Doomsday Wonderland

The fourth scene was an old residential neighborhood. When the group came to their senses, they found themselves in the middle of a worn-out, faded recreational area surrounded by apartment buildings. Dr. Chen's body and the paper and pens they had discarded in the previous scene were left behind.

In this much larger environment, several times the size of the previous scenes, the group seemed to receive an unspoken signal. They exchanged brief glances and quickly dispersed, as if no one wanted to continue the earlier discussions and only sought to maintain distance from one another. Hina's shouted curses from behind only hastened their departure, and even she eventually gave up, slumping onto a bench with a frustrated expression, stewing in her anger.

The fourth scene passed in near silence, punctuated only by occasional murmurs and wary glances. The only notable development was that many of the group began replacing the bags they had taken from the hotel. Without the record-keeping system in place, no one felt safe holding onto an item that could potentially be a media.

The fifth scene was set in a hospital lobby.

The hospital was small, with the first-floor reception area barely the size of a few rooms. The group was once again confined within a reduced space, forcing them to keep each other in their line of sight. The uncomfortable silence that followed felt like layers of sticky sweat clinging to everyone, suffocating and inescapable.

If this atmosphere of mutual suspicion and awkwardness persisted, no one would make a move to search for mouthpieces, even without a record-keeping system. In such an environment, merely approaching someone else was enough to draw attention.

Lin Sanjiu, however, knew it was naïve to expect the same level of utility as the record-keeping system. Barely ten minutes into the fifth scene, Wen Ya suddenly let out a sharp "Ah!" and strode toward the reception desk.

"What did you see?" Ya Rong was the first to succumb to curiosity, calling out from afar.

Wen Ya, standing at the marble counter, kept his back to the group. When he turned around, he was holding several thick pads of notepaper.

"Look," he said, his typically composed demeanor showing a rare hint of excitement. "Look at all this notepaper—and there are pens chained to the counter as well."

The scattered group, seated sparsely in the waiting area, stared at him with varying degrees of confusion.

"So what?" Rob asked.

Wen Ya tossed the notepaper back onto the counter and spun in place, seemingly searching for the right words. "I... I don't know how to explain it. This is a hospital. Think about it. Who among us would choose a hospital as their home territory?"

"You don't mean Dr. Chen, do you?" Ya Rong asked skeptically.

"Why not?" Wen Ya retorted, his tone brisk and his breathing quick. "This isn't a Twelve Worlds Centrum hospital; it's a pre-doomsday hospital, fully equipped with medications and systems. Think about it. Knowing Dr. Chen's personality, if he had the chance to see how people used to treat illnesses or to obtain pre-doomsday medical supplies, would he pass it up?"

Lin Sanjiu didn't know Dr. Chen personally, but judging by the expressions of the Chimeric City residents, it seemed likely he wouldn't have missed such an opportunity.

"But wouldn't it be too obvious for a doctor to choose a hospital as their home territory?" Jiang Tian asked. "It would immediately make people suspicious."

"You don't understand." Wen Ya dismissed her with a wave, not even sparing her a glance. "Precisely because it seems too obvious, he might have chosen it to mislead us. Did any of you think of this before I mentioned it? And second, if the hospital is his home territory, then his record-keeping system makes perfect sense."

"What do you mean?" Jiang Tian asked, her face turning cold. "Dr. Chen already explained the purpose of the record-keeping system."

Wen Ya's thin lips curled into a mocking smile.

"The idea of cooperating with the pocket dimension and waiting until it lets us go... I don't buy it," he said, tapping the notepaper on the counter. "But what if the purpose of the record-keeping system was to make us willingly collect paper in every scene and carry it with us?"

The waiting area fell silent for a couple of seconds before someone audibly gasped.

"You're saying Dr. Chen's media is paper?" Jiang Tian murmured. "But his home territory isn't the hotel..."

"Exactly," Wen Ya said, shrugging. "In this pocket dimension, we're naturally wary of anything handed to us by others. But items we choose to take ourselves? We don't suspect those. He needed to create a reason, one compelling enough for us to willingly pick up media when we entered his home territory.

"Think about it. If we'd faithfully followed the record-keeping system, what would have happened? We'd still be making notes and constantly needing new paper.

"Every time we entered a new scene, we'd replenish our supply of paper. Eventually, when we arrived in his hospital, plenty of us would've willingly picked up his media, these pads of paper. And if his message was truly for us to cooperate to survive, then the moment we carried his media, he would have had enough mouthpieces."

Even though she didn't want to admit it, Lin Sanjiu had to acknowledge that Wen Ya's explanation was quite convincing.

