Hey, first of all, thanks for reading my lousy Machine Translation. To be honest, I’d really like it if you guys corrected the mistakes I made. But please speak nicely and politely. My heart is not strong enough to read your too-harsh comments. Have a nice day. 🙂
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Chp35. part1
The countdown was a death knell, the numbers ticking down with malicious intent.
Ning Ge’s mind raced.
All the clues pointed to Mosh—the perfect Puppet Servant, the King of Puppet Servants. Why wasn’t he the Anchor Point?
Ning Ge scanned the room, her gaze freezing on Pei Han.
No way.
She tried releasing her Thought Silk.
Countless threads shot out, attaching to Pei Han.
Pei Han’s forearm suddenly twitched.
Even Pei Han looked puzzled, lowering his arm to examine it.
“Mosh, get up! Pei Han!” Ning Ge shouted. “Go sit on the throne!”
Everyone: ???
Pei Han paused only briefly before a wry smile spread across his face. With a helpless shrug, he walked over and sat on the throne of the King of Puppet Servants.
Owen frowned. “What does this mean? Are you saying we need to scan Pei Han? He’s the Anchor Point? Ning Ge, stop messing around.”
They had used two of their three scanning opportunities. They had to save the last one; they couldn’t risk another failed attempt.
Just as Ning Ge was about to speak, Teacher Su stepped forward, found the right angle, and aimed her scanner at Pei Han, who was seated on the throne.
With a flash, she vanished.
Pei Han really was the Anchor Point.
Owen was astonished. “He’s actually the Anchor Point?”
Everyone was excited that the Anchor Point had been found in time.
But Ning Ge couldn’t share their enthusiasm. If he was the Anchor Point, there would be a huge problem.
Time was running out, and her voice trembled. “Pei Han, when scanning the Anchor Point, do you have to wear the bracelet on your own wrist?”
Pei Han looked at her calmly and replied, “Of course. Otherwise, you can’t transmit.”
Ning Ge quickly called Engineer Zheng over. “Engineer Zheng, hold the bracelet close to Pei Han and take a picture.”
She needed to stay and help Pei Han, so she couldn’t use her own bracelet for the experiment.
Engineer Zheng didn’t understand, but he activated the scanner in the bracelet.
Ning Ge instructed him to stand an arm’s length away from Pei Han’s face, trying to frame both Pei Han and the throne in the shot, and scan.
Failure. It didn’t work.
Engineer Zheng tried a different angle, shooting from above and trying to capture the throne, but it still wouldn’t work.
He needed to be far enough away to get a full shot of Pei Han and his throne.
But the bracelet had to be worn on his wrist, so the distance wasn’t enough for Pei Han to take a selfie that included both himself and the throne.
Ning Ge turned and bolted.
Owen called out from behind, “Anything I can do?”
“No time! You guys hurry up and scan the anchor!” Ning Ge shouted as she ran, too focused to look back. “I’ll be right back!”
Four minutes left.
The Anchor Point wasn’t Mosh, of course it was Pei Han.
This was a role-playing dungeon, and Pei Han was playing the role of the truly flawless Puppet Servant.
He was Viscountess Nona Xiya’s masterpiece, her secret weapon for this year’s Puppet-Making Competition.
Alpha was the player least likely to die. From the very beginning, the dungeon had chosen him as the Anchor Point—at least as the primary choice, should anything happen to him.
He was perfectly fine, and the plot had been unfolding as if he were the Anchor Point all along.
Just as the Queen placed Mosh in the Brotherhood, the Viscountess Nona placed Pei Han in the sewing Workshop, among humans. No one noticed his flaws.
The task to find the “Viscountess’s favorite Wooden Puppet Servant” did indeed lead to Iris.
Iris’s body was covered in a soft outer layer, with a wooden core inside. Pei Han, however, was different.
According to the Queen, just like Mosh, Pei Han was made from the latest materials—soft and warm, indistinguishable from humans.
The riddle, so simple it always made Ning Ge suspect a trap, actually held the biggest clue.
The Viscountess’s three favorite flowers were Cornflower, Iris, and Rose.
Just as lilies represented Mosh and sunflowers the Iron Puppet Granny, Cornflowers represented Little Husky, Irises represented Iris, and Roses represented Pei Han.
Each flower was linked to a Puppet Servant, not a living person.
The Viscountess’s password sequence—Cornflower—Iris—Rose—was also crucial.
From Cornflower to Iris to Rose was the order in which the Puppet Servants were made. The Viscount first created Little Husky, then Iris, and Pei Han was her latest creation.
Mosh was exceptionally skilled, deceiving the Wooden Puppet Guards of the Royal Palace and all human eyes. Pei Han had achieved the same.
But the Viscountess had tricked something even harder to deceive—the Sacrificial Dance Floor.
Even the dance floor treated him as a man, failing to recognize that he was actually a Puppet Servant.
He was the one who deserved the Gold Medal, the one who should have sat on the stage throne—the true Anchor Point of this dungeon.
Ning Ge rushed into the corridor.
To get him to photograph himself, she needed a large mirror, and it couldn’t be small.
The top-floor corridor walls were covered with Queen portraits. Ning Ge knew there were mirrors in some of the lower-floor corridors, but with only a few minutes left, finding one in this labyrinthine place was probably impossible.
