Chapter 30

"…We don't really know either. We can't save everyone."

Liu Zhiyi didn't know what to say, what there was to say.

She lowered her head and pulled open the backpack's zipper.

Inside were three packs of Tang Monk Meat, a box of Naobaijin, and a bottle of Jizhi Cough Syrup.

[Naobaijin: For gifts, give Naobaijin! This product refreshes and clears the mind; the side effect is that afterward you'll move as slowly as an old person — it's a health tonic for the elderly, after all.]

[Jizhi Cough Syrup: drink it and you'll run faster than a cheetah — but the human body plainly isn't built like a cheetah's, so after an all-out sprint you'll cough nonstop for two hours.]

Liu Zhiyi: "…This?"

Shen Songyue: "You've seen the ads for Naobaijin and Jizhi Cough Syrup, right?"

"I have. Someone's prop is this?" Liu Zhiyi pointed at the Tang Monk Meat. "Props can be mass-produced?"

Shen Songyue: "A prop is born of a person's will. A single person's will produces a related prop, and the same goes for the tides of the public mind — put simply, some shared understandings among people produce props too."

Just as anyone who's read Journey to the West knows that eating the Tang Monk's flesh grants long life; anyone who's seen the Naobaijin ad knows the stuff is a brain tonic, and the Jizhi Cough Syrup is the cheetah from the ad.

Liu Zhiyi: "…How complicated."

Shen Songyue: "Anything you want to ask? Anything you don't follow?"

Liu Zhiyi thought a moment. "Does Naobaijin work on the mind?"

Shen Songyue: "Right. Some ghosts will mess with your mind — a ghost wall, say, or hallucinations. For that, eat Naobaijin."

Liu Zhiyi nodded. "Then I've no more questions. Put me in."

"Wait." Shen Songyue took off her coat. "This is from me, personally."

Liu Zhiyi didn't take the coat she held out.

Shen Songyue: "Take it — this is a prop too."

This counted as one as well?

Liu Zhiyi reached out hesitantly.

[The Queen's New Clothes.]

But that was the only line the watch showed about the coat.

Shen Songyue pushed her phone into Liu Zhiyi's hands.

"Look, quick."

The phone was on a news page; Liu Zhiyi glanced at the date — a while back, three years ago.

She didn't read the report closely; her attention was caught by the photo in the middle.

The woman in it was completely naked, half her body in the sea as if swimming, only her head turned slightly toward the camera.

It was Shen Songyue.

Shen Songyue: "A few years back my luck wasn't great — got caught by the press skinny-dipping in the sea abroad. I only wanted to find somewhere with no one around and let myself go a little…"

Liu Zhiyi had vaguely heard of the news; it had made a huge stir online at the time — even someone like her, who paid the entertainment world no mind, had heard colleagues chatting about it over meals.

Shen Songyue: "'Skinny-Dip-Gate' — they even coined a special name for it. Honestly, it dealt my career a real blow. But I don't get it: I just went for a swim without clothes on — why did that crowd online talk as if I'd committed some monstrous crime?"

She put a finger to the screen and swiped back.

A woman in a bikini flipping the camera off appeared on the screen.

Shen Songyue too.

"So afterward I shot a whole swimsuit spread."

The prop's description updated.

[Shen Songyue: this crowd always loves to look at whether other people are wearing clothes — and can't see their own.]

[This is a magic coat. When Shen Songyue wears it, everyone can't help but look at her; but when someone else wears it, ghosts and monsters can't see them.]

Shen Songyue: "For someone else's prop, you have to know the whole story behind it before you can make sense of what it does. Once you're in the dungeon, remember to put the coat on, and the ghosts won't be able to see you."

Liu Zhiyi held the coat, hemming and hawing a long while.

"Thank you… and, you're really something."

Shen Songyue pressed her lips into a smile.

"The truth is, my superiors told me to try to keep you on. Your hanger's ability is very unusual — a prop that can get a player out of a dungeon they haven't cleared is rare."

Liu Zhiyi put on the coat and looked at her, uneasy.

