Tricked 142: The Only Way Out

Jiang Yan froze in mid-motion.

Her fingertips trembled ever so slightly—barely perceptible, but truly shaking. She tightened her grip, trying to hold the rune steady, but the yellow talisman nearly slipped from her palm.

Jiang Yan caught it quickly.

It was the only thing left in her hands, the one rune that the energy field had no power to take away.

Torch Dragon Derived Rune.

【Rewind time by three seconds.】

Once, the greatest value of this rune for Jiang Yan was that it could be sold for money. But now that Shen Huanhuan was dead, its one true purpose was to save her. Jiang Yan immediately summoned her yao power, trying to break the rune’s seal, but just as it began to ignite, she stopped.

Slowly, she closed her fingers around it, folding the rune into her palm.

…It was already too late.

From the moment Shen Huanhuan died, to the notification from the guardian spirit announcing her death, to the moment everyone heard the words, more than three seconds had already passed.

And even if time truly did rewind three seconds, so what? They didn’t know where Shen Huanhuan was—couldn’t find her, couldn’t get there, couldn’t save her no matter what.

She had died so suddenly—without a trace, without warning.

Jiang Yan’s mind was a mess. She raised a hand and covered her eyes, hiding the emotion that flashed there. She tried analyzing the situation with a clear head, but after a while, she found her thoughts were still chaotic.

She always said her standpoint was different from humans’, but in living and cooperating with these people, she felt their goodness—they trusted her completely. Not long ago, they were even discussing organizing a special performance for Yu Renwan after getting out.

They thought they’d be here a long time—long enough for even the days to become weary.

But Shen Huanhuan had died now—dead on the third day.

Jiang Yan suddenly realized how important she was to her. Not just as a partner.

She gently shielded her eyes with her hand.

But ultimately, Jiang Yan wouldn’t allow herself to remain sunk in this tangle of feelings for long. She had also come up with a way to save Shen Huanhuan. Half a minute later, she looked toward Shen Xiaoxiao.

Shen Xiaoxiao was standing by the stone lion outside the theater. From this angle, Jiang Yan couldn’t see her face—just the hem of a gray garment.

Dim and shrouded, like a mass of fog.

Since the prompt had sounded, Shen Xiaoxiao hadn’t moved or spoken—just stood there.

Jiang Yan got up and walked toward the door. Yu Renwan, snapping out of her dazed confusion, followed quickly, eyes stinging with the threat of tears.

At the doorway, they finally saw why—Shen Xiaoxiao wasn’t silent by choice, but because she couldn’t speak.

She was slumped in pain against the stone lion, her head bowed, and her tears fell without end.

It turned out the phrase “tears falling like rain” could become tangible. For Shen Xiaoxiao, it was a downpour in her world. Her hand clutched her shirt at her chest, her mouth opening and closing repeatedly—yet not a single word came out.

When she saw the others, Shen Xiaoxiao slid down, completely drained, and Jiang Yan crouched down to catch her, letting her lean against her shoulder.

“Sister Jiang Yan,”

Shen Xiaoxiao gripped Jiang Yan’s arm tightly. “It hurts so much.”

“I can’t breathe. My chest hurts so much…”

Jiang Yan said softly, “Your character has heart disease; you can’t get agitated. That’s her sense that her sister is in trouble.”

“Try to take deep breaths.”

Shen Xiaoxiao shook her head, her voice breaking. “No, not just that, not just her.”

“My sister is her sister—she’s in trouble, they’re both in trouble.”

Jiang Yan looked at her. Shen Xiaoxiao was truly at the end of her strength, deeply sad, like a flickering candle flame blown every which way. Tears welled in great beads from her eyes, her voice hoarse and torn, as if something invisible was crushing her from within.

Her tears seemed as if they would never run dry.

“My neck hurts too—my sister must have died like this.”

“The bad people killed her.”

“Let the bad people kill me too. Take me away,” she rambled incoherently. “Sister Jiang Yan, if I’m going to die, don’t save me. Don’t save me… please don’t save me.”

Since Shen Xiaoxiao couldn’t stand upright, Jiang Yan was half-kneeling on the ground, and Yu Renwan knelt as well, taking out a handkerchief to wipe Shen Xiaoxiao’s face.

But it could never really be wiped clean.

“I still haven’t told my sister I’m sorry,” Shen Xiaoxiao whispered suddenly.

Jiang Yan said, “You’ll have the chance to, later.”

She said gently, “I have a rune that can turn back time by three seconds. As long as one of us gets out, and uses the rune outside, our timeline will rewind to before we came in.”

