Chapter 11: Night of the Blood Moon (XI)
Cui Zhongming was stunned for a moment. He had not paid any attention to the clock since he entered the door.
It seemed that his attention was distracted by the doll, and because the clock was placed in the corner and covered with dust, he didn't pay attention to the time on it at all.
Even when Nan Huan asked him to look, he didn't notice that the time was wrong.
Perhaps it was because Nan Huan’s look of disdain was a little too expressive, Cui Zhongming lowered his head and coughed twice to hide his embarrassment.
"How can you be sure that time is exactly two hours fast?"
Cui Zhongming didn't know if it was an illusion, but he felt that as Nan Huan wiped the dial clean, the sound of the clock became louder and louder.
The current time is 12:25, with both zeros and integers, so I am very curious why Nan Huan is so sure.
"After the system prompted the task, I looked at the clock in the living room before going upstairs. It was 10:15. Excluding the time we spent going upstairs and at the door, plus the five minutes that had passed, it was exactly two hours."
As Nan Huan explained, he bent over and reached out to grope at the bottom of the dial, as if he was looking for something.
Before Cui Zhongming could ask any more questions, he heard a click and Nan Huan had already opened the watch dial.
Then, as expected, I found the object and location for winding the spring.
Without waiting for Cui Zhongming to react, Nan Huan had already stuffed the long metal object in.
"What are you doing?"
Cui Zhongming was stunned and could hardly follow Nan Huan's train of thought.
"Turn back the time?"
"Why?"
"The room we were in two hours ago is the one we should clean."
Nan Huan's tone was already a little impatient. Except for that person, no one else could keep up with her train of thought. Talking and explaining to others was a very troublesome thing.
Realizing this, her face looked a little pale.
Without paying any more attention to Cui Zhongming, she had already turned the long metal object counterclockwise.
Circle after circle, until the time on the clock returns to the position two hours ago.
As the long bell sounded.
There were changes on the dressing table. The oval mirror facing the room slowly spread around like flowing liquid.
Like a wild beast with its huge mouth open, it swallowed everything in the room.
The neat sofa, the symmetrical bed curtains, even the open windows and the sunlight coming in, gradually became illusory and were finally swallowed up by the mirror.
The room gradually became darker, and Nan Huan and Cui Zhongming's vision was disturbed, and they could not see the scene in front of them clearly.
But in the darkness, another sound was heard.
Again and again, very rhythmically.
The first tone is low and long, the second tone is high and short, and the two tones alternate like this.
Nan Huan initially thought it was the sound of something knocking, but then she seemed to understand what the sound was and her face turned pale.
Then the clear sound suddenly began to become noisy, as if thousands or hundreds of the same sounds were superimposed on each other.
The sound seemed to be sticking to Nan Huan's ear, piercing her eardrum and causing pain.
She shook her head vigorously, trying to get rid of the painful feeling, but to no avail.
The moment she lowered her head, she noticed that the room was completely different from before.
The original furniture in the room had disappeared, and the surroundings were bare, except for three walls, which were filled with densely packed dolls at some point.
Those dolls were only an inch tall and packed tightly from top to bottom. One quick glance at them would make one's scalp tingle.
Because Nan Huan found that the faces of these dolls looked no different from normal people, and the clothes they wore were also varied.
She discovered that the noisy sounds came from the dolls, and she became more certain that what she heard was the superposition of many heartbeats.
"That...that doll..."
Although the room was still dark, it was not known whether it was because the turbulence had stopped or Nan Huan had adapted to the environment.
She saw that Cui Zhongming, who was originally standing not far from her, had moved to her left front without her noticing. He pointed at the location of the dressing table with one hand, and the surprised expression on his face was still seen by Nan Huan even in such a dark place.
She looked in the direction of the other person's finger and found that the doll that had been sitting on the dressing table was now standing on the ground.
Yes, she was not mistaken, the legs were clearly like a ball of velvet, but they were standing firmly on the ground.
She is half a person's height and much larger than the other dolls in the room.
What was originally a gray and unclear scene became clearer as the room changed.
Nan Huan noticed that it was wearing the same clothes as the maid, and even had the emerald green headband on its head. Except that it was slightly shorter than the one Nan Huan picked up, even the pattern on it was exactly the same.
