The cowardly but sensible young man cautiously turned on his phone. It still had a little battery left, and the time displayed was: "May 31st, 5:37 PM..."
"No need to report the rest." Ren Yifei walked to the combination lock. This year in this world is 2023, which he had seen on the calendar outside.
This is a six-digit combination lock.
"230528".
"Ding-dong. Password correct." With the sound of the electronic keypad lock, the door slowly opened in front of them, revealing a pitch-black corridor with countless laser beams.
"Holy crap." The young man was stunned.
Ren Yifei didn't go directly there. He turned back, pulled away a body cart, and went into the house. When the young man saw him leave, he rushed over hurriedly: "Brother, wait for me."
Once the password was unlocked, he immediately started calling me "Big Brother," showing none of the disdain he had shown before.
"Holy crap, bro, how did you know the password?" The young man was now very enthusiastic. "Bro, my surname is An. Oh, look at me, my sister's surname is An, so of course my surname is An too. How did you know that password?"
"Just guessing," Ren Yifei said succinctly.
"Don't be like that, tell me?"
The young man pressed on, "How could you guess that? You found it on the body? There was no name written on the body, was there? And the time? No, that's not right. I entered the time as soon as I arrived, the exact same time."
Ren Yifei only then realized that this person was being noisy, so he had no choice but to say, "This body has been dead for three days. If we go back three days from the current time, we get the actual time of death. The password is the time of death. Of course, I guessed it, and I just got lucky."
"I..."
"Shh," Ren Yifei told him to be quiet.
"Bring a hearse here. Oh, and," Ren Yifei thought carefully, pointing to the corpse on the ground, "take off those shoes."
"What?"
"Push the cart, take off the shoes." Ren Yifei repeated, telling him not to pretend he couldn't hear and deceive himself.
"But these, these shoes..." The young man came from a wealthy family; he'd never done anything like this before. Pushing a cart was one thing, but stealing shoes from a dead person, especially shoes from someone who had been dead for three days and was already decomposing... This...
However, under Ren Yifei's icy gaze, he was unable to resist.
I always felt that if he couldn't prove his worth, he would be kicked out by this woman's former blind date and left to fend for himself in no time.
He pinched his nose, took off the dead man's shoes, and then pushed a cart.
Two hearses filled the place to the brim. A young man ran to one side and dry heaved, feeling dirty and unclean.
As the doors slowly closed, the corridor grew even darker, and the lines representing lasers became even more dazzlingly red.
"This is a laser chamber; we need to avoid these lasers to get to the other side." After vomiting, the young man returned. He spoke softly, his voice filled with fear.
He wouldn't be afraid of a regular escape room game; after all, no one will die, and the thrill is limited. But this game—people can really die.
Who knows what mechanism will be triggered if you touch the laser? What if it's a deadly trap?
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"Does it have to be a living thing, or can inanimate objects also affect the laser?" he asked the young man who had played escape room games.
"Inanimate objects are fine. I mean those old-fashioned escape room games, but for this, I'm not sure."
Ren Yifei thought for a while, then used an iron hook to pick up a shoe and threw it out.
The speed was too fast for the two to see exactly which ray was interfered with, but the effect was still very obvious. Balls of flame shot up from the floor, and judging by their color, they could be several hundred degrees Celsius.
"If a person walked over there, wouldn't they be burned to a crisp?" The young man was somewhat fearful; humans have a natural fear of fire.
"Is it just fire-breathing, nothing else?" Ren Yifei wondered.
He chose another direction and lost his second shoe. This time, flames erupted again, and the temperature was so high that even from a distance, he felt like he was about to be burned.
However, with only flames, flames rushing from only one direction, Ren Yifei felt this was the best outcome.
He looked down and inspected the hearse. It had a solid metal frame underneath, covered with a thin plastic sheet, and the wheels were front and rear wheels, not swivel wheels.
The young man seemed to understand what he was about to do: "You want to ride this straight through? What if it stops halfway? Or what if it veers off course and crashes into the wall?"
