Seeing the door open, Feng Bujue sighed in relief. He did not hurry to run out. Instead, using the light that shone in from outside the door, he walked to the cage where the monkey was kept. He opened the latch, lifted the door, and carried the unconscious monkey out.
Name: Sleeping Tibetan Macaque
Type: Plot Item
Quality: Normal
Function: Unknown
Can be taken out of the scenario: Yes
Remark: A type of monkey with a lively and brave personality. It is now extinct.
"A plot item, but it says that I can take it out of the scenario. Hmm …" Feng Bujue mumbled. He tried to put the monkey inside his inventory, and he succeeded. Then, he walked out of the room.
There was a corridor outside the door. The walls were basically made of metal, and the ceiling was still four to five meters high. The lighting was normal, but there was still no window. There were doors and forks on both sides of the corridor, but they were either locked or blocked by large objects. There was only one real corridor. Occasionally, red arrows would appear on the wall to guide Feng Bujue. After several futile attempts, he knew that he would not find anything useful, so he picked up his pace and followed the arrows. About seven minutes later, he reached the end of the corridor, and there was another metal door that was painted red.
This door did not have a handle, and there was a circular valve in the middle. Feng Bujue walked forward to grab the valve and tried to turn it. The resistance was great, and he had to use a lot of strength before he managed to turn it.
After turning it half a circle, the door moved, and a gust of cold air seeped out from the gap. Feng Bujue had a bad feeling. When he pushed the door open, he realized that the metal door was very thick, and the room was obviously a sealed freezer. Once he opened the door, a gust of cold air rushed at him.
The interior of the room was truly a 'world of ice and snow'. The ground was covered in white frost, and there were signs of ice on the walls. Lifting his head to look, other than the lighting, he could see that there was a pipe that was about one meter in diameter at each of the three corners of the ceiling. When the door was opened, white snow started to drift out from the pipe. Thankfully, even though the pipe was large, the snow that fell was only sporadic.
Feng Bujue took a deep breath and blew hot air into his palms. He rubbed his hands and walked into the room. After he crossed the threshold, he realized that the depth of the floor was not right. The floor was lower than the bottom of the door, and it was not at the same level as the corridor outside the door. Therefore, the thin layer of frost on the floor was actually knee-deep snow. He stepped on it, and his feet sank into the snow. It was so cold that he jumped a few steps, but it was useless. The snow was very soft, and the only way to prevent his feet from sinking into the snow was to increase the surface. Therefore, he knelt down …
He did not close the door but knelt to the opposite wall of the room. There was another door there, but there was no wheel to open it. There was only an electronic lock that was embedded in the door that required a password. There were four empty slots for the password on the screen. There was an obvious movable iron plate on the wall next to the door. The iron plate was about ten centimeters long, square in shape, and there was a small handle on it. When Feng Bujue pulled the iron plate, the iron door that led to the room automatically closed.
There was a small space behind the iron plate, and there was a cassette. What he needed to do next was very clear …
Feng Bujue took out the cassette and the Walkman that he was carrying. He took out the original cassette and placed it inside his backpack. Then, he placed the new cassette inside and pressed the play button.
"Merry Christmas, Arthur. This is a day for family reunion. At the same time, the spirit of Christmas also means selfless sacrifice and blessing … "
As Feng Bujue listened to the recording, he started his second round of detailed observation of the room. He noticed the most eye-catching thing in the room earlier. On one side of the metal wall, there was a piece of newspaper that looked quite new. The wall had obviously been treated. The ice around the newspaper was not serious. Even though it was filled with artificial snow, the humidity in the room was not too high, and the words on the paper were still clear. The most eye-catching headline was' They are no different from us'. There was a picture next to it of a group of homeless people huddling around a waste oil barrel for warmth. In the background, it was snowing, and the ground was white. Of course, this article was also written by 'Arthur Siegel'.
"You often attend charity events and appear in front of the camera, but we all know that you have never donated to any organization in private. You have urged people not to discriminate against those who are homeless, but you have never shown any respect to those who are lower in social status than you. Your harshness and snobbery make everyone around you nauseous. You have also spoken up for the elderly, claiming that they need more attention and understanding, but every year, you use employment as an excuse to refuse to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with your parents.
Arthur, you have stood on the moral high ground more than once to criticize the indifference of the world and the unfairness of the system, but your actual actions show that you have no idea what you are talking about.
Now, you have a chance to understand how those helpless people get through the difficult times. In this snowy room, there is a piece of cardboard. On the paper is the password to unlock the door. What you have to do is to reach into the snow under your feet to find the piece of paper.
Just like how everyone who is freezing on the streets on a snowy night yearns for a wisp of hope. You don't have a time limit, but even if you find something, the best result is that you'll only be able to hold on until dawn … "
When the recording ended, Feng Bujue was shivering from the cold. The game provided clothing to ensure the player's comfort in an environment with a virtual temperature of more than 20 degrees Celsius. If it was hotter or colder, the player would feel the corresponding physical sensation. The ice cave-like room was clearly below zero degrees Celsius, and the three pipes on the ceiling were still increasing the thickness of the snow at a very slow rate.