It was closest to the two of them, so Nan Huan and Cui Zhongming could hear her heartbeat more clearly. It was very steady and especially strange in this environment.
Cui Zhongming originally spoke, but seemed to feel that it was not appropriate, so he stopped talking. However, Nan Huan could feel that his body was tense the whole time, which was a defensive posture when facing the enemy.
The two of them waited for dozens of seconds and saw that the doll didn't seem to move.
"There shouldn't be any problems now. After all, the mission time hasn't passed yet. Even if there are any rules, they won't be triggered now."
Cui Zhongming knew that Nan Huan was right, but his tense body did not relax and he still stared around nervously.
Nan Huan ignored him.
There is not much time left. If I keep standing like this, these things might really move.
Nan Huan strolled around the room nonchalantly and confirmed that the door they had come in through was gone. The three stone walls were all hung with densely packed dolls, leaving only a space on the wall that was originally facing the door, which seemed to have been deliberately left empty.
She found a place at a similar height and put her ear close to the dolls on the wall to confirm that there were indeed heartbeats inside the dolls' bodies.
At the same time, she also smelled a strong smell of blood, similar to the smell in the wine cellar in the basement.
"What are you doing? Don't get close to those things. You don't know what they might trigger."
Cui Zhongming finally finished inspecting the surroundings. He turned around and saw Nan Huan's actions. He was so angry that he lowered his voice and said, "Ten minutes have passed. The system didn't give us any prompts this time. We don't have much time left. What should we do now?"
He didn't believe Nan Huan at first, but now that he saw the layout of the room had changed, he naturally regarded the other party as his backer.
Nan Huan stood up straight. After confirming the situation of the dolls, she did not explain anything, but just pouted at Cui Zhongming angrily.
"Look, the puzzle has already been laid out. Just solve it."
Following Nan Huan's gaze, Cui Zhongming discovered that under the empty wall, there was a doll as big as himself hanging on the wall.
I looked at the empty spaces on the wall again and finally caught up with Nan Huan's train of thought.
"You mean cleaning the room? Actually, just hang up these dolls..."
Cui Zhongming took two steps toward the wall, bent down and tried to pick up the doll, but he didn't know what he saw.
He paused in his bending motion, his fingers frozen in mid-air, and he didn't even finish his words.
"It's not that simple. You should have remembered the mission prompt. Didn't I say that the doctor has a special understanding of cleanliness? This means that these puppets must have a certain order."
Nan Huan finished looking at the doll on the wall and walked towards the doll standing on the ground, not noticing that Cui Zhongming's voice was cut off in the middle of his speech.
She checked the headband of the standing doll again and found it was exactly the same as the one she picked up before turning around.
"What are you doing? Pick up the doll and let me see it."
When Nan Huan had seen enough and turned around, she saw that Cui Zhongming was still bending over. She was a little puzzled.
"Come and see for yourself. I think something is wrong."
Although Cui Zhongming had tried his best to restrain himself, Nan Huan could still feel that his voice seemed to be trembling a little.
Nan Huan walked over quickly and squatted on the other side.
Nan Huan was far away before, and the room was very dark, so she could only vaguely see the shape of the doll and couldn't see its appearance clearly at all.
I could see it clearly only after I squatted down.
No wonder Cui Zhongming was surprised. He saw six dolls scattered in the corner.
The one closest to Cui Zhongming was wearing a beige Lolita-style dress. The little doll was dressed very delicately. Not only were its clothes exactly the same as Nanhuan's, but its skin was even a little whiter than the other dolls. Except for the lack of facial features, it was almost a one-to-one replica of Nanhuan.
The doll near Nan Huan's feet was wearing exactly the same clothes as Cui Zhongming and also had no facial features.
The remaining ones are simply scaled-down versions of Li Shuai, Liang Yu and Xiao Xue.
The only difference is that Bai Wei's doll leaning against the corner is different from the other dolls because it has facial features.
Bai Wei's appearance was not very beautiful, but her eyes were very distinctive, the kind that was both charming and enchanting.
Although this doll cannot move and is obviously supposed to be a dead object, its eyes are exactly the same as Bai Wei's.
Nan Huan picked up the remaining five dolls without facial features, put them to his ears and listened, confirming that none of them had a heartbeat.
