IWOL Chapter 170: Interstellar Prison

Cui Zuojing walked through the factory. 

He didn’t move fast, because he didn’t have any special purpose. He was simply observing the condition of the factory. So far, he still didn’t know how many pilgrims this arena had, nor what the so-called secret letter looked like. 

There were many workshops in this large factory, separated by load-bearing walls and large open iron gates. In the several workshops that Cui Zuojing had walked through, there were many large machines working, processing countless parts. The structure of this factory building was similar to the one he had just entered, with tall ceilings and large windows.

Cui Zuojing pushed a few boxes in the corner under a window, stacked them on top of each other, and tried to see the situation outside. 

The boxes weren’t high enough, so he pounded the screws in his pocket against the wall with his fist to form a simple nail ladder, and climbed up with his hands and feet, like rock climbing. 　

Finally, Cui Zuojing’s head successfully reached the bottom of the window. Outside was an endless wasteland, dotted with only scattered green grass that somehow made it look even more barren. 

And the sun couldn’t be seen at all. 　

Cui Zuojing tilted his head and saw that there was a small box at the end of the window sill, about twenty centimeters away. 

Huh? 

Cui Zuojing climbed onto the window sill and stepped along the window ledge that was only ten centimeters wide, with the glass behind it. He moved little by little until he got close enough to pick the box up. Then, he returned to his original place and jumped down onto the box before opening the small box. 

Inside was an envelope sealed with rose fire paint. Cui Zuojing tore it open and poured out a hard, golden card with “Secret Letter I” engraved on it. 

This was the thing used to upgrade cards?

Cui Zuojing didn’t intend to use it right now. He planned to save the secret letter first and see if he could grab other people’s cards. If he got more powerful cards, he would upgrade those instead.

As for the situation outside the factory, he wasn’t surprised. The circus would definitely not allow them to leave this elimination arena. Cui Zuojing pulled out the nails on the wall, put them back in his pocket, returned to the ground, and continued to explore. 

In the center of the workshop, a giant hammer slammed down, using tons of force to press the steel parts below into flat shapes. Each hit produced a loud noise, which gave people no doubt that if it had fallen on something else, that thing would immediately be destroyed. 

Each factory building had between one to four doors that connected to other factories. Cui Zuojing walked through more than a dozen factory buildings and drew a rough structural diagram in his head every time he passed through a door. 

It wasn’t until he’d passed through the sixteenth factory building that he finally came across the first human being he’d seen since entering. 

Naturally, this tall and thin young man was also exploring the area. He looked warily at Cui Zuojing from a distance and quickly walked to the side to find shelter in case he had to safeguard his life.

Cui Zuojing ignored him and moved forward on his own. 

The young man saw him walking pass, and since Cui Zuojing had no intentions of attacking him, he also didn’t take the initiative to attack Cui Zuojing. After ensuring that the distance between them was wide enough to give him enough time to react, he hurried out in the opposite direction, entering an iron door that led to another factory building. 

He and Cui Zuojing both had the same idea. Before clarifying the situation on the ground, rushing into a conflict with one another in order to compete for their opponent’s card would only consume their limited strength. 

Cui Zuojing walked for about three hours. The rumble of the machine continued to ring in his ears, loud and monotonous, making it easy for people to get distracted. The giant machines and parts in the factory didn’t seem to be much different, or more precisely, some workshops looked exactly the same as the structures he’d passed by. 

He also met a lot of people along the way, and all of them seemed to have no intentions of starting anything for the time being—or perhaps, they might have, but they were thoroughly ignored by Cui Zuojing. 

In the fifty-eighth factory building, Cui Zuojing stopped. 

If he remembered correctly, this factory building was the one he’d first entered. Cui Zuojing still remembered that he came out of the east wall and took a few screws from the machine line.

He was certain he wasn’t going in circles. To ensure this, he’d been moving forward to the right. 

So… there must be a problem with the space here. 

He’d been walking for so long and still hadn’t touched the boundary of the factory building. If the space here was unlimited, it wouldn’t be a suitable place for pilgrims to eliminate each other and seize other people’s cards. 

Therefore, in order to control the scope of the site and make the people inside feel that the factory was infinite, the same factory building would appear at many spatial coordinate points at the same time to create this effect. 

In other words, there were only a dozen to twenty real workshops, but it was the distortion of space that made the factory seem endless. 

Okay, since this was roughly the case, the next thing to do would be to look into other people’s cards. 

If Cui Zuojing was right, the final card battle was probably not a turn-based battle. The more cards he had in his hand, the easier it would be for him to win. Otherwise, if the competition for the right to get tickets was too low from the start, it wouldn’t make pilgrims eliminate each other. 

Cui Zuojing had already thought about it. He didn’t need to deliberately search for secret letters early. The most efficient way would be to wait until the others had almost collected all the secret letters and simply grab it from them. 

He picked up a few pieces of steel plates that might be used as a cover. The parts were very thin, just in line with his thinking. With the power of the slayer, he turned the steels into daggers and easily inserted them into the wall. Like this, Cui Zuojing climbed up the steel plates one by one, and quickly and dexterously flipped over to the steel frame.