To ensure the flexibility of his fingers, Feng Bujue breathed into his palm when he exhaled. He quickly went through the recording in his mind, and then he repeated the last sentence to himself. "Just like those who are suffering from the cold … Once you find 'something', you will be able to survive until dawn …" Based on his speculation, this was the only hint. It was rather vague, but it had to be a sign of something.
Feng Bujue stood up again. Everything below his knees was completely frozen. Now, it did not matter if his feet were in the snow because he could not feel the cold anymore. He staggered over to the newspaper and stared intently at the article and the photograph, searching for any possible clue.
Feng Bujue knew that now was the best time to search for clues. Physical labor could wait until there was no other way. If he impatiently dug his hands into the snow on the ground, five minutes later, even if his fingers didn't break from the cold, his body temperature would drop even more. If he developed into a state where his reaction was slow and his consciousness was hazy, it would be impossible for him to solve the riddle.
"Something that can keep a homeless man alive until dawn …" Feng Bujue said that to focus his attention. "A group of people huddling around a bucket, burning trash to keep themselves warm until dawn? No, no, that's not it … "The image of a middle-aged man wearing sunglasses flashed across his mind." That's it … The three treasures of the street, the cardboard box, the dog, and the radio. "With that in mind, he started to work.
The newspaper was stuck to the wall with four small pieces of tape to secure the four corners. Feng Bujue tore off the corners as carefully as possible to ensure that the large piece in the middle of the newspaper was not damaged.
"The dog is impossible unless I build one out of snow. As for the radio … Walkman should be one. As for the cardboard box … "Feng Bujue had already removed the newspaper from the wall. Even though the four corners were missing small pieces, that did not affect what he was about to do.
As mentioned earlier, the newspaper was new, so the creases on it were very clear. A normal person would not fold a newspaper more than twice, but this newspaper had many creases on it. This undoubtedly showed that it had been folded into something before.
Feng Bujue reconstructed the newspaper according to the creases. His hands were not frozen, but they were still affected by the extreme cold. In fact, in his game menu, the special status next to his Life Points already showed the word 'frozen'.
Even though the newspaper was missing a corner, the shape that matched the creases perfectly was folded by Feng Bujue — a very small cardboard box.
Feng Bujue held it in his hands to study it. He turned it several times before he finally found a series of letters and numbers at a place where the edges of the paper overlapped.
The letters on a newspaper could not all be in the same format. Occasionally, there would be different font sizes and styles. For example, the letters used in the title or footnotes would be different from the ones used in the article. Other than that, there was also the issue of case.
The series of letters and numbers that Feng Bujue found were all in the same font size and style. The letters were all in capital letters. When the newspaper was open, they were in different positions and pages, but when it was folded, they joined together to form a neat little section.
"FM27.3 MHz …" Feng Bujue read. "The band of an amateur radio station …" He adjusted the Walkman to listen to the radio.
All the frequencies were noisy, and FM27.3 was the same. However, after he confirmed the frequency, he turned up the volume and waited patiently. As he expected, after forty seconds of noise, a hoarse voice said, "Nine, five, two, seven." Then there was more noise.
Feng Bujue rushed to the side of the exit door. As he keyed in the password, he grumbled, "What kind of stupid password is this? Does it mean that lowly people and dogs are not allowed to enter?"
As he expected, the password was correct, and the door opened. Feng Bujue scrambled out of the room. When he reached the corridor outside, he rolled on the ground from the cold. He rolled twice before he stood up to do more than twenty squats. During this process, he looked at his status on the menu. His Life Points had dropped to sixty-seven percent, but the frozen status would soon disappear in a normal temperature environment.
No matter what, coming out like this was less of a loss than crawling on the ground and digging through the snow to find the paper. Feng Bujue had always been unlucky when it came to gaming. For the kind of task that was like finding a needle in a haystack, he would not have found the paper without turning every inch of the room upside down.
After clearing the second scenario, he did not turn off the Walkman immediately. He soon discovered the pattern of the frequency. Every one minute, FM27.3 would repeat the four-digit password, and the other frequencies would be filled with noise.
After his body temperature returned to normal, Feng Bujue continued to move forward. He believed that the scenario did not plan or calculate how long it would take for 'Arthur Siegel' to reach the hospital after he escaped. The initial recording said that he had forty minutes to find the exit, or he would die from the poison in his body. However, Feng Bujue's menu did not show the status' Poisoned ', and at that moment, he could not tell whether the decrease in his Life Points was due to the cold or the slow effect of the poison. In any case, this was not an obvious poison effect but some kind of plot event. To put it simply, he had to clear the scenario within forty minutes, or it would be game over.
Feng Bujue had already spent more than twenty minutes. His speed of clearing the second stage was already quite fast. Combined with the five minutes he had spent in the first room and the time he had spent running, when he arrived at the third game, he should have around fifteen minutes left. The system had to consider the possibility that the player would choose to dig through the snow in the second scenario, and that would take even longer. Therefore, in terms of time, the game that Feng Bujue was going to face next should be the last one. After he completed it, he would end the scenario.
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