Chapter 47

Amid the small child’s persistent pleas for help, the three people lying on the ground still showed no reaction. If not for the slight rise and fall of their chests with each breath, they almost looked dead.

Seeing that he couldn’t wake the three brothers on the ground no matter how he shouted, Su Ximu turned his head toward the door of the Tin Shack, his expression somewhat timid.

He was too young and had no idea what had happened to him.

He only knew that before going to bed last night, he had cried a lot because he missed his mom and dad. Then, Dad had suddenly come home.

To coax him into stopping his crying, Dad bought him a Brown Bear Doll, and he had slept hugging the little bear that night.

But when he woke up the next day, he suddenly found himself in a very unfamiliar place.

There was also a brown bear there, very similar to his doll, but huge, terrifying, and it could talk.

Doll Big Bear spoke to him in a horrifying voice, saying they should play hide-and-seek, and it told him the rules of hide-and-seek. It scared him by saying that if he broke the rules or got found after hiding, it would eat him.

In the dreamlike fairy tale castle, everything was enormous. With no grandma, dad, or mom around, no one came to comfort him when he cried.

Afraid that Doll Big Bear would really eat him, he held back his tears and tried to take the hide-and-seek rules that Big Bear handed him to read carefully.

But there were many words on it that he didn’t recognize.

Big Bear didn’t care if he could read or not. After he took the rules paper strip, it covered its own eyes and started counting.

He could only hold the paper strip himself and walk away from Big Bear. When he got tired from walking, he crawled into a pile of dolls to hide.

He hadn’t been hiding long—maybe not even a hundred counts—when Big Bear’s voice suddenly appeared. It said: Good friend, I found you!

Then, the doll above his head was lifted away by Big Bear.

However, before Big Bear could actually eat him, a loud noise came from outside. Big Bear seemed very angry and didn’t even bother eating him. It turned and ran outside to start fighting.

The one fighting Big Bear was a big gray wolf wearing a Little Red Riding Hood.

From that moment on, Su Ximu understood that the stories Grandma told him were all real. Naughty kids really would get snatched away and eaten.

He might get taken by a toy big bear, or maybe by wolf grandma.

He had cried while sleeping last night and hadn’t listened, so he got taken away.

The castle had no windows, and Big Bear and wolf grandma’s fight blocked the door.

Finally, the little guy who had crawled out of the doll pile with great effort saw Big Bear at the door get its arm torn off by wolf grandma, revealing the white cotton stuffing inside its body.

Then Big Bear’s head was torn off too.

Big Bear’s doll castle suddenly shook violently, tossing him into midair.

In the blink of an eye, the entire castle belonging to Big Bear vanished. He was thrown into a gray and hazy place.

It was all gray and hazy everywhere, like the mist Grandma had taught him to recognize.

There was a lot of gray mist. He walked through it for a very, very long time until he finally found an edge that felt a bit hard. Then he squeezed through with effort.

He thought he had found the way home, but unexpectedly, he fell into another unfamiliar place.

He remembered clearly that he fell from a very high place. But it didn’t hurt much.

He fell from Doll Big Bear’s terrifying toy castle into a pile of little houses.

Then he dropped straight from the roof of one small house into the house itself.

Three brothers lived in the house. He wanted to ask these three brothers for help, but from morning until now, they ignored him.

At this thought, the little guy seemed to understand something. He immediately stopped crying and began sniffling apologies to the brothers pretending to sleep.

“Sorry.” His eyes and nose were red from crying hard, and his voice was a bit hoarse, but his apology was very sincere. “I, brothers, I, I didn’t mean, mean to smash your house.”

“I looked carefully. The roof isn’t broken.”

“There are so many, so many little houses outside. I don’t know, wu, don’t know how to get out…”

“Brother, take me home. I’ll share all my candy with you, okay?”

When he squeezed in from the gray mist and fell down, he saw a huge expanse of little houses. Even from high up, he hadn’t seen the end of them.

So after landing, he didn’t dare go out alone.

The three brothers in the house didn’t pay attention to him, but they also didn’t hit him or chase him out.

The little guy, who had once seen human traffickers abducting kids only to have the traffickers tied up and beaten by everyone, trusted these three not-very-old brothers more than adults in this situation.

As for how he knew they were just pretending to sleep, it could only be said that this was one of Su Ximu’s innate skills as a kid.

