C57 — The Emperor’s New Clothes

Mu Sichen’s mind flashed through the book “Once upon a time, there was an eye that longed to see everything in the world” and then shook his head, denying this speculation.

 

If the simple pupil dependent was hidden in such obvious books, as he’d certainly found by Shen Jiyue, he must be hidden in a very hidden book or a few books, and he could even convert books.

 

If it was okay in a fixed book, no matter how many books he had, he had confidence in searching them out. If he could easily switch them, then Mu Sichen would have a headache.

 

The clue was still to look in the book donation catalog.

 

Mu Sichen found all the books donated by Kongmu Tong and found that besides the bedtime stories of Qin Zu and Big Eyes, the book “Dreaming of Home” was also donated by him.

 

There weren’t many books donated by Kongmu Tong, only about ten, but the titles of each of them were very strange, and they looked like they were related to god-level monsters.

 

Mu Sichen didn’t dare to rummage through these books; once he became curious, he might enter the world of the books.

 

Before entering Xiangping Town, it was fine. Qin Zu was an introverted person and protected humans as much as possible; in other towns, it would be troublesome if he attracted any evil gods.

 

Mu Sichen found all the books donated by Kongmu Tong and found that besides the bedtime stories of Qin Zu and Big Eyes, the book “Dreaming of Home” was also donated by him.

 

Mu Sichen took out his notebook to copy down the titles of these books, and then he really found a characteristic.

The protagonist of “Two or Three Things About the Moon,” donated by Shen Jiyue, wasn’t the moon, but a person who wasn’t crazy under the moon. From the perspective of the protagonist, this was a bedtime horror story. But if they stood from the perspective of the moon, would it be a short and enjoyable story?

 

Similarly, the ending of Once Upon a Time, There Was an Eye That Longed to See Everything in the World was a sweet and cozy ending from the protagonist’s point of view.

 

On the contrary, in books such as Embrace, False Happiness Under the Moon, and Dreaming of Home, just by reading the titles alone, he felt that these stories either didn’t have very good endings or kind of discredited the moon and dreams.

 

The bookmark system displayed a calendar, and today’s time was July 28th, 20 years after the disaster. The donation date of Shen Jiyue’s “Two or Three Stories” happened to be five days ago, which was the same as the time when Shen Jiyue occupied the Xinmu Library.

 

As for the donation time of the Simple Pupil Dependent, it was more scattered, donated one after another between 10-20 years after the disaster.

 

The time of ‘Embrace’, on the other hand, happened to be today.

 

These evidences were enough to show that no matter if it was a god-level monster or an ordinary person, they would leave a book behind after entering the library, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

 

Those books related to god-level monsters, except for the two books of Qin Zu and Shen Jiyue; the rest were Big Eyes’ impressions of other towns.

Mu Sichen searched again and indeed found the book “Resident H5248” at the end of the donation list. The donor was He Fei, the book was in a rental status and couldn’t be borrowed.

As for the other books in the Resident series, many of them were in loanable status.

 

Probably because He Fei was still alive, and the readable books were all whose owners have passed away.

 

An ordinary person’s whole life was donated here like this.

 

Mu Sichen sighed slightly and continued to look for the book he wanted, and in the donation records from five days ago, he found a book called “Dependent C03,” donated by the Hairy Eye Dependent.

 

There was also another book “Dependent C02” that was donated by the Simple Pupil Dependent, which was currently in a non-borrowable status.

 

Mu Sichen also found a book donated by himself; unlike He Fei, his book was called **A02.

 

Mu Sichen repeatedly confirmed that it was indeed two asterisks, and two words in his book title were shielded.

 

Based on the donation of books by the Simple Pupil Dependent and Hairy Eye Dependent, it could be inferred that the words in the book title were the identity, and it was unclear what the letters represented, but the numbers should be the sequence number.

 

That was to say, for the same people who were shielding the word A sequence, there was at least one 01.

 

Mu Sichen searched for “A01” in the bookmark system’s bookshelf but didn’t find the book.

 

This didn’t mean that there was no such person as “A01,” but after Mu Sichen entered the library, he was recognized as “No. 02” by an unknown force.

 

For the time being, Mu Sichen put aside the matter of blocked words and the existence of a person of his own type and focused on looking for books that might harbor the Simple Pupil Dependent.

 

In the end, he chose three books.

 

One book was none other than Hairy Eye Dependent’s donation of Dependent C03; one book was The Power of Inquisitiveness written by the Simple Pupil Dependent; and the last book was the familiar fairy tale The Emperor’s New Clothes.

