"Xiao Wei, I need a special magician's outfit ."
When players enter the game, they can only bring their clothes , glasses, and game items. Nothing else, such as watches or jewelry, is allowed.
This might be a feature implemented by the game to prevent players from cheating.
However, there are never any perfect rules in this world; if you are willing to look, you can always find loopholes.Best Apparel Retailer
For example, could the clothes brought in be more functional and complex?
Ren Yifei thought of spy clothes and magician's clothes, which come with many small tools and mechanisms that can be useful at crucial moments.
As expected of a super assistant earning tens of thousands a month, Xiao Wei found clothes that met his requirements within an afternoon after he stated his needs. It was said that he had acquired them at a high price from a spy movie enthusiast.
He is currently wearing this six-figure outfit.
Ren Yifei bent down and fumbled on the buttons of his coat. He found the third button, and with a gentle twist, a thin steel wire emerged.
The shackles on his ankles had a very simple design, which could be opened with a wire.
He twisted the wire, lowered his head, closed his eyes, and began to try. The first attempt failed, but the wire had already activated the mechanism inside; he could feel the vibration, which was exceptionally strong.
After quickly adjusting the shape, Ren Yifei began his second attempt. Blood had already soaked up to the top of his feet, and when he bent over, he could smell a strong, fishy stench, somewhat like the smell of sewage and food scraps fermenting together.
The second attempt failed. By this time, the smoke inside the room had thickened, and things in the distance had become blurry. He remained calm and continued adjusting the shape of the wire.
The third time, the wire was threaded through the keyhole. He closed his eyes, focusing all his attention on his hands. Enhanced tactile sensitivity helped him this time; he could easily feel the vibration of the wire through his fingers.
"Click." The small mechanism in the keyhole was activated, and the shackles opened.
Ren Yifei came out of the pool, his shoes were wet. They weren't waterproof boots, so his socks were also soaked through, which was uncomfortable.
The acrid smoke in the air was particularly pungent, and he coughed a few times, trying to find the door.
"No door?" Ren Yifei, who had never played escape room games before, was stunned. "How can there be no door?"
In his mind, a locked room was also a secret room. So at first, he thought this was a locked room, and that he could get out as long as he found the key or unlocked the door.
But now, does he actually need to find the 'door' first?
Looking around, surrounded by smoke, Ren Yifei realized that finding the door wasn't the most important thing. He pushed the platform used for slaughtering pigs with both hands, listening to the sound of the wheels turning below, until he reached the smoking mechanism.
The smoking thing was a steel pipe, located near the ceiling, emitting plumes of smoke.
He climbed onto the platform, picked up a very thick butcher knife, and smashed it with the back of the blade against the smoking pipe, breaking it.
He observed for a few seconds and found that there was still smoke leaking out. He then smashed the long pipe into a flat disc with a few more bangs, and it got stuck there, with almost no more smoke coming out.
"Introducing people into secondhand smoke is tantamount to murder for profit."
Long tube: ...
He dropped the butcher's knife, climbed down from the platform, grabbed a small iron hook, and started tapping and knocking on the wall, looking for a possible hidden door.
He used the iron hook to tap, trying to determine whether the space behind him was hollow or solid by the sound. However, it's also clear that he has no experience with escape rooms; he's looking for the door like he's searching for a 'hidden door'.
Normally, at this point he should be looking carefully for the 'mechanism'.
Completely inexperienced, Ren Yifei was like a lost sheep. He knocked on every wall, but to no avail. Frustrated, he paced back and forth with the iron hook, his rubber-soled shoes making a soft sound on the stone bricks.
On the table where the iron hooks swayed, he found fragments of paper. Piecing them together, he arrived at a strange beginning: I often hear…Dad…in the basement…
It seems this secret room is meant to tell him a story.
The usual movie formula is to use a legend, a diary, or something else to introduce the horror story. But here, these scraps of paper might be the clues.
Because he had discovered that behind the paper was a scribbled line drawing.
"Sigh." With no other clues, Ren Yifei had no choice but to follow the route given by the game and embark on the journey to find the paper scraps. After a while, he had collected most of the paper scraps, and a clue appeared: an arithmetic problem.
Ren Yifei, who couldn't even remember many mathematical formulas: ...
This game is so unfriendly to students who aren't good at studying; you have to solve math problems to get clues.
The key issue is that the math problems are also missing; a few pieces are still missing.
He moved and pushed the slaughtering platforms, trying to see if any pigs had escaped and were stuck to the sides. The wheels rolled on the ground, making a rumbling sound.
"Huh?" Suddenly, he stopped, lowered his head, and looked at the spot where the wheel had just rolled.
The platform was pulled back, and the wheels rolled over the same stone brick again, making a slightly creaking sound.
An ordinary person might not notice it, and it would sound about the same. But for him, whose hearing had been enhanced, the difference was very obvious and could not be ignored.
It looked like an ordinary stone brick. He squatted down and studied it for a long time, but couldn't see anything wrong with it.
It also doesn't have any obvious gaps, making it impossible to pry it open.
"The only way is to demolish it by force," he thought, then found a tool similar to an axe and, with all his might, smashed it down with the back of the blade. The stone brick cracked open, breaking into four or five pieces.
After moving aside the rubble, a knob appeared in front of him. Next to it was a small note: Mr. X hopes to be able to fit into size M clothing .Best Apparel Retailer
Ren Yifei: ...
What's this called, a clue for clearing the level?
