Being an Extra Actor in an Escape Game

Mu Jiashi stared at the paper in front of him as if he had seen a ghost.

And it was indeed like ghostly drawn symbols, completely garbled characters, strange numbers and symbols, and some traces of random circles.

But he clearly knew that just a few seconds ago, it was just an ordinary text.

"how so……"

He muttered to himself, then looked at the other three taskers.

Neither the bald head nor the flower arm reacted at all. After Mu Jiashi took a look at them, he realized that these two people might have known about it a long time ago, so he just sat silently and watched them search for the pen and paper.

They probably already knew that it was useless.

After realizing that the taskers would lose their memories in this nightmare, it was very easy to think of using paper and pen to record the clues they found, especially when they discovered the existence of the pen in the grocery store before.

But as long as you try this method, you will find that paper and pen are simply unusable in this nightmare, and it is impossible for them to record the clues they get.

This nightmare seems to be exhausting all means to make them forget them after obtaining the corresponding clues and information... Gaining and losing it, it's like some strange evil.

But... Mu Jiashi looked at Wu Jian again. He didn't know if he was communicating with him, but he was just talking to himself: "Since the paper and pen can't be used, why put the paper and pen in the nightmare? What kind of hint is this?" ?"

Wu Jian listened, and tried to answer: "Maybe... it's just a useless prop?"

This kind of thing often appears in nightmares, but it is just a set.Does everything in the nightmare have to imply something?

Just like a brick on the ruins, what's the point?

Mu Jiashi remained silent, but lowered his eyes slightly, staring at the string of strange characters on the white paper.He has already forgotten what he wrote, all he can remember is this string of gibberish characters.

...No, there must be some meaning.

If the written characters are normal, then they are "normal" props; but now they are written in unrecognizable garbled characters, which means that in this nightmare, the pen and paper itself is not normal.

But why?

There are countless reasons in Mu Jiashi's mind - why the person who fell from the building died and the nightmare did not restart?Why do they keep losing their memories in this nightmare?Why is something written on paper and pen wrong?

paper, pen...

He suddenly remembered that in his Xu Beijin bookstore, he saw the book Lin Po was holding; also, on the same day, at a certain corner of the narrow building, he was met by a smirking narrow building resident with a pen in his hand. , stumbled abruptly...

Could that have anything to do with this nightmare?

Although this association is illogical, the various images contained in it have particularly subtle similarities.

Mu Jiashi was contemplating when he suddenly heard Wu Jian's voice.

"This one……"

Mu Jiashi came back to his senses and looked at him.

The man said with a bitter face, "You...are you hungry?" He rubbed his stomach, "I'm so hungry."

Mu Jiashi asked him subconsciously: "We just ate something half an hour ago, are you hungry again?"

Wu Jian asked him even more strangely: "What, did we eat half an hour ago?!"

The two looked at each other, and looked at the bald head and the flower arm at the same time.

The bald head didn't say a word, but the flower arm said: "I have eaten."

Wu Jian suddenly felt strange, he said: "But I'm really hungry..." He tried to use this reason to convince others, "If I ate something half an hour ago, how could I be hungry? "

Mu Jiashi frowned tightly, and he said: "If you forget that you have eaten, then you will also forget that you are full - you will feel hungry again..."

He thought to himself, what is this?Toss people on purpose? This nightmare?

The bald head reminded them impatiently: "Those people have entered the building, hurry up and follow!"

At this time, they were following the survivors and the two taskers, Fei and Collector, and they were already approaching the location of the building.

So the four moved on, but along the way, they began checking each other's memories.

Wu Jian struggled to find his own brain, and he recounted all their encounters about this round of nightmares in his brain: "Starting from the initial point, then Fei and I walked south, then east, and then to the building and You meet.

"After summarizing the information, I decided to go to the playground first. I found a pen and paper on the way, and Fei and another person were arrested. We are following them now..."

As he spoke, Wu Jian's voice gradually became softer and weaker, and he looked at the taskers present with some hesitation: "Uh, is there something wrong with my memory?"

What's the problem?

Mu Jia really thought, the problem is serious.

Obviously, Wu Jian has almost forgotten most of their experiences.

The man who walked into the fog, the search in the treasure house, the man who fell from the building, the conversation with the bookstore owner, the food before departure... He almost forgot all of them.

What he still remembers now is that they gathered information under the building, and finally decided to go to the playground first, and found paper and pen on the way.

What's even more frightening is that Wu Jian doesn't think there is any problem with his memory at all.He felt that his previous experience was as calm, simple, and straight to the point as he recounted.