He just knew that these three brothers in front of him, though they appeared to breathe steadily and motionless like they were dead asleep, weren’t actually sleeping at all.

Finally, he saw the brother lying in the middle position crack his eyes open a sliver.

242 felt the water droplets landing on his arm.

Water was an extremely precious resource in this world.

Only at the beginning of each month could each resident claim a small bucket of water. Normally, all residents had to rely on the paste dispensed from the Feeding Tube for sustenance and incidental hydration.

The rest of the time, city residents almost never got to see water—unless it was during the annual routine inspection by the patrol officers.

Before each inspection, all residents were herded by the managers under a large water cannon. The surging water from the cannon would wash away all the accumulated grime on them.

At such times, many residents couldn’t resist wanting to open their mouths and drink, but they couldn’t. Beforehand, they had already been fitted with steel mouthguards.

The managers of each district, to present a clean and tidy city image to the patrol officers, would rather use water to rinse them and let the sewage seep into the desertified ground than allow these residents to drink even a sip against their will.

Their desperately thirsty bodies were flushed by the water flow, yet their mouths couldn’t open even the tiniest gap.

From birth until now, 242 had never pondered anything. He had only instinctively remembered that beast-like thirst of a trapped animal.

Now, a drop of water appeared out of nowhere on his arm.

242, who had fully opened his eyes, lifted his left arm to his mouth.

As he moved, the shackles on his left wrist clinked.

This sound made the other two lying nearby also crack their eyes open a sliver.

The amount from one drop of water merely moistened the tip of his tongue slightly.

For the first time, a faint flicker of something like doubt arose in 242’s mind.

He wondered where this drop of water had come from.

Then, he saw the child squatting nearby, along with his tear-streaked little face.

The next second, the Dungeon World paused imperceptibly for an instant.

Su Xuanxiao looked down from above at the half-grown youth numbered 241 lying on the ground—so powerless, like one of those plankton adrift everywhere in the world, born in the morning and dead by evening.

But he hesitated no longer. He turned to glance once more at Xiao Xi, then stopped resisting the Dungeon World’s power. His entire body dispersed into black mist and fully merged into the shackled youth’s body.

Su Wuzi and Big Brother had arrived in the Dungeon World one after the other. He looked at Xiao Xi, whose memories had been temporarily suppressed by his Dungeon World—his age even regressed to childhood—along with Big Brother and Jiang Lou.

Many weirds had obsessions.

Su Wuzi knew he had one too.

But before today, he had never imagined that, under Third Brother’s machinations, his obsession would prevent Xiao Xi from leaving this Dungeon World in the fastest way possible. Nor had he thought that the dungeon he had constructed over the years Xiao Xi was away actually existed with Xiao Xi at its core.

The moment Xiao Xi entered this Dungeon World, he became its core, not an ordinary player. There were feasible ways to extract an ordinary player early. But to safely extract the dungeon core with absolute certainty, Su Wuzi figured he would need to practice on hundreds or thousands of dungeons with cores outside.

By then, this dungeon cycle would probably have long ended.

Looking at the little kid whose eyelashes were still wet from crying, Su Wuzi squatted down and gave the little guy a long, heartfelt air hug.

He also shot a somewhat disdainful glance at the one numbered 242—himself as a child.

Sleep, sleep, sleep. Once dead and turned into a weird, there would be plenty of time to sleep.

After a while, as the dungeon’s pause time was about to end, Su Wuzi finally released the little guy. He gave him one last deep look, then turned and merged into the half-grown child numbered 242.

The next second, the dungeon resumed.

242 reached out, and there was another clink-clink of iron chains colliding.

Seeing that this brother had finally been roused by his shouting—and seemed about to reach out to touch him—Su Ximu shrank back a little in fear. But seeing that the brother didn’t seem to want to hit him, he obediently stayed put.

Since the little guy didn’t move or resist, 242’s outstretched hand easily touched his cheek.

A few seconds later, after wiping the tears from the little guy’s face, 242 withdrew his hand. He looked at his palm, which was equally wet.

242 lowered his head, intending to lick it again.

But a head stretched out faster than his.

242 immediately turned, not giving his little brother 243 a chance to steal his water.

On the other side, the little guy—who had thought the brother just wanted to touch him, only to have his face thoroughly wiped—stared blankly at the scene before him. He hiccupped in confusion from crying.