Xu Beijin set an alarm clock for himself, and when he opened his eyes the next morning, he had no dreams all night, but he felt like waking up from a dream.
The exhaustion over the years has not been swept away, but at least it has become much lighter.
He stunned for a while, then took a deep breath, his expression gradually becoming rational and calm.
He knows what to do now.
In the morning of that day, Xu Beijin finally contacted all the contacts in the narrow building, and checked the list of those they could not find.
From the dashboard, you can see the location and location of those people, and contact people are naturally busy looking for them.
Throughout the day, Xu Bei was busy with these things.
The people on the ground floor of the narrow building waited calmly.
The ground floor of the narrow building is the only place where Xu Bei does not need to worry about it. The task force and the residents of the narrow building here knew everything first, and they were also the first to find everyone, and told them about the ultimate nightmare.
The whole day seemed extremely calm and depressed. They wanted to know how things were going, but they didn't dare to disturb Xu Beijin.
Xu Bei is so busy.
But he always has a subtle illusion. When he contacted different people, when he inadvertently caught a glimpse of the complex and narrow floors on the dashboard, he seemed to see... clusters of hopeful fires, igniting one after another in the narrow building. Lights up.
He felt a certain atmosphere, serious, stagnant, calm and depressed, but it gradually filled the narrow building. That means hope instead.
They saw hope.
Many people may not know anything. They didn't know the existence of Xu Beijin, the efforts of Mu Jiashi and others, and they didn't know that there was a tasker like Ringo who successfully left and was sent back at will.
Perhaps these people are just dull and buried in their own efforts. They are stubborn and firm without asking the world.
They are pursuing that hope, perhaps even they themselves think that they are about to fail, something they can't get.
But someone grabbed them, and then told them—hope, right in front of them.
They will be able to hold this hope in their hands immediately.
Sometimes, Xu Beijin finds those contacts, and then when communicating with each other, he can often hear some noises from the contacts around him. Some were excited screams, some were suppressed crying.
He will feel a long-lost, empathetic touch.
The contact person could not help but apologize because he was too emotional to talk to him properly, but he couldn't help crying again.
Many contacts are crying while looking for those taskers and those residents of narrow buildings.
Their compatriots. Their partners.
In the end, it was as calm as Xu Bei, and tears filled his eyes. He was infected by a special atmosphere, and he could feel that this atmosphere was permeating the entire narrow building.
They live and die together, and they are about to overcome all obstacles and move towards the most significant turning point in their destiny.
Their fate had gone through the previous decades smoothly and smoothly, and then the boat of their life was suddenly overturned by a huge wave.
After that, they followed the crowd, witnessed their miserable situation but could not do anything, experienced all kinds of despair but still could not see the flame of hope. Now someone has lit the light for them.
And this is for oneself after all.
When the contact person contacts these people, the contact person always repeats Xu Beijin’s request tirelessly: “You must remain calm in the ultimate nightmare, you must guard yourself and your sense, and you must not get lost in the nightmare. middle."
They didn't know why there was such a request, but they all agreed seriously.
Many people are unkempt or covered in blood. Some people's arms are full of bite marks, that is their torment and persecution of themselves.
Someone raised their hands heartily and said confidently: "It's okay. If I feel that I'm going to be lost, I'll just bite myself. In my nightmares, I always do this and it's very useful."
The contact person choked up again and again, but in the end he could only acquiesce in this person's choice.
Finally, just before nightfall, all the contacts returned a message of success.
At the level within their ability, they have found everyone and told those people what happened.
From the moment they entered the narrow building, humans have never been so closely linked together.
Perhaps there are many scum, many lunatics, and many scum, but at this moment, it seems that no one can refuse the great temptation brought by hope.
Will anyone betray? Xu Bei couldn't help thinking about it.
He knew that maybe he shouldn't think about this possibility at this time. Shake the military's mind, he thought, at least let him shake himself.
But he also knew that this was not impossible. He has now had to take the corresponding responsibilities, and he must consider it for the sake of all mankind.
So, after pondering for a while, he finally sent a message to each contact person.
He asked them to find at least one trustworthy covenant and inform Xu Beijin of the identity of the covenant.
Except for the three of them, no one else on this level can know the identity of the promised person.
The purpose of the promise-keeping person is that when everyone does that thing according to Xu Beijin's requirements, they are the last one to do it. The observant must ensure that everyone obeyed Xu Beijin's request.