Wu Jian believed that his past experience was like this, so after seeing the unpredictable faces of the rest of the taskers, he was a little confused.

Without Fei reminding him here, he would never have discovered that he had forgotten so many memories.

After a moment of silence, Mu Jiashi suddenly said, "One and a half hours..."

He hasn't forgotten anything.

According to Wu Jian, he can make up for all their experiences in this nightmare...he thinks so.He couldn't tell if he had forgotten something.

But the time is about to come to an hour and a half after the nightmare started. During this time, it was Wu Jian and the collector who were found to have forgotten memories.

Does this mean that, at the beginning of the nightmare, forgetting doesn't happen to everyone?

But... as the nightmare develops and collapses, in the end, they will all forget it... and at that time, how will they deal with this nightmare?

Start all over again?But the nightmare must have grown to an extremely sinister state.

...From this perspective, the first round of nightmares is the safest period for them, and they also need to have enough information during this period.

otherwise……

Mu Jiashi felt deeply disturbed.

Just like the nightmare in which he played the true ending after returning to the bottom of the narrow building, as the nightmare progresses and collapses, if one or two important pieces of information are missed, the situation may be completely different.

Mu Jiashi took a deep breath.

Before entering the building, he chose to stop and looked at the bald head and the flower arm.

The four of them stood in front of the glass window of the bookstore as if they were confronting each other. Mu Jiashi looked dignified, his flowery arms hesitated to speak, and his bald head remained silent.

Mu Jiashi said calmly: "Shouldn't you tell us what you are hiding?"

Hua Bi looked at the bald head, and there was a hint of teasing in that gaze, as if to say: Look, it's still useless to hide.

Either nothing, or all.

Saying half and keeping half will inevitably lead to distrust of the rest of the taskers.

Even if this group of taskers will eventually forget, but before forgetting, the situation is likely to lead to a direction that is not good for them.

The bald head was silent for a moment, he is now in a... subtle state of doubting life.Although he had reminded others aloud just now, his attention was not focused on this nightmare at all.

Because he was thinking about the impact of that item card on his psychology, and thought of something else from it.

He meant, is the effect of this item card rare or common in the entire narrow building?

He hoped it was the former, but experience told him it should be the latter.

This gave him an extremely bad premonition.

No one cared about the impact of item cards on taskers, because they all knew that this was a game, and item cards were just game items.

What impact can it bring?

But after personally experiencing this invisible change, the bald head felt rather terrified.Could it be that he really couldn't see things that even the flower arms could see?

But before he realized that he was affected by the item card, he never felt that there was any problem with his behavior, whether it was the concealment from the rest of the taskers or the conflicts he had with the collectors.

...However, he couldn't imagine what kind of method he would use to solve this matter if he hadn't been affected by the item card.

It was an invisible influence that didn't make him feel wrong in the slightest, and he had already recognized it as a part of his temperament that should exist.

Just like Wu Jian and the collector who lost their memory in this nightmare, they didn't feel that there was any problem with their memory, they believed that this was the case, and they had such an encounter.

—The human brain does not doubt the brain itself.

Along the way, the bald head was a little too silent.Others had no idea what he was thinking.

At this time, faced with Mu Jiashi's question, the bald head finally chose to be honest after thinking for a while.

He said: "In the first round of nightmares, one-third of the taskers will start to lose their memory; in the second round, two-thirds; in the third round, all of them.

"When any missionary loses all his memories of this nightmare, the nightmare will restart."

His words made Mu Jiashi startled.

Mu Jiashi frowned and asked, "All memories, do you mean the current round, or all of them?"

The bald head replied dryly: "All." He smiled wryly again, "However, those quest participants who forgot the memory of the first round at the beginning, when they entered the second round, they will start to forget again... …until, forget everything.”

Mu Jiashi showed an expression of uncontrollable astonishment for a moment.

When Xu Beijin heard this passage through the live broadcast room, he couldn't help but frowned, secretly sweating for the taskers.

The audience didn't quite understand why Xu Beijin and Mu Jiashi showed bad expressions at the same time.

Xu Beijin explained: "This means that when the taskers lose their memory successively, their mastery of information will cause conflicts with each other; moreover, sooner or later they will all forget the memory of this nightmare, that is to say...

"In one of the next rounds, they'll think that's the first round."

The audience burst into exclamation points.

"Infinite loop??"

"My mother, isn't that the process of constantly repeating the process of forgetting and searching?"

"Hey guy, is this the contemporary Sisyphus??"

