"Here’s the corn juice you wanted." Through the narrow slot of the partition, Li Cheng tossed a can of drink into the cell.
Gray Rain, still reading the newspaper, didn’t even look up. She caught the can, which was still beaded with condensation, with one hand, popped it open with a snap, and took a big gulp, letting out a satisfying "Ah~".
"This is what I call life." She said, shaking her head, "What do you want to ask?"
Li Cheng was well-prepared for this question. He immediately took out the pink children’s backpack and the crayon drawing, asking, "Three questions. First, have you ever seen this backpack?
Second, the specific conditions of each room.
Third, has anyone ever successfully escaped from here before?"
The laser traps and gravity-sensing floor in the Reversal Room were precisely inhibitive to the Bat Hook Claw Gun, and the 5∑ coins in the children’s backpack were exactly enough to buy a can of corn juice that Gray Rain wanted; it was hard not to suspect that these elements were generated on the fly specifically for Li Cheng.
"First of all, I haven’t seen this backpack. Secondly, besides the Prison Director’s Room, there are five rooms: Flashback, Coherence, Reversal, Mislead, Protagonist Effect. All employ reality distortion engines and narrative lattice array technology, generating traps and content in the rooms based on the Escapee’s life experiences."
Gray Rain explained while sipping the corn juice, "Among them, Flashback Room’s effect is to jump to the Escapee’s past or future, including a past even the Escapee themselves may not know about.
Coherence—disrupts the narrative integrity, adding settings on the fly. For example, a wall or a horde of monsters could suddenly appear just out of the Escapee’s line of sight.
Mislead—literally misleads and deceives the Escapee by all possible means. Like setting up a fake door, a fake button.
Protagonist Effect—this is the most abstract, most difficult room to understand and summarize. All sorts of strange things that happen to protagonists in literary works can occur."
Pausing here, Gray Rain continued with relish, "As for whether anyone has successfully escaped from here? Since the prison authorities and the Crystal Wall System Residence Committee dare to put the escape instructions on the wall, it proves they are fully confident in the prison’s security.
Indeed, that is the case—no Escapee has been able to pass through the five engine rooms on their first try, and each attempt damages the Escapee’s integrity on the narrative level.
Like a protagonist of a novel, if his origins, the major life changing events he encounters are deleted or modified, would he still be himself?"
This example was easy to understand; if the Waynes weren’t killed in an alleyway in Gotham City, the world would be without Batman and instead would have the playboy Bruce Wayne.
And consequently, it would lack many Batman’s hellishly funny jokes.
Such as "What’s something that takes shortcuts and has holes in it?" "The Joker gave Batman a voucher for his parents, but it’s expired." "Batman takes a selfie with his camera to use as a family photo," and so on.
"This is the insidious part of the Crystal Wall System Residence Committee. Because many prisoners are both criminals and Civilization Heroes, who might become revered planetary leaders after they are released, hence they cannot simply be disabled by breaking limbs or by cryogenic freezing.
The design of the Narrative Cage is equivalent to giving the prisoners a dilemma.
Either stay in prison honestly, not knowing when you’ll be let out, or attempt to escape, and in the repeated failures, lose oneself."
Gray Rain said, "When I first came to this single cell six months ago, the original occupant of your cell, that Isaac, said he had been held for ten years, tried to escape nine times, and almost forgot his own name.
Three months ago, he ranted about ’Give me liberty or give me death,’ ’the price of freedom is one generation, the cost of enslavement stretches over generations.’
After his last escape attempt, he never returned. He’s probably dead.
The prisoner in the cell on the bottom right, who’s been here even longer than Isaac and attempted escape even more times, ended up completely demented."
Li Cheng thought for a moment, then cautiously asked, "...Have you ever attempted to escape?"
This question caused Gray Rain to pause briefly, shaking the newspaper in her hand to cover her face, and said indifferently, "You should get moving. The rule of the prison is, if during the escape process, you take too long to press the engine room button, the whole cage system will reset. ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ novel·fiɾe·net
In a short time, a few hours; at most, a day."
Li Cheng frowned as he turned to leave. Although he had gained some information from Gray Rain, upon further reflection, there seemed to be even more questions.
He walked up to the vending machine; after the corn juice was purchased, the next item was a white rabbit doll encased in a transparent plastic gift bag, priced at 10∑. The next item was men’s clothing from the Pishuai brand, priced at 70∑.
The Pishuai brand’s logo featured a well-built man in a suit and tie, his face meaty, with a bald and shiny head except for a single vertical braid, trying hard to give a friendly smile, but still exuding a dumb ruffian’s aura.
"No matter how many times I see this brand, it still makes me want to criticize..." Li Cheng muttered. He stepped into the hallway where the Mislead Room was located and pushed open the wooden door.
Like Reversal Room, the Mislead Room also had a second metal door.
He stood responsibly on the gravity-sensing floor, holding the Straight Blade in his right hand, the Bat Hook Claw Gun in his left, with the most powerful Thunder Horn hooked at his waist, waiting for the metal door to slide open.
The door opened, and behind it was a cramped bare concrete room with a single red button on the floor...
"Mr. Xue, Miss Li, please look at this chart."
In the therapy room of the psychological counseling center, the female doctor said gently, "Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) and Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) are not the same. The former manifests a personality that determines the individual’s behavior at a certain moment. The latter has at least two identity or personality states that repeatedly control the patient’s behavior."