Qin Luosong: "Ji Shilu just opened his eyes in the sea of consciousness. The abilities belonging to the player are still too weak. The power they can bear is, compared to... compared to the essence of those things, as insignificant as a feather. Moreover, the 'Dream Maker's' tools can directly affect the mind. As long as the will descending from Them is forced into slumber, we have a way to wrap things up."
Cheng Tingyu blinked: "So you overlaid the two copies, using the dream copy as a seal for the apartment copy."
"..."
Qin Luosong silently looked at the respondent who had just blurted out his answer. The latter's expression remained calm and composed: "I had some guesses about the actual situation here."
The officer stationed at Apartment No. 6 sighed at his own competence, then said, "Based on your performance, I have serious doubts about the words 'a little'."
Cheng Tingyu smiled, "Because there's a problem with the probability."
Qin Luosong roughly guessed a bit: "The probability you're referring to, is it the probability of guests being captured into the instance?"
Cheng Tingyu: "The forum posts mentioned that the probability of a tenant entering a dungeon is not one hundred percent. Other people in the apartment told me that the probability of a player being captured is three out of five, while the probability for an ordinary person is one out of five. However, whether it's a player or an ordinary person, the first day in the dungeon is relatively safe."
"If only I or Mr. Ji from 604 had directly entered the instance on the first day we moved into the apartment, it could be said that we were just unlucky. But the residents of 501 and 504 were also captured by the instance. This situation clearly contradicts the previous information."
"So where exactly is the problem? What we know so far is that people who have entered the instance can become the instance entrance, and this 'instance entrance' attribute can be transmitted through close contact."
At this point, Cheng Tingyu laughed again: "Whether it was me or those three Mr. and Ms. Ji, after moving into the apartment, we all had a period of interaction with the long-term residents. Based on what happened later, I have reason to suspect that the true method of spreading the dream copies is from person to person.
"The apartment is not the point of transmission; the residents within the apartment are. The entrance to the copy has the characteristic of disappearing once the thirty-day period is up, and the inspection team has been trying to preserve the dream copy. This is either because there are uncontrollable residents in the apartment who do not leave after their stay expires, or because the existence of the dream copy itself has a function. Of course, from the current situation, both assumptions are true."
"Such a strange probability, if you think about it carefully, the answer is obvious."
Qin Luosong cleared his throat and said, "When explaining your thought process, you can omit descriptions like 'obviously' to make it more concise."
Otherwise, she couldn't help but wonder if she had stayed in the apartment for too long, away from the front lines for so long that she had lost her keen sense of observation.
Cheng Tingyu accepted the suggestion, then omitted the embellishments in between and spoke directly from the heart: "After understanding the internal logic, I roughly grasped the relationship between the two copies."
Qin Luosong's expression froze: "…You've only been here for three nights."
Just by looking at the content of their conversation at this moment, she felt that Cheng Tingyu seemed more like the staff member who had been stationed in the instance for a long time.
Cheng Tingyu smiled, "I also entered the instance while taking a nap, so I gathered a bit more information."
"..."
Qin Luosong took a deep breath, stood up, and politely said, "Wait a moment, I'll call my colleague over to listen in."
Ten minutes later.
The individual interrogation turned into a dual interrogation with Yu Zhishou and Qin Luosong.
Although the numbers formed a two-to-one situation, Qin Luosong felt that the side under greater mental pressure might not be the one being questioned in front of him..
Yu Zhishou didn't quite understand why she had been called in for this matter, but she generally supported her colleague's work. She glanced casually at the records and continued to ask, "You discovered that the apartment is actually two copies, and then?"
Cheng Tingyu: "I..."
Taking another look at the contents of the record, Yu Zhishou's work state, which had declined due to staying up late, finally improved a bit. She belatedly realized something and interrupted the person in front of her: "Wait, you've already discovered that there are two copies in the apartment?!"
Cheng Tingyu: "Since there was nothing else to do in the apartment, I just did some thinking."
Yu Zhishou: "…Please, go on."
Cheng Tingyu: "In the early hours, I was awakened by the strange occurrences in the corridor. Since the 'Check-in Notice' advised guests to try to sleep before three o'clock, and sleep should be a relatively safe state, I went back to sleep. Then I entered a dream instance, cleared it, and obtained an item that put the monsters outside into a deep sleep."
Yu Zhishou, Qin Luosong: "..."
They felt that Cheng Tingyu's summary was a bit too concise, omitting very important details.
Qin Luosong thought for a moment. She knew that Cheng Tingyu wanted to use the information she had to exchange intelligence with the inspection team, so she revealed a bit more: "The content on the forum posts is indeed incomplete. The source of the 01 copy is the Dreammaker, and as for the 02 copy, it also includes some power from the realms, incantations, and secret eyes."
She showed Cheng Tingyu a photo, and in the photo was a red apartment building.
Qin Luosong: "This is what Apartment No. 6 looked like when it originally had a balcony. At that time, the population density in this area was slightly higher than it is now, but it was still relatively desolate. Some players who wanted to stay away from the crowd, as well as temporary residents who couldn't afford hotel rent, lived in the apartment. At first, there were no issues, but one day, one of the tenants awakened the power of 'Secret Eye,' causing that, that thing's power to extend into reality and turn the surrounding tenants into its followers."
