Highway 9

Bai Ci composed herself. Without more clues to support her speculations, overthinking was pointless.

She dispelled her chaotic thoughts. Since she couldn't confirm if her guesses were correct yet, she had to focus on completing the dining task in front of her first, and worry about verifying her theories after she got the second stamp.

Bai Ci took one last look at the introduction sheet. Regardless of whether the things frying in the oil wok were humans or something else, she had no intention of eating them.

That went for the other items in the fried food section as well. Since they were fried in the same wok of oil, she would pass on them too.

In a way, she suddenly understood the horror of gutter oil.

Just as Bai Ci was about to move to the next section, she noticed that the corner of the introduction sheet was peeling back, making that particular spot look a bit bulged.

Intending to do a good deed, she tried to press the peeling corner back down, but the texture felt wrong under her hand, as if something were hidden behind it.

Pinching the corner of the introduction sheet, Bai Ci carefully peeled it upward, making sure not to damage the flyer itself.

Once she had peeled the bottom edge back a bit, she gripped the edge of the hidden object and pulled it out.

It was a neatly folded piece of paper, seemingly torn from a notebook. The handwriting on it was hurried and messy, as if written in a state of tension or anxiety.

[To whoever comes after me: When you read this letter, you must be in the same predicament I once was.

Having lost all your memories, you suddenly appeared in this strange place without warning, guided by the radio voice in your ear to complete those bizarre stamp-collecting tasks.

Please, you must listen to me. Do not trust those guides, and do not keep following the stamp-collecting tasks.

I know this is hard to believe, especially since everything in front of you seems so real, but I must warn you with the utmost seriousness:

Wake up! None of this is real. It is just a nightmare trapping you—a nightmare capable of devouring your actual life.

You are not dead. You never were.

You are simply trapped here by some kind of power, while your body is still alive and well in the outside world.

But if you truly finish visiting all four gas stations and complete the so-called “tasks,” you will never wake up again. You will be trapped in this bizarre place forever, while your body in the outside world will be reduced to a brain-dead, vegetative state.

I only managed to write this letter because I was lucky enough to discover a way to escape, and I hope it can save your life.

Have you seen 《Inception》?

If you want to break free from this nightmare and escape this terrifying cage, the only way is to shock your mind. And the fastest, most effective way to do that is suicide.

Please do not be afraid. Death here is not true extinction; it is merely the key to shattering the dream.

As long as you end your “life” here, you will immediately wake up from this scam and return to the world where you truly belong.

If you still do not believe me, that is fine. You can try walking backward. Look back at the road you have already traveled. Those stretches of road will have fallen into a suspended state because you have already passed them. If you look back, you will trigger a bug in the program, causing many of the messages left by other trapped people to be revealed.

Those messages should be enough to verify my words.

Finally, I have a small request, which is also a final wish of mine.

If you happen to meet a girl named Bai Ci on this bizarre journey, please protect her a little more for the sake of this life-saving letter I left behind.

She is my wife. She is very timid and will surely be frightened out of her wits by the eerie sights here.

Please tell her not to be afraid and not to give up. She must find a way to escape. I have not abandoned her. I am in the outside world, waiting for her to wake up, waiting to be reunited with her.

May both you and Bai Ci return to the real world.]

What a heartfelt letter, but Bai Ci felt absolutely nothing as she read it.

Setting aside how Yu Yue would even know how to escape, let's assume he figured it out from messages left by others when he turned back.

Was this method really reliable?

Furthermore, why leave it at the second gas station instead of the first?

Besides, where did he get a pen and paper? She had searched every nook and cranny of the car earlier and hadn't found anything of the sort.

Of course, these were just grounds for suspicion, but there was one thing that completely disproved the letter's authenticity.

Her Rain's Message panel.

It stated clearly on the panel that Yu Yue was thoroughly dead.

Even Fu Liu's complex state could be distinguished and labeled by the Rain's Message panel. If the letter were true, why would Yu Yue be labeled as deceased?

There might be hallucinations in the instance, and information inside the instance could lie, but the system panel would not.

This was a method of judgment unique to players. It was just that not every class had a panel they could check inside an instance, so this wasn't a universal trick.

Putting suicide aside, walking backward was strictly forbidden by the rules.

Bai Ci thought about it. The letter was highly likely a trap, deliberately written by someone in Yu Yue's name.

Enticing her to commit suicide would be the best-case scenario for the trap's creator, but even just planting a seed of doubt to make her break the rules would still be a win.

In fact, the latter was probably the primary goal. After all, humans loved to compromise.

If you asked someone to commit suicide right off the bat, they would definitely refuse. But if you just asked them to look back, that became much easier to accept, didn't it?

Although Bai Ci didn't believe it, she didn't do anything to the paper. Instead, she folded it up carefully and put it back in her pocket.

She planned to read it aloud to the radio host later when she was back in the car.

What would happen? She was actually looking forward to it.

Bai Ci pulled her thoughts back and began selecting her food.

She picked out a piece of boiled green vegetable, even going as far as to use Grow with Time to test it for poison before putting it on her plate.

Fortunately, Grow with Time was an item with a fixed appearance, so it wouldn't get dirty from coming into contact with the vegetable.

Carrying her plate to the dining area, the moment she put the food into her mouth and bit down, Bai Ci's expression instantly changed.

!

Heavens!

She had never eaten anything so disgusting in her life!

It smelled completely normal and ordinary, but when she tasted it, it carried an indescribable bitterness and fishy stench. It tasted like tree bark mixed with rotten fish and spoiled shrimp. As it slid down her throat, her stomach churned violently.

Bai Ci instinctively wanted to spit it out, but her physical fatigue and hunger indeed vanished because of that single bite.

This made her hold it back.

If she didn't eat this, her state of exhaustion might lead to severe consequences.

If someone were truly blinded by the appearance and smell, picked some food, and forced themselves to take a bite, they probably wouldn't be able to stomach a second bite.

But wait... there was a level of Hell where the punishment was related to wasting food.

Would she force herself to suffer through the terrible taste, or would she choose to be crushed to death in a mortar?

Take your pick.