Unlike his eldest brother, who opened a company out of love, and his third brother, who liked venturing into remote villages and wild mountains, Su Wuzi had only two dungeons in his possession ever since he gained the strength to create them.
One of those dungeons was rated SSS Grade by the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau: 【Horror Film Studio】. No player had qualified to enter a dungeon of that level yet.
The reason it had records in the Weird Tales Confidentiality Bureau was that a few years prior, a rather capable Central Bureau editor player cleared his own A-grade dungeon in the same area and took the opportunity to scout the surrounding region.
According to that player, he merely brushed against this dungeon, which resembled a Stage Theater, at the edge, and his vision went black.
Fortunately, the theater’s owner did not seem interested in taking a low-level weird as a subordinate; otherwise, he would have been trapped in the weird world forever.
The fact that a mere touch led to assimilation made its SSS Grade well-deserved.
As for the other dungeon, the players had no way of knowing.
Not only the players—even the large and small weirds living in Tanzhong City had likely never heard of such a place.
It was a fully enclosed dungeon.
No rules, no incoming Weirds or humans.
All it contained were the dungeon owner’s memories.
It was a world fragment.
The fragment’s predecessor had been a world on the verge of doomsday.
Regarding Jiang Lou’s determination to enter Yuzi’s dungeon, Su Xuanxiao asked Yuzi’s opinion. After weighing the matter, he chose not to stop him.
In the days right after Jiang Lou learned Xiao Xi’s identity, even if Yuzi had offered to let him enter, Yuzi still refused.
Now that Yuzi no longer explicitly opposed it, that meant, in Yuzi’s view, entering the dungeon would not push Jiang Lou’s already precarious mental state into complete madness.
Minutes before the dungeon key was used, Su Xuanxiao proactively sought out Su Yuzi, who waited at the outskirts of Wealth Avenue, and inquired in greater detail about the dungeon.
“What exactly will Jiang Lou encounter this time?”
Prior to this, Su Xuanxiao had only a rough idea: Yuzi’s dungeon carrier was the world fragment from their birthplace.
Yuzi rarely went home and mostly rested in that dungeon world.
Because the carrier was special, a time differential existed between the dungeon world and the weird world.
A few days outside might equate to years inside.
Through cycles of time, Yuzi had placed countless items in that dungeon, most tied to memories.
Su Xuanxiao believed that entering it would amount to watching an immersive film at most. That was why he had initially suggested Jiang Lou go there to calm down for a few days.
Su Xuanxiao did not think there was anything wrong with his understanding of his brother’s dungeon.
Just as Yuzi and Jiang Lou might not know the exact number of departments in his company.
After he spoke, however, Su Yuzi—who cradled a Little Yellow Dog borrowed from next door—replied, “Upon entering my dungeon, he will temporarily forget many things.”
“What do you mean?” Su Xuanxiao sensed something amiss.
Su Wuzi scratched under the Little Yellow Dog’s chin; its tail tip swept across his arm.
Only when he noticed his big brother’s somewhat dissatisfied gaze did he stop teasing the dog and explain in detail: “Big Brother, you’ve never been there, so you wouldn’t know—my dungeon world is actually quite lively.”
It contained people of all sorts, cities formed from steel and exhaust fumes, hedonistic upper-class hunters, and meat citizens who wore shackles year-round.
Everyone’s lives followed a rigid routine: regular rising, regular meals, regular sleep.
Then, when the midnight bell tolled at twelve, it all repeated.
Because Jiang Lou’s condition had been unstable, Su Xuanxiao had devoted more energy to this troublesome little brother.
He had not expected his other little brother to do something so deranged right under his nose.
He understood Yuzi’s implication.
He had revived that world of wasteland and steel within the fragment.
He had imprisoned all the surviving souls in the fragment world.
He had them endlessly reenact their meeting, turning the entire dungeon world’s puppets to dance for him.
Su Yuzi corrected his big brother: “Not all souls. In that world fragment, many people are alive, but they have no souls.”
A person’s soul could be viewed as a spirit or as the cognition of one’s own existence.
Those without souls merely existed as mobile, coded slabs of meat.
“Aside from me, Jiang Lou is the first outsider in the dungeon.”
Su Yuzi met his big brother’s eyes, his tone gentle: “He will enter as Resident 13-13252-243, and my dungeon will come slightly more alive because of his arrival.”
Resident 13-13252-243—that had been Su Jianglou’s city resident code before he became Su Jianglou.
Su Yuzi’s meaning was clear: it was no immersive film, no mere viewing of memories.
The Su Jianglou who entered would temporarily lose all his memories and retrace the path from Resident 13-13252-243 to Su Jianglou to weird.
That included Su Yuzi himself. The reason he could suppress his weird’s negative emotions without a single flaw when facing Xiao Xi was not because he had watched his own memories in his dungeon world to convince himself that Xiao Xi had not been gone long.
Rather, in that fragment world, they had already met countless times.
In those countless encounters, he had split himself in two.
One half was himself; the other half was the Xiao Xi from his memories.
After fully grasping how the dungeon world operated, Su Xuanxiao fell silent for a long while. He rubbed his brow. “No wonder you said sending Jiang Lou into the dungeon would drive him mad.”
“And now? Are you sure he can enter without issue?”
Su Yuzi replied lightly: “There will be issues, but nothing major.”
Worst case, Jiang Lou should hold out until he fished him out.
He could fish him out?
That was enough.
Su Xuanxiao relaxed. He set Jiang Lou aside and extended his hand to the man opposite. “Give me the soup. Xiao Xi should be waking up.”
Su Yuzi nodded and handed over the soup he had stewed.
From last month to this one, Xiao Xi had gained a total of five jin and seven liang. This nutrient soup deserved much of the credit.