 

Mu Sichen searched for these three books in the bookmark system, and the first two showed that they had already been borrowed once, and the borrowing name was unknown.

 

All the books here would show the borrowing record but would not show the borrower’s name; only the donor’s name could be seen. Like He Fei’s book “Little Colorful Fish,” Mu Sichen found 13 times borrowing records, but only He Fei was on the donor list, and it seems that only He Fei changed the ending of “Little Colorful Fish,” so his name appeared in the donor column.

 

The Emperor’s New Clothes had even more borrowing records, 27 times, worthy of being a classic fairy tale; probably the first choice of those who just came here, they tended to borrow familiar books.

 

Mu Sichen spent more than an hour reading the book list, during which time He Fei had already run to the bathroom three times and ate a lot of the food in the room, but the fake food only made him hungrier and hungrier the more he ate.

 

He Fei shook Mu Sichen’s arm and pointed to the time displayed on the bookmark system and said, “I know you’re not in a hurry, but I’m really worried for you. We don’t know what the library has in mind, but at least we have to survive first, don’t we? Every day at 23:59:59, the 1000 points for that day will be deducted, and it’s already 23:50 now!”

 

“Points are deducted before 0:00? I thought I had to stay for the full 24 hours.” Mu Sichen said.

 

He Fei: “At a glance, you didn’t read the system description properly. Players who logged in after 23:30 at night can have their points deducted again before 0:00 on the second day due to the small amount of time left, but those who logged in before 23:30 will have to gain points in the only time left. Otherwise, could I have rushed through ten books in a row? It’s not like I’m still scared by this points requirement.”

 

That was why the first few books He Fei chose were simple fairy tales, which were very fast to clear and gain points.

 

“So you should enter a familiar book as soon as possible and get the 1000 points first.” He Fei suggested, “These three books you chose… I think The Emperor’s New Clothes is good, ah! Go in and get the emperor an outfit, change the ending, and you’ll get a smiley face bookmark.”

 

“A smiley bookmark gets you 1,000 points, but you’ll be deducted 300 points for entering the book. You just said you have 400 points left; that’s enough. Go go go!”

“But after deducting the 300 for entering the book and the 1000 consumed on that day, I’m left with only 100; after this, there’s no way for me to enter any of the books.” Mu Sichen said.

 

“Then… find one that has the possibility of getting a moon bookmark and an eye bookmark.” He Fei said, “The moon bookmark can get 3000 points, and the eye bookmark has 2000, and the book you just read, ‘My Two or Three Stories with the Moon,’ It’s just fine; I think it’s a bedtime story; it’s only two or three minutes to read a book.”

 

“This one will never work, and you can’t get in.” Mu Sichen said.

 

Entering this book was simply looking for death.

 

“Then what to do!” He Fei was in a hurry. “There are only 5 minutes left. I do have more than 7,000 points, but there is no way to transfer them to you!”

 

His words did remind Mu Sichen.

 

“Maybe it’s not out of the question.” Mu Sichen casually waved his hand and took out his crossaxe.

 

“Why did you take this out again?” He covered his head and said, “Are you going to smash my head again? Be lighter!”

 

“It’s not your head; just put the bookmark on the desktop and pick an unimportant smiley face bookmark; hurry up.” Mu Sichen said.

 

He Fei obediently chose a smiley face bookmark; Mu Sichen concentrated and gently tapped the bookmark with a crossaxe.

 

Activating the “digging” skill, he took away one of He Fei’s bookmarks.

 

He “eeked,” looked at the bookmark system, and said, “I’ve lost 1000 points; how about you?”

“Mine increased by 1000; this method really works.” Mu Sichen said.

 

He hadn’t been anxious about the points from the start, firstly because he felt that with the power of the self-stickers he should be able to withstand the clearing of points before 0:00, and secondly because he also felt that he could rub a little off from He Fei.

 

“This weapon of yours looks stupidly heavy, but the skills are quite interesting.” He said.

 

“What’s your initial prop?”

 

“What else could it be, a gu-n. Even with only 6 bullets, it can’t stop me from loving it.” He took out a revolver.

 

Mu Sichen wasn’t surprised; this was indeed He Fei’s style.

 

“What about skills?”

 

“Skills? Can there still be skills?” He asked as he spun the wheel.

 

It seemed that He Fei hadn’t used the gu-n yet and hadn’t been able to figure out its skills.

