Infinite Peculiar Games - Chapter 18: Rose Manor (XVII) - The Three-Door Problem
“Lin Chen, are you in there? Ye is dead, and I’m so scared… Can you please let me in?”
Lin Chen curled up on the bed, clutching the room key tightly as he listened to the woman’s voice outside the door.
The sound, distorted and trembling with fear, was muffled by the door, but he could still recognise it as Zou Yan’s voice.
Lin Chen did not know Zou Yan well. He only remembered that she was a psychologist who had spoken a few words promoting unity, always appearing calm and gentle, like a breath of fresh spring air.
This was the first time he had seen her so distressed…
Instinctively, Lin Chen crawled off the bed and reached for the door handle.
Just as he was about to turn it, he hesitated, a vivid memory resurfacing.
An hour ago, as Qi Si was leaving, he handed Lin Chen the key with an unusually serious expression. “We’re all adults here, but I need to remind you: don’t open this door for anyone but me.”
Puzzled, Lin Chen asked, “Why?”
Qi Si had given him a cold, sardonic smile. “In this zero-sum game, you can’t trust anyone except me, your only ally. Just remember, if you open that door, it won’t just be you who suffers—it’ll be me too.”
The memory was so clear that Lin Chen instinctively took a step back, eyeing the door warily.
Outside, Zou Yan’s voice grew more frantic. “Lin Chen, please, help me! It’s coming! I’ll die!”
The sheer terror and desperation in her voice felt genuine, making Lin Chen’s heart race.
While the other players could not be trusted, they were merely suspects, not proven to be irredeemable villains. What if Qi Si’s suspicions were wrong?
If I don’t open the door, Zou Yan might really die…
But opening the door would endanger not only me but also Qi Si…
Sweat beaded on Lin Chen’s forehead as he started to waver, gripping the key tighter until it dug into his skin.
…
On the third floor, Qi Si exited the room adorned with skeletons and caught the sound of rain in an instant.
The castle’s corridors lacked windows; thick, ancient stone walls isolated the world outside. With no visual confirmation, the auditory senses faded into silence, the recent fleeting sound almost seeming like an illusion.
Yet, Qi Si felt it was really going to rain.
After all, in third-rated TV dramas, when the tragic plot reaches its climax, a heavy rainstorm always sets the mood, does it not?
Having nearly exhausted exploration of the first room, and finding no further clues worth lingering for, Qi Si proceeded to Room 2, extracting a thin wire and deftly picking the lock as before.
As usual, he let Changxu take the lead. Once the former had circled the room without anything happening, Qi Si then slowly stepped into the room.
He was greeted by a massive French window, nearly occupying the entire wall, through which a grey-purple sky cast its hue into the room, lending the floor and walls a hazy layer of dust.
Through the glass, covered with cobwebs, one could see threads of rain weaving downward like delicate strands, intersecting and overlapping, creating a tangled web that was hard to distinguish.
Suddenly, a soft thump sounded behind his ears; something had fallen to the ground.
Qi Si instinctively lowered his head and saw a worn-out rag doll lying beside his heel.
It was a small red-dressed girl with braided hair, her eyes replaced by two “X”s, her mouth pulled into a line, singing an eerie nursery rhyme:
“She’s coming, she’s coming, she’s in the storm…”
“Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, I’m in the wardrobe…”
The door behind him slammed shut with a bang, and the surrounding light quickly dimmed, casting everything in the sepia tones of a nostalgic flashback.
【Side Quest Triggered】
【Side Quest (Mandatory): Play Hide and Seek with Anna and Annie】
Two lines of text refreshed on the system interface, and Qi Si squinted slightly.
Would there really be side quests, and they’re even marked as “mandatory”? Could there be “optional” quests in the future?
He pondered while observing three identical wardrobes that had appeared out of thin air along the wall, each about half a person tall and two persons wide, casting dusty shadows on the floor.
A girl in a black dress slowly materialised from the shadows, speaking in a sweet voice, “My sister is hiding in one of these cabinets. Can you help me find her? Each person can only open a cabinet once; whoever opens the empty one will die.”
A blind box scenario?
Qi Si recalled the example he gave Linchen recently, and raised an eyebrow as he asked, “Can we use methods like tapping on the cabinet surfaces to assist our judgement?”
“No. Before making a choice, you can only look, not touch.”
The dust particles hung and fluttered in the air, while a faint halo surrounded the small girl, giving her an ethereal appearance with a blank face, almost like a phantom from a dream.
She folded her hands across her chest, innocently yet with a hint of cruelty, urging, “Hurry up and choose. One of you must go first.”
Qi Si lowered his eyes at the girl’s featureless face and suddenly asked, “Are you human?”
The girl tilted her face up and replied, “Yes, I have always been human.”
Qi Si chuckled, “Alright then. I’ll let my teammate choose a cabinet first, but we won’t open it. You go and open one of the other two cabinets. How about that? After all, you said, ‘Each person can only open a cabinet once.’ ”
In the dim, sepia-toned light reminiscent of old movies, Qi Si calmly waited. The girl remained silent, tilting her head hesitantly, pondering his proposal.
Behind him, the doll continued its eerie song.
“She’s coming, she’s coming, she’s in the storm…”
“Don’t look at me, don’t look at me, I’m in—ack!”
Without warning, the chanting abruptly stopped, interrupted by the sound of a cricket being squashed underfoot.
The flickering apparition of the girl before Qi Si flashed twice and vanished along with the two adjacent wardrobes, leaving only the middle one standing alone.
【Side Quest Completed】
A cold electronic tone suddenly rang out.
