Chapter 241: He Really Is a Genius
Drip—
Drip—
There was a constant drip of saliva on his shoulder, thick, sticky, and reeking of a fishy stench.
Jiang Che could feel something heavy pressed against his back. He couldn’t see it, but its presence was undeniable.
His neck felt unnaturally stiff, as if some entity had wrapped its hands around his throat, gripping him tightly, forbidding Jiang Che from turning his head.
The force was used with eerie skill—enough to restrain but not enough to kill, leaving Jiang Che no way to look back.
His shoulder was already soaked through, the pungent stink lingering beneath his nose.
Jiang Che took a deep breath and forced down the urge to retch. This was no ordinary foul odor; it was a nausea that attacked him on a purely physical level, gut-churning revulsion.
No pain came from behind. Still, relentless curiosity pushed Jiang Che to want to turn, to see what exactly was on his back.
He wasn’t hurt—there was only the steady drip of saliva on his shoulder, the ongoing stench filling his nostrils with every breath.
And the farther he walked, the more intense the taste on his shoulder became.
He never dared turn his head of his own accord, only catching glimpses from the corner of his eye—his shoulder, his shirtfront just visible to him.
The clothes on his upper body were stained and filthy, strange drool seeping downward, carrying unknown filth, soaking through Jiang Che’s fabric.
Ding Ning watched the scene with unwavering eyes. The first trial they’d designed for Jiang Che wasn’t about survival, but about testing him at his core.
They wanted to know, when Jiang Che faced crisis and unexplainable events, how would he respond, how would he analyze and decide?
"You think he’ll look back?" Hua eyed Jiang Che’s careful demeanor, visibly thoughtful.
She truly hadn’t expected Jiang Che would make it this far, and now, even when he sensed something wrong behind him, he didn’t move rashly.
"He didn’t look before, and he won’t look now either." Ding Ning gave a soft laugh; she understood Jiang Che.
Though Jiang Che was something of a mental anomaly among humans, that didn’t mean he made reckless choices in a real situation.
He had his own sense of judgment.
"This setup—I’ve seen it in a lot of Dungeons." Before preparing this special mental Dungeon, Hua had looked up the traps that claimed the most human lives in other Dungeons.
She discovered the highest death count for humans came from curiosity.
It wasn’t fear that killed the most people.
Most perished because of curiosity.
Like the setup around Jiang Che right now: an unknown entity trailing just behind him, clinging from his back, seizing his neck and stopping him from looking back.
Putrid saliva dripped onto him, the grind of teeth and odd hollow sounds from its throat twining together in his ears.
It conjured the sensation of a monster squatting on his body, watching its intriguing prey, waiting for a perfect moment to devour him whole.
What they were testing now was simply whether Jiang Che could restrain his unnecessary curiosity.
Curiosity was necessary; after all, it drove people to search, to hunt for solutions within Dungeons.
But sometimes, even curiosity became surplus—if you knew there was danger, yet still insisted on looking, that was just foolishness.
"Humans can’t suppress their curiosity," Hua said seriously.
"Because most people, when they face a monster behind them, their first response is cold sweat, chilled feet."
"They’re different from us. Our vision is almost three hundred sixty degrees—evolved from constant danger. By human terms—survival of the fittest—we’ve long adapted to survey our environment in every direction."
"Humans aren’t like us. Their backs represent vulnerability."
"If danger comes from behind, a human’s first instinct is to turn and see what’s there, instead of steadying themselves and refusing to look." What Hua said was all backed by data.
She’d found, in cases of human death, that when danger struck from behind, their first reaction was always to turn and see.
Because to them, so long as they identified the danger, they’d feel some security, able at least to contemplate countermeasures for whatever might lurk behind them.
Jiang Che moved forward, and as he turned the corner, another sound emerged ahead.
He was now caught between both fronts—some monster seemingly lying in wait ahead, a different one still pressed to his back. If he wanted to survive, the logical option was to deal with the thing behind him first, then explore what lay in front.
Watching Jiang Che’s actions, Hua murmured, "If the livestream was still running, those humans would be commenting that Jiang Che is out of his mind."
She’d designed the mental phantom-space around human instincts. But using those instincts could only ever lead to death for a human.
Jiang Che’s actions now—completely anti-human in nature.
With danger at his back, why didn’t he prioritize dealing with it?
Even plenty of malicious spirits would fall for this trap.
Expelling nearby threats—that’s a survival instinct for any kind of life.
Jiang Che felt the weight on his shoulders, his neck stabbing with pain and every breath becoming laborious.
Hua wasn’t wrong—when he sensed something moving behind him, he’d been startled, if only for a moment.
But just that moment.
Because he noticed: whether the grip on his throat, the saliva soaking his shoulder, or the nauseating stench in the air, none of it actually harmed him.
The noises behind him, the howls at his ear—they were paper tigers, just like when he’d first entered the Dungeon: only sounds, causing no injury at all.
He trusted Ding Ning not to hold back during this trial; they both knew that doing so helped no one.
After all, they’d gone to all this effort to create a special mental Dungeon just for him, to make Jiang Che stronger, not to coddle him inside a nightmare.
So if what was behind him could not hurt him, then he wouldn’t look back, nor pay further attention to it.
His neck was being gripped—that had to be for a reason.
Ding Ning had always said: in any Dungeon, if you encounter an event with rules—if something tells you not to do a thing, don’t do it.
Calming himself, Jiang Che pressed forward once more.
After a few more steps, the stink in the air grew even stronger. But now he was certain—the thing behind him was no threat.
He kept moving, pushing further toward the end of the corridor, no longer affected by the grotesquery behind him, his steps growing more assured.
"Humans might think he’s insane, but I think he’s a genius—maybe just because he’s never really interacted with humans, he’s immune to their habitual thinking," Hua couldn’t help but marvel.