“Then Shen Huanhuan will be alive; the others who died inside will live too.”

Shen Xiaoxiao looked up suddenly, hope flashing in her eyes—then dying out just as quickly.

“…Really?”

Jiang Yan promised, “I’ll make it out.”

Shen Xiaoxiao nodded faintly, but her depression didn’t lift.

At a time like this, any promise felt like a cruel trick. Her heart wanted to believe, but reason told her it was just Jiang Yan trying to comfort her. No psychic had ever come out of Cangnan Funeral Home. She thought she was prepared for this when she came in, but losing her sister was a cost too great to bear.

She regretted it.

She didn’t have such a strong spirit of sacrifice; her sister had long been her only family. She just wanted to be together—living or dead.

Regardless of whether resurrection was possible, all she wanted now was to die here.

“Let’s go back first,” Jiang Yan said, helping Shen Xiaoxiao up. “We misunderstood this energy field. We need to analyze it all over again.”

Shen Xiaoxiao took a deep breath and steadied herself.

Back inside, Xiao Congye looked over, frowning. “What happened?”

Jiang Yan replied, “She’s suddenly feeling sick—heart pain. We’ll help her upstairs first.”

Xiao Congye watched Shen Xiaoxiao, her lips turning pale.

She thought of that old saying about the bond between sisters’ hearts.

Xiao Congye instinctively stood, stared out at the dense night for a long moment, then turned to Shen Xiaoxiao. “I’ll go to the pharmacy and get you some medicine. Is there anywhere else hurting?”

Shen Xiaoxiao shook her head. “No, thank you.”

“This can’t be cured. I’ll just bear it.”

Xiao Congye said, “Alright, you two go with her, no need to come back down.”

“I’ll wait for them both.”

After a few steps up the stairs, Shen Xiaoxiao suddenly stopped and looked back at Xiao Congye. “It’s dangerous after dark—let’s not let anyone else go out.”

Xiao Congye sat alone on the black chair opposite the main doors, her back to the three of them, and nodded lightly.

*

After returning to the room, midnight finally arrived.

Xiao Congye was still waiting downstairs for someone who would never return. Upstairs, the others discussed their cause of death.

Shen Xiaoxiao didn’t join in. Lying flat on her bed, her blank gaze fixed on the white ceiling for a long, long time.

Jiang Yan poured herself a glass of water and drank it down.

A few minutes later, she began, “This energy field has nothing to do with persona contamination. Whether we’re clear-headed, whether we remember who we are or not, we’ll still die.”

“Shen Huanhuan was forced to die.”

Jiang Yan explained in detail: “Shen Xiaoxiao is still here. No matter what Shen Huanhuan saw or encountered searching for Liu Shaochun, she absolutely couldn’t have risked her life. No matter how upset or broken she felt, she wouldn’t—and it’s not a question of morality. These NPCs have all been dead for a long time; everything here is the duplication of history. However painful, it’s just a replica.”

“Shen Huanhuan could empathize, but she understood that well enough.”

Yu Renwan nodded softly. “So Huanhuan must have faced a question at the border of life and death. Because of her character’s constraints, she could only pick the correct answer—which meant choosing death.”

“If she didn’t pick the right answer, time wouldn’t move on, and the questions would just reset, over and over. The guardian spirit forces her to pick correctly—to walk to her death.”

Jiang Yan added, “It’s even possible the answer board didn’t even have a survival option.”

“There was actually only one option on the board—the inevitable ending of the persona.”

“Our personas weren’t invented by the energy field for us. We’re not people from outside the story, but people who truly existed—living beings inside the story itself.”

Jiang Yan recalled the prompt she’d heard earlier.

【Congratulations to Shen Huanhuan for completing Dai Que’er’s character arc.】

She could still remember that emotionless, flat voice—like the most uninspired monotone in a play.

Jiang Yan closed her eyes for a long time, then looked down and said quietly:

“In this energy field, Shen Huanhuan is Dai Que’er.”

“Hundred years ago, Dai Que’er died tonight. So Shen Huanhuan could only die tonight.”

“It was Dai Que’er who carried her sister everywhere in search of doctors; Dai Que’er who walked for days to reach Lingren Village; Dai Que’er who was nearly sold by her parents as a child bride; Dai Que’er who, in outrage, cut off her parents’ pinkies; Dai Que’er who was ransomed by Liu Shaochun for eighty taels.”