 

“The initial props all have skills, so slowly feel it out later.” Mu Sichen briefly introduced the skills of the crossaxe.

 

After resolving the points hiccup, He Fei covered his hungry stomach and said, “Have you figured out how to get out of here? I’m so hungry; did you bring any food?”

 

“I don’t have any…” Mu Sichen rummaged through his pants pockets, and his words lurched.

In his left pocket, he didn’t know when an extra piece of chocolate appeared. It was very expensive, and Mu Sichen rarely bought such expensive food.

 

“Isn’t this my favorite brand of chocolate? Why did you buy it too?” He Fei asked.

 

“Where do you usually keep the chocolate?” Mu Sichen asked.

He Fei: “Usually I put it in my book bag in class, on my desk in the dormitory, and I also bring one or two in my bag when I go to work.”

 

“Then I’m afraid this is yours.” Mu Sichen handed the chocolate to He Fei.

 

He Fei had once put the doll and chocolate together in his school bag to go to work, and it was probably that time that a piece of chocolate was passed along by the doll.

 

There was no way for the pirate doll to eat in the real world, and drinking coke would make the entire tentacle soaked in coke, so that was why it wanted to sneak a piece back when it returned to the game world.

 

The little octopus seemed to have a bit of a sweet tooth.

 

After a piece of chocolate went down, He Fei’s stamina recovered quite a bit.

 

“Do you want to enter this book with me?” Mu Sichen asked.

 

“The Emperor’s New Clothes, no problem; how easy is this book? Just now I suggested you come here to earn points.” He said.

 

“It’s not necessarily simple.” Mu Sichen sighed.

He found The Emperor’s New Clothes from the donation details, and the book had a full 17 donors.

 

In addition to the Feathered Eye Dependent, there were surprisingly 16 more!

“So many people donated a book at the same time?” He was shocked.

 

Mu Sichen told He Fei about the speculation that he could become a donor as long as he had changed the contents of the book, and He Fei pointed at the list and said, “You mean, this book has been changed 16 times? Then the story has been completely changed, right? Why did they go into such a book?”

Indeed, Dependent C03 and The Power of Inquisitiveness seemed more worthy of a look than The Emperor’s New Clothes.

 

However, the borrowing records of these two books made Mu Sichen very concerned.

 

He also had dealings with Shen Jiyue, and based on Mu Sichen’s understanding of Shen Jiyue, Mu Sichen suspected that the borrower of these two books was him.

 

If he were Shen Jiyue, he would definitely enter all the books where Simple Pupil Dependent might be hiding, and even if he wasn’t in these books, it didn’t matter. He could still set traps in the books.

 

In this way, regardless of whether or not the Simple Pupil Dependent could move the books, he could cut off the other party’s path of retreat.

 

Unless it was certain that Simple Pupil Dependent was in these two books, Mu Sichen wouldn’t enter easily.

 

On the contrary, “The Emperor’s New Clothes” seemed ordinary and easy to be ignored, but this story was somewhat similar to the sentence on the note on the second floor, “My Lord has not completely fallen; he is in my heart, in the books, in the sight of all the people’s reverence.”.

 

In “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” everyone couldn’t see the emperor’s clothes, but they insisted on praising the king’s new clothes, as if the non-existent clothes had been implanted in people’s hearts.

 

The people in this book were all talking nonsense with their eyes wide open, obviously not seeing but insisting on saying they saw it; they didn’t believe in their own eyes, and they believed in the lies of the liars even more.

That was to say, the people in this book were the type of people who least believed in eyes and were unlikely to believe in the big eye.

 

If Shen Jiyue used the tactic of casting a wide net to search for the Simple Pupil Dependent one book at a time, this book would instead be at the back of the line, so it seemed safer to hide it here.

 

Of course, in addition to this, there was another very important reason for Mu Sichen to select this book.

 

He asked He Fei to write down the names of the 16 people in the donation list and then flipped to the books in the sequence of residents and similarly found the names of these 16 people within the donors, and these books had a common feature: they were all in loanable status.

 

The still-living He Fei’s Resident H5248 was not loanable.

“Are you saying that the people who entered The Emperor’s New Clothes and altered the story, after leaving the book, without exception, all died?” He Fei asked, “You’re going to enter this?”

 

“The more dangerous it is, the closer it is to my guess, want to go with me?” Mu Sichen asked.

 

He Fei clenched his fists, which were trembling a little, but he still said with bravado, “Go, if you’re going, how can I not go? Good brothers should die together!”

 

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