Shen Songyue: "The way I see it, players like us spend our whole lives looking for how to break an obsession. If we could really always put the big picture first, reason ahead of feeling, then there wouldn't be so many dungeons in the first place."

Liu Zhiyi found, all at once, that she rather liked her, and wanted to talk with her a while longer.

But ever since she'd been swept into this game, Liu Zhiyi had had little time to stop and talk with anyone.

Shen Songyue pushed the door open.

Liu Zhiyi found that across from the door was the main entrance of Ankang Hospital.

Shen Songyue plucked a strand of yarn off the pocket of Liu Zhiyi's pants.

"Go on — and while you're at it, do me a favor…"

Shen Songyue gave the strand of yarn a shake; it had come off the cat.

"Say hello for me to the owner of this yarn… I've been covering its shifts for a good half-month now. If it's not dead, tell it to get its ass back to work!"

Liu Zhiyi was still surprised that she knew the cat.

But out of the corner of her eye she saw a man already waiting outside the door.

Shen Songyue: "That's Teacher Yang's son."

Liu Zhiyi pushed down every question that had nothing to do with the Ankang dungeon and walked toward the door.

But the instant her foot crossed the threshold, the hospital gate rushed close, and the asphalt road turned into a conveyor belt racing her toward the hospital.

Shen Songyue: "Once you're in the hospital, don't let your mind wander — your thoughts get drawn off by the dungeon and affect it."

Liu Zhiyi turned her head and saw Shen Songyue take a step forward too, as if to demonstrate for her.

And the moment Shen Songyue's foot touched the asphalt, the whole road arched up, like a noodle flicked into the air, and flung Shen Songyue back through the door.

The dungeon really did pull people in selectively.

She turned and looked toward Teacher Yang's son.

The flung-noodle road changed under his feet: his soles still stuck to the road, but his whole body rippled up and down with it like a wave.

It looked as if the dungeon both wanted him in and didn't.

While she was watching Teacher Yang's son, the conveyor under her sped up — and just as her belt neared the son's flung-noodle stretch —

the dungeon seemed to make up its mind at last: the noodle's crest surged to a new high, a gap opened under his feet, and it looked as if he was about to be flung out.

Liu Zhiyi: "Damn — playing favorites!"

"Mom!" Teacher Yang's son cried out. "Do you really not want to see me this much?"

The noodle-road paused, then whipped faster.

Liu Zhiyi saw the son spin once in the air, both arms clamped around the road, his head turning toward her as he shouted:

"Help me!"

Liu Zhiyi lunged at once — but the moment she jumped, the road sucked her feet down, and the two of them passed each other in the air…

Not quite passed, in fact, because Teacher Yang's son caught hold of the key hanging at her neck.

Choked by the key's cord, Liu Zhiyi's first thought was that the cord her mother had strung it on was too long.

But it didn't choke her for long; worn out from all its years of use, the cord gave a snapping sound under the hard yank and broke before Teacher Yang's son even let go.

He was flung off by the noodle-road, howling.

"Sorry, sorry… ahh!"

Then the hospital gate swelled wide, like a person opening their mouth, and swallowed her in one gulp.

Liu Zhiyi's vision blurred, and she was back in that empty, pitch-black ward corridor.

In the end, only she had made it into the dungeon after all.

She drew a hard breath and pulled the coat closer around her.

Coming from the bright, bustling real world into a place this dark and oppressive was always hard to adjust to.

Liu Zhiyi took out the Naobaijin and the cough syrup first and put them in a pocket where they'd be easier to reach.

The corridor had grown darker; she couldn't even see the green emergency-exit sign now, and even the beam of her watch's flashlight was like something sunk into a bog, vanished without a trace.

But this dark was strange — she couldn't see far, and the light lit nothing, yet she could dimly make out some outlines.

Liu Zhiyi took a few steps to the left and touched the wall.

She felt her way forward along it, one step at a time.

The corridor was very quiet; even walking with her shoes off, she could hear the faint scuff of her soles against her socks.

A place like this made her fix her attention, without meaning to, on listening.

Liu Zhiyi thought about putting on the prop headphones, but worried that with them on she wouldn't be able to hear her grandmother and the others.