Ning Ge quickly activated her bracelet and flipped to the Lambda icon.
The activation button finally turned from gray to active.
She tapped “Activate” and stared intently at her arm, waiting for the green progress bar indicating her NPC status to appear.
“Just glitch out, please,” Ning Ge prayed. “Just glitch out again.”
Data flowed, and the truth of the world began to emerge. Attributes appeared on the Queen portraits on the walls.
A few minutes later, when Ning Ge returned, clutching a Queen portrait that had transformed into a large mirror, the hall was already completely empty.
Following Ning Ge’s instructions, everyone was dismissed, leaving Pei Han alone on the throne.
He sat there, behind him radiating thousands of fine threads like a radiant sun. His long legs were bent and stretched, propping up his head as he looked utterly bored, awaiting Ning Ge’s return.
Ning Ge quickly brought over a chair, set up the mirror in front of Pei Han, adjusted its angle, and her hands trembled uncontrollably.
I’m running out of time.
Pei Han glanced at the mirror, his tone calm. “It’s ready. You scan first.”
Ning Ge checked the mirror again, still uncertain if this would pass.
The countdown was ticking down, counting the seconds.
“Hurry up. I can’t scan until you’re done,” Pei Han urged.
He was right. He couldn’t leave until she scanned him, so she had to scan first.
Ning Ge bit her lip and aimed her bracelet at him, activating the scan.
The transit hall appeared.
Ning Ge stood frozen, her limbs cold and stiff, unable to move forward.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
Pei Han didn’t follow her out.
This is all my fault.
Ning Ge’s whole body trembled.
I was too reckless. Too arrogant.
He had followed her wholeheartedly, trusting her completely, entrusting his life to her hands. And what had she done?
The Sprint Time was only twenty-six minutes. She shouldn’t have listened to the Queen and Mosh’s long-winded drama, wasting so much precious time.
Even without listening to that long, time-consuming tutorial, she knew Mosh wasn’t real—he was a puppet. She should have interrupted them long ago and rushed to the stage to scan Mosh.
That would have immediately revealed the System’s constant misdirection. Mosh wasn’t the Anchor Point; the Anchor Point must be Pei Han.
It was all her fault.
It’s completely her fault.
In the Transit Station, people bustled past, none sparing others a second glance. Within the dungeon, life and death, joy and sorrow faded into the background. People hurried about, each rushing to their own destination.
“You’re blocking everyone’s way.”
A familiar, gentle voice came from behind, and a hand rested on Ning Ge’s shoulder.
He was out.
Ning Ge felt a wave of relief. She turned and threw her arms around his waist.
Pei Han froze.
After a moment’s hesitation, he returned the embrace, murmuring, “Were you scared? The mirror’s angle wasn’t quite right. I just needed a few more seconds to adjust it. This is the first time I’ve ever scanned myself.”
More people emerged behind them.
The two of them stood there in their embrace, now truly blocking the path.
Ning Ge realized she’d been too impulsive. Holding him like this was inappropriate. She released him, stepped back several paces, and moved out of the arrival zone.
Owen, who had been waiting nearby, now approached them.
He smiled at Pei Han. “You wouldn’t believe it. When she came out just now, I finally understood what it means to look ashen and grief-stricken.”
Pei Han rolled his eyes. “Grief-stricken? If you don’t know how to use an idiom, just don’t.”
The Bracelet chimed with a message:
[Dungeon Experience Points: +1]
[Lambda Experience Points: +1]
[Test Reward Points allocated: 500,000 transferred to your account.]
Ning Ge no longer cared about experience points or ranking. All that mattered was that everyone had returned safely.
“Let’s go upstairs for something hot,” Pei Han suggested.
The top floor remained unchanged.
On the Alpha Monthly Rankings, “PH” still firmly held the first position, with a gap of two more Achievement Points over “L” than the last time they checked.
As the leaderboard refreshed page after page, Ning Ge noticed that “–“, the user who had been looking down on the entire rankings with their emoticons, had climbed significantly.
In Pei Han’s suite, Ning Ge finally felt a bit better as she sank into the soft, comfortable sofa.
Pei Han went to make her coffee, while Owen sat beside her, as usual, picked up a game controller, turned on the TV, and prepared to play.
“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Owen said, trying to comfort her. “Don’t take all the responsibility onto yourself. In places like this, death is pretty normal, isn’t it? Besides, even if Pei Han survived today, he’d die sooner or later anyway.”
Ning Ge: “……”
Owen started the game, selected his character, and waited for it to load.
“Death isn’t a big deal; it’s a compulsory course for everyone.” He paused, then suddenly said, “For a while, I thought about dying every day.”
On the screen, Owen’s character bounced cheerfully and struck a cool pose.
“Not the kind of ‘I really want to die’ people talk about casually. I mean ‘really’ wanted to die.”
“I seriously researched all sorts of ways to die,” he continued. “Every single one was agonizing. None of them were appealing. I knew perfectly well I had my mother—at least for her, I couldn’t actually do it. But the problem was, I couldn’t find a way to live either.”
He paused again. “I really couldn’t.”
Ning Ge turned to look at him.
