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Chapter 152 - The Corridor of Time (VIII)

Editors: Humu & Kitty

Luo Jian continued to support Clown as they descended down the stairs. Even if Luo Jian did not light the lamp, there would be no ghosts that would bother them. This time, Luo Jian realized a problem. He found that the ghosts were not afraid of the netherfire lamp, but they were afraid of Luo Jian himself.

Because I’m a GM? Luo Jian frowned and thought about this problem, but he quickly shook his head and denied his deduction. A GM was not something terrifying, and a GM would be much less scary than a stalker. In addition, Luo Jian’s GM identity was very special, and even the secret chamber couldn’t be involved in what he did or interfere with his behavior. Naturally, the NPCs or monsters in the secret chamber couldn’t recognize his GM identity. So, of course, being a GM would naturally not be the reason why they were afraid of him.

At this time, Clown who was beside him uttered a sentence casually: “Student Abyss is really powerful.”

Luo Jian raised his head to look at him and asked, “What makes you feel that I’m powerful?”

“When you don’t hide yourself, your entire body reeks of blood.” Clown sucked in some air, and it was not known whether he intentionally or unintentionally sniffed at Luo Jian. “It smells just like someone who came right out of the battlefield, mixed with blood and strong killing intent.”

“It makes me sometimes think that you aren’t a child at all. How old are you?” Clown asked him curiously.

Luo Jian was silent for a moment and replied, “You can make a guess, but I won’t tell you.”

“Oh, how could you!” Clown was so curious that he reached out and touched Luo Jian’s head again. Luo Jian slapped Clown’s paw and tugged on his sleeve as they descended again.

As they descended the levels, each stairway almost had the same structure. Occasionally, on several levels, something inside the black door would pound hard on the door. It seemed that the things inside could smell the scent of the living. They couldn’t wait to charge out from the door that they deemed as an obstacle and break through.

They started from Basement Floor 20 and went down 30 levels. Now, on Basement Floor 56, Luo Jian thought about what the ghosts had said previously. So he put up his spirit-evocation banner again and allowed the red flag flutter with the weak wind. This time, Luo Jian attracted more spirits.

More materialized spirits appeared than previously and there were several stronger spirits present. They were not afraid of Luo Jian. They were all almost identical to how they looked like when they were alive. They had pale faces and gloomy expressions. Some of them were bold enough to approach Luo Jian and asked him, “What is the matter? My Lord.”

Luo Jian wanted to ask about the NPC, but as he was about to ask, he changed his question. He asked the ghost, “Why do you call me lord?”

The ghost hesitated for a moment and said, “In this damned place of never-ending stairway, all of us powerful Soul Lords are known as such.”

“Soul Lords?” Luo Jian couldn’t help but frown when he heard a new term pop out.

“There are strong and weak souls, and I think you can see them.” The ghost answered Luo Jian’s question and said respectfully, “In this never-ending stairway, there are a total of 1,012 ghosts, but there are only a few powerful ones. I don’t know when this rule came into being, but we have to call powerful spirits &#k2018;Soul Lord’.”

“However, we don’t know why we appeared in this damned place. We can’t get out of this strange place anyway. Sometimes a group of people will appear. Some of them will become our companions, and some will be transported to somewhere else. We don’t know where they have gone.”

When Luo Jian heard this, he suddenly felt strange inwardly. He asked the ghost, “Do you think I am a ghost?”

The ghost paused momentarily, raised his head and looked at Luo Jian carefully. He looked at Luo Jian for a long time. It seemed to be certain, yet uncertain. He said, “You look like...... you should be a ghost, no doubt. You are no different from us, but you have a body, maybe...... Did you seize someone else’s?”

Luo Jian did not continue to listen to the ghost. He fell into his own thoughts. He thought of some problems that could not be ignored by him. Just like Ying once said to him in the Asura Realm, after exiting the Asura Realm, Luo Jian would become a ghost without a home, and he would never return to his body because he had no body.

