Ordinary Chapter 76: Twist

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

“I’m not with the Special Unit, but I never meant to do you any harm.” Cheng Xiangwen leaned against the wall with a half-dead look, his robbed vision and health making his whole body unusually sickly. “Cough, Mr. Shen, we are not enemies.”

Shen Si looked at him and after a moment he stood up, “But at least tell me why you’re doing this? Knowing me and disguising yourself as a member of the Special Unit, what is your purpose?”

“Purpose…?” Cheng Xiangwen laughed, unlike earlier, his voice was now very low with a hoarseness from coughing too much, “I said from the beginning, I admire Mr. Shen very much, after my eyesight was taken away I almost lost my ability to move, at that time suddenly heard your voice, and my brain snapped and I suddenly did this. I don’t have a purpose, I just worship you!”

No purpose, just worship?

Shen Si expressionlessly looked at Cheng Xiangwen, turned towards the outside, not far away, the man who lost his memory, the real Special Unit member, cautiously looked their way.

Hearing Shen Si’s footsteps, Cheng Xiangwen tried to stand up by holding the wall, but his body was so weak that he couldn’t stand up. “Mr. Shen?” Cheng Xiangwen struggled to support his body, “Shen Si?

“I don’t like liars, and I don’t like to hear lies.” Shen Si spoke as he walked, “Remember what happened when you and Tang Nan met? You and Tang Nan exchanged Special Unit’s communication code, and by doing so, you told me that Tang Nan was indeed a member of the Special Unit, and now you’re telling me that you’re a liar. It’s not good to forget what you said.”

Cheng Xiangwen coughed, his voice hoarse and weak as he tightly held onto the stone on the wall, “Ah… You still remember what happened before, ah, it’s really ungrateful to say something that slipped through the cracks from here.”

Walking to the man with amnesia, Shen Si returned the prop to him just now, and then prepared to leave the place with this man. The man looked at Shen Si somewhat cautiously, and then looked at Cheng Xiangwen who really couldn’t stand so was half kneeling on the ground, then pulled the corner of Shen Si’s coat.

“That man, it’s really okay to leave him here?”

“No problem, he can’t die.” Shen Si’s voice was calm, “He is not an ordinary person, and I don’t know what’s on his mind, it’s better to leave him alone.”

Shen Si never thought of people in a bad light, and would also choose to trust others, but if once he found conclusive evidence of lies, then he would no longer trust them, he would only turn away without mercy, as if the sky couldn’t chase the sun.

Because his trust was not really trust, just that he wanted to believe it.

The man let go of his hand, lowered his head and timidly followed Shen Si, although he didn’t know what happened, the people in the communicator told him to find the person in front of him, and although he didn’t understand what this place was, he only wanted to survive, so from here out, getting out of here alive was the most important.

On the other side, Cheng Xiangwen kept coughing, he covered his mouth, but he could feel the warm liquid dripping down his fingers and his mouth was full of blood. He was in very bad shape, and after having his health stolen from him, his whole body was alarming him with tingling pains all over.

“Shen Si!” Cheng Xiangwen amplified his volume.

Shen Si paused in his steps as he glanced back toward behind him, Cheng Xiangwen’s clothes bearing bright red blood, his godless eyes facing his direction.

“Lies are sometimes not something to be disliked, sometimes the truth and reality are more cruel than lies.” Cheng Xiangwen slowed his voice, “The world of lies is perhaps much better than our current world, where the pillars of many people’s minds are being piled up by lies.”

“So what? What does the need for lies to exist have to do with me?” Shen Si’s voice remained calm, “I will only live in reality.”

The man with amnesia hurriedly chased after him, and soon their figures disappeared. Cheng Xiangwen kept listening to the sounds around him, but his hearing was also decreasing, he could only hear the wind around him, and nothing else.

“This is bad.” Cheng Xiangwen fell to the ground, and kept gasping for breath, trying to open his eyes wide in front of him was just darkness, nothing. He reached out his hand groping, and finally clutched a stone, a sharp section of the stone stabbed into his hand, the sting brought on by the external force made him slightly sober.

“Underestimated this playfield, also underestimated Shen Si, will I really die here?” Cheng Xiangwen clutched the stone with one hand, the other hand groped towards his own pocket. Unfortunately, because he really couldn’t see, he turned over half a day but couldn’t find his own pocket, so he just turned his jacket over.

On the inside of the jacket, in the lower left corner near the heart, there was a small word embroidered in black thread.

「Left」.

… 

Standing next to the river, Shen Si looked at the clock in the air. The clock floating in the air emitted a light golden glow, looking beautiful, as if it was a creation that didn’t exist in this world.