Because the steel frame was intended to support the roof, it was quite thick, giving Cui Zuojing more than enough room to lie on it. He found a hidden corner where he could see others but would make it difficult for the others to see him. He stretched out on the frame and took out his mobile phone from his pocket. After taking a glance, he swiped with his hand and accidentally clicked on the chat interface with Dong Zheng. 

Since the two of them had developed their relationship further, Dong Zheng wanted Cui Zuojing to set him up as a favorite contact on his phone. Thus, every time Dong Zheng sent him a group or private chat, Cui Zuojing would immediately receive a prompt.

When Dong Zheng wanted to accomplish something, he would sometimes be so stubborn that it made Cui Zuojing feel disconcerted. Especially in this matter, it was useless to protest at all. Cui Zuojing always told him not to care about these formalistic things. But Dong Zheng insisted, so he could only follow him.

Since then, Cui Zuojing had set the phone to vibrate; otherwise, it would keep ringing, which wasn’t a good thing. 

Staring at the notification that Dong Zheng had sent him last night, calling him down to eat, Cui Zuojing sighed, unable to piece out his mood. He scrolled through their chat records. Everytime Dong Zheng sent him a message, he would only respond with “Oh,” “Okay,” or “Got it.” It seemed a bit unkind. 

But he really didn’t know how to reply. 

Maybe it would be better once he got his feelings back. 

Dong Zheng should be in another arena. Cui Zuojing hesitated for a while on the dialog box, and slowly typed a line of words: “Where are you?”

He regretted it the moment he pressed the send button. Dong Zheng obviously wouldn’t receive the message. Why would he do something so unnecessary? Once the signal was restored, Dong Zheng might even imagine something from it. 

 Cui Zuojing quickly withdrew the message. 

Putting the phone back in his pocket, he chose a comfortable position, closed his eyes, calmed down, and quietly waited for the time to take action. 

………………………..

Dong Zheng was sitting on a chair, his hands affixed to the armrests and his legs held tight by electronic shackles. He couldn’t move. The door of the cell was closed and security guards patrolled fully armed with guns and ammunition. Outside, a tight five-layer security system sealed this small cell, trapping Dong Zheng inside. 

This was a confinement room. 

The cell was about ten square meters with the single chair that held Dong Zheng welded firmly to the floor. There were security cameras in each four corners of the ceiling, ensuring that there would be no blind spots that could escape monitoring. 

Dong Zheng had woken up in a small dark room and listened to the clown’s words in the tape recorder. The moment he stepped out of the room, he was surrounded by a group of people wearing helmets and special uniforms, their guns pointed at his head. 

Dong Zheng quickly understood that this was a prison, they were prison guards, and Dong Zheng was the prisoner who had just tried to escape. 

He was taken back to the confinement cell. 

He didn’t know how to get out yet. 

The clown only said that this arena was called [Space], and the various kinds of advanced technology he’d seen so far told him that he was in an interstellar prison. But since the pilgrims needed to fight each other, he figured it wouldn’t be long before he was released from the confinement room and given a chance to fight the other pilgrims. 

Dong Zheng waited patiently, but waiting didn’t mean being idle. 

He closed his eyes, and his consciousness entered his kernel world. He stood on the tall firewall. 

Outside the wall were many things assembled by data, such positioning wristbands, shackles, electronic doors, cameras…These were all the electronic devices in the entire room. 

His consciousness quietly invaded the monitor in the upper left corner of the room, wandered along the electric waves, and mixed into the huge data stream. Then, he swam in all directions along the branches of circuits. 

He “looked” at the security personnel patrolling the corridor, and saw the strange humanoid creature sleeping on the chair in the confinement room next door. There was a small child in the cell next door, motionlessly facing the wall. The cleaners in the dining room were clearing the tables, and the guards on shifts stood in the lobby talking to each other. 

A red light flashed through the camera at the prison gate, and the hover car that dropped onto the parking lot below entered Dong Zheng’s sight. An older man dressed in black got out of the car surrounded by many bodyguards. Then, he and the reception staff headed towards the gate. 

In just a few minutes, he used the numerous camera doors in the prison to have a full view of the entire prison building. The information flooded in and a headache followed. Dong Zheng immediately stopped continuing the investigation. The information he’d received was enough for him to process. 

His temples throbbed and the back of his head became dizzy. He didn’t  know how long it would take for the official competition to start, but during this period of time in the confinement cell, he should be safe. 

Dong Zheng decided to use sleep to soothe his tenseness and his overdrawn mental force.

…………………………

“……”

“…We can work together and find someone else, why do you have to attack me?”

“…Don’t talk nonsense! If you don’t want to be beaten, please obediently hand over the card!”

“Since you want this, don’t blame me for being rude!”

Bang——! 

A loud metal collision awakened Cui Zuojing, who was taking a nap. He opened his closed eyes, poked his head out, and looked down condescendingly. 

Oh, someone was fighting. 

It was two against one. 　

The young man yawned and had intention of falling from the sky to save the world. He indifferently pulled his jacket tighter, continued to lean on the steel frame, and closed his eyes.

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