40 Password
He is too cunning.
"That's ridiculous!" Xu Huaihuai laughed out loud.
"Aren't you afraid I'll strangle you in the middle of the night?"
"Would you do that?" Ling Zhou asked, clearly certain that Xu Huaihuai wouldn't do it.
Her expression was unpleasant, and after taking a few deep breaths, she said, "Don't you have anything else to do?"
"Yes, I'll stay with you."
She felt a wave of nausea and vomiting, so she quickly left the dining table and locked herself in the bathroom.
There was nothing to tell her the time, so she wasn't sure how long she'd been inside. Luckily, the bathroom had a temperature control system, so it wasn't too cold. She pressed her ear to the door and listened for a while; there seemed to be no sound outside. Had he left?
Xu Huaihuai slowly opened the door, but her heart sank suddenly. Ling Zhou was standing in the doorway.
He stood at the doorway, watching her with an air of nonchalance as she looked like a frightened bird. He handed her the clean clothes he had picked out for her and asked, "Wash them yourself, or should I help you?"
It's obvious without even thinking that if I refuse, he'll threaten me with whose safety.
She stiffly took the clothes, swallowing her anger, "I have hands."
"That's good. Be careful not to get your forehead wet." Ling Zhou was quite satisfied with her cooperation.
She stayed in the shower for a long time. Ling Zhou checked the time and knocked on the door to remind her, "Don't stay in too long, or you might faint."
She flung open the door, wearing the clothes he had picked out for her, and said angrily, "Can you stop being so hypocritical? I just really, really don't want to see you. Do you think I want to stay in there taking showers until my hair is soaking wet?!"
"It fits perfectly." Ling Zhou seemed to completely misunderstand Xu Huaihuai's words as he raised his hand to help her adjust her neckline.
She dodged him, skirting around his side, and his hand missed its mark. He lowered his hand, but his gaze didn't give up as easily as his hand, following her intently.
Her return suggests a desire to communicate with me, which is a good sign.
Ling Zhou wanted to ask her what was wrong, but then he received two hot slaps to the face.
“If you won’t let me go, then let’s torture each other, S…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Ling Zhou understood from her lip movements; she was saying "Dead Madman".
He received quite a few slaps to the face in just one day, but he wasn't angry about it; he understood her anger.
"Do you want to continue? If your hand hurts, take a break." He noticed that her palms were red.
"You're sick." She shook her hand and walked away, keeping her distance from him, avoiding him like the plague.
Ling Zhou opened the wardrobe. Inside, the clothes he had prepared for her were placed alongside his own, the clothes seeming more intimate than the people themselves. He found his change of clothes, the same style as hers, and then turned and went into the bathroom to take a shower.
Xu Huaihuai watched him walk into the bathroom. The crazy man was really confident that she would only dare to slap him. She looked around the room, looking for something suitable, handy, and heavy.
She had seen the two doors; both required a password or fingerprint. If she could just knock the old man unconscious and try pressing his hand against each door, they would open.
But how do you knock him out? What do you use to hit his head? In many TV dramas, they just smash a bottle or a vase down on his head, and he falls to the ground unconscious.
If it's a headshot, it seems easier to succeed from behind; you need to choose an angle that catches him off guard. But what if the first strike misses...?
As she was pondering, Xu Huaihuai saw the vase on the small table. "If it were smashed on my head, it would probably knock me out, right?"
She tried to pick up the vase, but couldn't; it was firmly fixed to the small table.
That cunning madman! She wanted to smash the vase, the sharp shards could at least serve as weapons, but she was afraid of alerting Ling Zhou in the bathroom and making him wary, which would make it harder to whack him on the head. So she had to give up and spare the vase's life for the time being.
Xu Huaihuai's gaze finally fell on the blanket on the sofa.
As soon as Ling Zhou came out of the bathroom and sat down on the sofa, a blanket was thrown from behind and covered his face. He knew without a doubt who had thrown it from behind.
He deliberately slowed down his movement to lift the blanket. She grabbed his neck and came over from behind the sofa, awkwardly grabbing his hand. The soft fabric wrapped around his wrist, probably from the belt of some clothes.
He barely put up any resistance before she tied his hands.
She touched his neck through the blanket, probably looking for an angle to touch him; it tickled a little. He asked her, "What are you doing?"
She pressed down hard on his neck, her hand landing squarely on his Adam's apple. "What are the codes for those two doors? Tell me!"
His Adam's apple bobbed, and she must have sensed it, because she loosened her grip slightly, giving him room to speak. She really was a soft-hearted person, much softer than the one who abandoned him without hesitation. He told the person who was eager to know the answer, "The password is the time when we first slept together."
He did it on purpose; he knew she wouldn't know the time.
Sure enough, the hand pressing on his neck loosened slightly before suddenly tightening again. "You... just tell me the password!"
She seemed quite angry, and he didn't say anything more.
"Hey, say something!" The person under the blanket seemed motionless. Could it be...suffocated?! They haven't even said anything yet!
She released her hand from his neck and pressed hard on his chest in an attempt to revive him; it seemed there was still a heartbeat.