“A century ago, after a long journey, Dai Que’er entered the theater, received Liu Shaochun’s mentorship, was treated as her own daughter, taught martial arts, given new clothes, while Liu Shaochun told her the stories of her past life. Later, when the enemy invaded and Lingren Village was sealed, on Master Fang’s birthday, Dai Que’er died saving Liu Shaochun.”

“That was Shen Huanhuan’s false life.”

“But for Dai Que’er, it was reality.”

“The roles we received must all be like Dai Que’er’s—a fated death. They fought desperately to live in these turbulent times, but all of them died. So we will die too.”

Jiang Yan said, “That’s why there’s a one hundred percent death rate at Cangnan Funeral Home.”

This outcome was already half-expected, but hearing Jiang Yan’s analysis, Yu Renwan still felt her vision blacken. After a moment, she buried her face in her hands. “But that means it’s a dead end…”

“Aren’t energy fields supposed to never set up unwinnable dead ends?”

Jiang Yan replied, “Cangnan Funeral Home follows that rule perfectly. It never set a dead end.”

Yu Renwan was baffled. “What?”

Jiang Yan asked her, “Do you remember the first question we were asked here?”

Yu Renwan remembered the one in the blank white space.

【Of the thousand matters in the world, few are ours to decide; here, life and death are uncertain, fortune is not a blessing.

Please treat your choices with care—

1. Erase your memory, leave this place.

2. Enter Lingren Village.】

Jiang Yan spoke, “Cangnan Funeral Home has always had only one question.”

“Option one: leave, and live.”

“Option two: enter, and die.”

“We chose option two, and every question we faced since was only a demonstration, a confirmation of that second choice—using our lives as proof of how we died.”

“The blank space is the real energy field of Cangnan Funeral Home. It places right and wrong, life and death, out in the open; the only hope of survival is right there as well. Lingren Village is just the extension of option two—do you get it?”

Jiang Yan said, “That’s why no psychic ever comes back.”

“Because we can only choose option two.”

“No matter how gifted, how powerful, how sharp or skilled at healing the psychic is, once they enter, they can only die—because right at the start, they picked the wrong option, and so fulfill the conditions for erasure by the guardian spirit.”

No one had imagined this kind of operation from an energy field.

Since no one had conceived of this killing condition, when He Qingyuan’s prophecy about Cangnan Funeral Home spread, no one thought the answer was: simply don’t go in.

‘The starting point is the only way out.’

He Qingyuan’s prophecy had been crystal clear—nothing but its literal meaning.

“The deadlock is set. From now on, there’s nothing left but a brute-force breakthrough,” Jiang Yan said.

Yu Renwan was dumbstruck.

Brute-force breakthrough?

An energy field could be cracked by force?

“No need to panic—I can do it.”

Yet immediately, Jiang Yan laid out the snags. “But I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to break through the energy field within three seconds. The moment a crack appears, the flow of time inside and out will match. So in the instant it fractures, I must shatter it in one second, and then break free of the rune’s seal, and throw the rune out of the energy field.”

“If I manage that, everyone will be revived. The energy field will reset, and with my restored memories, I’ll prevent any of you from entering. I can come in and handle it alone.”

This was already beyond any psychic’s—or human’s—abilities.

A single tear traced rapidly down the corner of Shen Xiaoxiao’s eye.

She whispered, “My sister guessed right…”

“Sister Jiang Yan really is a formidable yao… But my sister wouldn’t let me ask, she said it’s not good to pry into others’ secrets.”

As she spoke, she choked up again, curling around her aching chest.

Jiang Yan was silent a moment.

“When we’re out, I’ll tell her.”

Because of her character’s arrhythmia and angina, Shen Xiaoxiao was in pain for a long time—sweat beading her brow—before she finally improved. She sank, exhausted, into the bed, breath shallow and quick.

But finally, a glimmer returned to her eyes. “So how can you break the energy field in three seconds, Sister Jiang Yan?”

Jiang Yan pondered for a while, then replied seriously:

“Keep following the storyline.”

“Though you can’t see it, in my eyes the sky above the energy field is a deep red mist. When the ritual at Wuhai Girls’ School began, or the sixth event at Tongyuan Amusement Park started its countdown—right as the story nears its end—the red mist’s concentration hits a minimum, and the energy field’s barrier is at its thinnest.”

“If I can survive until the end, I’ll save you after you die.”

“If I die next, I’ll try to break the field during the final prompt.”

Shen Xiaoxiao wasn’t afraid of death.

She raised her hands, pressing her palms together before her chest, closed her eyes, and prayed sincerely:

“May Sister Jiang Yan live until the very end.”