Feng Bujue stood inside an oval-shaped room. The light in this room was bright and soft. The direction that he was facing had four iron bar doors, and behind them should be the cells. But there was no light beyond the doors at all, and it was unclear what kind of thing or person was kept inside the cells.
Opposite Feng Bujue were four doors, and they looked similar to the four doors that he had come across earlier in the fan-shaped room. He could not help but feel like he had been tricked.
Could it be that… no matter what I chose, the result would be the same? All four corridors led to this ’prison’?
“Ah, you’ve returned again,” the voice said. Before the four prison doors, or right in the middle of the room, there sat a study table. The speaker was seated at the table, looking at Feng Bujue. It was a large wooden table and looked like it was made from high quality wood. The details on the table was exquisite. The angle of the curves, the polish on the drawer handles, the decorative carving on the edges, they all appeared expensive and sleek.
This was a piece of furniture that Feng Bujue definitely would not be able to afford in real life. In fact, the price might even be twice that of the gaming hub. After all, in the early twenty-first century, pure wooden furniture had become something of a collector’s item. The furniture that normal people could afford was mostly made from composite woods composed from wood chips. Some were even made from carcinogenic or poisonous materials. After all, as long as it could be sold, there was a market for it. When it came to Feng Bujue’s time, there was a fuel crisis, environmental pollution, and desertification. Therefore, most items created from natural resources had become a luxury. The table before him was similar to a dinosaur, a UFO, and a girl without make-up; they were things that players were only able to interact with because they were inside a game.
“What do you mean by… ’again’?” Feng Bujue looked at the speaker. “Also… why is it that you can speak?”
“Why can’t I speak?” the person asked.
“Hmm… Let me think… Because you’re a rabbit!” Feng Bujue looked at the bunny’s face, pretending to think about it, before roaring out the complaint.
The thing that conversed with Feng Bujue was really a rabbit. Or rather, it was a large rabbit about the size of a kangaroo. Its physical construction was different from a real rabbit, and its appearance obviously had been adapted to resemble a human. After all, it could ’sit’ on the chair and use its not-so-long paws to grab stuff. It was even wearing a white shirt and black vest that came with a tie, but it was not wearing pants.
“Traveler from another world, you sure are one rude fella.” Next to the rabbit’s mouth were two rows of whiskers that were turned upward, and it had a glasses perched on its nose.
“I am the loyal servant of the amazing Master of Time, the punctual, clever, graceful, and handsome…” The rabbit used its short hand to ruffle the pair of large ears above its head. “The bad news to the ears of criminals and ruffians… Mister Ravid!”
Feng Bujue slammed his palm on his forehead before sliding it down his face. “Ha ha… Really, all the good names are taken by rabbits already.”
“It’s Mister Ravid! Not rabbit!” Ravid corrected him.
“Fine, fine, fine…” Feng Bujue was not going to argue with a rabbit. “Mister Ravid, do you have the antidote?”
“Are you sick?”
The veins on Feng Bujue’s forehead were pulsing. It was difficult to describe his emotions. “I’m poisoned, and I need to find four chemical potions to make the antidote. Do you have…”
“I do.”
Before Feng Bujue finished speak, Ravid had already answered. “Oh?”
Feng Bujue was about to ask him how he would get the potion when Ravid added, “But I cannot give it to you.”
“What do you want in exchange?” Feng Bujue asked. “I should let you know, I don’t carry any carrots with me.”
“Who said I want a carrot‽”
“I don’t have any cabbage leaves either.”
“Are you done‽”
“If you wish to experience being pulled out of a tall hat…” Feng Bujue continued to test the rabbit’s patience. “As long as you can find a large hat that matches your size, I am willing to cooperate.”
Ravid tried to put on a serious expression and warned, “If my younger cousin were here, there would be two rods poking out of your nose now.”
But no matter what, his face simply could not be connected to terror.
“Is your cousin also a rabbit?” Feng Bujue asked.
Ravid gripped his fist and ground his rabbit teeth. Suddenly, he yelled, “Aldan!”
The shadow with blue eyes and exposed blood vessels from the room earlier suddenly materialized next to Ravid and replied, “Yes?”
“This thing that appeared at the seventy-seventh minute, he was transported here from your place, right?” Ravid asked.
“Yes,” Aldan answered.