Ren Yifei ripped off the plastic sheet, lay down on it, curled his legs up, and pressed his feet against the door. Yes, he planned to use the rebound force to propel himself forward.
The corridor isn't very long; if you have enough strength, you can push him to the very back.
There are definitely some risks involved in doing this, but it's better than doing nothing.
"I'm not responsible for other people's lives; that responsibility is too heavy. So, you decide for yourself. I can wait a maximum of ten minutes." With that, Ren Yifei slammed his legs against the door, and the four wheels of the hearse spun rapidly.
The red laser beam was blocked, and flames shot up from below. The towering flames immediately obscured the young man's view, and he shielded his eyes with his arm: it was too blinding.
Ren Yifei huddled in the middle, motionless. He clenched his teeth and forced himself to shut out his physical instincts of struggle and fear.
He lay there like a corpse, and the hearse steadily passed through the flames. Ren Yifei felt the steel plate beneath him become scorching hot, but it was like an illusion. Flames exploded before his eyes, and flames surrounded him, as if he were in a blazing inferno.
Finally, the hearse crashed into something else and stopped. Ren Yifei was still curled up, hugging his knees, and couldn't tell what was going on for a moment.
"We're here?" He looked up and saw the door, a stone door without a combination lock or anything like that, only a bunch of relief patterns shrouded in shadow in the dim environment.
By this time, the flames shooting down the corridor had stopped, and the young man had lowered his arm. Looking at Ren Yifei, who was completely unharmed at the other end of the corridor, he couldn't help but exclaim, "This actually works?"
"How did you do that?" The young man was filled with regret for covering his eyes earlier; he hadn't seen the hearse rush through the flames at all.
Ren Yifei succeeded, which proves that this is feasible. Not just theoretically feasible, but practically feasible.
Even with such a successful example, the young man hesitated when it came to actually replicating it. He could feel the heat that could melt bones.
"Isn't there any other way?" he asked loudly.
Ren Yifei ignored him; he was looking at the patterns on the doors.
It was too dark here, so he used his phone's built-in light to see. These were nine separate stone bricks, each with a uniformly styled Q-version relief, arranged together in a nine-square grid.
The nine-square grid is surrounded by a ring with very fine patterns.
"Brother, do you have any other ideas?" the young man behind him was still shouting.
Interrupted from his thoughts, Ren Yifei turned around and pointed to his wrist. Although he no longer wore a watch, the meaning was still clear: 'check the time'.
"Either come over yourself, or wait there." You're all adults and can take responsibility for your actions.
Having gone through so much, his heart had hardened. If this man couldn't arrive within ten minutes, Ren Yifei would simply leave without a trace of guilt.
As he said, everyone should be responsible for their own life, rather than shifting that responsibility onto others.
Upon seeing Ren Yifei's response, the young man was on the verge of tears. But there was nothing he could do; this wasn't his home. There were no loving parents here, no one to curry favor with him for power, and no true friends.
He imitated Ren Yifei's previous actions, shrinking back there and then kicking the door with his legs.
"Ahhhhhh—" But he still didn't have Ren Yifei's composure. He panicked from the start, yelling and moving his body around on top of him.
In the chaos, his outstretched finger was scalded by the flames, but fortunately it was brief and his finger wasn't burned, though he was frightened.
This clearly affected the hearse; it didn't travel in a straight line but instead took an arc.
Just as they were about to cross the inferno, the hearse crashed into a wall, bringing it to a stop. The flames below were almost melting the steel plate.
"It's over," the young man thought, as his life from the first twenty-odd years of his life began to flash before his eyes.
"How absurd... I hope they don't cry." The young man closed his eyes.
"He's already at peace even before he's dead?"
A hand, a hand holding an iron hook, passed through the gaps in the red laser beams without touching any of them.
He hooked the front of the hearse, pulled hard, and before the flames burst forth, he pulled the hearse, along with the weeping young man inside, back from the inferno to the living world.
