Chapter 178 The Unfinished Sandbox

After transfusing all four bags of blood, Feng Bujue's condition improved significantly. Although he still felt slightly dizzy and nauseous, it barely affected his movement.

He continued onward with Igor, and along the way... they discovered many more closed doors.

Just like the previous four doors, this route was filled with locked, airtight metal doors. Without opening them, there was no way to know what was inside.

This time, Feng Bujue tried to pick the lock, just to see what would happen.

But the result… when he inserted the tool into the lock, he heard the system prompt, [Cannot be opened].

Since it was [Cannot be opened] rather than [Requires a key] or [Locked], Brother Jue confirmed that… all these doors were impossible to open, merely decorations on the script's map.

However… this point made him even more puzzled.

"The script's map is so large, but the explorable space is very limited…" he thought to himself as he walked. "After coming out of the gravity gate, there's only one room we can enter, and that interrogation room doesn't have anything related to the main quest; it's purely for players to replenish their equipment…" He looked up ahead. "And this extremely similar map, still unchanged, seems monotonous and repetitive…"

"Crazy Brother, look! There's no road ahead." Just then, Igor widened his eyes and pointed forward.

"Oh… is that so…" Feng Bujue didn't see the end, but he didn't express any disagreement, because he knew his eyesight wasn't as good as Igor's; after all, Igor was a modified human. "I can't see that far, let's walk a bit more."

"Okay." Igor nodded and followed Brother Jue onward.

Before long, the two arrived at the "end" of the corridor. There was nothing special here, and no rooms either. There was only a gray wall similar to other places.

Moreover, this end wasn't a dead end. There were岔路(chàlù) (forks in the road) on both sides, meaning it was a T-junction…

Feng Bujue stood at the junction and looked left and right, finding that the scenery on both sides was still basically the same. Apart from details like the "texture of the walls and floor," which others would hardly notice or even remember, it was still the same corridor, the same ceiling lights, and the same metal doors.

"Hmph… what is this supposed to be?" At this moment, Brother Jue finally realized what the vague sense of abnormality this script had given him was.

It was a feeling of—"poor workmanship"...

To put it more specifically: apart from those rooms that could be entered, the entire script map revealed one problem… a lack of detail.

First of all, as mentioned earlier… such a large base, with everywhere built so similarly, was already odd enough, but under this premise, not setting up a single road sign was illogical.

Secondly, not just road signs, but many details that should have existed were also absent. For example, wires and pipes…

The ceiling lights in the corridor were all designed to be suspended by a wire, with the end of the wire directly connected to the ceiling, but in the corridor… there wasn't a single light switch. This meant two conclusions: first, as long as there was electricity in the base, the lights in the corridor would be on, never turned off; second, the control switches for these lights were concentrated in some kind of control center.

The latter assumption had almost zero possibility. Not to mention whether the technology of the 1940s could do this, even if it could… in this base with no markings, no monitoring, and no way to distinguish areas, how would the remote controller know which area's lights they were controlling?

It was like giving you a remote control and telling you that you can use it to control all the lights in a building, but not telling you which switch controls which floor, and you can't see the building either. What's the point of controlling it?

Of course, the point that "the lights in the corridor are never turned off" could still be used to explain this, so Feng Bujue didn't dwell on it too much.

However… there was one last problem that Brother Jue really couldn't stand.

No exposed wires and pipes were already strange enough, but to not even have a vent… what was that about?

This was an "underground" base, even if it wasn't sealed, it had to have vents, and many of them.

At first, Feng Bujue thought that expanding the exploration range would reveal a few, but he hadn't seen a single one along the way…

At this point, when Brother Jue confirmed the characteristic of "lack of detail," he finally realized something—there was something wrong with the "script map" itself.

This base didn't seem like a building generated by Thriller Paradise's system, but rather something built in Minecraft; in fact, even in Minecraft, buildings could be built more complex than this…

"So… the hidden worldview should be related to this script map?" Feng Bujue thought to himself. "Could it be… this is a 'sandbox' space made by something like a Derivative? And it's not finished yet?"

