Clown Game
Chapter 322 - 309: The Final Plan

Chapter 322: Chapter 309: The Final Plan

"You mean yourself?" Bai Xiong countered, "Are you planning to have me wait here, and then wake you up at a predetermined time?"

Bai Xiong immediately thought of Chen Xiao’s plan, and the very next second, he rejected it, "This is definitely not going to work!"

"Yeah, of course it won’t work." Chen Xiao immediately took up the thread, "I even think that the two of us must have already done this before."

Bai Xiong thought for a moment, "You mean the time that I specifically recorded in my phone, the one you messed up?"

"Yes, according to my guess, I must have entered the world of thought myself. Thus, my original consciousness was replaced by the ant colony, and when you tried to wake me up, naturally, the entire swarm sensed it. That’s why you were discovered instantly, leaving you with the shield and the scar on your head, of course, that also meant you were controlled again. The time you became an office worker."

"Knowing so clearly, why do you still want to go in yourself?"

"Yeah, but of course I’m not going in without any preparation..."

"So you want to...?" Bai Xiong hesitated to ask, he had a strong premonition that Chen Xiao was surely up to no good again in his mind.

"Oh, it’s nothing big, this time I don’t want you to wake me up," Chen Xiao waved his hand, indicating it wasn’t a big deal, "It’s just that you should kill me instead..."

"...Ah?" Bai Xiong stared at Chen Xiao silently, and for a moment, he didn’t know what to say. In his emotions, this expression would count as "utterly dumbfounded", but then he frowned slightly, "I see... I think I understand what you mean." He spoke indifferently, "Because in the fabricated collective consciousness, the concept of death doesn’t exist. So, if you’re on the brink of death in the real world, the collective consciousness can’t give you any feedback. That’s why we get free from control after we die. Which means, if I strangle you here, in the few seconds before you lose consciousness, you’d wake up, right?"

Chen Xiao nodded, "Yep, exactly right. The fact that you could keep up with my thoughts shows you’re a reliable teammate indeed."

"I don’t see keeping up with your train of thought as any kind of compliment," Bai Xiong replied indifferently, "And this plan won’t work either! The margin for error is too high. If I’m too quick, you might die before you even have a chance to wake up... Your physical condition is really not that great, and if I’m too slow, the ant colony will quickly notice it. So the success rate is too low, it’s very hard for me to gauge the force needed to bring you to the brink of death."

Indeed, what Bai Xiong was considering was the most likely outcome.

Chen Xiao curled his lip, "Ah, is that so, well... though I had thought of that, I have another plan in mind."

"..." Bai Xiong waited quietly for the other to finish speaking.

"This time, you’ll hide in the cave and pretend to be asleep. I’ll have already tied something around my neck before heading into the tunnel to attract a few ants to take control of me again. This time, I would enter the collective consciousness in a semi-hypoxic state, so I wouldn’t need any external stimulus to reach a near-death state. During that time, I’ll try to find Song Xuan and kill her, and your job is to watch me and make sure I don’t actually die."

"..." Bai Xiong remained silent and this time he pondered for a considerably longer period.

After a while.

"It’s feasible but still very dangerous. You can’t guarantee you’ll be able to find and kill Song Xuan, you can’t even be sure you’ll realize that world is fake in such a short time, so..."

"Ah, don’t worry about it," Chen Xiao interrupted casually, "In fact, in our many attempts, I must have already tried a method, but I can’t tell you what it is."

"What weird things are you talking about?" Bai Xiong asked, puzzled.

"Never mind that, just knock me out."

"Ah??"

"Right, knock me out. It doesn’t need to be for too long, just a few minutes should do. You can do that, right? Let’s start now, this is key to our success this time."

Bai Xiong pondered for a moment... "Uh... okay then," he said. Although he had no idea what the guy was up to, it was just being knocked out, it probably wouldn’t be any big deal.

As soon as his words fell, a hand chop struck Chen Xiao’s nape.

...

...

The world was white, completely empty.

"Ah!"

Chen Xiao groaned, "As expected, losing consciousness brings me here."

Immediately after, he began shouting loudly, "Hey, you two, whoever it is, come out!"

The next second

"Shh————"

A voice appeared beside him, and Chen Xiao turned his head toward the sound.

The weird man in the purple dress suit leisurely materialized.

"What’s all the noise about? Do you know how hard it was for me to escape? What if you draw that guy over here?"

"Yo..." Chen Xiao rolled his eyes, "Aren’t you supposed to be mighty? Being the embodiment of madness and chaos, you have things to fear? That image of yours is going to collapse."

"Hehe... Do you think I care about any image? Besides, it’s not fear, it’s more like disgust..."

"Disgust? Disgust with what?"

"With boredom, of course!" By now, the man was fully in front of Chen Xiao, "If it catches me again, I’ll be locked up since this is still my containment room. That would be insanely boring, you know. Boredom is the most terrifying thing. And right now, I still get to play hide and seek with him, which is much more interesting than lying in a cage."

"Hmm..." Chen Xiao pondered for a moment, "Alright, boredom is indeed unbearable. But I don’t have time to deal with your game of hide and seek. I’m here because I need your help!"

"Ahh, I know." The other quickly picked up the topic, "You want me to remind you to kill Song Xuan or Bai Xiong, right?"

"Yep, so, I have indeed done that already?"

"Yeah, you’ve been here twice already! Alright, as a player personally invited by me, I’ll help you. No more talk now, I’m really enjoying my game with that guy. Hehehe..."

He grinned and winked at Chen Xiao, then hurriedly vanished into the stark whiteness.

Chen Xiao could only shrug helplessly. He looked up at the sky above, where the torn canopy was still miserably gaping open, the outer space stained blood-red with stars. This endlessly white world was just a place to accommodate the consciousness manifestations of two high-dimensional worlds. He still didn’t quite understand what that smoke ghost was exactly, but judging by the standard of this self-proclaimed "Jester," if it were an average person, they could be eroded in an instant, losing their self.

Yet he could assimilate it entirely. Even more so, this sealed area was just a corner of his brain, whereas the crimson night outside was his true world of thought.

So... who exactly was he?