The young man opened his eyes and stared at him blankly. The cold face in the flames gave people a unique sense of security and a special charm.
"Damn, this man is so handsome."
"Get down," Ren Yifei said.
Upon reaching a safe location, the young man nimbly disembarked from the hearse, with his wife following closely beside him.
Ren Yifei sensed something was off about the other person, assuming they were still recovering from a fright, so he didn't say anything more. Young people usually calm down after experiencing a few similar things.
"Hey? Isn't that Anubis, the Egyptian god of death?" The young man pointed to a cartoonish wolf-headed human figure on the door. "I've been to Egypt before, so I remember it. And this, that's a symbol of royalty, a crossed crooked staff and a flail."
The curved staff is a scepter with a curved tip, while the flail is a wooden stick with three strings of beads hanging from it; both frequently appear in ancient Egyptian contexts and are highly recognizable. However, here they are depicted as very rounded and charming.
"What is this?" the young man asked Ren Yifei.
Ren Yifei shook his head: "It doesn't give any specific hints. However, I discovered that these individual relief patterns are movable, and there's a waiting area in the bottom center. Doesn't it look like the Huarong Road puzzle? But this is used for puzzle pieces."
"puzzle?"
"Yes, they are representative of the ancient Egyptian mythological system, the ancient Greek mythological system, and the ancient Indian mythological system." Ren Yifei pointed to the outer frame. "Look at the relief patterns on this frame; they actually represent different mythological systems."
"At the top is a scarab beetle pattern, which is one of the symbols of ancient Egyptian mythology. In their legend, the sun was driven by a giant scarab beetle (dung beetle).
"Below is a lotus flower. In the absence of any Buddhist symbol, I guess it is a symbol of ancient Hinduism."
"Finally, there's ancient Greek mythology, which needs no explanation: the Trojan Horse, the Trojan War."
Ren Yifei used both hands, with a clear plan in his mind, telling him how to move these relief bricks to achieve the best effect with the fewest steps.
The young man only saw him moving the relief tiles as if he didn't need to think; his hands seemed to be controlled by two separate brains, each rapidly completing its task. The young man felt dazzled; just watching was exhausting.
"Anubis, the god of death, the king's scepter, and the scales with a feather on them—this is from the ancient Egyptian mythological system."
The scales with the feather on them are used to weigh the heart of the deceased; it is called the Scales of Judgment, and the feather is the feather of truth. If the heart of the deceased is heavier than the feather, he will be cast into hell; otherwise, he will live forever.
"The elephant-headed god Ganesha, the great bird Lokara with a venomous snake in its mouth, and the vajra as a weapon. This is ancient Indian mythology."
Ren Yifei was completely unfamiliar with Indian mythology, and the fact that he was able to list these three was actually due to the process of elimination.
This is quite simple. Think about where elephants originated. They're neither in Egypt nor ancient Greece, so it must be India.
There was also the giant bird Loukara, which he once mistook for an Egyptian deity, because birds combined with venomous snakes sounded very Egyptian. However, the Egyptian pantheon was full, and this didn't seem to be from ancient Greek mythology, so it could only be from the ancient Indian mythological system.
The remaining three: the winged hat, which belongs to the messenger Hermes, undisputed, and is from ancient Greek mythology.
A white bull... well, I was initially skeptical, because Indians seem to revere bulls, especially white bulls. But on the other hand, the story of Zeus transforming into a white bull to seduce beautiful women is a well-known ancient Greek myth.
Lastly, the golden apple. This one is also uncontroversial. It was the reward for the contest between the most beautiful goddesses that sparked the Trojan War.
After adjusting his position, Ren Yifei took a step back. He was looking forward to the next development.
Light shone through the gaps in the embossed bricks, impossible to ignore in the darkness. They could feel the ground trembling slightly, and the door in front of them seemed to be opening.
It opened a crack, and the young man eagerly moved closer, but suddenly, his smile froze on his face.
Author's Note: Afei: When you don't know what to choose, use the process of elimination!