Free Web NovelChapter 163: Chapter 163: The World on the Phone
(Caught a fierce cold, have to go to the hospital tomorrow. I’ve posted tomorrow’s Chapter in advance, but there may only be one update tomorrow. I appreciate your understanding.)
The darkness around her made Yin Shuang unable to discern her location.
The voice on the other end of the phone was different from Bai Wu’s, sounding younger, or rather more childlike.
After hearing the words "Hello, my name is Bai Wu," Yin Shuang suddenly fell into shock and confusion, which dragged her into this dark Illusionary Realm where she then felt immense pain.
It was as if countless needles were pricking her nerve endings.
"Wrong answer, don’t let the pain affect your judgment. You shouldn’t have gotten such a simple question wrong."
The middle-aged man’s voice felt comforting to Yin Shuang, but what followed was not comfort, but an increased intensity of pain.
She wanted to open her eyes, but even flipping her eyelids was unbearably painful.
What on earth was going on? Why was she here? Why was there a child saying his name was Bai Wu?
Where was Bai Wu?
Countless questions popped up in Yin Shuang’s mind. She instinctively used Shujing Fengxi, but it was ineffective.
The pain she endured here surpassed her tolerance for it. Shujing Fengxi only made her feel the pain more acutely.
"Mild pain can quicken one’s thought process. The body secretes various performance-enhancing hormones to alleviate the pain, such as adrenaline. But let’s reconsider this from another angle," said the man, his voice still gentle and magnetic.
Under different circumstances, Yin Shuang would have imagined the owner of this voice to be a spectacled, scholarly researcher with a gentle demeanor.
She strained to open her eyes and the face she saw indeed matched her conjecture.
"This uncle... resembles Bai Wu, but appears more composed and friendly than Bai Wu," she thought.
She hadn’t cleared up the situation, not knowing the source of the pain she was feeling.
But this state didn’t last long. Yin Shuang’s consciousness was once again shattered by severe pain.
This was not the "mild pain" spoken of by the man. Even for a veteran of the Investigation Corps like Yin Shuang, it was utterly unbearable.
"Instead of thinking as if the body secretes various hormones to alleviate the pain, why not think the body craves pain and is constantly secreting hormones to encourage us?"
"So, in a sense, pain is your partner."
"You should adapt, experience it. Your facial expression is too dreadful. You should be happy at this time, and even if you’re not, at least maintain a calm demeanor."
Needles were stuck into various acupoints on Yin Shuang’s face, and the intense pain almost made her collapse before she completely lost consciousness.
This time, Yin Shuang finally saw that this kind-looking, well-mannered middle-aged man... was torturing her.
In the end, she heard the middle-aged man say,
"Bai Wu, you really are a failed creation, you’ve disappointed me deeply."
Yin Shuang passed out.
That was her state four minutes after picking up the phone.
The fragmented awareness in her mind formed into a painful dream where she couldn’t feel the severe pain striking her soul.
But the fear of pain persisted.
Her mind kept reliving the phrase "My name is Bai Wu..."
Bai Wu...
"Bai Wu..."
Bai Wu, who had been about to head to another phone booth to answer a call, suddenly heard Yin Shuang’s murmuring.
He turned back, confirming that Yin Shuang was still unconscious.
"Strange, she’s calling my name. Is it because the scene in her dream is too dangerous? No... she has never asked me for help before."
Speaking of which, Bai Wu felt something was off about Yin Shuang’s behavior.
Could the telephone possess some special ability that induces a kind of spiritual hallucination?
Yet Yin Shuang seemed to have succumbed too quickly...
Bai Wu didn’t know what Yin Shuang had gone through; otherwise, he wouldn’t have such thoughts.
It wasn’t Yin Shuang’s fault she was suffering—pain that even Lilith in a Heart Like Still Water state could not endure.
The telephone booth on the left continued to emit sounds.
Bai Wu did not cross the telephone booth but deliberately waited for a while, only to realize it seemed no good—the person on the other end of the line was very patient.
It was as if not picking up the phone could keep the call going forever.
After waiting for a full two minutes, Bai Wu answered the phone.
"Hello, my name is Mo Li."
From her voice, the woman on the other end sounded high-pitched, as if singing a kind of folk opera that could creep people out in the dead of night.
At this moment, not a trace of human life could be sensed on the streets. A normal person would be somewhat frightened by such a ghostly voice.
Especially since this phone was of the paranormal variety, it really could instill a chilling sense of fear.
But as everyone knows, being fearless is a standard trait of the Investigation Corps, at least that’s what Bai Wu believed:
"Where are you? Is your name Mo Li as in Molly of Mo Li Ya, or Jasmine as in Jasmine Flower? Your voice sounds tearful; are you going through a heartbreak? Oh, right, can you tell me this phone number? What number did you dial? What day of the week is it over there? How’s the weather today? Is it night or day? And could you tell me the date?"
