Chapter Ninety-Two

Upward, the stairs led to the third floor. The two of them stood in the stairwell, craning their necks to look above. Though a flight of stairs separated them, they could still make out the general shape of what lay upstairs.

At the exit of the stairwell stood a door. Beside it was a window, but the window was set into the wall, fused seamlessly with it. A touch was enough to reveal that this so-called window could not be opened at all.

It would be more accurate to call it a three-dimensional painting on the wall.

The door, by contrast, could be opened. Yet its appearance was strangely abrupt. The doorframes on either side had been crushed and twisted by the surrounding walls, one on the left and one on the right, each embedded into the wall at a different angle.

The lintel above the door had not even fulfilled its duty of creating an opening. It had collapsed and broken, but the concrete had firmly fixed the fractured crossbeam in place.

The wall itself seemed to be holding up the door. It was like a child’s modeling clay: shaped first, then pierced by wooden sticks.

The two of them climbed the stairs. Their footsteps echoed ceaselessly through the interior, loud and distinct. The place was too quiet—so quiet that a faint pulsing seemed to arise in the air.

When the surroundings fell utterly silent, when not even the chirp of an insect could be heard, a sense of oppression began to weigh upon their hearts.

It was like a great hand gripping the heart and squeezing it tight, holding it motionless.

They reached the door. For some reason, the two of them began communicating in sign language.

“Should we go in?” Jiang Wan asked.

He nodded. When he tried to pull open the warped and damaged door, he felt no resistance from it at all.

The door opened, and the world beyond appeared before them.

“Level 2.”

For some reason, those words surfaced in his mind. He looked at the space before him, then turned his head back—and in that instant, he realized something:

This was an entirely new space…

And it would be a dangerous world.

Frowning slightly, he turned back toward the room.

Yet what met their eyes was utterly ordinary.

The two of them bent low and entered the room together. On either side were rectangular doorways, but nothing beyond them could be seen. A layer of blackness blocked the view—pure black, something akin to imagination itself, something abstract.

At the center of the room stood a long table with chairs. The tabletop had been divided into six sections, and each section held flowers, books, and a calculator.

They approached for a closer look. Every book on the table was identical, and all the calculators had been placed in exactly the same position. It was as though they had been arranged by one person—someone with no individual habits, who put everything in precisely the same place.

He glanced down at the table and pulled out one of the chairs beneath it.

The chair was made of wood and coated in a thick layer of varnish.

Yet beneath the glossy finish, the wood was stained a deep reddish black. He reached out and touched it. The varnish was unusually smooth beneath his fingers.

Had anyone really ever sat here?

He could not help wondering. Lowering his head, he spotted a small piece of pale yellow paper in a narrow crack beneath the table, lodged within its frame.

He picked at it with his fingers, and the note came loose into his hand. The handwriting on it trembled slightly. He raised his head, took a pen from the tabletop, removed its cap, and traced a character across his palm as though imitating the writing.

“What is this?” Jiang Wan asked, coming back to herself. She walked over to Chen Qing and frowned at the words on the note.

There were three simple lines written on it—or perhaps they could be called “rules.” The message was so simple that it was difficult to believe.

She looked at Chen Qing. His brow was furrowed as well, evidently troubled by the same doubts.

“It’s too simple… and besides…” He stared at the words in his hand, hesitating.

“Do not become distracted during working hours.

“Do not visit other rooms during working hours.

“Do not turn on the lights during working hours.

“Obey your superior’s orders unconditionally during working hours.”

Those were the only four simple lines on the note.

Following them would be easy enough. The problem was…

Was the information on the note true?

He raised his head and surveyed the room once more.

Besides the long table in the center, there was another table standing off by itself.

There were no books on that table, which meant it could not be seen immediately upon entering.

Chen Qing looked at Jiang Wan and flicked the note in his hand.

“These may be the rules for the second floor,” he said. “But the problem is that we have no way to know whether they’re genuine.

“I believe the message left in Zhang Lan’s room is trustworthy, because Zhang Lan’s room may also be located in the main world. As for the entities in the Backrooms… I don’t believe they can enter the main world whenever they please.”

“Why?” Jiang Wan asked, puzzled. “Two of them have already escaped, haven’t they?”

“That is precisely why I think it’s impossible.” Chen Qing shook his head and continued explaining. “The logic is simple. If every entity could leave the Backrooms at will, the main world should have been destroyed long ago. According to Bu Zhaozhao’s deduction, these creatures may have existed for as long as the Earth itself. Humanity has developed over the past two thousand years—but what about the two thousand years before that?

“Besides, this is also a matter of probability. We know that entities escaping from the Backrooms is a low-probability event. Once such an event has already occurred, I don’t believe it will happen a second time, or a third.”

Jiang Wan frowned as she listened.

“But that amounts to gambling.”

“Gambling…” Chen Qing smiled, then shook his head. “No. This isn’t gambling. It’s probability. It’s mathematics. It is the truth you can rely upon in the universe.”