I almost forgot that Luo Jian was indeed dead.

Luo Jian took a deep breath to calm himself. He continued to speak to the ghost: “I came here to ask you something. Did the last person who came to this never-ending stairway open a door? Is that man still here?”

“The last one who came here...” The ghost heard Luo Jian’s words, thought for a moment, and thereafter turned and looked at the ghosts behind him. These ghosts had a tacit understanding as they got out of the way. They gave way to a small, translucent spirit that looked very ordinary and fragile. That should be the soul of the NPC. No doubt, he looked very, very weak and appeared as if he would disappear at any time.

As Luo Jian approached, he changed the spirit-evocation banner in his hand and turned it into the netherfire lamp. Although the netherfire lamp could absorb the Yin energy of the surrounding ghosts, it could actually also enhance the spiritual energy of a ghost. Therefore, Luo Jian could also enhance some weak ghosts to a certain extent, so the ghost wouldn’t appear as if it would disappear at any moment.

“What’s your name?” Luo Jian asked the NPC spirit.

The NPC’s translucent spirit looked very fuzzy. He seemed to be a young man born in the 1970s or 1980s. He was wearing a shirt of outdated style, and he appeared a little confused.

Luo Jian knew that some weak ghosts were so weak that they would forget many things. The weaker they became, the more they would gradually forget about their past. They would forget their origins, age, name, and even gender.

The spirit in front of Luo Jian seemed to be like that. He was at a loss. He was not afraid of Luo Jian like other ghosts. He might have even forgotten what he was afraid of.

“That ghost is very weak.” At this time, the powerful ghost who had spoken with Luo Jian interjected: “Logically speaking, he should not turn out this way. There are many spirits here, and the Yin energy here is very heavy, but for spirits, it is a kind of nourishment. There shouldn’t be a spirit that would grow increasingly weak.”

“In that case, he should have forgotten a lot of things.” Looking at the pathetic spirit of the NPC, Luo Jian couldn’t refrain from sighing. It was impossible for him to take Luo Jian to the door which he had opened.

Nevertheless, Luo Jian could not help but hold a glimmer of hope. He asked the NPC, “Do you remember how you died?”

The NPC finally had a reaction. He gloomily raised his head and replied to Luo Jian, “I had been walking in the dark constantly. The beast without a heart had killed me. I want to find my heart.”

The beast without a heart.

Luo Jian thought about what he had said. It seemed that this was the key to this chamber. But the chamber seemed surprisingly simple.

Luo Jian thought, turning back to look at Clown, who was in a daze. Because his eyes could not see, Clown was also very confused as he held Luo Jian’s hand tightly and refused to let go...... It was not known when he grabbed onto Luo Jian’s hand. This fellow also placed Luo Jian’s small hand in his palm and poked his hand here and there, revealing a dirty smile from time to time.

He was unable to endure it! Luo Jian angrily withdrew his hand, and his weapon changed into a rod in an instant, and he used it to knock on Clown’s head. Clown’s forehead suddenly swelled. He whimpered and covered his head with his hands.

Then, Luo Jian said to the NPC, “Can you take us to find the beast without a heart?”

The NPC raised his pale face. His facial features appeared blurred in the dark stairway. He said, “I cannot find it myself, but I know it is...... Two levels down, I opened the black door. It’s always there, behind the door. It has never left.”

After saying that, the NPC did not speak any more. No matter what Luo Jian asked him, he only looked to be in a trance. So Luo Jian did not waste his efforts. He lifted the spirit-evocation banner and dragged Clown down. After they descended two levels down, as expected, they saw a black door that had been opened.

The black door was half open. It was so dark inside that even Luo Jian’s night vision did not work. He could not see what was in the deep darkness. It was as if there was nothing behind the black door.

Luo Jian was not afraid. He boldly opened the black door and dragged Clown as they went into the pitch-dark place where darkness would swallow the shadows of the duo. Silence and serenity were fully displayed in front of Luo Jian.