If some people break their promise. Then, the keeper will force him to execute.
This is a double insurance.
After sending out this message, Xu Beijin began to look for taskers and residents of narrow buildings on higher floors. The number of them is not huge, about a hundred.
These are all people from the fifty-fifth floor upwards.
The fifty-fifth floor is already very high, but there is still a long distance from the top of the narrow building. They are all the best in this game.
Xu Beijin's contact is very fast, and it is also a model of contact person plus contractor.
And those people may not be able to verify Xu Beijin's statement, but they have spent a long enough time in despair, so they believe Xu Beijin.
There are not many people on each floor, and some floors are even empty.
For these taskers, they may have discovered the problem of the residents in the narrow buildings earlier.
After all, in some floors, there are only so few taskers coexisting with the residents of the narrow buildings.
They have already discovered each other's problems for a long time.
However, knowing the truth never means that the problem can be solved. When they learned that the ultimate nightmare was about to begin, they cried with joy. After tolerating silence for many years, they finally waited for a turnaround.
Xu Beijin's mood became more and more complicated. For a moment, he even wished that he had never looked for these people, and wished that he never understood their lives and current situation.
But—at the same time, it seemed that there was a cold, lofty will, forcing Xu Bei to do all this.
Xu Beijin could accidentally hear himself muttering to himself: "Things have already reached this point... If you don't succeed, you will become benevolent..."
He is trying to convince himself. Sometimes if he couldn't persuade himself, or his emotions were really out of control, he would go and talk to Ringo for a while.
He can feel that the heavy burden on himself is now not only on him.
Many people don't know the truth, and don't know where the final outcome will go. However, they are also taking care of everything.
They may also be able to guess how cruel and severe the consequences will be if this attempt is unsuccessful, but they still agreed.
So in the end, Xu Beijin felt that he was being pushed away by something.
The intensity was not very strong, gentle but firm, so that he couldn't distinguish, such a long search was based on his own will, or just because... Everyone wanted him to do this.
And he finally convinced himself.
This is an unprecedented operation. As if fate had connected all of them as a whole at a certain moment.
They have similar responsibilities, for each other and for themselves.
The last person Xu Beijin found was also the person who had gone to the highest floor among all taskers in the narrow building.
He was trapped on the 65th floor of the narrow building.
He is the only one here, there are no other narrow-building residents, and no other taskers.
This means that he is completely trapped here. If there are other narrow-building residents, then he can still return to the floor below through his nightmare. But not here.
No one keeps up with him, so he has been forgotten by everyone.
A hero destined to be miserable.
Perhaps all taskers have forgotten him, forgot that this is theoretically the best person among them. They will not remember him, nor will they know his glorious past.
The world has abandoned... her.
Xu Beijin couldn't tell her gender from the name on the dashboard, so it wasn't until the moment he saw her herself that he could replace the genderless pronoun "he" with a more appropriate "she".
Is a young woman. On the surface, she even enjoyed herself on the 65th floor. She raised flowers and read books. The precious props cards were used as ornaments and playing cards.
In this way, she spent countless lonely nights on the 65th floor.
Her name, as shown on the dashboard, is "Xiang Chenyu".
"Ms. Xiang, good evening."
When Xu Beijin's voice rang in her ears, Xiang Chenyu was taken aback. She subconsciously raised her head and looked around, but found nothing. A faint trace of confusion appeared in her gaze later.
Xu Beijin explained his intentions.
But Xiang Chenyu's reaction now seems a bit slow. Xu Bei waited patiently for her to react.
After a while, Xiang Chenyu said slowly: "So, you plan to start, the ultimate nightmare?"
"Yes..." Xu Beijin said, "Madam, just waiting for your reply."
Xiang Chenyu was at a loss for a moment, and then suddenly, she felt her cheeks become cold.
Without her own reaction, tears filled her eyes.
She said, "Of course... Of course!"
As a result, the last tasker in the narrow building also joined their team.
In fact, it is more difficult for residents of narrow buildings to find and persuade than the task force.
The vast majority of taskers are at least awake and able to communicate, but many residents of the narrow building, like the female tasker shivering in the corner at the bottom of the narrow building, have lost their self and reason.
They have completely become the characters in the script, but they are not crazy. At least, it's not crazy enough to have to get rid of the fog.
They regard themselves as characters in the game, so those reasons such as escaping from the narrow building cannot be moved to them.
