Backwards
Tick.
The clock on the wall was ticking away.
The red words of the rules on the door stared at the three people quietly, and the glittering gold powder was shining brightly.
"The first three sentences start with color, and the blackened sentence has the same structure as the first three sentences, so the first two words must be colors." Wang Keke analyzed clearly.
Lu Miao twirled his pen. "I think so too. Perhaps it refers to the color of the administrator's uniform, because we haven't found any information about the staff at the dining counter on the 12th floor yet."
He Pingan: "There are five words at the end, which are more difficult to guess."
Wang Keke held his chin in his hand and thought hard, and suddenly he shuddered. "They think the way to escape is at the management office, but could the exit be the other way around, on the 12th floor?"
He Pingan shrugged and said “I don’t know”.
"Okay, let's not go too far. For now, let's focus on exploring the management office on the first floor below ground." Lu Miao spun his pen quickly, his thoughts racing along with it. "What do you think of the group of people upstairs?"
The two noticed that she was asking about "that group of people" rather than what those people's plans were.
Wang Keke crossed her arms and said, "Fake."
He Pingan had no expression on his face: "Urgent."
Lu Miao was very satisfied that they had figured out the clue. "Tell me in detail."
"Humph, when we were at the base, I never saw Guo Li in a good mood. And her teammates always mocked Ping An and me for being new and weak during physical training. Tonight? Tsk tsk, they were so humble, as if trying to please us."
Lu Miao turned the pen and looked at He Pingan.
He looked indifferent. "They gave me the impression that they couldn't wait to go to the basement level. In fact, there is no need to have two people guarding the elevators and staircases on each floor. It's a waste of human resources."
"Yes. They sent four people to guard the elevator on the fourth floor, three people to the basement floor, and the remaining two to stay in the stairwell to watch the wind, which was too much, because no one lived on the first to third floors, and there would be no contaminated neighbors. Why do they have to wait for new residents to come in? What if the outside world blocks Qingshui Apartment and does not allow outsiders to come in?"
After saying this, Wang Keke suddenly had an idea and looked incredulous. "Did they wait for us to come in on purpose?"
Lu Miao's black eyes were startlingly bright, like a bright fire in the darkness. "In any closed ghost story area, if no one escapes after 24 hours, the department will send another investigation team in if there are enough people to crack the case within the final time limit. Once the time limit is exceeded, everyone who escapes will be shot immediately, even if they are members of the investigation team."
Similar situations have occurred before.
A certain team entered the field of ghost stories and escaped 42 hours later. When the department conducted a psychiatric evaluation on them, no abnormalities were found.
Unexpectedly, at night, they all went crazy and ran into the street to attack passers-by, and were shot dead on the spot.
Afterwards, anyone who came into contact with them had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and then be detained and subjected to various tests before being allowed to return home.
With the lessons learned from the past, the surveillance system in the city constantly monitors the outside of each ghost story area. There are drones patrolling the sky over the city, responsible for killing such people.
Although some people escaped, suggestions were planted in their minds without them realizing it.
He Pingan murmured: "Captain Huang knows this rule."
Wang Keke was even more confused. "What's the point? They clearly have enough manpower."
Lu Miao stared at the blacked-out line of words. "The answer is in the management office. Did you remember to copy down the note of the management office's eighth rule?"
"Remember."
"What did they say?"
"Uh... when I went out to look for the rules, I saw the ball of paper, and then I picked it up and read it."
"Who is so kind as to go to the management office first, and then copy a rule and throw it upstairs?"
Wang Keke blinked her green eyes. "Why don't you escape now?"
"Yes, why bother reminding other residents?"
Wang Keke couldn't help but knock his head. "I really can't think of it, Captain."
Lu Miao raised his lips slightly, but his eyes were cold. "If the management office had a way to escape, why didn't the person who threw the note copy a few more? Or gather people together to escape?"
Wang Keke vaguely thought of the answer, but the unbearable hunger affected her thinking.
"It seems like leading someone to the management office." He Ping'an's words awakened her who was trapped in the fog.
"Yes, I want to say one too!"
"Well, why do we need to lead people to the management office?"
The two were speechless.
Lu Miao asked again: "You know the eighth rule if you've been to the management office, right? Let's not talk about whether the rule is correct or not."
"right."
"Could the person who wrote the excerpt be one of those nine people?"
Wang Keke was surprised.
"Could it be that Guo Li copied it herself? As a team leader with a mission, it is impossible for her not to confirm the rules of the management office with her own eyes."
Wang Keke got goosebumps. "Captain, the more you talk, the scarier it gets."
He Ping'an's face turned slightly pale.
"Based on the above speculation, one of the nine people has been to the management office." Lu Miao concluded.
"Ah? Why do they want to go again if they've been there? And they're so kind to take us there?"
The speed of the deer sapling spinning the pen increased. "To find out their real purpose, we have to reversely infer what the management office's rules are."
