Chapter 69: Dialectical Game (7) Survival Instinct

Time flew; the lights went out, and a darkness thick enough to touch turned the room into an artificial night.

Qi Si curled beneath the blanket, fingers on his pulse, silently counting the seconds.

Seven thousand two hundred seconds—two hours—he reckoned the night was deep, rolled out of bed, tucked the pillow under the sheet, and folded the corners to shape a body still sleeping.

He groped his way into the bathroom attached to the Observation Room and ran his hand along the switches; only the small lamp above the basin answered, lighting the mirror set into the wall.

The pale night-lamp sheathed his reflection in a thin glow, bright patches and shadows sliding across the glass.

On that ashen face, black pupils swallowed each eye; the whites were almost gone—exactly the look of a non-human extra in a horror film.

After using the toilet, Qi Si stepped beside the mirror, tilted his head at several angles, even pulled exaggerated faces.

Yet no matter how he studied it, the figure in the glass could pass for any humanoid creature—anything but a real person.

He flashed the reflection a sly grin: ‘First thing after I escape: buy myself some colored contacts.’

He drew the rubber tube of the IV catheter buried in the back of his left hand and, with his right, slid it into the keyhole of the mechanical lock under the bathroom light.

Accustomed to fine wire, he fumbled with the unfamiliar material; two minutes passed before the lock clicked open.

Then he pushed the door and stepped out. The corridor was dim—perhaps to save power, only every fifth ceiling panel glowed, leaving long stretches in gloom.

Moisture hung in the air, maybe from the humidity; droplets of disinfectant condensed on his face, cool and sharp.

By day the building looked futuristic; now it seemed derelict—green stains scraped between floor tiles, yellow splotches mottling once-white walls.

Qi Si melted into the shadows and followed his memory toward the surveillance room.

He met no one along the way—either Jin Yusheng had cleared the path or the staff were simply slacking.

Thinking of what he was about to do, he grinned with pure malice: ‘I do hope you’re not too shocked when you find me gone tomorrow.’

‘And if they order you to dig three feet underground, you might even earn some overtime—congratulations in advance.’

Yes, Qi Si had never intended to help Jin Yusheng kill the original; his plan from the start was simply to escape the Research Institute.

After all, the original ‘Qi Si’ was dangerous—and a copy carrying every memory of Qi Si was no less so.

Who could say Jin Yusheng wouldn’t decide to rid the world of both threats once the hounds were no longer needed?

His promise to Jin Yusheng had always been a bad cheque; all he wanted was to have the restraints removed and the surveillance relaxed.

Jin Yusheng understood him well—yet Qi Si never revealed his true self to anyone.

In Jin Yusheng’s eyes, a selfish Qi Si would surely find a way to kill the original and secure his own uniqueness.

What Jin Yusheng didn’t know was that Qi Si felt no attachment to the identity of ‘Qi Si.’

Social bonds, human interaction, self-actualization—those were traits of the human herd, and he could just as easily be a creature driven only by the instinct to survive.

So what if he was Qi Si? Or wasn’t? As long as he remained himself—capable of thought and action—he could be anything: a ghost, a monster, an insect, a demon… He found the surveillance room by memory, picked the lock with the catheter, and slipped inside.

Again, no guard; only a blue glow from the monitor lit the dim room.

Like the Observation Room, it was eerily clean—nothing but the surveillance equipment, a desk, and a chair.

‘A neglectful worker who keeps the place spotless—looks like the average citizen’s hygiene has improved these past three years…’

He muttered the jab, sat before the monitor, and began clicking the grid of camera feeds.

One square at a time he enlarged them, memorizing details and stitching the scenes together in his Hall of Thought until a complete map of the Research Institute took shape.

Using prominent landmarks like ‘Emergency Exit,’ he quickly located the exit and plotted a route out.

What bothered him was the absence of any exterior cameras—he had no idea what lay outside.

No matter; he had never planned to escape tonight anyway.

Best strategy: find a blind spot and hide all day, let the researchers scramble like headless chickens, then slip out once the chaos peaked.

Idling, he ran through every feed again; nowhere did he spot the original ‘Qi Si.’

Understandable—the original, the Institute’s most valuable asset, would be classified beyond ordinary surveillance.

Jin Yusheng, afraid the Eerie Game might notice his tampering, wouldn’t dare lift that secrecy early and expose the original’s location.