“I haven’t experienced this kind of darkness for a long time.” Luo Jian talked to himself. This scene before him was very familiar to him. He encountered one such enemy in the Asura Realm that used darkness as a weapon. Before that, Luo Jian was defeated several times by that enemy, and he also gained the ability of night vision. In the dark, Luo Jian couldn’t really see things. He could only rely on hearing, his sense of smell, and various creatures and objects which emitted pheromones that ordinary people could not decipher to identify objects in the dark.

However, in the later periods when Luo Jian was able to defeat him, he repeatedly thought up new strategies to challenge Luo Jian, to compete for who was the most powerful. He remembered that the enemy had shown him such darkness. The real darkness. His body and soul seemed to fall into the endless darkness. At that time, Luo Jian could not even feel the passage of time. He could not see or feel anything. He could only remain stuck in the darkness as he wandered around in it.

He would sometimes deduce certain things, and he would sometimes think of Xing Yan. He remembered that Xing Yan once said, ‘He is a soul born from infinite darkness and primal chaos.’ So, Luo Jian would wonder if Xing Yan was also born in this kind of darkness that almost drove people crazy? Why was he born? Why? Was he born because the secret chamber intended him to, or was it just a coincidence under a combination of certain factors?

And here, in this deep and never-ending stairway, once again, such feelings roused within Luo Jian. When he came in, he could not even feel the existence of Clown. Turning back, he found the door behind him disappeared, and it was pitch black. Then Luo Jian changed his weapon and turned it into the netherfire lamp. He found that even the light of the lamp could not penetrate the darkness.

“That’s interesting.” Luo Jian swayed the netherfire lamp in his hand, and he could not even see the slightest hint of light.

In fact, the darkness that the player engulfed Luo Jian in was a kind of magic. Naturally, he could not really move Luo Jian into a completely dark and fearful space. He used this magic to force other people to have mental breakdowns. The players who fought with him had all crazily committed suicide. Even the ‘revival’ effect in the Asura Realm could not completely eliminate the sequela caused by the darkness.

“So, is this a kind of magic or something set in reality?” Luo Jian murmured to himself, “The real darkness can only be fully unfolded after one experiences death. Any other ‘darkness’ is just the adjustment of the environment and psychological misjudgment. In fact, there is light in this place. However, from the moment I entered here, I entered an illusion. It made my brain think that I could not see, hear, or feel anything. It shut down all my senses and prevented me from correctly understanding and reading my surroundings...... And human beings are, ultimately, creatures who require their senses to perceive the world.”

Luo Jian shook his head. “But this doesn’t affect me.”

When he said this, the world lit up.

The darkness suddenly retreated and vanished while the surroundings clearly showed that behind this horrifying black door was just a small narrow room that was dirty, empty, and had no windows. There was nothing here. There was only a corpse that was leaning against the wall in the room, and much of it had rotted away, leaving only white bones.

There was also Clown standing behind Luo Jian. He stood motionless. Luo Jian raised the netherfire lamp in his hand and shook it in front of him. Clown did not react at all. It was estimated that he had not left the illusory darkness. However, Luo Jian wasn’t in a hurry. He let him remain there.

Luo Jian went to check the skeleton that was supposed to be the NPC’s corpse. Because it had become all bones, he went to search through his clothes and found a letter in his pocket that was crumpled into a ball of paper.

Luo Jian unfolded the paper, and in the letter, a few simple sentences were written on it:

[I thought you shouldn’t be so weak, but I’m still disappointed, so this my last letter to you. Please don’t contact me again. I don’t ever want to see you again.]

There was no signature. It was just some lines of words. It felt like what a lover would say to the other when they were about to break up. The paper seemed to have been kneaded repeatedly by its owner. It seemed that he could have wanted to tear up the letter at any point in time but was reluctant to do so no matter what had happened.

“A beast without a heart.” Luo Jian stared at the handwriting on the letter and said to himself.