“Explain the effect of the corridor to him,” Ravid ordered.
“Okay,” Aldan answered as he turned to Feng Bujue. When Feng Bujue heard ’seventy-seventh minute’, his heart skipped a beat, and he thought, That’s impossible, right? Even though the low temperature and the running earlier might have caused some disturbance to my internal clock, according to my calculations, only thirty minutes or so should have passed. What is the meaning of this seventy-seventh?
Aldan soon answered the question in Feng Bujue’s heart. Its face did not have lips, and the voice came directly from inside the shadow. “Crossing the door at the ’front’ of the room and reaching the other end of the corridor, or the ’back’, will cause a change in time.”
He raised his hand and pointed at the second door from the left behind Feng Bujue. “The second door here, or the third door at the front, when you reach this place, the time will be the sixty-ninth minute, plus the time you’ve wasted while inside the corridor.”
“What about the other three doors?” Feng Bujue asked immediately.
“The second corridor is forty-six minutes, plus the moving time,” Aldan replied. “Both first and fourth corridors are the same, twenty-three minutes, plus the moving time.”
Something flashed across Feng Bujue’s mind, and he asked, “Have I been here before?”
“Yes, you have already taken the potion away from me!” Ravid looked at his pocket watch. “But the current you appears to be Feng Bujue, who has lived for only thirty minutes. Hmm… This means that I only need to explain things to you and do not need to waste time with the other yous.”
“So… there are two times here? One is the time that I’ve experienced, and the other is the time of this place itself?” Feng Bujue asked.
“No matter which timeline has reached the ninety-two minutes, you will die from the toxin.” Ravid answered the question that he was about to ask.
Feng Bujue was silent for a whole minute before continuing. “What if I go back down these corridors?”
“By going from the back to the front, no matter which corridor you go down, you could take twenty-three minutes from this prison’s current time, but… on top of that, you have to add the time you’d need to cross the corridor,” Aldan answered.
“Currently, it is the seventy-ninth minute inside the prison. Assuming I need fifteen minutes to run down the corridor, when I return to the front, it will be… the seventy-first minute?” Feng Bujue asked.
“Correct,” Ravid replied. “But the time at the front is not that important. As long as you enter the corridor from the front, time will start to calculate according to the time at the back. For example, if you arrive at the front at the ninety-second minute, there is no need to panic. You only need to run back into the first corridor. Your time will realign with the prison on the twenty-third minute. Of course, if you go backward before coming out the other side, time will start calculating from the moment you leave the front and combine with the time you spend inside the corridor.”
“Was it the rabbit who came up with such a crazy design?” Feng Bujue asked.
Ravid slammed on the table. “I’m warning you, Mr. Thirty-second-minute Feng Bujue! You are only wasting your time here!”
Feng Bujue understood everything after hearing the rules. Based on the setting, he should not die. By running up and down the corridor, he could return to the twenty-third, forty-sixth, or sixty-ninth minutes, not including the time he needed to traverse the corridor. The key was that the time that he experienced was based on this standard, and the losing condition had not changed. He would still die from poison on the ninety-second minute.
Ravid was not done yet. “Obviously, Ravid and Aldan are your allies, or else we wouldn’t have told you all this.”
He reached his paw under the table and pressed a button. “The person who designed this game is him!”
At that moment, one of the four cells behind Ravid lit up. Inside the dark cell, the white prismatic light shone down from above to light up the room.
The floor of the cell was cement, as were the three walls and ceiling. Through the bars, one could see a bench in the room, and on the bench sat a wooden puppet. A puppet in a suit and red bow tie. The puppet had a long, powdered face. It was dark and creepy. Dark hair curled above its head. Its dark, black eyes stared at the trio outside—one man, one rabbit, and one ghost.
Feng Bujue pulled out the gun immediately. He pointed it at the puppet that appeared in Saw through the bars and warned in a serious tone, “Give a reason not to kill you.”
A low groan of a voice emerged from the puppet’s stomach. It sounded like a recording, but its mouth was moving. “Pull the trigger, and you won’t have killed the real me. Furthermore, doing that won’t help this game we’re playing.”
Its neck moved, and it turned its face to Ravid. “Furthermore, even though I’ve been imprisoned, you have no right to execute me. Am I right, Ravid?”