Escape the Infinite Chambers

Chapter 149 - The Corridor of Time (V)

Editors: Kitty & Humu

This was an old stairway located in an old house in the 1980s. Each level had two doors, one on the left and one on the right of the stairway with the floor numbers written in the middle. Because there was no light source here, Luo Jian turned his umbrella into a lamp with a dark fire lit inside it, emitting icy blue light. He raised the lamp and let the light illuminate the floor number of the stairway. There was an archetypal sign stuck on it, and on it was written—Basement Floor 1.

“The first floor of the basement?” Luo Jian pulled the corners of his mouth up. Then he moved his lamp away and looked toward the two doors nearby.

The door on the left was red and the door on the right was black.

“This means that there are no doors available that I can open,” Luo Jian said to himself. He recalled that the note mentioned the red door should not be touched and the black door should not be opened. In this case, what was the significance of these doors here?

Both doors were very old wooden doors with many rotten cracks and moss growing on them. Luo Jian seemed to be able to see beyond the door through the cracks in the door, but it was very dark inside the rooms as if there were nothing in them.

Luo Jian could not curb his curiosity, so he raised his netherfire lamp and squatted in front of the black door to peep inside through a crack of the door. Only a little light could penetrate beyond the darkness. The darkness inside the door seemed to be swaying. Luo Jian seemed to be able to hear some strange sounds from the crack of the door, much akin to the wind passing through the crack. It was the sound of howling wind.

But truth be told, Luo Jian did not feel the wind.

Just when Luo Jian was disappointed and wanted to avert his eyes, he suddenly made a new discovery. There seemed to be something behind the crack of the door. He saw it. Thus, Luo Jian focused his attention on the darkness behind the crack. Then, Luo Jian seemed to see something in the dark rushing towards him. Just like Luo Jian, it squatted in front of the black door. They were only separated by the door.

Then the bizarre thing behind the door squatted down and looked at Luo Jian through the crack of the door.

Luo Jian only saw a pair of pale eyes. There were no black pupils, just a pair of white eyes with streaks of blood vessels on them. From the other side of the door, it was gazing at Luo Jian.

Luo Jian was not afraid. Perhaps someone ordinary would immediately retreat when they suddenly saw this pair of eyes, but Luo Jian had already thrown away his fears. He had been in the Asura Realm for ten years. He had seen many players or monsters who used strange means. Some fellows used ‘fear’ as weapons.

Luo Jian merely squatted there and had a face-off with the pair of eyes. He waited for the owner of these eyes to act. Sure enough, it seemed that because of Luo Jian’s unexpected reaction, the other party began to hit on the door with much of its strength. Bangs started sounding out from the black door as the other party began to thump on the door.

But the broken and rotten black wooden door firmly stood there; the thing inside could not come out and the people outside could not get in.

Luo Jian stood up, having lost his interest. The banging on the black door stopped after he left. It seemed that the thing did not thump on the door anymore.

Luo Jian did not head over to observe the red door. The red door could not be touched because he found that it was covered with strange and disgusting green moss, which grew in the crack of the door. Some moss even grew along the door to the wall beside it. The door looked like it had rotted and had not been touched or opened for a long time.

Luo Jian had no interest in touching the sticky moss because these disgusting plants were poisonous and highly toxic. But do not ask how Luo Jian knew it. This was the life lesson Luo Jian had learnt after experiencing numerous cycles of dying and reviving after being poisoned to death many times.

“I hope Clown won’t take the road to the ruin and touch these,” Luo Jian said to himself. He didn’t want to stay on Basement Floor 1. He decided to head up first, so he headed up along the old stairs that seemed ready to collapse any time. The handrails of the stairs were made of iron and were rusty. Some of them looked like they would break after a person touched them. Therefore, Luo Jian did not want to touch those handrails.

He walked up the stairs. He thought he should be able to go to the first floor, but when he went up the stairs and used the light to illuminate the sign that indicated the level number, the sign still read—Basement Floor 1.

“I see. Is it telling me to go down?” Luo Jian was still on Basement Floor 1. He once again looked at the two doors on the left and right sides. He found that these two doors were indeed the doors on the first floor that he had seen earlier.

“One can only head downwards. Hm, Basement Floor 1, Basement Floor 2, Basement Floor 3...... Can we continue down all the way to the 18th layer of hell?” Luo Jian did not hesitate. He raised his foot and started walking down the stairs. When he walked to Basement Floor 2, he found that it looked the same as Basement Floor 1. On both sides of the floor were a red and a black door. If not for the sign indicating this was Basement Floor 2, even he would feel that he had yet to descend another level.

A never-ending stairway.

How interesting. If what he deduced was true, it would not be accurate for him to continuously descend. Maybe after one had gone down hundreds or thousands of levels, there would still be a never-ending stairway below them.

So what was the use of this? Even if one tries their best in descending, one will not see the exit at all. Based on the hint provided, it merely mentioned that the red door and black door could not be touched. On the back of the note, a baffling sentence was printed. Wait...... Let us try to hypothesize what I would do if I were the protagonist. Something terrifying was chasing me so I ran out of the house and descended down the steps. When I got to the first floor, I found that there were more stairs on the first floor, but there was no exit.

But the thing behind me was close at hand, so I kept running down and kept fleeing......

Luo Jian imagined the scene, and he hypothesized as he went down the stairs: “In fact, it’s very simple. The protagonist has been running down, but the stairs have no end. He must be afraid. He does not dare to go downwards, but he also does not dare to go up. The thing chasing him will devour him, and his only choice is...”

