Chapter 189: A Story That's Just That (1/3)

This is a world devoid of light, filled only with darkness, though a scattering of illumination may occasionally gleam in certain places.

In the Otherworld, the walls are frequently stained with water, blood, and mold; at times, the entire reality seems constructed from rusted iron meshes or metallic fabrications. Corpses lie scattered everywhere within the Otherworld.

Paths that are perfectly passable in the Real World are sometimes blocked in the Otherworld, and the reverse is equally true.

The Otherworld invariably manifests the deepest, darkest negative emotions hidden within the subconscious of whoever enters it.

Under the beam of a flashlight, some narrow corridors reveal walls where mold mingles with bloodstains and rust, blending the scent of corrosion with the stench of gore; aside from the dripping of water in the corners and one's own footsteps, no other sound can be heard.

Even with the flashlight's illumination, it brings not the slightest shred of security; instead, the further one walks, the more one feels submerged into a profound, enveloping darkness.

The darkness behaves like a mire, constantly swallowing the flashlight's beam, while the traveler presses ever forward into the very heart of this sludge.

An oppression as heavy as a rising tide stifles the senses; the further one goes, the more the breath hitches in a suffocating urgency.

From the hospital to the abandoned prison, then following the stairwell down into the basement, the location seems to plunge deeper and deeper into the earth as Fang Qi continues his descent...

"What is the boss doing?" the crowd murmured as they beheld a square, fathomless abyss exposed beneath a pulled-up floorboard in an incredibly cramped room.

The opening was only about the size of a single square floor tile, so narrow that it could accommodate only one person passing through at a time.

"He's not actually going to jump down, is he?!" In a prison like this, where monsters roamed everywhere, such a pit seemed deep enough to stretch to the very core of the earth.

To say nothing of whether terrifying monsters lurked below, the mere narrowness of the opening invoked a profound sense of claustrophobia, let alone the sheer height—wouldn't a person drop straight to their death?

"It seems to be right here..." Nalan Mingxue stared at the pitch-black void on the screen, as if calculating whether she would dare to leap when it was her turn to play. "The clue we just found, the one in that painting, depicted this exact place."

Immediately afterward, a chorus of gasps echoed through the room as the protagonist on the screen actually jumped!

A violent sensation of weightlessness ensued, and by the time feet struck solid ground and eyes blinked open, the surroundings had transformed into a staggeringly deep, cylindrical shaft.

Opening the door at the bottom of the shaft revealed a dark, damp underground tunnel.

As they ventured deeper into the subterranean passage, time and space seemed to warp; a door that should have led to a corridor now lay flat beneath their feet, while the corridor itself had turned into a vertical shaft plunging straight down into the earth.

Looking down, it resembled nothing less than a bottomless abyss!

Leaping into the depths of the earth time after time did not merely make one feel as though they were tumbling further into a chasm of darkness; it also felt as though they were drawing closer to the innermost darkness of the soul!

At this moment, not only were Dong Qingli, Shen Qinging, and the other watching girls completely transfixed, but even An Huwei and his men stared open-mouthed at the screen; this place could no longer be described by the word "bizarre" alone.

The distorted space, the monsters far more twisted and powerful than before, and those repeated plunges into the narrow, dark depths of the earth gave even the onlookers the sensation of drawing step by step closer to the dark and terrible things within themselves that they dared not face.

The deeper one dived into the depths of the heart, the more a tide of terror came rushing forth, reaching its absolute peak when the crowd saw a graveyard in the courtyard, where tombstones were found for every living person encountered along the way—including Angela, whom they had met at the very beginning—and finally, the protagonist's own grave!

Even in the broad daylight, the onlookers felt as though a vast, surging expanse of freezing seawater was washing over them like a deluge!

The grave had already been dug, but the protagonist was clearly not yet buried; at the bottom of the pit lay that same fathomless, deep darkness!

And now, just like leaping into those dark, deep holes before, he had to jump into his own grave!

Perhaps the moment he leaped, the grave would bury itself, adding another fresh mound to the site just like the others!

"This game...?!" An Huwei and the others were completely stupefied!

Every step was steeped in horror and ill omen, yet one still had to press on step by step, because from the very beginning, the entire game had established that the protagonist could not turn back, for he had said with absolute certainty: he would do whatever it took.

Naturally, it was impossible for Fang Qi to broadcast the entire game in a single sitting; this time, he split the stream over three days.

Inside the grave, where the boundaries of the Otherworlds intersected, he witnessed the fates of everyone, including Angela, and the protagonist, too, was about to meet his own end.

At the Lakeview Hotel in Silent Hill—the true "special place" mentioned in his wife's letter, and likewise the deepest recess of the protagonist's memory—the videotape recording the absolute truth of everything remained waiting.

Through the videotape, he finally understood that Mary, who had been suffering from an incurable disease, had been killed by his own hands just a few days ago; he had smothered her with a pillow.

Watching the male lead, who had gone through untold hardships to find this place, ultimately meet such a conclusion left everyone's mind completely blank.

Stunned.

Perhaps upon seeing the opening, some might have thought it would be an admirable love story, but seeing it come to this, everyone shared the panic and sheer astonishment of James, the protagonist in the cutscene on screen, moving from initial denial to finally sitting on the sofa, lost in profound contemplation.

Just when everyone believed the protagonist to be a perfect, courageous figure who, despite being an ordinary man, was worthy of admiration, this single scene shattered the expectations of everyone present.

And at that moment, the radio picked up at the very start of the story crackled with Mary's voice, pleading with him to come see her quickly.

Not long after resuming his trek, he encountered Maria once more—the woman who looked exactly like his wife but possessed a different personality, the idealized version of his wife born from the depths of his own mind.

This time, she was fastened upside down to a metal frame, ultimately pierced to death by two Pyramid Heads.

James finally understood that the Pyramid Heads were manifestations created by his own mind to punish himself for the crime he had committed.

They were born of his own inner demons, which meant they could never be killed by ordinary means!

The corridor echoed with the voices of him and Mary.

One day he had brought flowers to see Mary, but because she knew she didn't have long to live, she was in a terrible mood, taking all her negative emotions out on James, saying many cruel words and telling him to get out. James left in anger. Mary knew she had done something awful and cried out for James to come back, to stay with her and comfort her...

James traversed the corridor, walked down the long iron staircase, and arrived at the hotel rooftop, where he finally met the person waiting for him.

"Forgive me."

"I told you I wanted to die, James. I wanted the pain to end."

"So I did it... I didn't want to see you suffer..." Saying this, James seemed to quickly change his words, "No, that's not true. You said you didn't want to die. The truth is, I hated you. I wanted you out of the way. I wanted my life back."

"James, if that were true, then why do you look so sad right now?"

Looking at the dialogue on the large screen, everything became perfectly clear; there were no heroes in this story, let alone any grand, selfless affections.

It did not praise the beautiful things that people desire but cannot obtain; this was merely a small person's journey of redemption, constantly interrogating his own heart.

A story that was simply that, and nothing more.

At the conclusion of the story, the words of his wife's letter echoed once again, just as they had at the very beginning:

"In my restless dreams, I see that town..."

Reading those words filled with lingering affection, it felt as though something within everyone's heart had been deeply touched.

Perhaps this was the ultimate charm of the entire game; it held not just horror, but also humanity and warmth.

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