…Yes, such a futile cycle is very similar to the legendary Sisyphus who is doing futile and hopeless labor.He pushes the stone to the top of the hill, and the stone rolls down the hill, so he goes back down the hill and pushes the stone to the top of the hill again.

But that was the punishment of the gods to Sisyphus, and in this nightmare, what is the point of such a process of constantly losing and recollecting memories?

A flash of inspiration seemed to flash in Xu Beijin's brain.He vaguely sensed a trace of familiarity, but he didn't know where his sense of familiarity came from.

Besides, he was still worried about another thing.

In this nightmare, the taskers will one day forget their memories of this nightmare. In other words, they will think that they are still in the first round of nightmare and still know nothing about this nightmare.

If such encounters are repeated, will the taskers be lost in this nightmare forever?

Compared with other nightmares, in this nightmare, the probability of taskers sinking into the nightmare of eternal collapse seems to be much higher.

This made Xu Beijin a little worried.

The quester sinks into a nightmare of eternal collapse that doesn't sound like he has anything to do with it.After all, the chances of this kind of thing happening to cosplayers are very small, as long as they can distinguish their real self from the role they play.

However, this kind of cruel thing happened before his eyes, which always made him feel a little unhappy and uneasy.

...a thing that hurts its kind.

He sighed to himself.

At this time, he was indistinguishable from Dai.Dai Wu's role in this nightmare may not be simple, maybe he is the right-hand man of the man in black robe, and he is already busy with other things at this time - at least busy under the arrangement of the mastermind.

However, Xu Beijin was a little hard to imagine, whether a person like Dai Wu would say that "human beings are the impurities of the earth".

Perhaps for him, he doesn't care whether there are impurities or not, as long as he lives happily.

As for Xu Beijin...

The meaning of this sentence did not bother him too much.

He knows very well that human beings have countless ideas and concepts, and many times they even conflict with each other—if you believe that human beings are impurities on the earth, and God will punish you for this, then you are also human, why haven’t you been punished?

These noisy, messy, and self-contradictory ideas often linger in Xu Beijin's ears, and finally dissipate in silence.

However, this sentence appears in the nightmare of the narrow building, but it will make his imagination run wild.

Xu Beijin unconsciously lost his mind again, thinking of something else.

And when he came back to his senses, on the screen of the live broadcast room, six taskers had already arrived on the roof of the building.

Several survivors have forcefully pushed both Fei and the collector to the edge of the roof.When the missionaries arrived, they happened to see Fei being pushed down abruptly!

"Fei...!" Wu Jian watched Fei fall from the edge in horror.He rushed to the edge of the roof and said in shock, "What happened?! Why did you push her down!!"

Obviously, he had forgotten what Mu Jiashi had told him about the trial that took place in the playground.

Mu Jiashi closed his eyes, he felt a kind of tiredness.He didn't know if his memory was still intact, he couldn't imagine it at all.

How can one doubt one's own brain?How can you doubt your past and memory?This is actually self-doubt.

But in this nightmare, they had to do such a thing.

The survivors stopped their actions because of the sudden departure of these mission workers. They held the collector and scolded the mission workers for their reckless behavior, but because the mission workers came aggressively, they were at a loss for a while.

Just at this time……

"Here..." In the silence, they suddenly heard the collector's voice waking up from a dream, "Is this the starting point of the nightmare?"

Mu Jiashi suddenly turned to look at him.

He saw the unfeigned interest and a little bit of confusion in the eyes of the collector, and he seemed to be really curious why he could see the conflict between the taskers and the residents of the narrow building in the nightmare when he opened his eyes.

He forgot all the memories from the first round of nightmares.

... The nightmare is about to restart!

Before Mu Jiashi looked at Wu Jian, wanting to confirm whether this tasker had completely forgotten the memory of the first round, his vision went dark.

Nightmare, restarted.

In the first second when he opened his eyes, Mu Jiashi first confirmed one thing - the nightmare was restarted because the collector lost his memory of the first round, not because of Fei's death.

If it's the latter, then the Nightmare reboot is taking a little too long.Those two or three seconds must be because of the collector.

... The second round of nightmares begins.

Mu Jiashi stopped where he was, without saying a word.

They returned to the northwest corner of the ruins again.

The collector asked in confusion: "Hey, that's not right, why did the scene suddenly change again?" This confusing scene made the collector unable to laugh, "Uh, how are you...? Can you tell me what happened? what?"

No one ignored him.

After a few seconds of silence, Wu Jian asked tentatively: "Uh, shouldn't we explore this scene? We didn't find any clues in the last round of nightmare..."

The rest of the taskers glanced at him one after another, then sighed in unison, and then fell silent for a while.