Luo Jian stopped walking. He stopped on Basement Floor 10 and realized he had gone down ten levels unconsciously.

“The only option left for him is what he’ll do. He’ll open one of the doors and enter into it.

“If it is the NPC who opens the door, it will mean that I didn’t touch the red door or open the black door. I just walked through a door that was already opened.

“The only thing I have to do is to find the door that was already opened.”

Luo Jian carefully observed each level even though he had already descended ten levels. The red and black doors were all tightly shut. There were no abnormalities. Only the monotonous stairway accompanied him.

Luo Jian continued to walk down, repeating the process of checking the stairs and doors every time he descended. After descending more than 20 floors, Luo Jian finally made a new discovery. He found that some coagulated blood stains had appeared on the ground, and there were bloody fingerprints on the wall. Looking at it, it felt as if someone who had been seriously injured was slowly walking down the stairs, using the wall as a support.

And the bloodstains were new.

Luo Jian squatted next to a pool of blood and dipped his hand into it. The blood was even warm and fresh. The injured person had been here not long ago, and he was still walking downwards as if being chased by something.

“The blood of the living.” Luo Jian put his bloody finger in his mouth and licked it. It was not known if it was because of the blood, but he started to feel excited. The pitiful plight Luo Jian was in while he was stuck in Asura Realm could clearly be witnessed. Luo Jian would always start to feel his blood boil because of the blood splashing on the battlefield. He had no other way to calm down his heart that yearned to kill except by killing constantly.

But he almost lost his sense of reason because he was muddled by the yearn to kill. For a period of time after he walked out of the battlefield, Luo Jian even that he didn’t want to save his companions. He was too lazy to destroy the horrifying secret chamber. At those times, he wanted to return to the Asura Realm, to that battlefield.

In the end, however, he overcame this when he cut his throat with his knife.

Killing someone, or killing yourself, was something that would excite people.

Luo Jian self-mockingly laughed at himself. Following the bloodstains, he slowly descended. He knew that the man was not far away from him. The man was still here. He had heard the heavy breathing of the other party. How did the fellow get injured? After all, along the way, except for those strange things behind the black door, Luo Jian could not see any creatures that could pose a threat.

After descending several levels, Luo Jian saw a man squatting by the stairway. The darkness devoured the figure of this man and hid him perfectly in the dark. When Luo Jian approached him carrying the lamp, the other party seemed to notice the light source Luo Jian was carrying and turned to take a look at Luo Jian.

When the other party turned around to let Luo Jian take a clear look at his appearance, Luo Jian naturally recognized Clown, Luo Jian’s only teammate now. Luo Jian recalled that they had once risked their lives and engaged in a confrontation. However, the person whom he had engaged in a confrontation with was the future Clown, the grown-up Clown. But the grown-up Clown and the current Clown gave off completely different vibes.

So what changed him?

“Who? Who is there?” Clown sensed the light, but he couldn’t see it. Luo Jian found that his face was covered with blood. Soon, he realized that Clown’s eyes were injured. His eyes were blinded.

“Hong?” Luo Jian called out his name, and the other party heard it. He seemed excited and jumped up and rushed to Luo Jian. Even if he was blind, Clown accurately rushed to Luo Jian’s face and embraced him.

Luo Jian was a little surprised by how emotional Clown was as Clown pulled him into an embrace. However, after looking at his bloody face, Luo Jian estimated that something horrible had happened to him. That was why he was pleasantly surprised when he met his companion.

“Sob, sob...... I was scared to death.” Clown miserably tried to act cute as he rubbed against Luo Jian in his embrace.

Luo Jian felt it was a little funny, but he recalled that the other party was only a teenager. He may be a little naive and a little foolish because he had not fully grown up. He was but a child.

So he patted his companion on the back and comforted him, “What happened?”

“Don’t you see them?”

Interestingly, Clown seemed to be puzzled by his indifference because Luo Jian could not see them. Clown touched Luo Jian’s face and pinched him hard, confirming that the one he held was indeed Luo Jian. He nodded and said, “En, you’re definitely student Abyss.”

“Nonsense, who else could I be?” Luo Jian frowned.

“Didn’t you see the phantoms?” Clown’s words surprised Luo Jian for a moment. He really did not see any phantoms. He merely went all the way down.

“What phantoms?” Luo Jian could not help asking. Now he knew that there were some other things in this strange secret chamber that Luo Jian could not see.

Clown said: “At first, I did not realize that it was a phantom. After I appeared in the secret chamber, I descended nearly twenty levels. I met it and thought it was you. The fellow accompanied me a long way down. Then he asked me to open the door, but I did not want to, so he attacked me.”

“Then why would you feel that I’m not a phantom now?” When Luo Jian heard what he said, he could not help touching Clown. Yes, the body temperature and body information were exactly the same as those recorded by Luo Jian, which made Luo Jian sure that he was indeed Clown. He never doubted his own judgment because he was always right.

“I don’t know. I blinded my eyes. I couldn’t see anything, but I could hear sound.” Clown continued: “But when you came, the voice disappeared...... Oh! God, you are such a good tool to ward off evil spirits!”

Clown declared this excitedly and continued to hug Luo Jian. It was as if he regarded Luo Jian as a big, soft bear toy.

T/N: Thank you ChrysAmans for your Kofi! Two bonus chapters will be posted this week.

(This chapter is unedited for now. Humu: not any more~)