Day of Imprisonment

"Fire!" Zhou Di rushed out, shouting in the hallway.

His room was already filled with thick smoke, and faint flames could be seen.

That's right, his 'might makes right' strategy was to set his own room on fire.

Creating chaos to get all the residents out of the building would allow him to blend into the crowd and go downstairs.

Even if the killer was powerful, would he dare to kill in front of dozens of people?

Combined with the earlier police report, Zhou Di believed his chances of escaping this time were very high.

Sure enough, Brother Jia next door ran out with his dog.

More than a dozen neighbors ran down the fire escape, and residents from other floors also came running out, some even in their underwear, having lost a shoe in their haste.

Under these circumstances, the killer wouldn't be able to kill, right?

Zhou Di's plan was well-calculated.

As long as he could escape the building and leave this dangerous place, everything else could wait.

However, anyone observing carefully would notice that while everyone else was disheveled in their underwear, Zhou Di was fully dressed, and even had a backpack on.

Valuable things, of course, had to be taken.

Because he was afraid the commotion wouldn't be big enough, he had set a very thorough fire, resulting in it spreading very quickly, and the acrid smoke could be smelled several floors down.

But by this time, Zhou Di had no time to regret it, and fortunately, the neighbors on that floor had all been woken up and were going downstairs together.

Hopefully, there wouldn't be any fatalities.

Throughout this process, Zhou Di was also carefully observing, but he didn't see the raincoat killer.

The other party didn't take the opportunity to kill anyone.

Of course, it was also possible that they had, but Zhou Di hadn't seen it.

Finally, he ran downstairs, where many residents from the lower floors had already gathered, looking up at the building.

Some were even taking pictures with their phones.

As Zhou Di walked out of the building, he suddenly heard a voice in his ear.

"You have completed the initial scenario 'The Killer-Infested Building' and have been rewarded with 1 'Memory' card. You may draw 1 card at random."

Zhou Di froze.

He stood there in disbelief.

Until he reacted, reached into his pocket, and took out a card.

"Memory."

The back of the card had a spider on it.

The front had a beautiful illustration, along with the card's name and a description below.

Zhou Di was very familiar with this type of card, although the actual appearance was slightly different from what he had originally envisioned, it was close enough.

This was indeed the card style he had designed.

"So, Mr. D's game and this false world have merged into one?" Zhou Di thought of what Luo Xi had said before.

If he had been somewhat doubtful before, now the facts were in front of him, and there was no point in doubting anymore.

Zhou Di put the card back into his pocket.

His phone rang.

He took it out and saw that it was the number of the police officer who had been killed in the previous loop.

Zhou Di answered and met with the officers who had arrived.

There were indeed quite a few officers this time, because reporting a fire was no joke, and Zhou Di stammered and explained for a while before being taken to the station to explain the situation.

By the time he managed to deal with this matter and come out, it was already past ten in the morning.

"Is it cloudy?"

Looking at the gloomy clouds in the sky, Zhou Di was in a bad mood.

He found a fast-food restaurant to eat, after all, he hadn't eaten anything since last night and was already hungry.

Taking advantage of this time, he secretly drew a random card and obtained a card called "Treasure Map."

The card could be transformed into a map, with the locations of some valuable cards marked on it.

In addition, the small print on the card reminded him: "Please note that cards only exist within the scenario."

Zhou Di analyzed these two cards very carefully.

He even entered two other scenario levels according to the directions on the "Treasure Map" in the following period.

As a result, he experienced many deaths.

No matter what it is, if you experience it often enough, it becomes a habit, or at least you become very familiar with it.

Zhou Di was like that.

Although he really wanted to have a good chat with that guy named Luo Xi again, to understand this false world, to understand everything he wanted to understand.

But since witnessing the world's annihilation last time, Luo Xi had not appeared again.

So Zhou Di could only rely on himself to explore.

After experiencing two terrifying scenario levels, Zhou Di died more than twenty times, and finally managed to clear the two scenarios, and besides getting used to death, he had finally figured out many things.

First of all, it was completely certain that this world was false.

And 'Mr. D' was a card game that had merged with the false world. This card game seemed to have used some incredible power to create many places called 'Scenario Levels'.

