Chapter Forty: Diverging Paths and the Rules of Walking Backwards

When they returned to the gap floor between the twenty-first and twenty-second floors, Jiang Wan and Chen Qing had already prepared a specialized high-powered flashlight.

An 8000-lumen flashlight was like a stun grenade indoors; he refused to believe there could still be places it wouldn’t illuminate.

With such thoughts, the two stepped once again into this area.

The moment they entered, both Jiang Wan and Chen Qing shivered involuntarily—after stepping out of the elevator, the temperature noticeably dropped by four or five degrees.

They turned to look back and saw that, in truth, there was no button to open the elevator door at this location. Chen Qing frowned, worry gnawing at his mind.

“Human suffering... there’s no turning back in life.”

He murmured under his breath, perhaps finally understanding the literal meaning.

“But if there’s no turning back, where do we leave from? Not considering what we might find in the back rooms.”

Jiang Wan frowned, taking the flashlight from his hand and gripping it along with her pistol in a tactical stance.

Her hands were roughly positioned before her chest—the direction of the gun’s barrel matched the beam of light. At this moment, the flashlight also served as a makeshift red dot sight.

Listening to her confusion, Chen Qing’s brows knitted further. Yes. If there was no way back, did that mean the entrance and exit of these back rooms weren’t the same?

“If it’s a one-way road... who knows where the exit will be.” Yet, after a moment, he shook his head. “No, I should know. Yin Zhengchu told me he knew the so-called address related to the Foundation.

That back room connects to here, and it’s a place that can be accessed safely.

So we shouldn't be trapped here.

Besides…”

Chen Qing hesitated, his gaze lingering on the elevator doors behind them.

Perhaps there wasn’t truly nowhere to leave.

No turning back in life, but perhaps turning back didn’t mean ‘turning back’ after all.

The target’s location wasn’t always ahead.

He looked at the pitch-black floor before him and called out to Jiang Wan. This floor was enormous, as large as the combined area of Yin Zhengchu’s three companies.

Hundreds of square meters were divided by supporting columns, forming several regions.

There were three in total; first, they headed toward the area directly ahead.

It was the region most easily illuminated by the flashlight upon entry.

They took several steps, but as they advanced, both were astonished to find their flashlights could only ever light up to five meters ahead.

Beyond that range, the brightness faded oddly, and at about ten meters, it dissipated into a grayish-white haze.

Given the environment’s dominant darkness, even an eight-thousand-lumen flashlight ended up no more than ordinary.

After walking about ten meters, Chen Qing’s brows began to furrow.

The difference of ten paces, the change of ten meters—he turned to Jiang Wan, uncertainty in his voice: “Do you remember which spot we came from?”

Jiang Wan paused, instinctively turned back, and pointed with her flashlight. “Are you joking? Isn’t it that way?”

Chen Qing nodded, his expression grim. “I knew I wasn’t mistaken. There’s definitely something wrong.”

“What’s wrong?” Jiang Wan frowned in confusion.

He said nothing, simply pointed at the ground beneath his feet. There were two footprints.

One pointed forward, the other to the right.

The footprints were identical; Jiang Wan smiled, puzzled. “Maybe they’re from someone before.”

But Chen Qing shook his head. He lifted his foot and pressed a fresh print beside the two.

Yes, this was his own footprint.

They seemed to have walked in circles.

Chen Qing didn’t reply, but took her hand and began retracing the footprints backward.

After three to five steps, both their faces turned grave.

Yes, they’d returned to the same spot, adding a third footprint to the group.

“How can this be?” Jiang Wan’s fingers felt cold. She looked up, hoping for an explanation from Chen Qing.

But as his expression grew darker, she realized things were amiss.

“We might…” He looked at Jiang Wan, hesitated, then said, “We may have already entered the back rooms.”

He gazed ahead, mind racing with countless possibilities and methods for solving mazes. Jiang Wan, beside him, found her composure restored by his words.

If it was the back rooms, so be it; if it were just an ordinary floor, the implications would be far more sinister.

