Zhongli's mortal frame, stripped of godly vigor in the thirteenth cycle, swayed under the corridor's dizzying blur, a rare vertigo he hadn't tasted in eons creeping into his ancient bones.
The haze sharpened his focus—each corner looping back to the first demanded scrutiny, the bathroom's shifting state a riddle he chased with unwavering care.
After several circuits, a frame toppled in the corner, exposing a hole aligned with the bathroom's wall, a breach he peered through to glimpse a lit, empty room echoing with a woman's anguished coughs.
A faint radio crackled—It's time to act, our flesh is rotten to the bone, I'm speaking to honest people whose benefits are ripped away—its words a grim chorus to her strangled cries and slaps.
The broadcast urged, Yes, you know what to do, as a knife rasped free, her screams peaking then fading into a dying moan, the silence that followed heavy with unseen slaughter.
Zhongli pulled back, a phrase materializing above the hole—There is no way out—its stark warning signaling the endgame's approach, a final act he met with steady resolve.
He rounded the corner, the bathroom aglow and open, a silent baby embryo nestled in the sink, and the radio hummed again, unveiling a family's unraveling tale.
You got fired, drank your woes away; she took a cashier job; the manager liked her—that's why she earned; just ten months ago, it intoned, laying bare a husband's descent into suspicion and ruin.
The truth crystallized—jobless, drowned in spirits, he'd doubted her fidelity, the embryo's origins, sparking a murderous rage that claimed them all, a tragedy Zhongli mourned with a sigh.
"Marriage hinges on trust—lose it, and all crumbles," he mused, his voice a soft lament for a man undone by jealousy, propped up by a wife he'd betrayed in his spiral.
He pressed on, the corridor snapping back to normal after a few loops, ushering him into the fourteenth cycle, its lights steady, the clock locked at midnight's ghostly hour.
The next cycle's door stood shut, the bathroom a dark maw, and the chandelier's creak mingled with rain's louder patter outside, a deceptive calm cloaking the air.
No clues leapt from the bathroom's shadows or the hall's stillness, leaving Zhongli to pace, his steps stirring the scene until the screen tore apart in jagged rips.
The tearing worsened with each stride, then plunged to black, words emerging after ten seconds—I know you, and you've started playing; I'll remember that day twenty years ago; call me, J—a cryptic note aimed at him, the player.
The screen flared back to the starting house, cockroach-free, and Zhongli frowned, "What's this twist?" the message's directness clashing with the game's narrative veil.
He sifted the text—J and a call as keys—its sound echoing Mondstadt or Fontaine names, a cipher he'd crack as he stepped into the corridor, now dim and mute.
The clock ticked back to 23:59, the next door locked, and Zhongli lingered by it, waiting as midnight chimed, a baby's laugh drifting from the bathroom just as he neared.
No lock clicked, so he entered, the embryo still in the sink, eerie music swelling with Lisa's groans—her location vague, prompting him to hold fast, patient as stone.
After thirty seconds, the sounds faded, and he emerged, scanning for Lisa but finding none, his path veering to the corner's phone, a nexus of clues he couldn't ignore.
J—Jack, Jeff, John, Joseph—he recited names aloud, testing the code, until a baby's giggle answered, a cold touch grazing his hand, a chill he met with a sage's calm.
Liam leaned forward, his system humming—Zhongli's march to the endgame fed a steady stream, not Tartaglia's torrents, but a flow hinting at a flood if that composure ever broke.
The crowd hushed, Zhongli's nearing triumph a magnet—where they'd faltered, he wove clues into a tapestry, his fearlessness a beacon in Silent Hill's haunted sprawl.
Hu Tao peeked over, her Mario run eclipsed by this—Zhongli wasn't just clearing; he was rewriting the game's script, his clarity a crown she'd never wear.
Liam marveled at the pace—PT's trial could fall in hours under Zhongli's gaze, a mind forged by millennia turning ghosts and riddles into mere stepping stones.
This cafe pulsed with his feat, the fourteenth cycle's edge a precipice Zhongli teetered on, his final push a promise of points Liam dreamed might dwarf Liyue's wildest days.
***
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