She was still afraid that he would really die under the blanket without revealing anything, so she finally lifted the blanket, and he looked at her with smiling eyes.
Realizing she had been deceived, she was furious and slapped him hard across the face again.
The slap was crisp enough; he felt his left cheek was definitely more swollen than his right.
He tilted his head, looking at her in front of him. She seemed familiar yet unfamiliar. The two people were so similar, perhaps they even shared the same name.
At that moment, he suddenly felt a long-lost heartache, not knowing whether it was from longing or something else. He said sadly, "You used to cherish my face. Why did it only take a few short years to go from cherishing to hating it?"
She abruptly took a step back, her expression complex.
After a while, she said, "Don't tell me these things, tell me the password."
He suppressed his sadness and smiled at her, saying, "I already told you."
“Fine, there are still fingerprints anyway.” She reinforced the restraints on his wrists with another belt, then kicked him. “Get up, come here.”
He cooperated and followed her to the door. She asked simply, "Which finger?"
“Index finger, do you believe me?” He raised his hands, which were tied together.
She seemed somewhat suspicious of his honesty, and thus appeared cautious. "Left hand? Right hand?"
"My right hand." He said it sincerely and confidently.
"Be honest, or I'll suffocate you tonight." She grabbed his right index finger and pressed it onto the fingerprint sensor. With a soft beep, the electronic screen displayed the words "Recognition successful," meaning it had passed. She breathed a sigh of relief, let go of his hand, and pushed the door, but it wouldn't budge.
She was a little confused, and glanced at the electronic screen on the fingerprint sensor again.
It does show that the recognition is correct, but in addition to these large characters, there is also a line of smaller text that says "Locked for eight hours".
"What do you mean? You're playing me? Ling Zhou, you bastard!" She was furious, unable to believe that someone could be so cunning. "And you're..."
"Or what?" He flicked his wrist, shaking off several belts that posed no threat to him, and asked her with great interest.
She fell silent. She knew she had missed the best opportunity to subdue him, but how could he have broken free so easily when she had tied the knot so tightly? She should have just knocked him unconscious and given him a quick, blunt blow.
"Are you regretting not knocking me out earlier?" He moved closer to her. "Actually, you should be glad you didn't actually walk out. Remember what I said? If you take one step out of here, I'll break one of his bones. If you've forgotten, I won't blame you this time."
She pushed him away and pointed to the door: "Then can you go out?"
Ling Zhou sighed softly: "Can't you take my words to heart? I said we'd sleep together tonight."
"I don't have the habit of sharing a bed with others."
"Then get used to it. Now, go to sleep, be good, you don't want him to worry, do you?"
She lay on the edge of the bed, straight, her body tense, in a state of high alert.
He slept on the other side, completely at ease, unlike her nervousness. "Don't fall off, goodnight."
Only a dim sleep light was on in the room. She was very quiet and made almost no sound. He closed his eyes and fell asleep peacefully.
Xu Huaihuai waited with her eyes open for a long time. She heard his breathing gradually become regular, so he must have fallen asleep.
Just to be on the safe side, she did not act immediately.
She was analyzing Ling Zhou's words and actions, and she found him very strange. Sometimes, his words made her feel that he knew she wasn't the original female lead, Xu Huaihuai. But how did he know?
She questioned him, asking if his current behavior was revenge against his ex, and his response, "Besides, are you even my ex?" was highly suspicious.
Assuming he truly knows he is not the original Xu Huaihuai, and setting aside how and when he found out, his current behavior is quite strange.
If he already knew she wasn't his ex, why would he tie her up? His past love-hate relationship with the female lead had nothing to do with her, right? Besides, if he knew she wasn't his ex, shouldn't he have questioned her about where the original female lead, Xu Huaihuai, was? But he never mentioned that. Although she didn't know the answer either; she was just someone who had stumbled into the world of the novel by chance.
Is this a hurdle she has to overcome while playing the "female lead"? There was no mention of "forced love" in a redemption story! This is truly heartbreaking; it's like tackling a sweet story with a tragic element! This kind of categorization will definitely deter readers!
Oh wait, the original novel, "The Light That Fell From the Sky," already has a happy ending. This is five years after the finale, and the plot is developing freely without being restricted by the original text. But isn't this a bit too free? She couldn't help but smile wryly.
But it doesn't make sense to say that Ling Zhou knew everything. His line, "You used to cherish my face. Why did it only take a few short years for you to go from cherishing to hating it?" was clearly directed at the female lead. If he knew he wasn't the female lead, would he have said that?
And it seems he said this before. Didn't he say it at the farewell dinner last time?
"You still care about me, you still care about my face, right? So what you said before about hating my face wasn't really true, was it?"
Xu Huaihuai remembered; he had indeed said that. She had even wondered at the time if the woman's request for divorce was truly because she was tired of his face.
Her body was stiff from lying down, so she moved slightly. Ling Zhou next to her didn't react. He probably wasn't pretending to be asleep, right?
What a bizarre case of mental illness!
She propped herself up, tiptoed out of bed, and prepared to examine the door lock again. She wanted to see if Ling Zhou was awake. When her gaze fell on his face, she was horrified, her hair stood on end, and her blood seemed to freeze.
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