Chapter 81: Challenge

I have teammates? Can those teammates be trusted? Xing Ye thought to himself.

If the mirror was the one who erased his memory and was trying to trick him, he was doing a shoddy job. The best way to deceive somebody was to assume the identity of their most trusted person, preferably a family member or a good friend. In contrast, the mirror didn’t even have a face and couldn’t even make the simplest fake expressions. It’d be hard to even believe him, nevermind be deceived by him.

This was actually what made him trustworthy.

“Can you tell what I did yesterday? You should be able to say that, right?” Xing Ye asked.

According to the mirror, Xing Ye learned that he woke up at 12 in the morning and had done pretty much the same thing as he did today. The only difference was that he didn’t see the mirror on the makeup cabinet and so he saw the records on his phone without knowing ghosts could exist in this world, making it very difficult for Xing Ye to believe the world could be supernatural. After thinking it over, Xing Ye decided to delete The Game of Challenging Fate to test if the contents mentioned in the app were true or not.

If the game was so powerful, then it must be like a maggot entrenched in bone, something that can’t be uninstalled.

Sure enough, Xing Ye tried uninstalling it several times, but the game kept on reappearing on his phone. With that, Xing Ye finally believed the game was real.

Without anybody to lead him, Xing Ye decided to leave the patient room and look around. He wore a set of womens clothing and stayed outside for several hours, but didn’t discover anything apart from running into two patients in the bathroom and a nurse on duty.

At ten in the morning, he returned to change clothes and found the mirror hidden in the closet.

By now, it was already daytime so the mirror’s bloody, horror-movie font looked more comical than anything. This made yesterday’s Xing Ye brazenly take a towel and try to wipe the writing off the mirror before spending the day chatting with him.

Since Xing Ye didn’t remember the mirror, their intimacy points were at 0. The mirror simmered in anger- he couldn’t even talk!

While the two were slowly deepening their feelings, Xing Ye suddenly had a mania episode and started going mad trying to chop off his dick. There weren’t any knives in the room, so he ran into the bathroom, wanting to break the bathroom mirror to use as a weapon. Fortunately, Xing Ye placed the mirror right next to the pager. The mirror, who was only able to wiggle, struggled to hop forward and press the pager. The doctor and a group of nurses quickly hurried over and injected Xing Ye with tranquilizers.

After being tranquilized, Xing Ye passed out and didn’t wake up until 11 PM. At that time, he still remembered everything that happened but under the tranquilizer’s effects, he couldn’t speak and his thoughts were jumbled.

He wrote the whole day’s events down and placed the note by his pillow before setting the mirror on the makeup cabinet. That way, he could see it as soon as he opened his eyes.

Xing Ye was already amazing for being able to do so much under the tranquilizer’s effects, but the progress bar for that day was still at zero. He hadn’t been able to do anything.

The only good thing was that after his memory was reset the next day, his body seemed to have also returned to normal. The tranquilizer no longer influenced Xing Ye’s thinking. Otherwise, after several days of tranquilizers, his brain probably would’ve been crippled.

After hearing the mirror’s story, Xing Ye knew how severe the situation was.

He had essentially wasted an entire day yesterday. If it weren’t for the mirror, he would’ve passed the second day exactly the same as the first all the way until he was killed by the parasites the game mentioned.

“What are you planning to do now?” After talking and talking, the mirror forgot his anger and turned worried, “You don’t know when you’ll have another mania episode again. You have to find people who will stop you when you have another episode, or you’ll just be injected with tranquilizers again.”

After saying that, the mirror suddenly thought of something and said grumpily, “Why can’t you just like me as soon as you see me? I can’t help you unless our intimacy points are over 80.”

Xing Ye’s heart turned warm as he rubbed the mirror, his voice gentle, “Don’t worry, I won’t let today turn out like yesterday.”

With that, he picked up his phone and opened The Game of Challenging Fate again.

In order to understand what happened, he had to be patient and start from the beginning.

However, the game was truly ruthless. All his player info, game details, and everything was blocked off. When Xing Ye tried to tap it, he just received the prompt, “Sorry, but this feature is disabled in hard mode.”

“Why did I pick hard mode earlier. Was I unhappy with how comfortable my life was, or did I think losing my memory and self-mutilation would be fun?” Xing Ye complained as he scrolled through the phone.

