Chapter 7: Lilith’s Doll (6)

The time allowed to clear a dungeon is limited.

If players fail to clear it within the allotted time, they are automatically considered to have failed.

Therefore, from the moment the two Liliths met inside the basement cage, time in the basement began moving five times faster than normal. In other words, one minute in the basement was equivalent to five minutes in the outside world.

Regardless of which Lilith it was, each would do everything possible to stall for time while still leaving the players with a chance to clear the dungeon.

The purpose wasn’t simply to make the players fail their mission. It was to provoke impatience and irritability.

After all, impatience was a negative emotion in its own right, and it was also fertile ground for other negative emotions to take root.

Of course, this little seed of negativity was only one of the many surprises Ye Jiujiu had prepared for them.

More importantly…

Before anything else, there was one thing the players absolutely needed to recognize. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

Who were they?

Were they human, or were they dolls?

And the Lilith they were supposed to protect—was she the doll Lilith or the human Lilith?

Because of the way Lilith had been introduced and the guidance she had given them through her dialogue, the players were naturally inclined to follow her lead. They would instinctively group themselves together with Lilith as members of the same faction, overlooking these two crucial questions.

In reality, however, the players’ faction affiliation was undecided when they first entered the dungeon.

It was only after the appearance of the two Liliths that the faction selection officially began.

According to the dungeon’s rules established by Ye Jiujiu, the players were required to protect the Lilith belonging to their own faction.

The Lilith without a heartbeat belonged to the doll faction. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

If the players killed the Lilith without a heartbeat, they would be killing a doll. This would put them in opposition to the doll faction, and they would automatically be assigned to the human faction.

Under this choice, because Ye Jiujiu’s default identity was human and the doll faction would be wiped out, both the second clearance condition and the Hidden Mission would automatically become unavailable.

The players would have only one way to clear the dungeon: complete the first clearance condition by discovering the entire truth behind the disappearance of Lilith’s doll.

Of course, if the players were clever, they could piece together most of the truth from the nursery rhyme.

But the clearance condition specifically required them to discover the entire truth.

And the only person in the entire dungeon who knew the final missing piece of the puzzle was Ye Jiujiu.

If they wanted to obtain that last piece of information from her, they would have to bring her the dead body of the Lilith without a heartbeat.

But would any player really have the leisure to carry around the corpse of a dead monster? Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

Even if someone actually did, the human Lilith would tell them that bringing the doll Lilith’s corpse along would cause the doll Lilith to come back to life. She would then die herself, deceiving the players in the process.

With the dungeon’s clearance prerequisite being to protect Lilith, would the players dare to take that gamble when only one Lilith remained?

And even if someone did dare, would the other players agree?

The answer was obvious.

Not to mention, once the doll Lilith was more than ten meters away from the human Lilith, she would crumble into dust after ten minutes.

Meanwhile, the Lilith with a beating heart belonged to the human faction.

Therefore, killing the Lilith with a beating heart would put the players in opposition to the human faction. They would automatically be assigned to the doll faction and obtain a heart from the human Lilith.

Under this choice, the human Lilith’s heart was the crucial item. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

The heart-shaped indentation on the door was actually nothing more than decoration. Its sole purpose was to trick the players into handing over the heart.

They were already at the final step, and the doll Lilith had explicitly told them earlier that a heart was needed to open the door.

What player would suspect anything under those circumstances?

Even if someone did, once they successfully opened the door, the first clearance condition would automatically become unavailable because they did not meet the faction requirement of the human Lilith.

The players would then have to clear the dungeon by completing the second clearance condition or the Hidden Mission.

The second clearance condition required them to return Lilith’s most beloved doll to her.

But what exactly counted as returning her most beloved doll?

The nursery rhyme had already made it perfectly clear. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

“Rain from the heavens falls ever so softly,

A beautiful doll shall dwell in the tower.

A magnificent prison, chains long and cold,

A lovely little doll shall have no home.”