All Qi Si needed now was to use elimination: rule out the impossible and search the remaining places one by one.

Of course, Qi Si had no such leisure at the moment.

Propping his chin leisurely with his left hand, he used his right to control the mouse, captured a full hour of surveillance footage from this exact time yesterday, set it to loop, and one by one swapped out the feeds for every camera zone he planned to pass through.

First stop—the director’s office. While the place was empty he would search it from top to bottom; maybe he’d dig up some unspeakable secret he could use as blackmail for start-up funds once he escaped the Research Institute.

While he was at it, he’d jimmy every mechanical lock, ransack every searchable room, and if he could find anything that passed for a weapon, so much the better—it would improve his odds of getting out alive.

After that there’d be no time left; he’d spend the remaining day holed up in a surveillance blind spot and wait for a gap in security to slip away.

Reviewing the plan once more in his head, Qi Si felt good and strolled out of the monitor room humming a tune.

The instant he stepped over the threshold, a sidelong glance at the corridor windows narrowed his eyes to slits.

On the grimy, time-worn glass, two crimson handprints had appeared without warning, greasy and dripping thick, rich blood.

The ceiling light flickered like a bad connection; sticky pus oozed from the floor seams, pulsing as though alive.

The moment these eerie phenomena surfaced it felt as if a switch had been thrown; Qi Si sensed countless eyes sprouting behind him, glaring hungrily at his back.

He spun around. A yellow-stained wall met his gaze—no human figure, and… no reflection of his own.

On the window, the blood slowly knitted itself into lines of text:

【Eerie Name: Clone Research Institute】

【Eerie Source: Evolutionary Dead-End instance】

【Exchange Cost: 500,000 points】

【Exchanged by: Jin Yusheng】

【Arrival Time: 3 September 2035】

Twelve hours had passed since he opened his eyes; at last Qi Si caught another trace of the Eerie Game.

Invisible to non-players… terrifying yet familiar… threading through instance and reality alike—the Eerie Game.

Had the system noticed a bug and decided to send another invitation to patch the hole?

In the shadows Qi Si smiled oddly. “The whole Research Institute is an eerie entity bought out of the Eerie Game; supernatural stuff shows up at night, and they leave a weak, pitiful, helpless clone like me here alone—how thoughtful.”

The joke lost its color even as he told it; it didn’t make him laugh.

He squinted at the bloody letters for a long moment, then pressed his hand against the red print, ignoring the filth, angling until palm and print aligned perfectly.

The outline matched his own hand precisely, as though he had left the mark himself.

So… this print is supposed to be mine? Deliberate misdirection, or some parallel-world gimmick?” Countless hypotheses flashed through his mind, and for the first time his smile held real feeling.

This instance had been designed with clones and originals in mind; paradoxes abounded, amplified by the Eerie Game’s mechanics:

For example, anyone the Game hasn’t chosen can’t know it exists; anyone who knows it exists must already be chosen. So as a clone who knows about the Game, am Ia player or not?

If not, my very existence violates the Game’s basic rule. If I am, why is there no countdown in the upper left of my vision?

Unless… I’m still inside the instance, and the disappearance of the system interface is just part of the script—

A malicious segment meant to deceive me.

Treat it all as a puzzle and the next step is obvious: gather more clues and crack the worldview.

And by elimination, the likeliest place for key clues would be the Research Institute’s surveillance blind spot. Qi Si strode toward the one he remembered.

In the corridor the pale lights flickered, revealing drifts of grey-black stains crawling across the floor.

Handprints of blood crawled in sheets over glass and walls on both sides, chasing some formless presence ahead.

The reek of fermented disinfectant grew sharp; he felt soaked in mildew, as though he and the building would rot together.

Qi Si halted at the edge of the blind spot.

Before him stretched a dim passage: no tiles, no paint, nothing like the Research Institute’s interior—more like a ruined temple cloister.

A thick white fog rolled in from nowhere, blurring the scene. Through it he could barely make out grey figures: some sprawled on the ground, some dangling from the ceiling, some leaning against the wall.

Holding his breath, he stepped in. The moment the fog swallowed him he saw the nearest figure clearly—

Faint, smoke-thin brows, pale thin lips: unmistakably himself.

Instinctively he looked up at the hanging figure ahead.

The head drooped, limbs pierced by threads, suspended like a Puppet—and that silhouette was also him.

Every corpse here was his own.