Therefore, the contact people can only mention the ultimate nightmare, NE, etc., before they can finally be convinced.
Whether it will follow Xu Beijin's request in the end is still unknown.
But Xu Beijin has also tried his best.
In this day's actions, he can almost be said to have seen the world.
He used to stay on the ground floor of a narrow building, looking at the gray mist churning outside through the window of the bookstore.
He imagined the life of the people in the narrow building, but he didn't really observe it.
The ecology of the ground floor of the narrow building is completely different from that of the higher floors, whether it is the environment or the atmosphere.
On the higher floors of the narrow building, people are obviously calmer and more rational, and the quality of life is much richer and more relaxed than the lower floors. Although, this calm atmosphere should be called dead silence.
In fact, many people have realized that they may never be able to leave the narrow building.
Like Ye Lan and her companions, there are still a few who are willing to come to the bottom of the narrow building resolutely for a ray of life.
And, no matter what hope they hold, when they decide to return to the bottom, it means that they have denied what they used to be.
The same is true for Mu Jiashi, although he didn't return to the bottom of the narrow building because of various rumors in the narrow building.
This is a complete failure, but they are willing to call it a pursuit of hope.
crazy
Crazy is something hidden behind reason. The atmosphere of the higher floors of the narrow building hides an imperceptible tension, and everyone's heart is stretched with a string that is about to break.
They really seem to have stood near the Yuan.
This is especially true for those tasked with moving from the bottom of a narrow building to a higher level.
They hope to go to a higher level, but the result is that the higher-level tasks are even more desperate and gloomy than them. In addition, the higher-level nightmares are far worse than they thought.
For those residents of narrow buildings, the situation is a different look.
They have always carried the gloomy, decadent, and corrupt temperament of the narrow building on their bodies.
The kind of coldness and madness that is almost death. They can't break away from the script they are used to.
Although it was only required and mandatory by NE at the beginning, as time passed, as they became more and more familiar with the nightmare master in this script, they would find that the self in the mirror became stranger.
Who are they
self
When they can't even tell who they are, who is the object to which they are pointing
It was not so much the hope of escaping from the narrow building that persuaded the residents of these narrow buildings, it was the curiosity of the ultimate nightmare that convinced them.
Regardless of everyone's mentality, they eventually agreed to the contact person's request.
When the contact person walks through the floor where they are with the news about the ultimate nightmare, people who have already known the news need not say, those who have not heard the news before, with a kind of unusual joy and renewal , Besides, it is a kind of panic.
They couldn't believe that hope had really come. They were afraid that this was just another rumor that seemed true or false in the narrow building. No one knew where it came from, why this news appeared, and whether it would disappear immediately.
But this time, the contact person brought a more accurate time.
"At twelve o'clock tonight, we will know the answer."
Twelve o'clock!
People watch time almost constantly, counting down to themselves. They used this method to try to calm themselves down, but the frantic atmosphere that permeated the entire narrow building still couldn't dissipate.
At ten o'clock at night, Xu Beijin was still standing in front of the control panel.
He stood for almost a day.
Occasionally, when you feel tired, sit on the floor. The control panel will also be lowered along his line of sight.
He would chat with Ringo aimlessly, but mainly dealing with contact persons and contract keepers.
They spent a whole day of work and finally connected everyone.
This is really an incredible thing.
Most of the reason is that Ding Yi, Dai Wu and Su Enya have already contacted more than 90% of the people, and Xu Bei only needs to find the last 10%.
And another reason is that the control panel—or NE's authority, gave him a great help.
He can locate a certain person at any time, monitor a certain person remotely, and get in touch with him.
There are some residents in the narrow buildings who cannot be contacted by contact persons anyway, or some taskers who have locked themselves up. These are all contacted by Xu Beijin.
However, there are not many such people. Otherwise, whether they can accomplish all this today is still unknown.
But eventually caught up.
Now there are still two hours left before Xu Beijin and the contact persons and contract keepers agreed.
He is observing a number.
That is the person in the nightmare.
There are not many, about forty or fifty.
When the contact persons contacted the humans on each floor, they had already emphasized to those taskers and the residents of the narrow building that today, please don't enter the nightmare. If it is not possible, they will enter a nightmare tonight.
Of course most people listened.
Even if he was dubious, he didn't hesitate to waste such a time and a half.
At least those taskers with very high floors, after Xu Beijin got in touch with them, paused one after another, waiting for the ultimate nightmare to come.
