"Nothing much, just cooling off."
Li Cheng hung his head down, like a mischievous kindergarten kid, spat a line of saliva onto the ground, and shook his head back and forth, making the saliva swing.
His action, comparable to abstract performance art, filled Gray Rain with question marks. Luckily, Li Cheng immediately recovered and slurped the saliva back in.
"That’s disgusting!" Gray Rain blurted out instinctively.
Li Cheng defended himself righteously: "What’s so disgusting about it? Just as ’Sacred Fire Revelation’ mentions in its fun facts section, many animals including canines and alpacas use saliva evaporation for cooling down."
"Isn’t it better to spit it out..."
"Humans secrete 1 to 1.5 liters of saliva every day, 80% of which is water, and the rest is mucin, glycoproteins, immunoglobulins, free amino acids, and so on. Just by its composition, it’s not much different from some health supplements. Every time you spit, you’re spitting out money."
Li Cheng curled his lips, "Moreover, water is the source of life. If you are unfortunate enough to end up in extreme environments like deserts or oceans, not just saliva, but sweat must be recycled, and even urine must be used when necessary!"
"Why do you get so excited every time we talk about pee, poop, and fart?!" Gray Rain twitched the corner of his eye, feeling somewhat relieved to be a silicon-based life form.
"Now, it is time to face the real Prison Director."
Li Cheng instantly became serious; while Gray Rain grumbled about the ’awkward change of subject,’ he straightened his clothes and strode towards Room No. 3, pulling open the wooden door.
As the door opened, the surroundings instantly changed, and the two of them once again stood in the gravity-lacking corridors of the Blood Eagle.
Crew members with magnetic boots ran past, and the sound of damage alerts from different parts of the ship echoed in the corridor, with the red emergency lights flashing continuously.
Everything was the same as when they first entered here, including the location, movements, and expressions of every crew member.
[Stage 2 Task Objective Completed]
[Stage 3 Task Objective: Escape from the Narrative Cage]
[Task Time Limit: 10 Minutes]
[Task Reward 1: 600 Experience Points]
[Task Reward 2: 700 Game Coin]
[Task Reward 3: Random item *1, Quality depends on clearance rating]
[Task Reward 4: Micro Life Potion *1]
[Task Failure Punishment: None]
After glancing at the newly popped-up notice, Li Cheng walked through the corridor to the ship’s bridge at the bow. Isaac and the rabbit-eared assistant were standing side by side, ready to greet Li Cheng and Gray Rain, with the background outside the floor-to-ceiling window still that of pirate ships bombarding each other.
There was no need for cryptic riddles anymore, so Li Cheng candidly said, "Considering that the mechanical device in the Misleading Room claimed to be the Prison Director, it must have been created after you took over the Prison Director’s Room. I want to know where the real Prison Director went."
"This prison sector doesn’t actually have a Prison Director in a real sense; it’s automatically controlled by the system."
The rabbit-eared assistant spoke slowly. The fact that Li Cheng could stand here asking this question proved he had seen through the deception and deduced the truth about the first Isaac, the second Isaac, and everything else. Otherwise, he would have started firing immediately upon arrival.
Li Cheng was surprised, "Then how did you end up trapped here?"
"Authority," explained Blood Eagle Captain Isaac, or rather the second Isaac, slowly: "The original Isaac was infected with the Iron Epidemic virus during an escape attempt. Knowing that her days were numberked, she divided herself and split me off.
I’ve tried to escape countless times and succeeded many times, but I don’t have full prisoner authority. Even after a lot of effort and pressing the five engine room buttons consecutively, I was unable to open the gates of the Prison Director’s Room to leave this place."
She paused, looked at the crew members working tirelessly on the ship, and said calmly: "I couldn’t bear to return to the single cell to continue the endless wait—the prisoners of the Narrative Cage might face court trials after decades or even centuries, or may never receive a sentence.
Therefore, I chose to enter the Prison Director’s Room, used my incomplete authority, and borrowed features from other engine rooms.
The time jump of the Flashback Room, the Coherence Room’s breaking of narrative completeness, the deception of the Mislead Room...
The combination of these functions transformed the Prison Director’s Room into a familiar environment for me."
"A familiar environment? It must be more than that, right?"
Li Cheng said: "Even based on the bits and pieces shown in newspapers and past images, you don’t seem like someone willing to indulge in illusions."
Isaac stated: "My idea is to use the various capabilities of the Narrative Cage itself, to create a small world within it."
Duck’s Law—if an animal looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
Likewise, if the small world created by the Narrative Cage has consistent physical laws, operational rules of things, and the flow of time with the outside world, then it is an indistinguishably complete world.
In this world, the second Isaac can completely control the world lines, resurrect her comrades, her foster daughter, make up for past regrets, and forge a new future, considering it her own "true" reality.
No wonder the contents of the other engine rooms were more or less related to Isaac, including the newspaper Li Cheng last read in the Mislead Room (which was actually the Main Character Effect Room).
He looked around, "So, what’s the catch?" Official source is ⓝovelFire.net
The most important individuals to Isaac, such as Angelina, Anna, and others, were not present on the Blood Eagle, which meant there must have been deviations, and things didn’t go as desired.