The mirror grumbled, “You don’t like me enough, so I can’t say anything. But you have to believe in yourself- when you make a decision, there’s always a reason!”

Xing Ye smiled. Not a forced smile to hide his inner pain, not a confident smile to make others think he had a card up his sleeve, and most definitely not a fake smile to exchange niceties, but a true smile from the heart. A “you are so cute” kind of smile.

The mirror fell in a daze.

Xing Ye’s current body was Xing Ye’s original body only slightly altered by the system. His height of 185 cm had been turned into 175, his body was thinner, and his features were softer, giving him a more gender-neutral look.

All of this was to make Xing Ye look more natural for his crossdressing setting. Now, with a dress, he looked just like a tall, beautiful woman.

But what dazed the mirror wasn’t the crossdressing, but Xing Ye’s distinct change in attitude.

In the past, Xing Ye was smart, strong, confident, and calculating, but not happy. He seemed to be carrying the weight of the Himalayas on his back, or a burden as great as Mount Everest. Emotions of deep grief, hatred, and loneliness always choked Xing Ye. They bound and clouded him, so much that the mirror had almost never seen him genuinely happy.

But the current Xing Ye had forgotten all his memories and returned to his original self. The mirror felt like he was seeing the him that only existed in Xing Ye’s memories, back in his university days when Xing Ye was the proud, boisterous talent who loved to challenge the hardest problems.  

He watched as Xing Ye revealed a very confident smile and rubbed his hands together, cracking his knuckles, “It looks like I’m in big trouble right now, but isn’t this a game? If it’s a game, there has to be a way to clear it!

“Taking from what you said, I think my amnesia, or rather, memory resets, mania, and crossdressing are all restrictions imposed on me to make the game harder. Amnesia keeps me in a state of cluelessness, mania with the threat of tranquilizers make it difficult to remain clear-headed, and crossdressing… you mentioned I have teammates, so could the crossdressing be to prevent my teammates from recognizing me?

“This past hour gave me a good understanding of what I’m like. I should be a strong man, or at least definitely not a delicate crossdresser in the eyes of others. The way it is now, my teammates won’t be able to recognize me, nor would I remember them.

“The game set up these restrictions in order to- or rather, in hopes of- keeping me trapped in this patient room without remembering anybody, all the way until the game is over.

The mirror hopped in front of Xing Ye, reflecting his face, still mulling over it, on the mirror surface. “Why do I have a feeling you’re more excited than worried?”

“Of course!” Xing Ye smiled, “The harder it is, the more interesting it becomes, no? Besides, the game didn’t think of you at all. Just having you on the makeup cabinet’s already saved me a dozen hours. Now, let’s go and search for people.”

“Are we going to find your teammates?” The mirror said, “But I don’t know if their appearances would’ve changed or not. I might not be able to recognize them.”

Xing Ye tsked, “Their appearances may change, huh… it looks like my body and even the world settings change with every round of the game. There’s also more players in this game and if there are teammates, there will definitely be enemies as well. When you add in my restrictions, the game is probably expecting me to turn paranoid and avoid reaching out to people.

“Oh well, it doesn’t matter. It’s pretty interesting searching for people you can’t remember or recognize.

“Yesterday, I had a mania episode after around ten hours. We’re not sure when it’ll occur again, but it’d be best to find a teammate before the next episode to avoid being injected with tranquilizers.

Yesterday, I made a mistake. I didn’t know this was a game or that other players existed. I overlooked the people I ran into last night and now that I do know, there are too many people to identify them.

“If it’s another player playing the game, they will definitely come out at night to look for information. There are also the parasites. Every night, another player will be infected by parasites and will also come out.

That means the probability of finding clues at night is very high. While there’s also obviously the probability of hitting a direct game over and dying, it’s worth trying.”

With that, Xing Ye put on a short casual dress that looked like a tennis dress and matched it with a pair of sneakers. He put the mirror into a fanny pack and put it on before tying his hair into a relaxed ponytail.

“Why are you still crossdressing?” The mirror asked, startled, “Didn’t you say you wanted to find your teammates?”

Xing Ye said, “First, since the game set up these settings, there’d be no point if I didn’t follow them. Second, female clothing gives me a weaker look when I’m actually very strong. This might make enemies or parasites lower their guard. If I can exploit something, why not do it?”

Mirror: “...”

Enough, can’t you just say you like crossdressing? In the first world, weren’t you also saying you weren’t willing but continued on happily anyways?