Although his face was full of confusion and reluctance, Kim Won-hoon knew Chen Junnan all too well.
Under his relentless pestering, he had no choice but to accept the task of helping him tear down all the doors.
Soon enough, Kim Won-hoon realized the task wasn’t actually that difficult. After all, most of the doors here already looked dilapidated—some could even be shattered with just a hard kick.
Even so… Kim Won-hoon glanced back at the seemingly endless corridor and still felt the weight of the daunting task ahead.
“Bro…” Kim Won-hoon hesitated before asking, “Since this ‘train’ is divided into three sections… what’s the third part?”
“Didn’t I just say you’ve got no brain at all?” Chen Junnan shot back. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Huh?”
“The third part is the ‘Interview Zone,'” Chen Junnan said darkly. “Deep in the most shadowy and ruined part of the corridor, there’s an ‘interview room’ for each of us. We were led out from the other end of the hallway, heading to different zones. If we’d stubbornly gone the opposite way, we would’ve met the ‘Celestials.'”
Kim Won-hoon paused, then raised his own question: “Then should we wreck the doors to those ‘interview rooms’ too?”
“That place…” Chen Junnan fell into thought, as if stumped by the question.
“Bro, judging by the weird layout here and the earlier ‘Cangjie Chess’ game…” Kim Won-hoon mused along, “our ‘interview rooms’ might be scattered all over the place, not even on this ‘train,’ right?”
“Yeah… pretty much,” Chen Junnan nodded. “It might look like we came from the ‘interview rooms’ into the corridor, but there’s no telling where those rooms actually are. They could be in Afghanistan, or the Taklamakan Desert for all we know.”
“Bro, could you try to say something I can actually understand…?”
“Point is, these ‘doors’ teleport us across vast distances, only to end up in the same corridor…” Chen Junnan explained. “And even the door at the end of the corridor is weird. Different teams exit to different locations. Plus, since we all finish our room’s game at different times, we arrive in the ‘Land of Finality’ in batches over the course of a single day.”
“Oh, that part’s definitely true,” Kim Won-hoon nodded.
“Right… you even waited for us at the arrival spot,” Chen Junnan recalled. “You probably understand the mechanics better than I do.”
“Yeah, Bro. Chu-ge also said that even though everyone arrives at different times, it’s always within the same day,” Kim Won-hoon agreed. “That day doesn’t count toward the ‘Ten Days’—Chu-ge calls it the ‘Descent Day.'”
“Old Qi calls it ‘Day Zero’…” Chen Junnan nodded. “Those two figured everything out so damn early…?”
“So…” Kim Won-hoon still didn’t quite get it, “should we destroy the ‘doors’ to those interview rooms or not…?”
“I don’t think it matters. Those ‘rooms’ are probably scattered all over, miles away from us…” Chen Junnan trailed off, feeling an invisible thread of thought suddenly weave through his mind.
“Wait a sec…” He blinked. “Holy shit…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Hold on… let me sort this out…” Chen Junnan muttered. “I just thought of something, and it feels really damn weird…”
Kim Won-hoon thought Chen Junnan’s earlier ramblings were already bizarre enough—was there something even stranger than that?
“Little Kim! Little Kim!” Chen Junnan patted his shoulder urgently. “Help me think this through… Our ‘interview rooms’ might be in Afghanistan or the Taklamakan Desert… theoretically miles away from this ‘train,’ and even farther from the ‘Land of Finality’… right?”
“Yeah…” Kim Won-hoon nodded. “Didn’t you just say that yourself…?”
“That makes no fucking sense…” Chen Junnan’s expression twisted in confusion. “Why the hell did it never occur to me before that these things are so far apart?”
“Huh?” Kim Won-hoon hesitated. “Bro, what do you mean…?”
“I spent over seven years in that damn room… With my brilliant mind, why didn’t I ever realize this?” Chen Junnan demanded. “I always thought the ‘interview rooms’ were right in the ‘Land of Finality,’ that they were super close… With my brilliant mind…”
Kim Won-hoon almost blurted out, *Maybe you don’t actually have a brilliant mind*, but decided against it and instead asked:
“So… what do you think the reason is?”
“Because I fucking heard the bell!” Chen Junnan’s expression darkened. “Goddammit… why the hell could I hear the bell from inside our interview room?! How does that make any sense?!”
“WHAT?!” Kim Won-hoon’s face paled. “Bro… no way. You could hear the bell in your room?”
“You guys couldn’t, right?” Chen Junnan pressed. “If I had to guess… I bet damn near none of the ‘interview rooms’ in the entire ‘Land of Finality’ could hear it… because it shouldn’t be possible. It means our ‘interview room’ was right next to the giant bell… You can’t even hear it in the ‘corridor,’ but you can in the ‘interview room.’ That means we might not even need the ‘train’ to get to the ‘Land of Finality’ at all…”
“Bro, I’m lost again…”
“My brain’s fried too…” Chen Junnan frowned. “How could Old Qi not know about this…? Why the hell could we hear the bell in our room…?”
Chen Junnan closed his eyes, racking his brain. The situation was undeniably suspicious, but he couldn’t piece together any answers.
Qi Xia *had* to know that room was strange. Based on past events, that bizarre room might’ve even been arranged by him… But what was the point?
Chen Junnan suspected their ‘interview room’ might’ve been somewhere *inside* the ‘Land of Finality,’ hidden among the city’s countless ruins.
But the room was completely sealed—there shouldn’t have been any way to enter it from the outside. So where could it be?
The more he thought, the more tangled his mind became. The best course of action now was to find Qi Xia. If Qi Xia knew about this, he could clarify everything in person. If he didn’t, he’d at least be able to make sense of it.
But this ‘train’ was way too long. Going to find Qi Xia now would waste too much time—they only had one night to destroy all the ‘doors.’
“As much as my head’s full of questions, I don’t have time to deal with them now,” Chen Junnan said, turning to Kim Won-hoon. “If we’ve got enough time, we’ll wreck *all* the ‘doors,’ including the ‘exit’ at the end of the corridor. I want to completely sever the ‘train’s’ connection to the ‘Land of Finality.'”
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