Finally, he picked up Bai Wei's doll, and as expected, he heard a heartbeat.
"It seems that those who are not yet dead have no heartbeat, and only those who are already dead have heartbeat."
Although this statement was somewhat contradictory, Cui Zhongming at least understood it.
"Then how should we arrange them in order? We can't just sort them by life or death, since there are still five of us alive."
He seemed to realize that his reaction was a bit extreme. He paused beside Nan Huan, adjusted his mood, and then asked.
"Probably not."
Nan Huan rejected Cui Zhongming's answer, which was without any ideas, and then stood up to observe the empty space.
There are other dolls on this wall, but only six spaces are left empty at a height of about one meter.
Apart from this, there are no other hints.
【bite--
Tip: There are only five minutes left to clean the room. 】
Before Nan Huan could think of anything, the system prompt sounded. They had just wasted some time and only had five minutes left.
"There are still five minutes left. How about we try some permutations? There aren't that many combinations of six dolls. Let's try them all. There must be one that's right, right?"
From the clock incident just now, Nan Huan has already realized that solving puzzles is indeed not Cui Zhongming's strong point. However, Nan Huan did not immediately respond to the solution actively proposed by the other party.
She pondered for a moment, then asked another question without any context, "Do you have any skills or props that can help me quickly arrange and combine things? If not, go to the mall and see if you can buy such props?"
Nan Huan asked, and when Cui Zhongming heard that she wanted props, he thought she agreed with his method. There was not much time left, so he hurried to the warehouse and the mall to look for it without thinking much.
Originally, Nan Huan wanted to look for it in the mall herself, but she was still a novice after all. The mall had at least several thousand categories, if not tens of thousands of items.
She was not familiar with it and it would take a lot of time to find it, so she had to let Cui Zhongming do it.
"I found it. There is a product called a permutation and combination accelerator. It is not very expensive. The product description says that if the permutation and combination results are within 1,000, you can try them all within three minutes and find the final answer. The price is not very expensive either, so I bought it directly."
Cui Zhongming made a brief calculation and found that there were only 720 possible arrangements of their six dolls, which was within the usable range and there was still enough time, so his tone of voice finally softened a little.
"The system doesn't restrict purchases?"
Nan Huan grasped the key point of the matter.
“Why does the system restrict…”
Cui Zhongming was originally very puzzled, and finally came up with a solution. Nan Huan suddenly asked him why, but before he could finish his words, he suddenly shut up.
"It seems that the purpose of setting up this task is that we only have one chance. As long as we hang the doll on the wall, the task will be completed."
Nan Huan did not forget the line of small words below when she was shopping in the mall before.
[Tip: The prices of all items in the mall will fluctuate depending on the player's copy status.]
The system will allow players to use skills or props to combat in-game situations, but the use of such skills and props will not necessarily disrupt the fairness of the game.
The core point of this cleaning task lies in the arrangement of these dolls. If the player uses a prop at this time, the problem can be solved.
From a system perspective, wouldn't this make the game less interesting?
From the player's perspective, this dog game will definitely set traps.
It was obvious that Cui Zhongming had experienced this feeling in previous games, so Nan Huan only explained it with one sentence and he understood it.
Seeing that there were only three minutes left, the system seemed to feel that it was not oppressive enough, so it simply put the countdown on the virtual panel, stimulating the nerves of the two people.
"Time is running out. Do you have any other ideas? If not, we'll have to guess."
Cui Zhongming is not the type who would sit and wait for death. He couldn't just sit there and do nothing, waiting for the mission to be completed. While speaking, he had already picked up a few dolls from the ground.
It seemed as if if Nan Huan said he had no ideas, he would immediately hang the doll on the wall.
"Wait a moment."
After Nan Huan uttered a few words, he frowned and thought about his own things.
This is the doctor's room, the system has reminded us, and the doctor has his own understanding of cleanliness and tidiness.
But this is essentially a game, and it is impossible not to give players some hints, which is inconsistent with the general characteristics of the game.
So the hint must have been given early on, but I just didn’t notice it.
But they only met the doctor once, and during the treatment, the doctor did not seem to show any understanding of cleanliness and tidiness.
"Two minutes left."
Cui Zhongming's breathing became tense.
wrong--
Nan Huan suddenly had an idea and thought of something.
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