"However, at that time, there were still 'domains' and 'curses' at play, with different forces overlapping each other, eventually leading to the current situation. The old apartment vanished, hidden in the crevices between the real and the spiritual worlds, occasionally overlapping with the present-day Apartment No. 6. The residents who turned into familiars possess a strong desire to attack and will seek out the nearest living person. It's just that due to the spatial barriers, it's not so easy for them to make direct contact with the living."
"The inspection team summarized the patterns and found that the time points when the old apartment and the new apartment overlap are over ninety percent after midnight, with most occurrences concentrated between three and four in the morning. However, it is also possible during the day, as long as the living person's sanity value is low enough, or if they possess the 'dense pupil' trait, which increases their likelihood of encountering monsters."
"The dreamscape can affect the monsters' sanity, causing them to act purely on instinct. They won't randomly run out of the apartment unless there aren't enough living people around, in which case they will go outside to hunt."
Cheng Tingyu nodded—so the dreamscape copies and the residents of this place were all methods used to contain Apartment No. 6.
Qin Luosong: "The inspection team has tried to exterminate those kin, and after some analysis, we have discovered certain patterns."
Communicating with Cheng Tingyu can be quite pleasant at times, especially when she can keep up with the interlocutor's train of thought. The young man pondered, "As long as the monsters are in a state of sleep and their location can be determined, can the inspection team kill them?"
This is very close to the fourth rule in the "Check-in Instructions": "If you find signs of activity on an unoccupied bed, you must leave the dormitory immediately and go to the lobby on the first floor to seek help from the staff on duty."
Qin Luosong gave a definite answer: "That's right."
The inspection team told Guocheng Tingyu about the background of the copy, and she smiled, unhurriedly saying, "In the dream copy spread among the apartment residents, there are actually many hints for passing through."
Yu Zhishou slapped down a stack of documents, all of which contained the inspection team's exploration records of the dreamscape copies over the years.
Judging by the thickness of the documents, it wasn't as extensive as Cheng Tingyu had imagined.
This is quite normal. For the inspection team, the real danger lies in the ancient originators and their kin. As for the dream copies, when they are no longer needed, simply cutting off the source of transmission can prevent the spread of the copies, without spending too much time pondering the mechanism.
Cheng Tingyu casually picked up a few pages and flipped through them, showing great interest: "Your research is very detailed."
Qin Luosong always felt there was a subtle pause in the other person's words. He cleared his throat and said, "We've tried many ways, no matter what we do or how many items we find, the outcome is always a dead end."
As a member of the inspection team, when Qin Luosong first started guarding the apartment, he was eager to find a way to completely solve the dream dungeon. However, after countless failed attempts, he finally decided to focus on his primary duty as the apartment manager and no longer involve himself in the sanity-testing dungeon explorations.
Cheng Tingyu: "Going upstairs is not the correct way to pass through."
Yu Zhishou: "The inspection team has long considered other possibilities. We verified the method of going downstairs, and it would also result in death. Staying in the room is not a good idea either; at most, it would delay things by six or seven minutes, or even less. The outcome would still be failure."
Cheng Tingyu looked at the staff in front of him: "You should know that the participant's identity in the dream scenario is the child who just moved into 401?"
Yu Zhishou and Qin Luosong both nodded—this conclusion could be drawn from the unopened boxes in the room and the style of the interior arrangement.
Cheng Tingyu flipped through the documents, the corners of his lips slightly curved: "In the following narration, I will first replace the participant's identity in the instance with '401'—401 had just moved in at the time, so their understanding of the new home was very limited. They hadn't visited any neighbors, so in 401's dream instance, the participant couldn't open the door to the next room."
Yu Zhi Shou: "But the door to room 501 can be opened..."
Cheng Tingyu shook her head slightly: "What was opened wasn't 501, but 401's fantasy about the other rooms upstairs. As for the source..." She thought for two seconds and guessed, "It was probably something like 'Our house has the same layout as the one upstairs, but it's different from the one next door' that Mom and Dad once said. A child can't fully understand this sentence, so in 401's dream, all the houses ending in 01 became replicas of their own home."
Yu Zhishou had to admit that Cheng Tingyu's hypothesis was reasonable.
Moreover, she also thought of other details: "So the floors in the dream copy are endless because 401 had just moved in and didn't know the exact height of the building."
Cheng Tingyu: "I tend to think it won't be too high, probably only about six floors, because this building isn't equipped with an elevator. If it had a hundred floors, it obviously wouldn't be very friendly to the residents on the top floor."
Yu Zhishou murmured, "'Dreams are but fragments of reality'—so indeed, they are merely fragments."
Cheng Tingyu: "The document also shows that the props obtained on the seventh floor cannot be used on the sixth floor because the seventh floor and above are merely the fantasies of Room 401, while the sixth floor is based on reality. Naturally, things conjured from fantasies cannot affect reality."
Qin Luosong opened his notebook, quickly jotting down notes, while gesturing for the other person to "please continue."
Cheng Tingyu: "As for the prototype of the monsters in the instance, I lean towards 'fire'." She closed her eyes briefly, then continued, "If 401 chooses to stay at the respawn point without moving, the outcome is immediate death on the spot. If they choose to leave the room, every time they will have their throat crushed by a black claw."
"The truth behind the sudden death was likely carbon monoxide poisoning, and the prototype of being strangled by black claws probably died in the fire after inhaling a large amount of dust."