Remember, the singer of this nursery rhyme was the Lilith belonging to the doll faction.

That meant Ye Lingmei and the others had gotten everything wrong from the very beginning. Their interpretation of how to distinguish the doll from the human, as well as all their subsequent deductions, had been mistaken from the start.

Dolls had no heartbeats. Only humans had beating hearts.

And from the perspective of a doll, humans were simply dolls belonging to the doll faction. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

Therefore, every doll described in the nursery rhyme actually referred to someone belonging to the human faction.

Without a doubt, the beautiful doll referred to Ye Jiujiu.

From this, the meaning of the four lines became clear:

For some reason, Ye Jiujiu had locked the doll inside the basement prison, while moving into the tower that had originally belonged to the doll Lilith.

From the perspective of players belonging to the doll faction, this meant that Ye Jiujiu had stolen her doll companion’s home. The relationship between master and servant had been reversed.

Therefore, the second clearance condition’s instruction to “return the doll to Lilith” meant putting the doll Lilith in the tower and locking Ye Jiujiu inside the basement prison.

To accomplish this, aside from the time needed to travel back and forth, the players would also have to remember how to trace the pattern on the snake mural to open the basement passage.

But would Lilith allow the players to watch her open the door? Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

Even if the players wanted to observe, would they dare to force their way into watching after Lilith refused, especially when the dungeon’s clearance prerequisite was to protect her?

Thus, under this choice, the only condition they could realistically hope to complete was the Hidden Mission: killing the doll.

But even that was merely a possibility.

Ye Jiujiu had planted two more traps here.

The first concerned the meaning of killing.

What exactly counted as killing the doll?

Only the method described in the nursery rhyme:

“Scalding blood, a beating heart, Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

The beloved doll closes her eyes.

Sharp, jagged edges, flames rising high,

Oh, doll, my doll—

You shall never see the break of day again—”

But why would the blood be scalding?

Of course, it was because of the flames.

In other words, the players first had to use a sharp blade to extract the blood. Then they had to ignite the blood and burn the heart. Only after completing this process would the doll truly count as dead.

And the second trap… Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

For players belonging to the doll faction, did killing the doll really mean nothing more than killing Ye Jiujiu, who belonged to the human faction?

No.

They needed to remember something the doll Lilith had said earlier: at that time, she wasn’t yet her true self.

So when would she finally become her true self?

After the human Lilith died.

Only after the human Lilith’s death would the doll Lilith replace her and assume the human Lilith’s human-faction identity.

And the dungeon’s clearance prerequisite, “Protect Lilith,” required players to protect the Lilith who belonged to their own faction.

The human Lilith was clearly an enemy of players belonging to the doll faction. Therefore, at this point, the clearance prerequisite to “Protect Lilith” would no longer apply. Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

In other words, the players still needed to kill Lilith.

That was precisely what the heart was for.

Although the doll Lilith had taken over the human Lilith’s faction identity, her fundamental nature had not changed. She had flowing blood, but no heart.

Therefore, to fulfill the conditions for death described in the nursery rhyme, the players had to use that heart.

In fact, figuring this out was quite simple. The doll Lilith had practically given them the answer right from the beginning.

All they needed to do was touch the doll Lilith. Once they discovered that touching her did not result in their own deaths, they could deduce that her faction affiliation had changed.

But after what had happened to Bai Xing, which player would dare touch the doll Lilith when they had already been warned not to?

And even if someone actually did touch her— Original translation by Lhaozi, read at lhaozitranslation.com

The dungeon’s clearance prerequisite was still to protect Lilith.

Even if they discovered that Lilith’s faction had changed, would any player really dare to attack her under that condition?

And even if someone did dare, wouldn’t the other players who were unwilling to take the risk stop them?

Every trap was connected to another, every choice led into yet another snare. A single wrong step was all it took to leave the players with only one possible ending:

A complete party wipe.

And that—

Was the dungeon Ye Jiujiu had constructed: Lilith’s Doll.