Then she pointed to the blacked-out sentence. "If this sentence refers to the management office, then this sentence is the most important rule of the management office."
She wrote a line:
1. Administrators must wear clothes of color X.
“There are no phones in the building, so since the security guards can receive complaints from residents through the clipboard, the administrators can also use the clipboard to find out what facilities need repair.”
He Pingan and Wang Keke nodded.
Lu Miao then wrote:
2. Administrators must carry a writing board at all times.
3 (8), the administrator is responsible for maintaining the hardware facilities of the apartment building.
"There is a distinction between security guards in blue and red uniforms. Does that mean that after becoming a security guard, you can't switch to an administrator? There is no restriction on whether an administrator is mentally normal or not?"
He Pingan frowned. "I agree that security guards cannot be transferred to administrators, just like security guards cannot be changed back to residents. The blue clothes of security guards are worn by contaminated residents, and the white clothes are worn by residents. I guess the clothes of administrators are also worn by a certain type of people."
Wang Keke slapped her knees excitedly. "They said the escape method is at the management office. Are they implying that ordinary residents can become managers? Otherwise, they would have gone around the world looking for the manager to open the door."
Lu Miao continued to write:
4. There can only be one administrator in the building.
5. When the position of administrator becomes vacant, residents in white can recommend themselves to be the initial administrator.
"The rules for residents mention spare keys. I tend to think that residents cannot take spare keys that do not belong to them. Otherwise, the contaminated residents do not need to knock on their neighbors' doors."
The two had no objection.
6. Spare keys that do not belong to the residents are not allowed to be taken out of the management office.
Wang Keke added: "Administrators should not be able to open residents' doors at will."
"Article 8 prohibits the administrator from opening the door of any resident's apartment unless the resident requests help."
Wang Keke frowned. "Except for the excerpted rules, the other rules do not suggest a way to escape. Did the escape door appear after the administrator took office?"
"If it's so simple, why isn't any one of those nine people an administrator?" He Ping'an hit the nail on the head.
"Oh yeah, they really have bad intentions!"
Lu Miao thought about it. "They swore that the management office had a way to escape. We boldly speculated that the administrator had the key to open the door."
"Reasonable!"
"Um."
9. The administrator keeps the key to the gate.
"The security guard can't escape, right?" Wang Keke suddenly asked.
He Pingan glanced at her. "If you didn't fall asleep during the theory class, you would know that you can't. In the closed field of ghost stories, all those who are contaminated will stay there forever."
"So the administrators cannot leave if they are contaminated. If they wear the administrator's clothes and get contaminated, they definitely don't want to be administrators."
"Assuming this rule exists, they will give us fake rules, lead us to be contaminated, and then jump out to persuade us to sacrifice ourselves. But why do they teach us how to distinguish problematic food?"
Wang Keke tapped his solar plexus in distress. "Maybe the method we were taught is fake?"
He Pingan shook his head. "It's almost time to get the meal. Their lies about this matter will soon be exposed. We will turn against them, which goes against their original intention of needing new residents to join the plan. They don't need to wait for new residents to move in before taking action."
"Well... they hid the rules and took advantage of our curiosity to go to the management office first, causing us to be contaminated accidentally."
He Pingan was speechless. "What good would it do them if we were contaminated? Aren't they worried that we would perish together and not let them escape?"
“…”
Sometimes Wang Keke felt that the soul of an old man who had seen through the world lived in his body.
Looks calm and composed.
"It's so difficult! I'm so hungry and I can't think of anything!" Wang Keke, like a salted fish, slumped on the sofa, stroking his hungry stomach.
Lu Miao, who was watching the debate with his chin in his hand, held up his diary. "The reason why they don't want to be administrators may be related to the blackened words."
What is the most desperate thing for people who actively or passively enter the field of ghost stories?
Of course I can't leave.
23:40.
The elevator started to move upward.
The elevator stops for a moment on each floor and then continues to go up.
No one used the elevator until it stopped on the 12th floor.
At this time, it was exactly 23:45.
The silent Lu Miao and He Ping'an were already standing in front of the elevator on the first floor.
Lu Miao pressed the button for the building.
The elevator began to descend.
He Ping'an, who was beside him, gave him a look that contained hidden worry.
They couldn't speak, and he couldn't open his mouth to tell the captain to take care of himself.
The mentally polluted residents will undergo a certain degree of mutation, and the direction of the mutation is aquatic animals.
The walls of the apartment building are lined with water pipes, and aquatic animals can identify each other's locations through sound waves that travel through the water.
Therefore, they speculated that the abnormal resident who was harassing them used this method to get to the third floor and block them on the first floor.
Soon, the elevator reached the first floor unimpeded.
Lu Miao lowered his head and walked into the empty elevator.
Reflective objects are considered dangerous items in the field of ghost stories, so try not to look at them directly.
She lowered her head and pressed the "-1" button, then pressed the "Close" button.
Then, the elevator door slowly closed.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
