Black Corridor

Messing with me, are you? Well played.

Lin Ye entered the Red Corridor and began checking the room numbers. Red light shone on door after door, as though reminding him that opening any of them meant gambling with his life.

Good thing I have ten lives. Even a cat with nine lives can't outlast me.

After preparing his Psionic Energy Protection, Lin Ye pushed open a random door.

Nothing behind the door attacked Lin Ye this time, but the state of the room was far from good.

Red fuzz covered the dark red walls and floor. In the center of the room stood a corpse covered in the same red fuzz.

Go in, or open another door?

After some thought, Lin Ye quickly entered the room. It was not particularly aggressive, and he might not encounter any danger if he merely went in and out.

Just as Lin Ye had expected, neither the fuzz nor the corpse in the room attacked him. But when he opened the door again, he failed to leave the room as quickly as he had planned.

Because beyond the door lay a pitch-black corridor.

No, to be precise, everything beyond the door was pitch-black. He could see nothing.

It was not just his vision-even his perception could not penetrate that darkness. Lin Ye could not even be sure whether there was a corridor in it.

Lin Ye knew he had to enter the darkness and open the door opposite, whose room number he could not even see. But faced with the darkness, he hesitated for the first time in a long while.

Fear of the dark was a human instinct.

Only when the corpse behind him pressed close to his back did Lin Ye step into the darkness.

He tried to open the door opposite, but touched nothing. If the corridors had the same dimensions, the distance he had covered should definitely have brought him within reach of the opposite door.

Lin Ye hurriedly retreated, but the room behind him had vanished.

Is this the deeper corridor the Attendant mentioned?

Lin Ye crouched in the darkness and felt his way forward. There was no distinctive smell here, and tapping the floor produced no sound. With his vision and perception rendered useless, touch had almost become his only point of contact with this world.

After crawling across the hard floor for five minutes without encountering anything, Lin Ye knew he could not continue like this.

Actually, I should have changed my approach as soon as the room behind me disappeared.

Many powers could cause something like this, but they all come down to space or the mind. If it's a spatial problem, I'll have a hard time solving it. But if it's a mental problem...

Lin Ye began to concentrate. A particle of light shone in the darkness, illuminating his surroundings.

At that moment, Lin Ye was crouching in a black corridor. Behind him was a room with its door wide open, a corpse standing in the doorway.

The opposite door was right in front of him. As the particle of light was about to go out, Lin Ye lunged for the handle and pushed open the door to Room 99 before the darkness swallowed him.

Lin Ye scrambled into Room 99. With no time to examine his surroundings or even turn around, he shut the door behind his back.

Just as Lin Ye was about to open the door and leave, a mass of thick red fuzz burst from his pores and was sucked into the air. Once all the fuzz had been expelled, Lin Ye's body collapsed to the floor like a specimen whose contents had been drained out.

Only then did Lin Ye have time to examine the room. After all, there was no longer any need for him to hurry.

Room 99 was a black, cubic space. A pitch-black sphere made of an unknown material rotated in its center. The red fuzz revolved around the sphere, steadily dissipating into the air.

Lin Ye did not know whether he should feel fortunate. If the fuzz had not parasitized him, he would have been the one being absorbed now. Of course, apart from letting him cling to life a little longer, there was really no difference.

Waiting like this seems like a bit of a waste of time.

Although Lin Ye's insides had been drained dry, he had not died immediately. That was probably thanks to the red fuzz.

Lin Ye tried to crawl out of the room, only to discover that some kind of gravitational pull existed within it. It was not strong, but it was just enough to keep him, in his current state, from crawling out.

The sphere still needed some time to absorb the fuzz. Not wanting to waste time, Lin Ye crawled toward it himself. He had a few other ideas, but not many. After all, even raising a hand was difficult for him now.

Without the sphere's gravitational pull, he would not even have been able to crawl.

Lin Ye crawled directly beneath the sphere, rolled onto his back, and looked up at the constantly rotating sphere as he began tracing a Collapse Rune.

He was not sure whether this would work, but it was better than waiting to die.

Besides, for a constantly rotating system, perhaps a little external force would be enough to make it collapse.

This was Lin Ye's first time using a Collapse Rune in actual combat. Zed's body was not particularly easy to use, but after the Feast of Revelry, Lin Ye had gained a new understanding of the concept of collapse, so he could just barely manage it.

Then Lin Ye's body collapsed.

As he collapsed, Lin Ye watched the rotating sphere and gained some new knowledge.

[Remaining simulations: 7]

Lin Ye got out of bed and dressed. This time, he planned to go to Corridor 3.

He had seven simulations left and four corridors remaining. He planned to visit each corridor once.

If he still could not discover a pattern, he might lay his cards on the table with the organization and try relying on it to get through this simulation. A pattern he could not find would not even count as a problem to the organization.

But this was an extremely dangerous choice, because to the organization, he was an Anomalous Event that could not be trusted. Compared with negotiation, containment and elimination were the best solutions.

Besides, negotiation required equal standing. No one would negotiate with the weak, and to the organization, Lin Ye was weak.

So Lin Ye felt that this choice would not end very well.

But he was already out of options. Thousands of rooms, arranged without order, and every door he opened could mean death. If he could not find a pattern, he could not possibly find Room 1904, much less leave the Cruise Ship within an hour.

Once he was ready, Lin Ye followed the Supervisory Personnel downstairs.

As before, Lin Ye and the other two boarded the Cruise Ship.

"Are either of you mathematicians? Or do you have a mathematics-related illness?"

Although neither looked the part, Lin Ye still asked before entering Corridor 3, just to be safe.

"Huh? I... I never went to school..."

The woman gave Lin Ye a strange look. This man had been a little odd ever since they boarded.

"I finished elementary school, but I can do the four basic arithmetic operations."

The little boy thought Lin Ye knew something. Not wanting Lin Ye to abandon him, he hurriedly stated his strengths.

"...Oh, that's really impressive. Stay close to... me... Wait, don't go in. I'll go in and swap the cases. You two wait outside!"

Lin Ye clutched his hair as he spoke urgently.

Only now did it occur to him that the variables were not just the room numbers, nor just the order in which the rooms were opened. They themselves were the biggest variable!

When three people entered together, they would be assigned to different corridors. If each person was a variable, the pattern of the rooms' arrangement would become incredibly chaotic. No matter how good he was at mathematics, he would never be able to calculate it!

This was why he had never been able to find the pattern in the rooms' arrangement!