The old radio rustled: "Interview time is limited. We only have 30 seconds to wait."
"30 seconds! We have to hurry!"
Hearing Zhang You say that he wanted to ask his roommate for help, Guo Guo and Zheng Wanqing threw off the quilt and rushed to the radio, and then immediately realized: they had no idea how to contact this radio station!
They didn't even give out their phone number, clearly setting a trap. Whether or not they could answer the question was another matter, but if they couldn't successfully call, then they wouldn't even have the chance to buy time for Zhang You.
Among the three people, Tang Xinjue remained silent, his eyes fixed on the radio.
"There are only 20 seconds left. We haven't received any calls~" Lily's sweet voice was accompanied by giggles, and she did not hide the malice in her tone at all.
On the radio, Zhang You anxiously fought for a chance for himself, but only received a cold answer.
[——We don’t need to be reminded. All the students in the school know how to contact us. It’s the most normal thing, isn’t it?]
These words lingered in his ears, and Tang Xinjue's eyes moved.
The next moment, she picked up her phone and dialed a number. Her roommate asked in surprise, "How did you know the radio station number?"
"Everyone in the school knows about the student union, so it's normal for its contact number to be posted in the hallway of a dormitory building."
The game certainly didn't offer any completely unsolvable deadlocks. Recalling the various posters lining the corridor walls as he walked back to the dormitory, Tang Xinjue dialed the number: "One in three chance."
Tang Xinjue could only remember a portion of the numbers, and she could only recall three numbers, but couldn't remember which clubs and activities they belonged to. They only had two attempts at trial and error before the countdown ended.
Fortunately, the connection sound came through on the first try.
The person who answered the phone was Lily. Perhaps because of the unstable electromagnetic waves, her voice was slightly gritted. "Hello, this is the Student Union."
"I'm Zhang You's roommate." Tang Xinjue's voice was as gentle as ever. "I just heard on the radio that you guys will solve our heating problem, right?"
Faced with this sudden reversal of power, the person on the other end of the line choked, and Lily's prepared words were blocked. She smirked, "Of course... After all, the school won't just sit there and watch all the students freeze to death. However, whether we can find a solution depends on whether the answers given by the students are correct."
Can we change heating systems simply by asking students to answer a few questions? From a practical perspective, this is clearly a false logic.
Therefore, there is only one possibility - this is one of the level tasks of the exam.
Tang Xinjue agreed without hesitation: "Okay."
[Ding Dong, Mission Reminder: Please cooperate with the Student Union's announcement to find the real cause of the heating failure and help all students survive this night of extreme cold.]
[If the mission is completed, winter will end early]
Trigger new mission!
Several people in the dormitory exchanged brightened glances, and then heard a question from the other end of the phone:
"So, my dear classmate, what is your name?"
"Tang Xin Jue."
"Great, we'll remember that cute name. Now, I'm sure you can help your roommate answer this question - do you know why the heating didn't work?"
Faced with the question, Tang Xinjue pondered for two seconds: "I can provide a few ideas."
"Firstly, heating is primarily provided by electrical facilities, and given that all electrical energy sources in the dormitory have failed, the heating failure may be due to a problem with the school's electrical network."
"Very good." Lily interrupted impatiently: "Is this your answer?"
Before Lily could continue, Tang Xinjue spoke clearly and without pause, "Of course, as a university that considers its students well, we certainly wouldn't simply rely on electricity to maintain such a complex winter heating system."
Lily: “…”
"So I'm more inclined to believe that there was a problem with the pipes on campus. My roommate had to unclog a frozen pipe this morning. So it's very likely that the pipes were blocked, resulting in a lack of heating, such as hot water and heating."
"Oh - then this is Mr. Tang's answer -"
"And, combining the above two points, I've come up with a new possibility, one that's both biological and artificial. Because the temperature drop came so suddenly, many people were left freezing outdoors without proper insulation. It's also possible that heating staff accidentally suffered frostbite or other injuries, affecting the school's heating."
Tang Xinjue didn't pause for even a second, speaking fluently as if he was reading a script, and finished the three points in one breath.
"...So, what is your answer?"
Lily's voice was filled with suppressed anger. "Mr. Tang, our radio time is limited. Please give a clear answer."
"Calm down, Lily-san."
Tang Xin Jue smiled instead. "My final answer is that due to a combination of physical, biological, and coincidental factors, today's heating has suffered an unavoidable delay. However, I believe the Student Union will definitely find a way to resolve it as soon as possible. That's all."
“…”
"Well, well, well, we have received your answer. In that case, let us wait and see if it is correct."
The call was rudely hung up. It was obvious that the other party was too lazy to even be sarcastic and simply didn't want to listen to Tang Xinjue anymore.
The dorm was silent for a moment, until the radio began to rustle again. The roommates finally came back to their senses and asked, "Where did you find this information?"
In comparison, they seemed to have spent four hours in a false light. Apart from being "lying down and freezing to death", they had noticed nothing.
Tang Xinjue exhaled lightly: "I made it up on the spot."
After three years of studying liberal arts and three years of studying Chinese, she relied on her skill of quickly filling out answers on the test paper even if she didn't know any of the knowledge points. The three points she summed up on the spur of the moment covered almost all possibilities and touched upon some aspects, which was basically called Tai Chi.
roommate:"……"
There are no words to describe it, only awesome.