Qi Si turned his head in response and saw Chang Xu’s expressionless face and… the doll he had stepped on.
Chang Xu fell silent for a moment, lowering his gaze. “I didn’t expect it to be so weak.”
…Did you hack the game?
What’s this? You can’t solve the problem, so you decide to eliminate the one who posed it?
Qi Si suddenly remembered the answer he had heard in the discussion about the trolley problem, where the solution was to “blow up the trolley.”
He was secretly glad he had not challenged Chang Xu earlier. Smiling teasingly, he said, “You seem quite adept at dealing with the peculiar. Your identity probably is not as simple as you claim.”
Chang Xu tugged at the brim of his hat and uttered three words: “Born with it.”
“Impressive, impressive.”
Qi Si complimented with a nod, gesturing towards the flattened doll on the ground, signalling to Chang Xu to pick it up.
Chang Xu silently complied, picking up the cloth doll and examining it closely, flipping it over in his hands. Finally, he turned up the doll’s dress hem to show Qi SI a glimpse of a red embroidered English word—”Anna.”
“This is the doll representing her elder sister, Anna. From the nursery rhyme, it appears Anna was afraid of her younger sister Annie, whose affection for Anna was likely one-sided,” Qi Si reiterated his earlier deduction.
Surveying the room’s layout, Qi Si confirmed there were no other places to explore. He then gestured towards the wardrobe in front of him.
Understanding his intent, Chang Xu opened the wardrobe door and bent down to retrieve a yellowed old photograph from the dusty interior.
The photograph was hastily composed, depicting a long table adorned with dishes, around which nine people sat stiffly facing the camera, their poses rigid and unanimated.
Four faces were clearly visible, while the other five were blurry.
Qi Si leaned in, carefully scrutinising the photo. Among the four distinct faces, one was unmistakably familiar—Shen Ming!
The remaining three faces included one he had seen before—the first victim dug out by Chang Xu from the garden’s pit.
A suspicion that had been brewing in his mind was swiftly confirmed at this moment.
Chang Xu’s slender finger pointed to the three less familiar faces. “These three bodies were all found in the garden; I had dug them out earlier.”
Qi Si stared at the nearest figure to the main seat, whispering, “After a player dies, their face appears in the photo. With five empty slots left, it perfectly corresponds to five players. Doesn’t this suggest the instance never intended for players to leave alive?”
All the previous incongruities now came together, forming a coherent picture. The sense of life and death hanging by a thread was so intriguing that he had to suppress a grin to keep from laughing out loud. “Do you think it’s possible that a time loop began when the instance started? Every three days, three people die, and we’re in the second cycle.”
“Impossible.” Chang Xu shook his head. “I couldn’t have delayed exploring obvious key places like the garden and the third floor until a second cycle.”
Qi Si chuckled disdainfully. “Perhaps we’ve already gone through the first cycle completely, but unfortunately, we couldn’t break it. So, everything resets.”
Behind his words lay a chilling implication.
Over and over, they explored, and over and over, they failed, losing all memory each time, only to be thrust back into the cycle anew.
The cycle repeated, each iteration claiming more lives, leaving fewer survivors, and causing the glimmer of hope for escape to dim ever further…
Caught in this web of despair, they struggled, convinced they were fighting for survival, oblivious to the fact that the sinister manor was silently consuming them, turning them into nourishment for the roses…
As these thoughts spread through his mind like creeping vines, Qi Si’s breath quickened, captivated by the haunting imagery.
Ignoring the grime on the photo, he took it from Chang Xu’s hand.
The once-clear image on the front of the photo began to blur, as if ink were seeping into it. In mere moments, the distinct scene became indistinguishable.
On the reverse side, red words, seemingly written in blood, bled through, stark and undeniable:
【We are all going to die】
…
After her parents died, the girl finally got her wish to live with her sister, until that man appeared.
She could not understand why a stranger, who suddenly crashed into their lives, could capture her sister’s attention.
He was not even attractive; he was far less appealing than her sister. So why was her sister so humble—so careful—in loving him?
The girl schemed, and eventually, the man left without her sister.
She watched her sister cry day after day, unable to comprehend why she was so heartbroken.
Her sister became more and more haggard, her once beautiful face growing dull as the roses in the garden withered with the changing seasons.
Feeling powerless, the girl once again climbed to the attic to pray to the statue.
The deity told her, “She is ill and dying. Only the heart of her true love can revive her.”
The girl did not want to believe it, but deep down, she knew her sister loved that man.
Fortunately, by this time, she looked almost identical to her sister. Even if their parents were alive, they might not notice the difference.
When the man returned to the manor, she greeted him instead of her sister and killed him.
In the coffin, her sister’s corpse opened its eyes. It had become a monster, parasitised by the roses, no longer calling her name, no longer looking at her with sad eyes—ageing, rotting, and decaying with time.
Terrified, she sought help from the deity again.
In its mercy, the deity granted her three days, allowing her and her sister to survive in an endless cycle.
She watched her sister rot over and over again in the infinite three-day loop. Though her condition stopped worsening, her face had already decayed beyond recognition.
She was horrified to find she could not accept her sister’s ugliness.
Each time she saw that wrinkled, rotten face, she felt nauseous, wanting to vomit.
She even began to regret everything she had sacrificed to keep her sister alive.
She asked the deity if her sister could be restored to her former beauty.
The deity opened its crimson eyes, smiling with a thirst for blood. “Keep the guests who come to the manor; use their flesh and blood to nourish the roses, and everything will be as you wish.”
(End of Chapter)
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