Wu Jian: "..."

He and the collector looked at each other, and at the same time saw the bewilderment in the other's eyes.

what happened?

Fei's face was pale, and she folded her arms in silence.Her body was trembling slightly, and her teeth were biting her lips tightly.

She didn't seem to have forgotten the shock of the death just now, so she couldn't help frowning, as if she was thinking about something.

After a long time, Fei took a deep breath and said hoarsely, "Maybe we can continue the unfinished business of the first round of nightmare..."

Amid the collector's chattering "What? Is this already the second round of nightmare?", Fei and Mu Jiashi looked at each other and continued, "Go find the man who walked into the mist."

Other taskers have no comments.

On the way, they told the two people who had lost their memory of everything that happened before.Wu Jian naturally believed in Fei, but the collector was dubious.

In addition, Mu Jiashi also told Fei about the garbled characters written on paper and pen.

It will take some time to walk from the northwest corner of the ruins to the south path.During this time, Xu Beijin, who had returned to the bookstore after the nightmare restarted, stood up from behind the counter and looked around his bookstore.

……bookstore.

Xu Beijin immediately thought of the books in his bookstore after seeing the words written on the white paper turned into ghost symbols through the live broadcast room.

If the written characters become garbled characters, what will the books in his bookstore look like?

In the live broadcast room, some viewers also noticed Xu Beijin's movements.Xu Beijin changed the sound source to himself, and then explained his thoughts.

"I see! Maybe there are books or texts with garbled codes here in Beibei, and that must be a clue!"

"Not necessarily, I still have to look for it first."

"If there is a place like a bookstore, there must be relevant clues, right?"

"That's right...Beibei was able to provide those clues because we are from God's perspective. But if another actor plays the boss of this bookstore, he certainly can't know so much."

"Summary: The bookstore itself must have clues!"

Xu Beijin took it for granted.

In many cases, he thinks that the role of the group performance is to remind the taskers that there are clues here.

Just like the nightmare that Mu Jiashi once went to, there was Xu Beijin in the bookstore, the function was to make the taskers pay attention to the newspaper; there were some cosplayers watching TV in the gas station, the purpose was to make the taskers pay attention to the TV news. Information.

But now, Xu Beijin has appeared in this bookstore, and the scenery and books in the bookstore are still very sound, which means that of course the mastermind will put some special clues here.

In the past, Xu Beijin didn't know how to search for it by himself. He didn't have any curiosity about nightmares.But it's different now, he can even be said to start looking for it in the bookstore with great interest.

He took out a book at random, and as expected, he found that after he focused his eyes on the cover of the book and opened it for a while, all the text and illustrations in the book became a mess, or it was strange and strange. Messy color smear.

The second book, the third book... four five six seven eight...

All of them.

After pulling out ten books in a row, Xu Beijin paused temporarily, frowning slightly.He thought that most of the books in this room were garbled characters, and it was impossible to read the contents clearly.

But there must be one, or several... not so.

But what's the matter?Finding a needle in a haystack, a drop in the bucket, is almost a matter of luck.

But the collection of clues in nightmares should never be based on luck.There must be some clues pointing to the clues in the bookstore, and what is that...?

Xu Beijin walked to the door of the bookstore, stood there and looked inside the bookstore.He wanted to see from the perspective of the outside world, whether there would be any hints in the bookstore, perhaps some hidden information, that might point to the location of a certain book.

He stood there watching for a while.

Viewers in the studio asked what he was doing.

He replied: "I was thinking, if someone enters this bookstore, the first reaction will be where to look for it?"

"Emmm, I like to look at the bookcase by the door first."

"My words... I habitually turn right."

"No, you guys are not really shopping in a bookstore, okay? [Laughing and crying] This is a decryption game! You must go wherever there is an NPC!"

Xu Beijin was taken aback for a moment, and then he had a flash of inspiration!

Yes, of course the players gather wherever there are NPCs.

And the NPC in the bookstore?

Isn't that exactly Xu Beijin sitting behind the counter!

Xu Beijin immediately walked towards the counter and circled around there.The structure of the bookstore counter is a circle of wooden cabinets against the wall. There are also cabinets on the wall, and some recommended books are placed, although they are now dusty and yellow.

In the end, Xu Beijin's eyes fell on a book in the cabinet on the wall behind.

All the books stood upright, but that one was lying there, even open.Even though he only glanced at it from a distance, Xu Beijin also found that the writing on it seemed to be very regular.

After a while, he got the book and opened it.

He found that the book that was opened - the words inside were indeed not garbled characters.