Chapter 141: The Alive Gallery

Seeing the bullet text sent by Annan, Delicious Wind Goose was startled.

Then he quickly reacted.

Yes, it is vital.

“This friend is smart. He is not bound by cognitive inertia [1]. I’m half as witty.”

Old Goose casually praised, “I didn’t read the letter just now. I subconsciously thought it was the same as the letter which Child God had gotten. But it is a new environment. I really should recheck it…”

With that, Old Goose opened the envelope.

The envelope was still a fragment of Elle’s diary.

Under the usual operation on Dungeon Memorizing [1], Delicious Wind Goose had already realized it.

The diary mentioned that “Amos’ paintings were hung on the wall and looked like corpses outside the window.” It was already a psychological suggestion.

After Wandering Child read this letter and then looked back at the corpses in the hall, he realized that “the painting turned into a corpse.” It was precisely because of the foreshadowing of this letter that the sense of fear became more intense because of the “anticipation.”

This was a technique used in many horror games and horror movies.

The producer would mix some fragmented information in the main message and give it to the audience, using curiosity and fear to mobilize the audience’s attention.

For example, the audience who “suddenly see bloodstains” would become nervous. “People who see those with their heads down from the back” would subconsciously want to investigate it. They would want to know what was within when they saw “a group of people gathered together.” After finding the “closed cabinet” and entering the “closed space,” you would want to know what was inside.

This principle had a simple application.

In the early years, there were some scary pictures or media that became popular on the Internet. Generally speaking, they all had a lengthy suspension. When the camera zoomed in at the end, the ghost would suddenly appear.

This was because when it was focused, the audience would be subconsciously curious about it. That was why people felt the horror when they saw the jumpscare, rather than being in a daze. There was no doubt that the latter situation would significantly dilute the sense of fear.

The same principle was true when a ghost suddenly haunts when the victim turned around after reaching the end. The same went for opening a door into a new and unfamiliar space. It was precisely because the sense of curiosity was aroused that a person would be exposed to those terrifying elements in a sensitive state.

Only those who have read this letter felt the fear of the painting becoming a corpse. When the shadow changes, the victim would immediately think “someone was outside the window” instead of thinking they saw it wrongly.

But, there was a problem.

This letter was on the fourth level. It was supposedly useless.

It might be the key to take away the diary in the cabinet, just like on the second level where the knife was the key to take away the tomato.

If the tomato represented food and blood, and the knife represented cutting and death, then the diary and the diary fragments must also indicate something.

—Wait, not only that.

What if the dungeon challenger got a knife in the second level but didn’t enter the nightmare of the second level… but directly entered the third level?

On the third level, if the dungeon challenger had a weapon in their hands, the situation against the Brother Sledgehammer would turn out better.

If the dungeon challenger was lucky, they might be able to repel Brother Sledgehammer once.

Delicious Wind Goose murmured,

“Yes…Yes…

“If you get the clothes on the first level and the knife on the second level, then you can put the knife in your clothes. If you just walked forward without hesitation after taking the diary, you can let Brother Sledgehammer directly appear behind you.

“—At this time, the distance between you and Amos allows you to injure this enemy with a knife!”

Delicious Wind Goose was suddenly enlightened.

Annan also realized what Old Goose meant.

“…So that’s it, I totally understand now.”

Annan whispered, “The reason there is no nightmare on the first level is that there is nothing in the display cabinet on the first level.

“There is a dress on the coat rack, which implies that there is a “path beyond the nightmare.’ That is the existence of Level -1.

“The display cabinet on the second level is a tomato, and the key is a knife. After the tomato is cut with a knife, a lot of blood will flow out. This implies that the homeless men are tricked into this place because of the food. Maybe their fate ends up being squeezed into juice like a poor tomato. The tongue in the tomato may refer to Amos’s witty tongue, tricking the homeless men.

“So, the dark shadows under the chandelier may be the homeless men.”

Annan thought of the blood and black mud all over the basement in Yiyi’s live broadcast.

The volume surpassed two people.

But if all the homeless men who Amos tricked were killed and then thrown into the basement for bloodletting, that blood volume seemed to make sense.

Annan’s fingers tapped his thigh lightly, seemingly enlightened,

“The keywords of the third level are diaries and diary fragments. The diary undoubtedly implies the key information at the ‘study’ pointed out in Elle’s diary. The diary fragments are alluding to ‘the Venerated Skeleton’s ritual.’ The torn-off pages in the diary undoubtedly heralded the ending of Elle’s eyes and hair being taken away after the ritual was over.”

The core mechanism of this dungeon instance was nothing else but…

The display cabinet!

What was in the display cabinet represented the keyword of the nightmare on this level!

What would be placed in the display cabinet?

Painting!

After careful thought, Annan recalled the illusion that Jiu Er fell into the second level.

So those were the reasons why the small dungeon instances were displayed as “Gallery: XXX?”

Because they were actually in the illusion created by Amos’s work…

—But, something still didn’t seem right.

The players were playing as Amos.

So this should be Amos entering the illusion he created…

Annan suddenly realized that he, the players, and the Silver Sire’s priests had overlooked an important point.

They seemed to subconsciously connect the horror elements seen everywhere in the gallery, a.k.a the dungeon instance, with the sledgehammer who pursued Amos.

But, what if those terrifying traps were not on the same side as Brother Sledgehammer?

If the endless gallery was Amos’s means of escape?

It was a possibility worth considering.

In the second level, Jiu Er had already shown it to Annan. Amos could control the space in this building at will. He could easily create complex, distorted, and messy architectural structures.

Amos just lacked the means to identify the location of other people.

Then, an idea suddenly emerged in Annan’s mind.

Brother Sledgehammer disappeared suddenly when he was on the second level. When he was on a pursuit at the third level, he couldn’t chase into the indoor.

This might be because this complicated and terrifying gallery was helping Amos to escape!

[1] More of a Chinese Terminology in the game. To depict the process of players meticulously memorizing all the dungeon challenges while dying repeatedly and retrying the same dungeon.