Xu Bei arranged the people on the ground floor of the narrow building even more early in the morning.
In this case, there are still dozens of taskers — and residents of narrow buildings, who have entered a nightmare.
Their mentality may be indifferent, or they may be dismissive, or they may be too lazy to pay attention, or they may feel that they can quickly come out of their nightmare. In any case, they entered a nightmare.
Xu Bei looked at these dozens of names quietly, and then sighed slowly.
Should these people be called betrayers
It does not seem to be necessary.
At this point, he was unable to help these people who "voluntarily gave up their opportunities."
When the ultimate nightmare opens, if these people are still in the nightmare—including those nightmare masters and taskers—then they will be abandoned by the ultimate nightmare.
The reason is simple. Players who have already entered one instance cannot enter the second instance at the same time.
Of course, there are no other actors in these nightmares. Whether the actor enters the nightmare role is randomly selected by NE, and Xu Beijin prevents this process.
Therefore, those who are still in the nightmare are just the questers who enter the nightmare, and the owner of the nightmare, and there are no other actors.
The other NPCs in those nightmares are just programs automatically generated by this game.
Xu Beijin guessed that those people in the narrow building were waiting excitedly, and didn't even know that someone had entered a nightmare.
He stared at the number for a while, and then cut the interface cleanly.
He didn't want to see this anymore, it didn't make sense. The rest, wait till twelve o'clock. Now, he has completed all the things that should be done.
Xu Bei stayed for a while, and then contacted Ringo.
Xu Beijin's voice was slightly hoarse and affectionate: "Good evening, Little Apple."
Ringo was in the bookstore in Xu Beijin, and the others were in a hurry, but Ringo stayed aside, took the book, and looked at it quietly.
Through the screen displayed on the dashboard, Xu Beijin caught a glimpse of what book Ringo was reading...
He couldn't help but pause, and then turned away the subject casually: "There are two hours left."
Ringo put down the book, as if waking up from a dream: "It's only two hours?"
He stood up, moved his body, thought of the ultimate nightmare, and was a little curious: "What is in the ultimate nightmare?"
"It's a retrospective of some things." Xu Beijin said, "However, the two of us will not enter the ultimate nightmare."
Lin Piao was stunned.
"On the one hand, we are no longer... human beings in the true sense. Nor are we the players recognized by this game." Xu Beijin said, "On the other hand, there are always some people left outside of the nightmare."
Ringo seemed to understand but he still asked, "What are you doing out there?"
"Save the world." Xu Beijin said with a playful smile in his voice, "Those who stay outside of the nightmare are really saving the world."
Ringo blinked in surprise.
Afterwards, he said: "Beijing, just listening to the tone of your words, I think you are more like destroying the world."
Xu Beijin: "..."
Hello!
He was angry and funny, and deliberately said angrily: "How come there is a little apple like you!"
Ringo whispered: "Just tell the truth..."
Xu Beijin: "..."
Ringo couldn't help but smile.
They then talked about other topics, such as the book Ringo read.
However, Xu Beijin still didn't say what the ultimate nightmare was, and what the two of them needed to do outside of the nightmare.
At 11:30, Xu Beijin temporarily cut off contact with Ringo, and began to contact those contacts one by one, telling them what they needed to do.
Those contacts were surprised on a certain floor of the narrow building and kept asking, is this what Xu Bei wants them to do
And Xu Beijin replied affirmatively: "Yes, that's it."
The contact person was hesitant and puzzled, but he did what Xu Beijin said. Xu Beijin also informed those very high floors one by one.
The last is the ground floor of the narrow building.
It was already twelve o'clock at this time.
Xu Beijin found Mu Jiashi, Ding Yi and others, and then said his request: "Now, let everyone sleep."
sleep
The people who heard these words were stunned at the same time.
Xu Bei smiled imperceptibly. He said: "You have always wanted to know what the ultimate nightmare is and how to open it—then have you thought about who is the owner of the ultimate nightmare?"
The people present thought of Xu Beijin's command just now, and an incredible guess suddenly appeared in their brains.
"The ultimate nightmare is the nightmare that belongs to all humans in the narrow building. The common nightmare of all humans."
Everyone felt like their heart was hit hard by something. It suddenly dawned on them, and they were frightened.
Xu Beijin's tone slowly became dull, with an indescribable complexity and exhaustion: "So, when everyone falls asleep, the ultimate nightmare will automatically start."