"My name is Mo Li..."
The voice on the other end became more mournful, and Bai Wu frowned:
"I’m Bai Wu, white as in the color, mist as in fog. I haven’t encountered a heartbreaking matter, but I have come across something annoying. Right now, I’m at the start of a street, using a telephone booth oriented to the east. If we go by the tower calendar, today is Wednesday, daytime. Alright, I’ve said what I need to say, now it’s your turn."
"My name is Mo Li..."
The voice grew even more distorted, as if crying and yet as if emitting a bloodcurdling laugh. Bai Wu was puzzled:
"Hello Mo Li, is there anything I can help you with?"
"Can you talk about something else? Anything’s fine, are you at a phone booth right now, too?"
"At least tell me, how do I trigger the mission, huh! Did you call just for me to listen to you state your name?"
"Hey, little Li, are you still listening? Still there? It’s okay, just say anything, you don’t have to answer my questions. Or are you a robot? A program? Is this area a mechanical zone, perhaps?" freeweɓnovel.cѳm
"..."
Beep - the busy signal started, and the call was cut off. It wasn’t Bai Wu who hung up but the person on the other end.
Bai Wu was perplexed. What was this situation? The remarks mentioned that only after completing a paranormal call could one proceed.
Did this count as having completed the call? This question was soon answered. Bai Wu noticed a countdown timer on the glass doors of all the phone booths—6:59.
He quickly guessed the truth:
"Six minutes and fifty-nine seconds... That must be the time I have to freely pass through the phone booths. But Yin Shuang didn’t get any time after her call; it must have been her exemption right that offset a negative condition. What would happen if I moved forward with Yin Shuang?"
Bai Wu hadn’t planned on letting Yin Shuang go back too soon.
But now he was even more curious—was Yin Shuang really that weak? Answering the phone didn’t seem to affect him at all.
Or could it be that different phones come with different levels of difficulty?
Up to this point, Bai Wu hadn’t experienced the so-called difficulty at all. He just felt that the other person hanging up was somewhat rude.
"It seems I can only wait for her to wake up and ask her what happened."
He lifted Yin Shuang onto his back, then walked past the phone booth. At that moment, Bai Wu noticed that the countdown on all the phone booths was speeding up.
The count had been decreasing by one every second, now it had started to decrease by two.
"I see, if two people cross the boundary, then the rate at which time is deducted doubles. That means I only have a little over three minutes to move forward."
Voice was still emanating continuously from the telephone booth, meaning Bai Wu now had the freedom to act within those three-plus minutes, which meant he had the power to choose.
Ahead was a dense array of telephone booths that stretched as far as the eye could see. Although not all booths were ringing, the bells managed to cover the entire street.
After some thought, Bai Wu came up with two viable plans to get through—
"In the span of three minutes, I could choose to keep moving forward, thus crossing the street in a very short time to see what lies at the end. But that would be like speedrunning, which is merely showing off without any substance."
"Alternatively, I could choose to answer most of the calls and piece together what exactly happened in this area through the phone calls."
With that in mind, Bai Wu eventually decided to go to the nearest telephone booth, prepared to answer the calls one by one.
Picking up the receiver once more, Bai Wu decided this time to ask fewer questions:
"My name is Pang Yu."
This time, the respondent was a man. His age was hard to discern; he could be anywhere from eighteen to thirty.
It was that strange tone of voice again; if ghosts truly existed in this world, then Pang Yu and Mo Li likely resembled those spirits who died a tragic death, speaking weakly yet drawing out their intonations.
"Oh, old Pang ah, I’ve missed you to death!"
Getting a bit closer to them shouldn’t be an issue, right?
"MY NAME IS PANG YU!!!!!!"
It was as if he was enduring some severe torment, with anger and defiance resonating in his roar. If it were someone else, they would be able to sense an unnerving atmosphere at this moment.
But Bai Wu truly couldn’t feel it.
It was obviously because Bai Wu’s response seemingly lacked some necessary emotion, and he was unable to enter the scene inside the phone.
After serious consideration, Bai Wu thought: A roaring style? Could it be a netizen from the year of the Roaring? Got it, time to echo back.
"MY NAME IS BAI WU!!!!!!"
"..."
Dial tone—
The call had been hung up.
This time, Bai Wu noticed that he had more time. Twelve minutes remained on the countdown.
"Hmm, that’s like having six minutes now, but is communicating with me really this hard? I’m putting a lot of effort into answering these calls."
Seeing that Yin Shuang had not yet woken up, Bai Wu decided to answer another call.
Approaching the telephone booth, Bai Wu picked up the receiver for the third time.
"Big brother... save me... I’m so cold... my name is Wen Hao."
