Having figured out where the key was, Ren Yifei stood up and walked to the cage.
The lion was somewhat bewildered, sensing a dangerous aura emanating from this seemingly calm young man. However, the lion didn't move; it simply observed.
It is too young to know how terrifying humans can be; these two-legged creatures have no limits when they go mad.
"Clang, clang, clang!" Just like that, the iron hooks pounded on the iron bars like a torrential downpour, making a sharp, ear-piercing noise.
The lion was stunned; for a moment it thought the two-legged creature had suddenly gone insane.
The iron hook was still striking the iron bars, which angered the lion. It pounced angrily, slamming its large paws on the iron cage, causing the entire cage to shake.
The lion's paw almost touched the tip of his nose, but Ren Yifei didn't even blink.
Just as the lion pounced and pressed its furry face against the iron bar to threaten him, he reached out and grabbed the gold pendant under the lion's mane, tearing it off along with the lion's fur.
The movement was executed in one smooth motion, like that of a well-trained magician.
He even had time to touch the lion's little toe (the gaps between the metal bars were too small to allow the entire paw to extend). It was fluffy, but the fur was a bit coarse, not as soft as a cat's.
In one movie, he made a cameo appearance as a thief. To achieve the one-shot effect the director wanted, he practiced extensively on how to quickly, accurately, and discreetly steal a gold necklace from someone's neck and hide it quickly.
That shot later became a classic clip used by content creators in the editing section to crush popular streamers, usually accompanied by an eye-catching and exaggerated title such as "God-level Cameo".
He laughed at himself at the time, saying he had learned a bunch of skills he would never use. Little did he know that having many skills was never a bad thing, and now he was putting them to good use.
After having its fur plucked and its little toe touched, the lion roared angrily again, its foul breath filling the air. Ren Yifei, however, had already turned to experiment with the gold pendant.
This escape room is probably testing a person's courage or something? Ren Yifei wasn't quite sure.
He felt no fear while separated by the cage. Fear usually stems from a lack of control, but the current situation was completely under his control.
After realizing that the lion could not hurt him no matter what, his innate fear of wild beasts was suppressed to a very low level.
Come to think of it, he also seemed to have experienced being eaten alive by hungry wild beasts in a dream given by the Great Villain System.
However, he wasn't left with much psychological trauma. Probably because the beast bit off his neck immediately, causing him little pain.
Compared to being sliced to pieces by an ogre and dying in excruciating pain, this is already considered gentle.
The flower-shaped gold pendant was pressed into the flower-shaped groove, fitting perfectly. He heard a sound behind him; a wall was turning to both sides. On the other side of the wall was a young man with a pale face, and at his feet lay a gruesome corpse.
"Hmm." The wafting scent diluted the stench of wild animals and the stench of the slaughterhouse in the room—the smell of rotting corpses.
Ren Yifei suspected that the designer of this escape room game had a grudge against the nose, as all three smells were particularly unpleasant.
"It's you?" the young man asked, pointing at Ren Yifei.
What a coincidence! It was that brother of my blind date who was obsessed with his sister.
As the door was about to close again, Ren Yifei carried the iron hook into the room where his younger brother was.
It looked like a morgue, with a body disposal station, refrigerated cabinets for placing bodies, and trolleys for transporting bodies... Combined with the eerie cold light overhead, it actually looked quite authentic.
The door behind him closed, leaving only the stench of death in the room. Ren Yifei took a pair of thin gloves from his pocket, carefully putting them on, his movements slow and calm.
The young man had been with the corpse for a long time and was terrified, but when he saw a familiar face (?) who seemed calm and composed, he suddenly felt a little more confident.
"You killed him?" Ren Yifei asked, pointing to the corpse on the ground.
The man jumped up as if he were on fire: "What? What does this have to do with me? He was like this when I came in!"
"Oh, are there any other people? Have you run into anyone else before?"
The young man shook his head. Just then, a green fly flew up from the corpse, disgusting him. He took a few steps back, covering his nose with one hand: "I saw this thing as soon as I came in, about twenty minutes ago. I'm not sure, there's no timer here."
"Since you came in? You've been in this instance since you came in?" Ren Yifei found it strange that this person hadn't even cleared a single secret room.
"Yeah, you've already passed one of the escape rooms? I think I saw a lion." The young man looked him up and down. "I didn't realize. Hey, how did you pass the level?"
"There's a groove in the wall, and a key on the lion's neck. Just take it through the cage." Skipping over all the difficulties, Ren Yifei casually revealed his secret to success, then asked the other person, "What about you? Did you find anything?"
Now that they needed to work together, the young man didn't intend to hide anything. He pointed towards the door and said, "There's a door here, but it requires a password. I don't know what the password is."
Ren Yifei nodded, indicating that he understood. He began to check each of the drawers where the bodies were stored, but they were all empty. It seemed that the only body was the one on the floor.
"Have you ever played this kind of escape room game before?" Ren Yifei asked the young man, who looked very fashionable and seemed like the type who would play this kind of game.