She searched a while and found the ward doors all pushed open, a few of them left ajar.

"…Ho."

Liu Zhiyi stopped and turned her head toward the sound, and then heard it again.

"Ho… hoo…"

The breathing was very particular — not a normal person's breath, and not snoring either; more as if something were stuck in the throat, and only with all one's strength could a breath be drawn.

Liu Zhiyi had heard this sound before.

Back when she was staying overnight with her grandmother at the hospital, once the night grew quiet, the breathing of Big Sister Ma's father in the next bed would turn distinct, just like this.

First a hiss — the sound of air passing through narrow nostrils — and then.

"…Ho."

As if something had caught: a few "ho"s, the air clattering and snagging in the nasal passage.

After a brief pause of a few seconds —

"…Hoo."

the air was at last, with effort, breathed out through the nose.

Listening to him breathe left Liu Zhiyi's heart in her throat, afraid the old man might suffocate and die the very next second.

But now she was hearing that sound again, in the corridor.

Was it Big Sister Ma's father? Was he out in the corridor?

Liu Zhiyi quickened her pace and ran toward the breathing.

As she drew near, a pale-yellow halo flickered in and out of the dark.

Running up for a look, she found it was a cloud-shaped night light stuck to a hospital bed.

Big Sister Ma had specially prepared it for her father.

Some old people seemed especially afraid of the dark; even her grandmother went muddled mostly at night, when she couldn't see.

As her grandmother put it:

"Once it goes dark you can't see a thing, and it feels like the shadows are all moving, like they'll eat you… I can't even tell if I'm in the land of the living or the land of the dead."

At the sight of the night light Liu Zhiyi relaxed a little — but then she saw the odds and ends scattered by the bed.

Yarn, and a cracked foot-basin, and a toothbrush snapped in two…

These were all Big Sister Ma's washing things.

And on the card at the head of the bed hung a slip.

That kind of card Liu Zhiyi knew too — it usually held the patient's information.

Ma Qirong.

Liu Zhiyi saw the name on the bedhead card.

It was Big Sister Ma's father.

Had something happened?

Liu Zhiyi pointed the watch at the bed and swept the light over it top to bottom.

Then, on the edge of the bed, she saw several bloody handprints.

Liu Zhiyi looked down and saw the wheels under the bed weren't locked, and were skewed, as if they'd been pushed not long ago.

Seeing such a wretched scene, Liu Zhiyi understood.

After she'd left, Big Sister Ma and the others must have been through a brutal chase — even pushed the ward beds out.

Liu Zhiyi knew why Big Sister Ma had done it: the watch's flashlight swept to the bedhead, where a blue oxygen tank stood.

She remembered the oxygen setup plugged into the holes in the wall at the head of the ward beds, not into a tank like this.

Clearly this was no use.

She looked at the bed. Ma Qirong was lying on it now.

An oxygen mask still covered his face; his mouth was open wide, breathing with difficulty.

In the dark the old man looked far more terrible than by day.

Skeletal, eyes sunken, his head rising and falling — each rise and fall giving off a "ho," his cheeks puffing once.

Yet even unable to catch his breath, he couldn't move at all, mouth open, drool running down his whole face.

His eyes were the most mobile part of that body; the eyeballs turned, and fixed on Liu Zhiyi.

Then a tear rolled from them.

Liu Zhiyi's heart clenched, and she turned her head away on reflex.

She knew, rationally, that she could barely save herself, let alone take a paralyzed old man along.

"…Ho… hoo."

The breathing grew more and more hurried, the catch in his throat louder and louder, the gaps between exhales stretching longer.

Liu Zhiyi knew he was suffocating.

"…Hoo… ho."

She took a few steps forward and hurried to the oxygen tank.

The breathing mask wasn't connected to the tank at all; the clear tube was broken through the middle.

Liu Zhiyi froze in place, not daring to look at the old man's face on the bed.

"…Ho."

His breath snagged again.

Liu Zhiyi suddenly found it hard to breathe; she didn't know how to face the old man, and the snagging sounds seemed to turn into knives, stabbing at her eardrums one after another.

"Go, just go."