After handing over the soup, Su Yuzi suddenly closed his eyes. About two seconds later, he opened them. “Jiang Lou has entered.”
Su Xuanxiao had asked all the pertinent questions earlier, so he merely nodded and turned toward the lit villa.
He had not gone more than a few meters when Yuzi’s voice turned urgent for the first time behind him.
“Idiot! What did he do before entering the dungeon?!”
“He took Xiao Xi in too!”
“The medium! He carried something belonging to Xiao Xi as a medium before entering!”
Su Xuanxiao halted. His body remained still as his head whipped around 180 degrees. “Bring him out.”
“Can’t.” After careful consideration, Su Yuzi refused.
His dungeon had never had entrants before; he had no prior practice extracting someone early.
It might harm Xiao Xi.
Moreover—perhaps due to his own obsession—he could feel that the moment Xiao Xi entered the dungeon world, the entire world had come ‘alive’ anew.
If he connected the period from Xiao Xi’s appearance in their world to their world being devoured by the weird world into one cycle, then he was confident he could safely extract Xiao Xi once the dungeon cycle ended.
At that moment, Su Yuzi could not help but feel grateful that Xiao Xi had first appeared in their world in a near low-level weird form.
He had suffered no harm in that dark world.
Hearing that Xiao Xi would not be harmed by the dungeon, Su Xuanxiao cracked his neck back into place with a click.
He casually removed the glasses perched on his nose bridge, revealing his frenzied side. Without a second thought, he said, “Let me in.”
In that instant, he cast aside the Su Consortium and forgot his commercial empire.
He yearned only to become Resident 13-13252-241 once more.
Su Yuzi smiled at his big brother. “Wait for me. We’ll go together.”
Since he could not extract Xiao Xi in time, he would go keep him company.
He just needed a little time to split off some power for contingencies, in case problems arose in the dungeon.
In the interval while dividing his power, Su Yuzi began to recall his first meeting with Xiao Xi, long, long ago.
He remembered it clearly—what sort of scene it had been…
Dungeon: 【Wasteland World】
Grade: Unknown
Dungeon Horror: Su Yuzi
Half an hour later, with the entry of the final two weird players, the dungeon officially commenced.
At the world’s very center stood a massive chimney.
Waste gas laced with all manner of chemicals billowed from it, permeating every corner of the world.
In this world, the ruling upper class had divided it into 19 districts.
Districts 1 to 19 showed no stark differences; the divisions were based solely on the number of city residents in each.
District 1 had the most residents; District 19, the fewest.
By the statistics, District 13 ranked medium-low in population.
With fewer residents, the city had fewer food dispensing pipes constructed.
But those statistics dated back decades.
District 13 originally had 50 feeding tubes; over a dozen years, 15 had broken down one by one.
The remaining 35 food dispensing pipes saw queues from day to night.
Resident 13-13252-241 got shoved along by the crowd. After a long wait in line, he finally reached the front.
At the same time, his two brothers, Resident 13252-242 and Resident 13252-243, got dragged to the front along with him.
Residents 13-13252-241, 13252-242, and 13252-243—they should have been brothers.
Just as humans raised livestock, they preferred to rear social herd animals in family units.
Residents 13-13252-241, 13252-242, and 13252-243 were shackled together by iron chains: 241’s left wrist to 242’s right, 242’s left to 243’s right.
Several years earlier, the eldest brother, 241, had his right wrist shackled too—the chain’s other end linked to a man and woman.
Those had been their parents.
But they had died long ago.
At first, the two heavy corpses greatly impeded the surviving children’s movements.
The three children chained to them showed no reaction; they simply carried on with their daily routines, like all the other residents in the city.
Until those two bodies began to rot, exposing pale bones, until the skeletal hand bones finally slipped free from the round cuffs.
Perhaps due to the pervasive waste gas in the city, the process from rot to bleached bones attracted no bothersome flies or maggots.
At the front of the feeding tube, the city overseer in charge did not permit the residents to linger. Once they had eaten half their fill, he simply waved his hand to drive the group away from the spot.
He needed only gesture; no words were required.
The residents obediently dispersed.
The sated trio of brothers made their way back to their dwelling.
It was a row of connected tin houses; theirs sat a bit toward the outside, numbered 423.
He pushed open the door, and everything inside the tin shack came into view at a glance—no bed in sight.
Bellies full, it was time to sleep.
According to the biological clock ingrained from childhood by the regulations, they wouldn’t need to line up at the Feeding Tube again for another two days.
The three lay down side by side and closed their eyes.
In the corner of the Tin Shack crouched a teary-eyed little boy who looked no older than five.
He wore a tender yellow romper. Unsure of the situation, tears welled up in his eyes but he didn’t dare let them fall, leaving his chubby-cheeked, exquisitely cute little face flushed bright red.
Finally, watching the three stranger big brothers who had left that morning, returned, and ignored him the whole time, the little guy couldn’t hold it in anymore. He burst into tears with a wail.
The kid couldn’t think of too many things. He was scared in his heart, mainly afraid that he hadn’t gone home for so long and his mom and dad would get angry.
Mom and dad had been fighting for a long time, and grandma was always unhappy too. He had to be good and not make mom and dad mad.
After crying for a while and seeing that no one paid him any mind, the little guy mustered his courage. He got up, ran over, and gently pushed 241, who had already lain down. “Big brother, I, wuu, I… I can’t find my home.”
“Big brother, you, hic, help me, okay, okay?”
He reached out to push, but he couldn’t actually touch him—his hand passed straight through the middle.
Only when he really, really wanted to make contact did he feel the slightest touch.
The weather was very hot that day, so the little guy pushing back and forth was basically fanning cool air right there.
241, who was being “pushed,” felt the cool breeze and fell into an even deeper sleep.