“Let’s test if it’s a visual problem,” Chen Qing said, closing his eyes. After nodding to Jiang Wan, they linked arms, shut their eyes, and tried walking forward.

After about twenty more steps, they opened their eyes—only to find two fresh rows of footprints on the ground.

Yes, they were back again.

Chen Qing didn’t lose heart, moving on to a second method. He looked at Jiang Wan: “Try pressing the flashlight to the ground. Let’s walk straight, keeping our route true.”

He bent down, pressing his fingers to the dusty floor. Years of neglect made it easy to leave two prints.

Jiang Wan nodded; after Chen Qing drew a circle, she set down the flashlight and pushed it ahead.

After seven or eight steps, they saw the same marks reappear. Jiang Wan was about to speak when Chen Qing promptly drew a horizontal line at his finger’s current position.

Then, he turned and said, “Let’s walk the opposite direction.”

She didn’t understand, but followed him anyway.

After three or four steps, Jiang Wan saw another line on the ground.

He kept walking forward; when they returned to their starting point, Chen Qing drew a horizontal mark across from the previous line, at their current position.

“Come, once more.”

She listened to Chen Qing’s words, puzzled by his actions—what was he trying to do?

Yet, seeing his demeanor, she instinctively felt he had found the answer.

With that thought, she followed Chen Qing further.

After seven or eight steps, the first horizontal line appeared again.

Now, the line was on the right.

Chen Qing, seeing this, took a step back and drew another horizontal line. He repeated the process.

Jiang Wan felt she was beginning to understand, but was still confused.

She followed Chen Qing, repeating the process thirty or forty times, until the horizontal lines before them grew denser.

At last, Jiang Wan glimpsed the answer.

“You’re looking for…the turning point that makes us double back?”

Chen Qing chuckled, nodding slightly. “Not too dull after all.”

He shook off the blood seeping from his hand due to friction; the lines on the ground now joined together.

Turning, the left side held the horizontal line; ahead, the right.

He looked at his surroundings, then at Jiang Wan, who understood his meaning.

Repeating the maneuver on both sides, they soon found another turning point.

Standing at that spot, they began the journey to find the next.

Yes, it had to be called a journey.

They spent three to four hours, uncovering eight turning points in total.

The paired turning points ensured this wasn’t a simple process.

With a sigh, the two finally sat back-to-back on the floor to rest.

“I must admit…the rules of these back rooms are absurd,” Jiang Wan said, pulling at her clothes to let out some warmth.

But Chen Qing shook his head, sighing. “It’s not so much difficult as it is neither easy nor hard.

This place is safe, extremely safe in fact.”

He smiled wryly. “But I didn’t expect that the phrase didn’t just refer to entering here—it also contained the rules of this back room.”

“No turning back in life.”

He nodded, not caring if Jiang Wan could see.

“How did you realize?” she asked curiously.

“No turning back means always forward, but life shouldn’t have no turning back—what if, some day, your goal appears behind you?

So I tried walking backward.

But it didn’t work.

Since there’s no turning back, yet we kept returning to the starting point, there’s only one explanation: We were walking the wrong route, always on the road back.”

Chen Qing smiled calmly. “See, once we found the correct path, didn’t we get out quickly?

Because this time we didn’t encounter the turning points, we never stepped onto the road back.

Thus—

We fulfilled the rule of this back room.”

They looked back—the three-hundred-square-meter space still seemed as vast as dozens of football fields. Ahead, a ruined corpse lay.

The body was swallowed by the wall, only a pair of hands and a head fixed in the concrete.

His body had long since become bone, but the skeleton seemed cemented in place, so the remains were still embedded.

Every fingertip was preserved on the wall, maintaining their appearance from life.

“What do you think…” Jiang Wan whispered to Chen Qing, “Is he connected to the rules of the back room?”

Chen Qing murmured affirmatively, nodding. “But what happened in this building all those years ago…”

He frowned, walked closer to the corpse, and reached out to touch its fingers. The sensation was chillingly cold.

He was silent for a moment before saying, “Come on, let’s check the rest of this place. There’s no reason for only one body to be here.”