Chapter 65 The Insurance Vault

Seeing that there was finally a way out of this hallucinatory forest, Jane was overjoyed and immediately ran toward the car along with Shadowslayer.

Hua Sheng followed closely behind them for a few steps, a wave of unspeakable doubt rising in his heart.

Instead of stepping out of the door, he stopped and glanced back into the house once more.

He thought of the bizarre dream he had just experienced, in which he had turned into a child.

Why did both he and that child appear in such a similar wooden cabin?

Who were that masked man and woman?

If those events were not his own memories, whose memories had drifted into his mind? Had he somehow traveled across time and space into a specific scene?

Besides, where had the clothes of that family of three in the wooden cabin come from, and why had they suddenly vanished? Were these people former guests of this jungle cabin? Could they be the family from that strange dream, and where were they now?

If all of this was merely a scenario designed by the White Mage to play his game of death, why would he go to such trouble to orchestrate these irrelevant details?

Hua Sheng did not know the answer, but deep down, he felt an inarticulable, strange sense of familiarity within this dreamlike setting, as if the dream were intertwined with some deeper event.

His intuition told him that he had witnessed certain... truths.

The reason it was so difficult to distinguish was that multiple events had become entangled, exuding completely different layers of visual information.

It was much like mixing paints of various colors together: although one could see the resulting blended color, it was nearly impossible to discern what the original colors had been.

Contamination?

For some reason, this word popped into his mind again.

Tianjizi had once mentioned the contamination of immortal arrays during the Heavenly Eye Trial.

An immortal array could be contaminated. Therefore, while being trapped inside some formation set up by the White Mage, the things and the truths one perceived would likewise be contaminated.

Many answers to his current questions already had precedents—the scenarios of contamination within the immortal arrays of the Heavenly Eye Trial had manifested during the Game of the Cunning Casket as a cruise ship, a futuristic apocalyptic world, and the hag Wuwang.

That was because the memories of Mingyou, Weiyu, and Hua Sheng had become intertwined for reasons still unknown to him. And the very design of the Heavenly Eye Trial had ultimately resulted in that unidentifiable setting.

Consequently, truth would contaminate truth, and scenario would contaminate scenario; this contamination caused the information to become bogged down, ambiguous, and difficult to recognize.

When he looked back after knowing most of the answers, he could clearly distinguish which "paints" had been mixed together.

Yet, while lost in the fog, Hua Sheng could only rely on guesswork.

His intuition told him that the existence of this house, right down to its furnishings and every single detail, was by no means a coincidence!

Perhaps not a single thing was pulled out of thin air; all the answers had simply been scrambled and reassembled.

What kind of event had once taken place in this setting?

It was not merely what had happened just now—the actions the White Mage had inflicted upon the three of them; there was something far more terrifying than that.

The clues scattered everywhere were in a jumble now. Hua Sheng could not tell them apart.

"Why aren't you coming out yet? What are you daydreaming for? Hurry up and leave!"

Shadowslayer Xiao Qi's urging echoed from outside the door.

With a roar, Jane started the Ferrari's engine, as if urging Hua Sheng once more to leave this place.

He himself wanted to get away from this intensely uncomfortable house as quickly as possible.

However, Hua Sheng knew that once he left, he would never have the chance to search for more clues.

This place would simply become a baseless "ghost trap," and he would never obtain the answers.

At this thought, Hua Sheng rushed frantically back into the room where he had just been tied up! He dashed back into the trap that had once imprisoned him, casting all caution aside!

Even though the White Mage could wake up at any moment, he could no longer care about that.

Although the wooden partition walls inside had already been dismantled, he could still vaguely distinguish the study from the bedroom. He desperately searched for the spot where the child in his dream had been sitting.

He returned to the child's seat, located the corner from the dream, and struck the wooden wall with his palm!

The wall instantly fractured, scattering wood chips and plaster across the floor.

Behind this plastered wall, an aged, old-fashioned safe was abruptly revealed!

Goosebumps broke out all over Hua Sheng's skin.

This was the exact safe from his dream just now! The previous dream had not been without reason—this safe had truly appeared before him!

Without a single moment of hesitation, he crouched down and rapidly spun the combination dial on the safe!

"99, 12, 48!"

Following the numbers he recited under his breath, he entered the combination and twisted the rust-stained handle.

Click!

The lock of the safe gave way under his hand!

The narrow, cramped interior of the safe was packed with stacks of materials. Some were thick manila envelopes bulging to the limit, while others were black-covered notebooks and photographs.

Hua Sheng shouted out as he rummaged through them like a madman.

"What is this! What on earth are you looking for, what are the child's parents trying to hide!"

He grabbed the documents and flipped through them rapidly, but the paper was covered in strange text. At first glance, it looked like pages full of words, but upon closer inspection, they were merely blurred masses of black.

It was like a severely nearsighted person trying to read a newspaper from afar without the aid of glasses.

He rubbed his eyes, but the characters on the page did not sharpen in the least.

Hua Sheng opened the black notebooks as well, but the situation remained identical. It was as if all the information had been covered with a layer of frosted glass, rendering any useful data unreadable.

When he looked at the photographs, they too were reduced to blurred, dim colors.

The entire safe was filled with this unreadable, celestial-script-like writing and inexplicable materials.

Why would those two masked people in his dream want these materials?

The items were still here, and the wall had been smashed open by Hua Sheng.

Had those materials already been taken by them, or had they not arrived yet and were yet to come and retrieve them?

Had the events in this house truly occurred, or were they merely some sort of portent?

Hua Sheng stood dazedly in front of the safe, completely baffled.

Suddenly, someone yanked his arm!

It was Shadowslayer standing behind him, pulling his arm and shouting, "What are you standing around like a fool for? I've been calling you for ages, what on earth are you trying to do with this pile of waste paper and garbage!"

With that, Shadowslayer dragged him toward the exit. Hua Sheng was practically hauled out of the house by her and then unceremoniously tossed into the back seat.

Shadowslayer climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the car door shut with a heavy bang. The car sped away into the darkness.

Until they reached the highway, Hua Sheng sat completely motionless, staring blankly ahead.

He merely repeated over and over in a daze, "Why? Why?"

Shadowslayer turned her head back and yelled, "Stop acting crazy with your endless ' whys'! This young lady is sick of it!"

Jane asked with a hint of worry, "What is actually wrong with you? You were fine just a moment ago. Why are you both acting like you've lost your minds?"

Only then did Hua Sheng slowly reply, "That house just now wasn't just bizarre. I feel like something was hidden in there."

Jane immediately retorted, "It was probably just a scenario set up by the magic array to induce hallucinations. You have to understand, a lot of those things were fake."

"No, no, no!"

Hua Sheng uttered three negatives in a row, then continued, "I feel like that scene hid something real. For example, that safe, and that combination... 99, 12, 48. It's exactly the same as what I saw in my dream while I was unconscious."

Shadowslayer's tone was full of skepticism: "What on earth are you playing at, Hua Sheng? We've escaped. Stop obsessing over such metaphysical nonsense."

Hua Sheng's tone grew urgent as he explained, "You might not understand. But to me, there are some very strange coincidences here. The combination to that safe just now—991248—is my exact identification number from the Heavenly Eye Trial!"