Sure enough, the young man perked up at the mention of this: "You bet! I'm an expert. Whether it's using a mirror to reflect a laser, using pressure, or requiring certain sounds... there's no trick I don't know."
"Really? What are your thoughts on this secret room?"
"My opinion?" He looked around, rubbed his arm, and hesitated. "It should be about right, right? But for a locked room with an obvious door like this, what we need to crack is a password. But..."
He shook his head: "Normal escape rooms usually have some numerical clues, but here, I didn't see a single Arabic numeral."
That's true. But those freezers don't have numbers on them. Aren't they worried about picking up the wrong body?
Thinking about how this young man had been struggling here for half an hour without finding his way out, while he had already successfully navigated two escape rooms, Ren Yifei felt both envious of the other's luck and impressed by the difficulty of escaping this escape room.
It seems that even experienced escape room players can't offer much help here. This escape room doesn't follow the usual formula.
In fact, Ren Yifei thought the young man was quite capable of maintaining basic composure in the face of a corpse.
He walked over to the corpse, squatted down, and began to examine the gruesome body lying on the ground.
This is the only clue left for them in this locked room, and also the most likely clue to provide the password.
"...Holy crap, what are you doing? You're such a pervert!" the young man cried out in exasperation. He saw Ren Yifei using an iron hook to pry open the dead man's lips, which were crawling with maggots and several greenbottle flies.
The movement of the iron hook caused the flies to fly up, but they didn't go far; they went to the groin area of the corpse. There were also 'holes' there that attracted flies.
"As you can see, we're looking for clues." Ren Yifei didn't turn his head; he was carefully examining the corpse.
"Ugh." The young man, who had never seen anything like this in real life, felt nauseous. He turned his face away, thinking to himself that it was right for his sister to fail her blind date. People who could handle corpses without batting an eye, and who weren't even forensic professionals, could they be normal?
"Don't you find it disgusting? I heard you studied finance?" A finance student playing with corpses?
"What's so disgusting about a lifeless corpse? It won't stand up and hit you, it won't open its mouth and curse you, and it won't hide under your bed and scare you." Ren Yifei was particularly calm.
Actually, he hadn't been very comfortable with corpses before, after all, he grew up in a peaceful society. But after being in the Desolate Corner for more than a month, Ren Yifei found that his sensitivity to fear had decreased.
Crises can indeed be a good test of character.
Well, perhaps it's because I know these are all NPCs that the image of NPCs being turned into wax figures automatically appears in my mind, which immediately lessens the fear.
The thought that I was moving around was probably just a wax figure made me less scared. It felt similar to the props or special effects makeup actors in movies.
He didn't even seem to feel anything when he saw the corpse. He's becoming more and more inhuman, Ren Yifei thought to himself.
Meanwhile, the young man on the other side was terrified. Ren Yifei had been quite happy when he first arrived, but now he began to doubt: was it really okay to share a room with this terrifying guy?
Ren Yifei ignored the young man; he was observing the insects.
Frankly, Ren Yifei hadn't studied forensic entomology in detail; he could only make a preliminary assessment of how long the body had been dead. A more specific assessment would likely require the expertise of a professional.
Judging from their clothing—a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans—the season is likely similar to the outside world, early summer, with an average temperature of around 23 degrees Celsius.
The body was wearing a watch on its wrist, but it was no longer working; it was a mechanical watch.
Half of his phone slipped out of his pocket; it's currently unknown whether the phone is usable.
Clusters of fly eggs were found on the face, especially the lips, along with flies and larvae. Larvae were crawling inside the nasal cavity. The longest larvae were third instar larvae, exceeding 0.5 cm in length, but pupae were not yet visible.
The fact that these insects only appeared in the orifices indicates that there were no other lacerations or wounds on the body.
He then used an iron hook to lift his clothes to examine his abdomen, which showed a noticeable bulge.
After a person dies, the body decomposes, producing gases that attract flies to lay eggs. If all goes well, the first batch of first-instar larvae, or maggots, can be seen within 24 hours. The next day, they molt into second-instar larvae, and then into third-instar larvae.
There are clusters of eggs and third-instar larvae on the corpse, but no pupae. Based on the average temperature and other characteristics, such as the condition of the livor mortis and the bulging of the abdomen, he can roughly determine that the corpse has been dead for about three days.
"I remember that when the morgue received a body, it was required to register it and indicate the time of death."
"So...so?" the young man asked, trembling.
Ren Yifei used an iron hook to pull the phone out of his pocket, and it slid down to the young man's feet with a 'whoosh,' startling him: "What are you doing?!"
"Open it, let me see the date," Ren Yifei said.
"Why don't you open it?" The young man almost vomited when he saw the two plump little white maggots still crawling on the screen.
"Heh." Ren Yifei tapped the long iron hook, shaking off the small insects on it.
The young man held his breath; he suddenly felt a little afraid of this person.
"I'm a businessman, I don't do business at a loss," Ren Yifei said. "If you're of no use to me, I might just smash your legs and leave you here to keep the corpse company."
His voice was calm and composed, yet the young man trembled with fear.
"Wait, I... I'll press it, okay?"