether it was a brutal escape, an endless bus ride, a puzzle game in a locked room, or a game of house played under false memories, all of it might have been nothing more than entertainment those unseen eyes wanted to watch.

"Ning Yan helped so many people, but perhaps even she forgot she was just a young girl who had only just started her second year of college. She was at an age when others should have been protecting her, yet every day she'd secretly wonder whether she was too immature because her words kept offending people." Sister Yao closed her eyes in pain, her hand brushing gently over the wound in her abdomen. "I went to see Ning Yan's mother. Three years have passed, and she's still searching everywhere for her missing daughter."

"I once lost a child. Even now, I don't dare remember the pain I felt back then."

"I know. That's why I'm atoning!" Lan Xingchen raised his head, his expression just as pained.

"You're not atoning. You're running away!" Sister Yao's abdomen was still bleeding, but she had the two players beside her help her up so she could stand against the wall. "I can't speak for Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie. I don't even know what they were thinking when they died, but..."

"They chose to save you."

"They chose to save you."

Sister Yao scratched at her hair in frustration, apparently struggling to find the right words.

"Although I act like I hate you, I've known you far longer than I ever knew Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie. If you're willing to admit it, we're... old acquaintances who often meet in the Nightmare World. No matter how many people mock you, despise you, or use you in the games, there are still people, myself included, who hope you can find another way to atone."

"For example, leave the Nightmare World and go back to the real world to see your family, or visit Ning Yan's and Fang Xiujie's families. Do something that actually matters. Or stop blindly saving newcomers who don't know how to do anything. Help them and guide them the way Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie did, so that once they no longer have your help, they can clear the next game through their own strength."

"Or... take good care of this body that Ning Yan and Fang Xiujie gave their lives to save."

"Damn it, I'm really just as bad with words as Ning Yan." Sister Yao sighed. "I wish those two would pop out themselves, give you a proper tongue-lashing, and then beat you up!"