BXBX NOVEL Chapter Ch34.1 - Butterfly
Chapter Ch34.1 - Butterfly
translator: xiin
editors: apricot & juurensha
The air was cold, dark, and damp.
The entire structure was submerged underground, causing the ambient temperature to plummet.
Wu Jin drew in air through his nose. The air inside the match grounds didn’t smell good. It carried the scent of earth, metallic devices, and rust mixed in with strange, acidic substances, all stuck together like glue and lurking in the dark.
Caesar, who was carrying a submachine gun, stepped out first.
“Things aren’t quite right.” He narrowed his eyes and looked ahead with a penetrating gaze.
After the second batch of players were sent in, the elevator squeaked as it rose up, the moving parts making harsh sounds as they collided, akin to an eerie screech.
Wu Jin used the illumination from the weak source of light to stare at the moving track for a long time before retrieving his gaze.
The four of them quickly loaded up their guns.
For strategic reasons, Zoe, despite being a sniper, gave up his usual 12.7mm caliber bullets and replaced them with 9mm bullets that were the same as the ones Caesar and Wen Lin were using.
In Wu Jin’s hands was a 5.56mm assault rifle. As a member of the White Moonlight team that tended towards heavy melee, he took on the role of medium to long range support firepower.
“What was that noise just now?” Zoe frowned.
He had clearly heard a dull noise in the distance before the elevator landed.
“Two sounds, heavy objects colliding, then a small machine gun.” Caesar replied, “Wei Yan... might have gotten beat up by something. Let’s go and sound it out first.”
Soon, however, the few of them were back where they’d started.
They were standing in a sealed space about 30 meters long and 30 meters wide. The walls on all sides were metallic, smooth, and couldn’t be climbed. There seemed to be gaps between the walls, but they hadn’t been able to break them apart.
Zoe frowned, “Let’s first see how high it is. Little Witch,” He turned to look at Wu Jin, “Go to the staircase and measure the wind speed...”
Wen Lin shook his head, “There’s no wind. It should be blocked tight.”
The use of air convection to measure altitude was a common method of exploring the environment, but wind was a required prerequisite for this method.
Zoe stilled for a moment. Wu Jin had just finished calculating with his eyes closed and quickly opened his mouth to say, “80 meters to the surface, and the surrounding walls are 30 meters high.”
On the surface, in the Crosson Show’s live stream room.
Ying Xiangxiang gave an exclamation of surprise, “Worthy of a memory type player. I remember that he was constantly looking at the elevator just now. He calculated the height of the ‘cell’ based on its speed and the time it took for his view of the elevator shaft to be blocked.”
Blood Pigeon nodded and looked at the time, “There’s twenty seconds left before their competition officially begins.”
Within the grounds of the Crosson Show match, a ‘ding’ suddenly rang out in the empty air.
“What was that sound?” Caesar bounced up off the ground, reacting quickly.
The four people on the scene weren’t unfamiliar with the sound in the background... It sounded exactly the same as when the elevator arrived in the twin tower dormitories.
But then, Caesar opened his eyes wide in amazement––
The cracks in the four walls all opened at the same time and led to four almost identical corridors. At the end of each corridor, dim sources of light could be seen faintly glowing, giving off a cold feeling as it reflected off the metal walls.
Nobody knew what was waiting up ahead.
“Let’s go together.” Zoe said.
The four of them chose a corridor. Caesar walked up front, Wu Jin hugged his gun and guarded the rear, and almost at the same moment that he stepped out, the wall behind him suddenly closed up.
Wu Jin hesitated slightly. Along with the sound of the metal bang, he could also hear the sound of countless gears being shifted and pulled.
The source of light was at the end of the corridor, and the closer they were to the light, the stronger it became––the light was coming from a narrow door.
As they walked in, Wu Jin suddenly sniffed the air.
The acidic smell of chemicals wafted through the viscous air.
“Wait a minute.” Caesar, who was walking in front of him, suddenly bent over and picked up a small envelope from the ground.
When they opened the envelope, a line of text could be seen:
“The most beautiful colors are unpredictable.”
“It’s a clue.” Caesar read it over twice, then stuffed the note into his pocket. “Can you tell anything from it?”
They all shook their heads, and Caesar gestured for them to prepare for battle. He stepped forward and opened the door––
The door closed behind them automatically.
Light bright enough to dazzle their eyes streamed down from above, and almost everyone’s first reaction was to close their eyes.
It was too bright!
This was also a 30×30 room, but it wasn’t illuminated with a single white ceiling lamp. There was light that burned like a sharp knife within their field of vision here.
This room had no walls.
Instead, there were six huge, strange mirrors, forming a cube in which the team was caged. Their reflections were infinitely reflected and repeated, and it looked like there was a whole stretch of people standing next to them no matter which direction they looked.
Caesar subconsciously raised up his gun and was about to crack apart the mirrors on the wall.
Zoe hurriedly stopped the fool, “Save your bullets. Also, what if you trigger something? We’ll all be eliminated along with you... Why do you want to hit the mirror for no reason?”
Caesar rubbed his head, “Just... feels dangerous.”
Zoe immediately went on alert.
Survival show contestants were usually both intelligent and courageous, relying on both physical and mental prowess. As for those like Caesar who never used their brains––intuition was the basis for most of his judgement, instead of his brain cells. If Caesar felt that it was dangerous, this was at least 70% credible.
He was just about to open his mouth when he saw Wu Jin walking over to one corner of the room from the reflection in the mirror beside him.
“Little Witch!”
Wu Jin seemed to want to reach out but finally retracted his hand. On the other side, Wen Lin also discovered that something was wrong, “Look at the ground!”
The ground was also a mirror.
Zoe looked down, and the smooth mirror rippled, like someone had spilled water on its surface, or like some kind of liquid was spreading out, bringing with it a pungent sour smell––Zoe suddenly looked like he’d seen a ghost.
“It’s moving––” Caesar didn’t hesitate to pull his teammates away, shooting as he jumped up, “The motherf*cking mirror is moving!”
The discharged bullet landed in the mirror, and the glass cracked in a spiderweb pattern, sharp shards flying everywhere. Caesar’s expression became even more astonished––the originally rippling mirror shards suddenly folded together and hung suspended in mid-air in a way that defied gravity.
The mirror turned into a triangle and folded down the middle before immediately charging over to attack Caesar like a knife!
––He finally saw what it was clearly.
It was about the size of half a palm. The two mirror shards were actually the insect’s wings. When they were unfolded, they integrated and blended in to become part of the mirror. When they were folded up, their slender bodies and coldly flashing mouthpieces were revealed.
It seemed to be a butterfly. At least, it could barely be considered as a butterfly.
In other words, there was a disgusting insect between the two mirror shards, but there was no doubt that it had flexible control over its wings, and the edges of the wings were as sharp as daggers.
The air suddenly stagnated, and then there were more insects than this single butterfly. Countless mutated butterflies flew up from all sides of the room!
“Bunker down in a corner.” Zoe called out anxiously, “Spread out the firepower!”
The sounds of gunfire rang out as Wen Lin and Caesar quickly began to spread their firepower, shattering mirror surfaces with their crossfire.
The pungent sour smell was mixed in with the scent of sulfur and smoke. The liquid contained in the mirrors lost its barrier and slowly pooled downwards. It appeared to be the secretions from this particular variant of insect.
Wu Jin looked at it and just felt that his stomach was churning. There was a hint of white amidst the secretions...
His gaze stalled slightly.
Wu Jin suddenly reached out, flipped over a broken section of the mirror wall, and pulled a familiar white envelope out from the gap.