Pa-pa-pa-pa—

Just as Brother Jue was thinking, a burst of rapid footsteps suddenly came from his side.

"Careful! It's him!" Igor's vision and hearing were better than Feng Bujue's at this moment, so his reaction was faster.

"Oh…" However, Feng Bujue's calmness was something Igor couldn't match.

After being reminded, Brother Jue interrupted his thoughts, stared with dead fish eyes, and mumbled listlessly, "The barefoot guy, right?"

Just listening to the footsteps, one could tell that the other party wasn't wearing shoes. Plus, Igor said "It's him," which indicated that the newcomer was a character they had seen before.

Based on these two points… the identity of the newcomer was self-evident.

"Jie-jie-jie-jie-jie…"

As soon as he spoke, the barefoot guy rushed over from dozens of meters away while laughing strangely. His speed was even faster than when he was wearing shoes.

"Igor." Feng Bujue calmly called out to the Soviet captain beside him.

"Yes." As he responded, Igor had already put down the toolbox and gripped the meat cleaver in his hand.

"Same as last time, you know what to do." Brother Jue continued.

"Okay!" With the experience from last time, Igor wasn't as afraid of these so-called "devils" anymore. With fear abandoned, his combat power became stronger, and his attacks were faster and more accurate.

Chi—

Two seconds later, the sound of air being cut rang out, and the blade slashed towards the barefoot guy's neck.

The same scene, the same result.

The world in the eyes of those monsters… was different from that of ordinary humans. It was like when Feng Bujue looked at Thriller Paradise through the data perspective, it was a completely different sight from the normal perspective.

In the barefoot guy's eyes, the corridor was a dark space. All the terrain and objects were shadows with only outlines, and all the light sources were a hazy cold color.

The only bright color in his eyes was red… the red of blood. In his view, Feng Bujue was a humanoid outline emitting a bloody aura, while Igor… including Igor's clothes, the knife in his hand, etc., were all fused with the surrounding darkness.

Therefore, when the barefoot guy realized the blade was attacking, he couldn't stop and couldn't avoid the attack…

"Hee—uh…" The laughter stopped abruptly due to the fracture in his neck, and his head flew forward due to inertia.

Two seconds later, Feng Bujue caught the barefoot guy's head and pondered, "Hmm… a familiar scene."

"How… is this possible…" The barefoot guy could undoubtedly speak normally even with only his head left.

"Alright, let's get straight to the point." Feng Bujue looked at the barefoot guy and said, "If you don't cooperate, I'll put your head in a place where it won't be discovered for decades; if you cooperate, I'll kill you in a moment, understand?"

The barefoot guy heard this, froze for a few seconds, and then replied, "Uh… understood."

"How did you find me?" Feng Bujue didn't say "us," but said "me," because he knew the other party couldn't see Igor and didn't want to reveal this.

"I can sense the blood flow in living bodies…" The barefoot guy replied. "If the distance is far… it's relatively blurry, but the closer I get, the clearer it becomes."

"Oh?" Feng Bujue raised his eyebrows and continued, "Then why didn't you find me in the operating room?"

"What… operating room?" The barefoot guy couldn't see any details of the scenery. In his eyes, there were only light sources and shadows, so he didn't know which room he had entered before was the operating room. Also, for this very reason, he wasn't affected by Sopor-1011.

"I only know… that in a certain area before, I felt that someone was nearby, but I couldn't find them after searching for a long time…" After a few seconds, the barefoot guy continued, "Then… I guessed that the person might not be on 'this floor,' but on the floor above or below, so I left."

"Wait…" Feng Bujue's expression changed slightly when he heard this. "This base… has more than one floor?"

"Yes, there are four floors, one above ground and three below ground; we are currently on the second floor below ground," the barefoot guy replied.