Dr. Chen had openly highlighted the potential risks of the message hidden in his own words, warning the group about the dangers. At the time, Lin Sanjiu had assumed his honesty had no ulterior motive and that he genuinely wanted to implement the record-keeping system.

But Wen Ya's alternative theory now explained this behavior: at that point, Dr. Chen's home territory hadn't been reached yet, and no one had picked up his media. His honesty cost him nothing and instead earned him trust.

By focusing the group's suspicion on the paper and pens he distributed from the hotel, Dr. Chen diverted their attention away from other paper and pens in future scenes. Hadn't the group picked up paper and pens on the beach without hesitation?

"Dr. Chen truly was a clever man," Jiang Tian said bitterly after a moment of thought. "His mind was always sharp."

"But wait," Lin Sanjiu interjected, a thought striking her. "Dr. Chen is already dead. His home territory should have disappeared, shouldn't it? So how can the hospital be his home territory?"

"Does it really disappear when someone dies?" Rob frowned. "The rules say a home territory disappears when its owner becomes a mouthpiece, that's certain. But I don't recall the rules saying that a home territory disappears if the person dies."

Lin Sanjiu felt that logically, the scene should vanish, but she couldn't be sure. The extensive rules were difficult to memorize in their entirety.

The group buzzed with discussion for a while, and they all agreed that there was no specific rule stating a home territory would vanish if its owner died. The truth could only be confirmed once all the scenes had cycled through; if there were eleven instead of twelve, Dr. Chen's death might have been a factor.

"Even if the hospital isn't Dr. Chen's home territory, which I think it is, this strategy would still work," Wen Ya concluded.

The word "strategy" made Lin Sanjiu uncomfortable.

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Did this mean they were now in a battle where everyone was pitted against everyone else?

When she instinctively glanced at Jiang Tian, she noticed Jiang Tian looking back at her, as if they both sought to confirm they still had an ally.

Their gazes met briefly before they looked away. Lin Sanjiu used the moment to study the others' expressions.

Rob was frowning deeply, Ya Rong looked visibly indignant, Guan Nan's face was unreadable as she stared at Wen Ya, and Rodent-Face sat with his arms crossed, his expression smug, as if saying, 'I knew it.'

The hope of uniting the group to resist the pocket dimension and force the factory's operators to reveal themselves now seemed impossible.

"Wait," Jiang Tian suddenly raised her voice. "Could it be that the person who killed Dr. Chen realized all this?"

Wen Ya paused and then nodded. "I think that's exactly why. After all, the system itself was sound... The only real risk in the record-keeping system was Dr. Chen himself."

"So you're saying... the killer wanted to continue the record-keeping system but didn't want to be turned into a mouthpiece by Dr. Chen, so they killed him?" Jiang Tian asked, her voice trembling with frustration. "Which is it? Does the killer want us to keep the system running or stop it?"

"I think the killer's motive has nothing to do with the record-keeping system," Guan Nan said, glancing at Jiang Tian. "When you accidentally mentioned someone might secretly attack us, the record-keeping system didn't even exist yet."

Jiang Tian looked as if she wanted to claw at Guan Nan. "I already told you, you misunderstood what I meant!"

"Then why would someone secretly target us?" Wen Ya challenged. "If it wasn't to protect us from being turned into mouthpieces by Dr. Chen, what other motive could there be for killing him?"

Guan Nan lowered her gaze to her tightly clasped hands resting on her knees. In a quiet voice, she said, "I'm not smart like you all. I can't come up with strategies or schemes. But... I've been thinking about the killer's motive, why they would kill, and I think I've figured it out."

Wen Ya smirked openly. "Oh?"

"Dr. Chen wanted us to resist the pocket dimension, to block the factory's production line until someone came to let us out, right?" Guan Nan's voice was so soft that everyone had to strain to hear her. "It could work, but it depends on a lot of people working together to maintain the system, which is hard to trust. I didn't join because I was afraid someone would sabotage it. If that happened, it would all fall apart."

It was true that if Dr. Chen had intended to manipulate the system, those who participated would have been defenseless. The record-keeping system required mutual reliance and trust to function, leaving the group vulnerable to anyone with ulterior motives.

"So I thought of a simpler way... maybe the killer thought of it too." Guan Nan glanced quickly around the group. "Remember? The pocket dimension rules said you can kill everyone if you want. You just won't be able to complete the tasks and will get stuck here indefinitely. If the killer eliminates enough people, the pocket dimension will eventually halt, and the factory operators will be forced to intervene and unlock it. The killer's plan is safer than Dr. Chen's record-keeping system."

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