Then, on the radio, the student union began interviewing the next person. Lily smirked and asked, "It's the same question again. The student union hopes you can answer it within thirty seconds."
After learning from Tang Xin Jue's lesson, they increased the time limit this time.
"I, I..." The second boy almost stuttered as he repeated half of Tang Xinjue's words.
After he finished speaking, Lily laughed happily. "Ah, what a shame! Your answers are over 30% the same as the previous student's. Your answers are invalid~"
"No, I can say it again, no, ugh!"
After struggling twice, the boy fell silent. In the distance, the girl's terrified sobbing could be heard faintly. It was the next person to be interviewed.
Outside the radio, Guo Guo whispered, "Are these people being interviewed real students?"
If they were real people, it meant that there were more than just their dormitory taking the exam, there were other "candidates", and some of them might have even been eliminated in the initial stage.
Tang Xinjue frowned, "There's a 70% chance they're the same kind as us."
As for the so-called student union, they are 100% not human.
I later interviewed four more people. They were all university students, their voices filled with uncontrollable panic, their voices rasping with the struggle of being eliminated. Surprisingly, the calmest among them was Zhang You.
In the end, only Zhang You and a boy managed to survive by using the answer that "natural disasters caused monsters to be born and destroyed the heating."
Everyone in the dormitory breathed a sigh of relief. Judging from the way Zhang You spoke, he should have taken some measures to keep warm and was not in danger of frostbite for the time being.
Lily picked up the phone with a sweet voice: "Then, it's time for our field trip~"
"Both students gave very reliable answers. From these, the Student Union identified four possible locations for investigation. They are—"
"One, the power generation room; two, the water supply room; three, the heating staff lounge; four, the school swamp."
"However, unfortunately, we can only choose one location to investigate at a time. Where to go first? Where to go next? Where can we find the truth, or... where can we find the truth? The choice is left to the students listening to the radio! Your votes will determine the final location!"
"Friendly reminder: The voting time is only three minutes, and each student can only cast one vote~"
The radio suddenly fell silent, as if waiting for something.
Tang Xinjue was the first to react, "We need to select an option immediately and then send the text message."
Guo Guo's red nose took a deep breath, and he asked with wide eyes, "What if we can't choose?"
“If you can’t choose, [other students] will decide your options.”
When Tang Xinjue's face was gloomy, she naturally exuded an aura of keeping strangers away. Guo and Zheng knew that this was a sign of her rapid thinking.
Tang Xinjue was indeed thinking.
Countless possibilities intertwined and whistled in her mind, shaping and stripping away, evolving into corresponding answers one by one.
The student union's language trap, with too little information, meant the four options corresponded to the four possibilities she and another boy had proposed. To some extent, her answer broadened the options, but only if there was a correct option.
Assuming there is a correct option, choosing it requires a vote. Who is voting? Are they the "candidates" who were dragged into the survival game like them? Or are they the same entities as the "student council"?
If it is the former, then the accuracy rate will undoubtedly increase because they all have the same goal - to end this harsh winter before they freeze to death.
And if it is the latter...their purpose is obviously exactly the opposite of theirs.
The former is towards life, the latter towards death. As this logic took shape in his mind, Tang Xinjue felt relieved and immediately had a plan.
She asked her roommate to take out his phone and said, "For the first three positions in my answer, let's vote for one."
"Huh?" Guo Guo was bewildered. "Wouldn't it be impossible to choose now?"
"We don't need to choose." Tang Xinjue pressed the send button, his eyes clear: "Someone will help us choose."
——"Ding Dong, three minutes are up!"
Lily's voice was a little excited, and she seemed to swallow before reading out the results: "Let's take a look. A full 75% of the audience chose [School Swamp], 15% chose [Power Generation Room], 8% chose [Water Supply Room], and a mere 2% chose [Heating Staff Lounge]."
"It seems that the result is obvious."
She giggled, "Our first field trip will be to the [school swamp]!"
"Then let's meet in an hour~"
"Shit, why do we have to wait another hour?"
If Zheng Wanqing hadn't been worried that this old radio couldn't hold up, she would have wanted to reach out and slap it away.
They were now almost unconscious from the cold, in pain and hungry, and felt suffocated at the thought of having to wait another hour.
"By the way, is it possible to find out the truth about the heating in this school swamp?" Guo Guo was full of worries.
Tang Xin Jue said firmly: "Impossible."
“…”
This time Guo Guo was about to cry, "Really? Is this really bad news?"
If she saw it right, Tang Xinjue seemed to be relieved?
Guo Guo didn't understand, and Zheng Wanqing was even less confused. The two roommates huddled in their down jackets and quilts, staring at Tang Xinjue with confused black eyes.
"Among the four options, the swamp is the least likely to be correct," Tang Xinjue explained.
If Tang Xinjue's answer was at least a set phrase based on the three people's tasks and dormitory situation in the morning, then the boy's answer was obviously fabricated, and he was only judged to be passed because of his pretended calm tone.
If students taking the exam were to vote, even if they were casting a blind vote, they would not vote for this item.
"But now, the most outrageous option has won overwhelmingly with over 70% of the votes. What does this mean?"
The roommate thought about it and his face gradually turned pale:
"Does that mean... they don't want the correct answer to be chosen?"
Did voters deliberately cast the wrong vote?
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