What ruined this beauty was the long crack on the dial, the crack was in a vertical line, not too obvious, but also not too small, at least the man next to the face full of bewilderment could see at a glance that the crack couldn’t be blocked at all.

“What is this?”

“A clock.” Shen Si reached out and touched the clock in the air, the cracked part was a little out of place.

Under Shen Si’s touch, the clock turned into points of light around Shen Si, but those images were still empty. Shen Si rewound the time back to eight years ago, but just as he thought, whether it was the three overlapping timelines or the images he had memories of, they didn’t exist.

His past had dissolved into nothingness.

“Is that your ability?” The man made a puzzled sound, “Why does the ability still have cracks?”

“I don’t know.” Shen Si gave the man a look, “Just like why your memories were stolen, I don’t know why my clock cracked.”

The clock was the source of Shen Si’s ability, and a sign that would appear when he used it. In his opinion, whether the past disappeared or the clock cracked was a very unbelievable thing, in this playfield there was really nothing that couldn’t be stolen, if he didn’t have the ability of time to view his past, he wouldn’t even notice that he had lost something.

Normal people would never think of it until they died… 

“Understood.” The man who didn’t understand at all replied.

Shen Si entered this playfield in order to be able to master the ability as soon as possible and be able to see what happened eight years ago, after all, that was the event of his parents’ death, but now his past was all stolen, in other words, the fundamental purpose for which he worked for disappeared.

So what was the point of him going into this playfield? To go from successfully leaving the playfield to successfully snatching the past back?

“Ah!” The man suddenly let out a miserable scream as he pointed to the river with fear all over his face, “That… it’s that guy!”

Shen Si looked towards where the man was pointing, and a pink mass emerged from the river, a light red liquid diluted by the river flowing around him, that was the blood from the man. Shen Si took two steps forward, and then he came into line of sight with the man in the water who had no skin.

Even without skin, Shen Si could see the pain in the man’s eyes; he was alive, but worse than dead.

“Don’t come over, don’t come over!!!” The amnesiac man rolled away, Shen Si had no time to shout at him, the man ran away without a trace. With a subtle frown, Shen Si pondered whether this man was a member of the Special Unit or not.

He was very timid, and ran away when things got tough. There was a big difference between him and the Special Unit members he knew

He didn’t continue to care about the man with amnesia, Shen Si squatted down, looked at the man in the water, who reached out towards Shen Si, blood trickling down the man’s skinless fingers. He couldn’t speak, but his eyes were slowly pleading for help, even though it was so painful and so unbearable, he still wanted to live.

He wanted to… survive?

“Do you want to save him?” A familiar voice appeared behind Shen Si. Shen Si froze, turned around, Qian Min was standing quietly, her eyes wide open, staring at Shen Si like a puppet.

Shen Si took a step back, “Qian Min?”

“I am indeed Qian Min, and I am also the thief.” Qian Min cocked her head, “Because I stole everything from her, including all of her experience, looks, and physical condition.”

“That’s how this playfield is set up, I need to steal a person’s identity and kick them out of the playfield before opening the game,” Qian Min turned her neck, her neck joints made a cracking sound, “Yes, that’s it, but that’s not enough, I have to try harder to do it.”

The skinless man in the river floundered, and Shen Si glanced over, the man’s eyes growing hollow.

“Do you want to save him?” Qian Min again repeated what he had said at the beginning, “After all, you are a good man, it is right to want to save him, but it’s impossible.” Qian Min laughed a little, the smile on his face was full of malice, “Because ah, I stole his body control.”

“What?” Shen Si froze for a moment, and before he could react, there was no more fluttering sound in the river.

The man’s eyes were fixed, his body stopped moving, and his body sank directly into the water in a few seconds.

“That’s the look, show me some more!” Qian Min let out a sharp laugh, her eyes welled up with red blood, like a hysterical psychopath, “Why aren’t you afraid? Why don’t you suspect others? Why should you be the only one who is different?! No! Everyone in my playfield is going to lose what’s most important to them! I’m going to steal everything from you! And those people you know, one by one, I will kill them in front of you!”

Shen Si, who was completely unable to intervene, just watched Qian Min disappear straight away, and he opened his mouth blankly before finally spitting out the words, “…What? What does it have to do with me?”

Why would a thief in the playfield have such a deep hatred towards him? It wasn’t right at all to even go out of your way to take out someone you had come in contact with. Shen Si quickly ran forward, his direction of action was clear: the place he left at the beginning.

If Qian Min hadn’t lied and she really wanted to attack the people she had come into contact with, Cheng Xiangwen would have been the first.

Although he hated lies, he didn’t want people to die straight away either.