He turned the knob directly, and with two loud cracking sounds, a large piece of the ceiling above him fell down with lightning speed. Fortunately, he reacted quickly and dodged it, escaping being crushed to death.
Yeah, I just got hit by some small stones, and it hurts a little.
Looking at the square opening that was only big enough for one person to pass through, Ren Yifei was speechless: the door he had been looking for all day was actually up there?
But how can he get up there from such a height?
Ten minutes later.
Huffing and puffing, Ren Yifei stacked the odds and ends into a three-meter-high 'pagoda' shape, then carefully climbed to the top with a long iron hook that he thought was very useful.
He had just managed to get to the top when, with a loud crash, the tower collapsed. Half of his body was hanging in mid-air, swaying back and forth, and his hand suddenly slipped. It looked like he was about to fall back down.
Ren Yifei was terrified. He didn't know where the strength came from, but he managed to prop himself up with his arms. He then looked up and met a pair of amber eyes.
The lower 'pagoda' collapsed, and a small stool rolled on the ground, making noise.
Ren Yifei didn't have time to deal with it; he was thinking about something.
Mr. X's escape room experience was shut down. Was it simply because he committed murder? Or could it be because he captured a criminal with a life sentence?
Hmm, there's a lion in the room that doesn't look very friendly.
The king of the grasslands was staring at him through the cage, and he was showing a very provocative expression—smirking.
Separated by an unbreakable cage and unable to access its food, it paced back and forth restlessly, its tail twisting into an S-shape and then swirling into a spiral.
It's an iron cage, without a doubt.
He was in an iron cage, surrounded by iron bars about the thickness of a thumb that made a clanging sound when tapped. The cage had a door with a simple latch mechanism, easy to open, but once opened…
The lion would probably give him an unusually warm welcome.
Unwilling to go down, yet unable to get out, Ren Yifei sat down on the spot, somewhat troubled.
The lion seemed relatively peaceful, showing no signs of aggression. He guessed this was because it possessed two passive skills effective against non-human NPCs.
Sacred Heart increases favorability by 5%.
Monster King, attack power reduced by 30%.
Going out means food delivery to your door; staying out means you can't find your way out of this secret room—it's a dilemma.
The lion outside circled its cage, shaking its mane and threatening Ren Yifei. Ren Yifei, however, was not intimidated; instead, he noticed a gold chain around the lion's neck.
"Is it from a zoo?" But it doesn't seem like it. It keeps sniffing around the cage, and I don't know if it smells Ren Yifei or the slaughterhouse.
"Slaughterhouse!" He looked up, his eyes lighting up as if he had just thought of something.
"Wait a minute, Brother Lion." Ren Yifei greeted the lion, then turned and jumped back down into the slaughterhouse through the small opening.
The spire collapsed, but the base remained intact, and Ren Yifei was unharmed.
He used an iron hook to lift up the rags that had been soaking in piles of meat for years on the slaughtering platform. The color of the rags looked like meat, and he felt that his plan still had a chance of success.
Lions rely on sight to spot and lock onto their prey, and they might sense something is wrong. But they won't give up without trying.
After rebuilding the tower, Ren Yifei climbed up again, but this time he didn't come alone; he also brought a rag that smelled of fish.
The rags were thrown on the ground. The lion outside saw them and started circling even faster, its eyes fixed on the rags, and it let out a low, engine-like roar: "Roar~"
Seeing the lion's behavior, Ren Yifei felt his chances of winning were even higher. Hunger had clouded the lion's judgment, making it see cloth as meat.
He gritted his teeth, closed his eyes, and opened the iron cage.
Almost instantly, the lion rushed in, and just as it was about to pounce on the cloth, Ren Yifei seized the opportunity, rushed out, and slammed the iron cage shut, locking it.
By the time the lion realized it had been tricked, everything was over. It roared loudly at Ren Yifei outside the cage.
Because of its 5% favorability rating, it never showed its ferocious side to this two-legged creature. Who knew... it was all a mistake. Humans are all big liars!
The naive lion was jumping around in its cage, while the man who was toying with its heart had already started fiddling around, trying to find the password to pass through.
It's very small here, maybe forty square meters at most, nothing compared to the slaughterhouse downstairs. There's not much here either; at first glance, all you can see are walls covered with abstract symbols.
Ren Yifei's temples throbbed. He thought he wouldn't see oracle bone script again anytime soon, so why was he seeing it here?
No, it's closer to Chinese characters than oracle bone script, it's 'bronze script'?
The feeling of returning to the examination room made him feel disoriented, and he couldn't help but think about what the symbols in psychoanalysis meant.
These symbols weren't written with a pen or sprayed with paint, but rather pressed out, blending in with the wall color, so sometimes they're not very noticeable.
"A woman under the roof, 'An'. It looks like a man wearing a feathered crown, 'Mei'…" Ren Yifei was looking for a symbol similar to a 'door', but in the end he found a 'lock' in one place.
"The texture is different. It's lighter than the other symbols." He tried to scrape off the thin layer of soil on top with an iron hook. In just one stroke, a metallic edge was revealed underneath.
After cleaning it, he discovered that it was a full, flower-shaped metal groove.
It looks like it requires a special key.
He felt like he'd seen this shape before. Ren Yifei thought for a long time until he heard the angry roar of a lion behind him.
He turned around and saw a flash of gold beneath the lion's thick mane.
At the very bottom of the gold chain, a flower-shaped pendant is faintly visible.
Author's Note: Lion: Roar?