In a daze, Liu Zhiyi seemed to hear a voice speaking to her from inside her chest.

"You can't save this old man. One look at the scene and it's obvious his own daughter dumped him; even Big Sister Ma doesn't care, so what are you agonizing over? Hurry up and go find your grandma…"

What? Could this be a thought from the bottom of my own heart?

Liu Zhiyi wondered.

But there was no time to dwell on it; she no longer heard the sound of him breathing out, only —

"Ho… ho…"

Liu Zhiyi suddenly felt the air go thin; her nostrils seemed blocked, and though she drew hard she pulled in only a few threads, so she opened her mouth.

Straining too hard, she felt as if even her chest were moving.

But the air seemed frozen solid, squeezing in from her nose with effort, giving off one short sound.

"…Ho."

Wrong… this was wrong…

Liu Zhiyi dropped to her knees.

The lack of oxygen blacked out her vision; her brain knew she should breathe in, but her lungs seemed paralyzed and simply wouldn't take air.

This was wrong.

Her hands and feet clawed at the air beyond her control.

Calm down, calm down.

Liu Zhiyi held what breath she had and reached a trembling arm into her pocket.

The memory that followed was all a blur; Liu Zhiyi only remembered her mind repeating, over and over —

Naobaijin, Naobaijin, Naobaijin.

Half-conscious, she seemed to chew something in her mouth.

"…Ss."

At last, a breath went in.

Liu Zhiyi collapsed to the floor.

She gulped air, rolled over, and looked at the bed.

The "ho, ho" hadn't stopped.

She saw the clear tube of the hanging oxygen mask quivering, jerking up and down, as if someone had gripped one end and was yanking it.

The jerking grew larger, faster.

At last, the clear tube pulled completely straight.

—Thud.

The bed lurched hard, and half a human body flipped off it.

Liu Zhiyi startled; she scrambled and rolled, trying to get up and run, but the Naobaijin's side effect made her sluggish, both arms gone limp with no strength to them; she braced on the floor a long while and still couldn't stand.

She could only crawl out like that, stopping and looking back only once she'd reached the wall.

Ma Qirong hung off the edge of the bed.

The oxygen mask was clamped tight to his face, the clear tube attached to it stretched taut, running up and up into the dark.

And Ma Qirong's mouth gaped, his cheeks puffing and then hollowing; his two eyes folded backward from the nose into a flat, curved plane, one eye staring at her without a single blink.

"…Ho… ho."

It was like… like…

a fish hooked up out of the water, about to suffocate to death.

He wasn't a person anymore.

Liu Zhiyi crawled off to one side with effort.

But strangely, the Ma Qirong who could see her a moment ago now seemed suddenly unable to, his gaze still fixed on the spot where she'd been lying.

Then he slid off the bed — or rather, was dragged down by the tube of the mask on his face.

"Ho… ho…"

At the instant he hit the floor he even bounced, truly like a fish.

Liu Zhiyi sped up her hands; she felt the air around her go thin again, especially after hearing the "ho, ho" he gave off.

Had Ma Qirong changed the way Teacher Yang had?

Once she'd crawled some distance off, she could clearly feel the can't-breathe trouble ease a great deal — and eating the Naobaijin had helped.

Was Ma Qirong's changed skill mental damage plus stealing the ability to breathe within a certain range?

Liu Zhiyi crawled under a hospital bed and hid; she'd noticed that the Ma Qirong dragged along by his oxygen mask didn't move very easily — it was just that his range of effect was rather wide.

She unlocked the watch.

The task bar now had a separate section of its own; besides "Saying One Thing, Meaning Another," another idiom had been added.

[Stranded Fish: Son, son, save me, save me — why won't you save me! I'm dying, I can't breathe.]

[Within three meters, the player will be like a fish just landed on shore, struggling to breathe.]

Liu Zhiyi remembered Big Sister Ma had said her father's brain hemorrhage had affected his breathing; he'd had a craniotomy afterward that helped a little, but he still had to take oxygen from time to time.

Compared with "Saying One Thing, Meaning Another," the description of "Stranded Fish" was plainly a good deal more detailed — and much like the guess she'd had before.