The Gentleman at the End

The cluster of balloons blocking the moonlight, the smile on the doll's face, and the opening of this form of performance game.

Perhaps Reagan and Jin haven't linked this to William, after all, their impression of William remains in the past as a gentleman.

But Yi Chen and Lorrian are different; they've witnessed the completion, they've witnessed the fusion of the clown and the actor.

Lorrian looked up to the top of the mall, gazing at the balloons densely clinging to the ceiling like abscesses, obstructing the moonlight's penetration,

"Is it here as expected? William... you can even completely shield my Moon Transformation Disease, no wonder you're the Plague Master. What on earth are you playing at? Do you want to test us or avoid God's surveillance, or have you really gone mad?"

Just as Lorrian slowly lowered his head, looking at the doll riding the children's bicycle in front of him, the tape in its mouth continued playing and announced the rules of the game.

"The name of the game is called [find me].

I will give you a riddle, and you can infer my state and location through the riddle and finally find me in a certain area of the mall.

However, this game has a few strict requirements.

1. From the start of the game, you can no longer cooperate, including the most basic conversations or information exchanges between brains; you must maintain the state of [one person] to find my traces. If I find anyone privately communicating or cooperating, you will be directly eliminated from the game.

2. I'm inside the mall and won't run around, but you only have one hour. If you don't find me within the time limit, it shows the gap between us is too big, and you're not qualified to meet me.

3. Prohibited from damaging the mall; if any items are destroyed, part of your body will also be destroyed.

4. I'm inside a specific store, but you only have one right of choice; once you enter a store, you can no longer go to another one.

Okay! I will now give a riddle, please find me based on the hints from the riddle!

≮Hahaha... Hahaha!≯

Tik~ tak, time waits for no one! The game starts now!"

With a string of laughter as the riddle, both the brain-ascended Reagan and the well-informed Yi Chen were puzzled but quickly had a direction of speculation.

The doll pulled out a timer, and the one-hour countdown officially began.

Jin, listening to the doll's speech, looked displeased, "Seems like William started looking down on us after becoming the Plague Master... when we meet, I'm definitely going to kick his ass hard."

Due to the restrictions, no one followed up on Jin's words.

Lorrian stepped into the air, preparing to start with the balloons floating on the top floor, analyzing their components to try to locate William.

Reagan kept his eyes closed, strolling leisurely toward the mall's dark zones.

Jin used the most barbaric method, directly letting cancer cells spread out, covering each floor in turn, trying to find the hiding William.

In her opinion, as long as William completed with Art's Evil Tumor, cancer cells would inevitably generate homologous induction.

In the team, only Yi Chen didn't move, instead, staring at the doll riding the children's bicycle in front of him.

In his view, the so-called game should not be as simple as it seems. After all, William's mind isn't ordinary; cracking the so-called 'riddle' must involve thinking combined with William himself.

『From receiving a note at the guest room door up until arriving at this complex mall, every step had William's guidance.

This guy had obviously been planning for a long time,

but what I saw was all related to 'clowns,' including balloons, numbers, dolls with painted smiles, and the laughter riddle, without seeing anything related to William himself.

To crack the riddle, to find where William truly is, should require finding something related to the true William.

What is William's trait...』

As Yi Chen deduced up to this point, an image of a black vortex suddenly appeared in his mind.

"Abyss, Madness Brain... Flipping!"

With this thought in mind, Yi Chen suddenly looked at the doll before him, and looked at the tape in its mouth! In his lifetime, he had encountered this kind of technological product and knew well that these tapes had a reverse functionality—[Rewind].

This function is strongly related to flipping.

Yi Chen immediately installed the tape backward onto the playback slot on the surface of the doll's tongue.

Rewinding the beginning was a meaningless scrambled audio, primarily consisting of A, M, N, S syllables, with no significance.

However, when the rewind reached that unmeaningful laughter riddle, the scrambled audio immediately became fluent, and that weird laughter, turned into three precise sentences when played backward.

≮I'm trapped in a dark room, only by finding the corresponding key and connecting the power can you see my appearance clearly≯

≮My body is coiled up but unrestrained≯

≮I can become young, or grow old≯

Yi Chen, with a rough answer in mind from receiving the riddle's content, didn't immediately search through the mall but went to the mall's entrance.

Since it's related to flipping, he also chose to walk backward into the mall, then searched for a store in the supermarket selling a corresponding item as mentioned in the riddle.

"This world's timeline doesn't differ much from my previous world; the 'thing' the riddle refers to should be outdated now... would the mall still sell it?"

Yi Chen could only search layer by layer.

The little grape in his brain provided no assistance, as the game rules clearly stated maintaining solo action throughout; as soon as little grape provided visual assistance, it might be judged disqualified.

Each floor was thoughtfully equipped with timers, reminding everyone of the time remaining.

Yi Chen wandered several times at the entrance of some special stores, like the arcade, escape room, and digital store but didn't enter to search.

Meanwhile, Jin seemed to have sensed something and entered an expansive escape room alone to search for William.

Yi Chen continued upward via the staircase, using backward walking to find a small shop in the corner on the fourth floor of the mall—[Zhang's Recycling].

At the entrance stood a handwritten wooden sign—'Recycles old phones, old fridges, old TVs.'

Not only that.

With eyes still closed, Reagan also arrived at the shop's entrance at this moment. Yet, he showed no intent to seize priority, and gentlemanly made a gesture of please, letting Yi Chen enter to check.

Pushing open the rolling shutter,

An antique shop filled with outdated digital products stood before him,

quickly scanning the front desk and not finding the item corresponding to the riddle, Yi Chen immediately headed to the partitioned area behind the store,

Creak!

When the decrepit wooden door opened, the scene before Yi Chen made him pause slightly.

An interior room with no window structure was faintly lit by an old television full of static,

The shop owner was actually inside, sitting on a rocking chair swaying heavily while watching TV, with a large bag of chips in his hand spilling mostly onto the floor due to the violent shaking.

As Yi Chen backed to stand before the TV, he noticed that although the owner's eyes were wide open, his pupils were completely blank, and his face was painted with a chilling smile, dead.

At the same time, the owner, seemingly eating chips, was actually pointing deep into his throat.

Yi Chen originally intended to 'dissect,' but the game's rules suddenly flashed through his mind.

One of the rules prohibited damaging any objects in the mall, which probably included the shop owner left in the store.

Reaching into the owner's slippery throat, he indeed felt something in the stomach sac. The elasticity of the owner's esophagus was unusually good, managing to accommodate such a large foreign object.

As Yi Chen extracted the item, a box stained with gastric juice was taken into his hands, precisely the answer to the riddle—[Videotape].

Attention no longer focused on the owner, rather on the old player above the TV.

Wiping off the sticky film from the videotape, he placed it into the player on the TV, sizzling noise as colored stripes transitioned, bright red words appeared on the TV screen.

[miss me?]

As the font shrank gradually, pop! Confetti exploded from both sides of the screen, and William, unseen for two years, wearing a gold and black suit, appeared on the TV screen, bowing like an actor.

"I knew it, Mr. Yi, you found me first... Haha! Isn't it funny~ things are not as complicated as you think, watching you find me all the way backward, I nearly laughed several times.

Ha ha!

As you can see, I delved into evil, I completed the [Transformation]."

Snap!

In the TV, William suddenly slammed against the TV screen, staring intently at Yi Chen,

"Not seen in two years, Mr. Yi, you've grown quite strong! Little grape, yellow skin also thanks to your care!"