"You've been to all four floors?" Brother Jue asked. "Do you know how to get out?"

"No… I…" The barefoot guy revealed a complex expression. "In my memory… this base has four floors, but, right now, I can't find the exit either."

"Why do you have that kind of memory?" Feng Bujue asked again. "The five participants in the experiment are all war criminals. There's no reason for them to know the structure of this base."

"War criminals?" The barefoot guy was stunned for a moment. "Are you talking about… the 'first experiment'?"

These five words were like the first torrent breaking through the dam, causing Feng Bujue's thoughts to spread out like a flood.

"I say…" After a silence of two seconds, Feng Bujue asked in a deep voice, "How many sleep experiments were done here in total?"

"Three," the barefoot guy replied.

"Can you take me to find the experiment records?" Feng Bujue asked again.

This question made the barefoot guy hesitate for a moment. "No, the world in my eyes is different from what you see. Although I remember the way, I don't know where I am right now."

"Then I'll find a fixed coordinate for you. Can you find the way based on your memory?" Feng Bujue asked again.

"Fixed coordinate?" The barefoot guy didn't seem to understand Brother Jue's meaning.

"It's simple," Feng Bujue replied. "For example…" He turned to look at one side of the T-junction. "I'll take you to a certain corner of this floor. Can you tell me, starting from that corner, after passing how many intersections and stopping at the door of which door, I can find the experiment report."

"This…" The barefoot guy understood this time, but he replied, "I can, but… why don't you just find it yourself? Aren't there signs in the corridor?"

"You… what?" Feng Bujue's expression changed abruptly.

The barefoot guy thought that the other party hadn't heard clearly, so he said again, "There are signs on the road, can't you understand them?"

The next second, Feng Bujue immediately turned his head and looked at Igor. "Are there?"

Igor was stunned for a moment, and then shook his head.

Then, Feng Bujue looked at the barefoot guy again. "In your memory… does this base have signs?"

"Of course it does." The barefoot guy replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "This base is built like a chessboard, all the passages are straight and perpendicular to each other. Without signs, who can tell where they are?"

"Then… in your memory…" Feng Bujue continued to ask, "Are there light switches on the walls of the corridor? And… are there vents in the corridor?"

"What are you talking about?" This time, the barefoot guy asked instead. "What happened in this base?"

Judging from his tone, the answer was obviously—yes.

However, the reality was that Brother Jue hadn't seen any of these things…

For a few seconds, Feng Bujue thought that his vision or mind was being interfered with, causing him to "not see" those details; but… Igor also said no, which meant that it wasn't a problem with that aspect.

"It's getting weirder and weirder…" Feng Bujue thought to himself. "Could it be that Igor is also something I imagined?" He quickly denied this hypothesis. "Impossible… he must be a real entity. I've had physical contact with him, he helped me carry the blood bags, he's been carrying the toolbox all the way, and he's even killed two monsters. If Igor is illusory… then wouldn't everything in this script so far be illusory?"

Thinking of this, Brother Jue had a flash of inspiration.

"Wait… illusory?" He couldn't help but mutter aloud, whispering to himself.

…………

"Lack of detail."

"The NPCs' memories contain details…"

"It's not an interference with vision or the mind."

"Illusory… illusory."

"There's something wrong with this script map itself."

"It's like an unfinished sandbox…"

"Sandbox…"

"Unfinished?"

…………

A series of fragments of information flashed through Feng Bujue's mind, spreading out like water seeping into a sponge in a very short time, generating countless hypotheses and deductions…

Finally… in a distant end of that reasoning map, there was an area that gradually became clear.

"Heh…" At this moment, Feng Bujue showed a long-lost, confident smile. "It's not that it's unfinished… but that it can only be done to this extent, right…" He looked up at the distance, his gaze seeming to be focused on the wall of the corridor. "What Derivatives can do, NPCs can also do; since Origin can develop a sandbox, then, *******…"