Zhou Di also knew about scenario levels, which was originally an idea from his graduation design, a 'game map' to obtain cards, use cards, and level up.

But the actual scenario levels he encountered were very different from his original vision.

For example, the scenario levels here seemed to use some terrifying legends, some killers described in the news, or even someone's imagination, to create a place full of danger and opportunity.

Just like the 'initial scenario' Zhou Di himself experienced.

It was called 'The Killer-Infested Building', and Zhou Di learned by chance that the origin of this scenario was most likely from a novel called 'Rainy Night Killer'. After he specifically bought the novel and read it carefully, he found that the killer described in it was exactly the same as the one he had seen.

Clothing, physique, cruelty, and cunning, all the same.

"So, scenario levels extract these existing elements to construct the scenario."

Even knowing this, Zhou Di still felt a little confused.

What is the meaning of the existence of scenario levels?

He couldn't figure out this question himself.

Until he met the first 'Memory Retriever'.

Zhou Di defined the day after the world's annihilation as 'Day 1 of the Cycle', and he met the first Memory Retriever on Day 7 of the Cycle.

That was the first scenario on the [Treasure Map] that he investigated.

It was a bus.

Within Zhou Di's range of activity, he would not take this bus, which meant that if it weren't for the markings on the [Treasure Map], even in the same city, he might never have had any connection with this bus route in his life.

Not long after getting on the bus, he noticed a napping female college student.

Speaking of which, Zhou Di himself was also a college student, but the other party seemed to be only a freshman.

The other party suddenly woke up and hysterically wanted to get off the bus.

But the bus had not yet reached the stop, so she couldn't get off.

Some passengers advised her, and the seemingly pure freshman's emotions stabilized slightly, but she still looked terrified.

As a result, when the bus was about to stop, it exploded.

Yes.

Zhou Di was startled at the time.

The entire bus, including himself, was blown into the sky.

So, the next cycle day, Zhou Di still got on this bus at the appointed time.

This time, he saw the female college student still sleeping.

So he took the initiative to go over and wake her up.

As a result, the female college student still looked very terrified, and shouted that the bus would explode.

Facts proved that she was a jinx, and the bus exploded as soon as she finished speaking.

Zhou Di didn't even have time to say anything more.

So in another cycle, he went up and covered the female college student's mouth. The moment she woke up, he leaned over and whispered.

"Don't shout. I know this bus will explode. If you shout again, it will explode again. It takes me a long time to come and take this bus every time, so please don't waste my time."

Zhou Di's words worked.

Maybe the female student was frightened. In short, she stared with terrified eyes and nodded.

The following communication process was not smooth, and there were even some conflicts, misunderstandings, and messy accidents.

As a result, another cycle day was wasted, and the two of them established the most basic trust.

After the exchange, Zhou Di confirmed that the girl, like him, could retain her memory, but her situation was still different from his.

"I have a card called [Sleeping Bug], which says that as long as I fall asleep, even for a short while, I can immediately get a [Memory], but I can only sleep once in a scenario."

The girl said, her name was Zhao Shilei.

Sure enough, she was a freshman, but not from Zhou Di's school.

Zhou Di then realized that [Memory] was the key to preserving memory.

Having [Memory] was the only way to remember what happened in the previous cycle day.

But Zhou Di himself did not need [Memory] when experiencing the cycle day, and he would not consume any [Memory] every cycle day.

So during this time, he had accumulated many [Memory] cards.

Compared to Zhou Di, Zhao Shilei was still very inexperienced. Afterwards, they reviewed and found that if Zhao Shilei didn't have that [Sleeping Bug], she would not have been able to preserve her memory every cycle, and most importantly, she was sleeping at the beginning of every cycle.

Perfectly triggering the condition of [Sleeping Bug].

This formed a perfect closed loop.

That is to say, even if Zhou Di didn't get involved, Zhao Shilei, this natural lucky person, could gradually figure out the situation through multiple cycles, and then find a way to clear the level.

It would just take more cycle days.

But now that there was Zhou Di, a relatively senior player, their time to clear the level would obviously be faster.

So in a few cycle days, they peeled back the layers and finally found the cause of the vehicle explosion, preventing the disaster from happening.

After getting off the bus, both of them received clearance prompts and obtained corresponding card rewards.