Had the cadence been faster, the tone more urgent, Bai Wu would have believed that the other side was calling for help, but as it was, he felt like he was listening to a sleepwalking child, weakly crying out.
Thinking back to the abnormal intonations of the voices in the previous calls, Bai Wu suddenly realized something.
Could these people... all be in some sort of pain, waiting to be rescued?
The notes mentioned calls that cross time and space. To his present self, these people might have already been dead for a very long time.
Did that mean that the calls he was receiving were actually from ghosts?
Could the reason these people’s voices sounded strange be because they’d been through countless cycles in some sort of loop?
"How can I save you?"
Perhaps finally feeling a tinge of sympathy for the child, Bai Wu quickly realized that the scene outside the telephone booth was shattering like a puzzle breaking apart, and then new pieces began to construct the world once again.
This scene seemed to have lasted a long time, but it also seemed like just a moment.
By the time Bai Wu regained his senses, he found himself in some unfamiliar environment.
As the sound of a ship’s horn echoed, he felt as if he had arrived at the end of a street; right then, Bai Wu saw a magnificent cruise ship outside a splendid harbor, massive like a city on the sea.
Even in his previous life, Bai Wu had never seen such a colossal maritime apparatus.
The cruise ship was nearly seven hundred meters away from the harbor, connected to it by a sea bridge built alongside the port.
One thing was certain, if the cruise ship were to set off, this seven-hundred-meter-long sea bridge would inevitably collapse.
At the entrance of the bridge, many soldiers armed with guns stood guard, the entrance serving as a ticket checkpoint, and boarding the ship required a ticket.
Outside the harbor, a long line had formed, and Bai Wu was in that line, directly behind a family of three undergoing ticket inspection.
Soon it would be his turn to board the ship.
"Everyone must have a ticket! No one gets through without a ticket! You three, you only have two tickets, leave one person behind."
The person responsible for the ticket inspection was indifferent; everything on the Ark cruise was calculated with precision, forming a human maritime ecosystem cycle.
Therefore, the initial population number had to be controlled precisely.
The family arguing with the ticket inspector in front of Bai Wu was the Wen Hao family.
They were only seven hundred meters away from the giant cruise ship that seemed to represent hope and the future, but at this moment, the family faced a dilemma.
Two tickets for three people. Only two could walk across the sea bridge, leaving the remaining person behind in the city that might be running out of resources.
Wen Hao’s parents pleaded with the ticket inspector to let their twelve-year-old child board.
Their cries were heart-wrenching, but there was a long queue behind them, and countless others waiting to board the ship.
These desperate screams seemed so inconsequential.
To the ticket-inspecting officer, this scene was nothing out of the ordinary; he had become indifferent to it.
"Two tickets mean only two can enter. Everyone in front came through the same way; you’d better hurry up, we must complete loading Zone A before tonight. Don’t make everyone wait for your family of three!"
"I’m giving you twenty seconds! Otherwise, get out of the way!"
As harsh as these words seemed, in times when order was most needed, they were the most efficient. The ticket inspector’s methods may have caused dissatisfaction among many, but they also made the overall boarding process much smoother.
The joys and sorrows of humanity were actually quite similar in this moment, as many people in line had only one or two tickets.
They came with their families, hoping not to part even at the last moment.
But if so-called utopia only had that many spaces, all past warmth would culminate in a cruel finale.
Wen Hao’s fate seemed clear, and when Bai Wu looked at him, the note that flickered in his eyes read as follows—
[Title: Lonely Harbor. Content: The harbor’s sea breeze is cold, tears are icy, I long for thunder and lightning at night so that I won’t hear the terrifying gnashing sounds. The night is beautiful, my parents went afar, on the endless sea surface, no one is waiting for me—Author: Handsome Eyes. You saw it too, his obsession lingers in this city, a pity that your empathic ability is somewhat lacking, unable to feel it~ You can try to help it, or simply kill it, or take it to a safe place? Or give it a future it never had?]
Bai Wu roughly understood.
The voice from the phone could pull a person’s consciousness into a certain scene, experiencing the ordeal the person on the other end once endured.
It seems Yin Shuang must have experienced someone’s pain, causing her to faint.
But why would it be through a method like a phone booth?
Without thinking too much, Bai Wu looked at the distant cruise ship and noticed that the note provided by Prayle’s Eye was similar to the one he’d seen on the streetsides before, but there was also an additional hint:
[Just a useless set piece, you can’t traverse this scene to really board that ship, a friendly tip—what you lose here will be restored once you hang up the call.]
Bai Wu had already had an idea in mind, the hint from Prayle’s Eye was more or less a clear answer.
The items consumed here wouldn’t truly be used up, as long as he returned to the world outside the phone booth.
And in the Manor, Bai Wu had once obtained a cruise ticket.
