Chapter 146 Hotel Copy (Part 4)
When it was almost time for dinner, the restaurant entrance was crowded with people. Because the restaurant door was not open until the time, the guests were inevitably a little anxious.
Ordinary guests might be able to reason with you, but the guests here will not listen to you. If they are really unhappy, they may resort to violence. If a human player is beaten by a guest, the leaders of this hotel will not help them.
Ning Hanqi seemed to be lucky. She met a foreman who was willing to help her, but the foreman's help was conditional. Ning Hanqi gradually discovered this in her subsequent work.
The foreman is not a gentle and temperless kind of person, he can also get angry... For example, when employees raise objections, he will severely "correct" the employees' thoughts, but as long as his employees are obedient, he will not care about anything, even if the employees make mistakes, he will help cover them up.
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 Xia Yingnuan asked him to look, he didn't notice that the time was wrong.
Perhaps it was because Xia Yingnuan's look of disdain was a little too explicit, 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 Xia Yingnuan wiped the dial clean, the sound of the clock became louder and louder.
The current time is 12:25, with both zeros and whole numbers, so I am very curious why Xia Yingnuan is so sure.
"After the system finished prompting the task, I checked 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 already passed, it was exactly two hours."
As Xia Yingnuan explained, she bent over and reached out to grope at the bottom of the dial, as if she was looking for something.
Before Cui Zhongming could ask any more questions, Xia Yingnuan had already opened the watch face with a click.
Then, as expected, I found the object and location for winding the spring.
Without waiting for Cui Zhongming to react, Xia Yingnuan had already stuffed the long metal object in.
"What are you doing?"
Cui Zhongming was stunned and could hardly follow Xia Yingnuan's train of thought.
"Turn back the time?"
"Why?"
"The room we were in two hours ago is where we should be cleaning."
Xia Yingnuan'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 was a change on the dressing table. The oval mirror facing the room slowly spread out around like flowing liquid.
Like a beast with a huge mouth, it devoured everything in the room.
The neat sofa, the symmetrical bed curtains, even the open window and the sunlight coming in, gradually became illusory and were finally swallowed up by the mirror.
The room gradually became darker, and Xia Yingnuan and Cui Zhongming's vision was disturbed, and they could not see the scene in front of them clearly.
But in the darkness, another voice 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.
Xia Yingnuan 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 Xia Yingnuan's ear, piercing her eardrum and causing pain.
She shook her head vigorously, trying to get rid of the painful feeling, but it was of no use.
The moment she lowered her head, she saw that the room was very 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 look at them made one's scalp tingle.
Because Xia Yingnuan discovered that the faces of these dolls looked no different from those of 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 because Xia Yingnuan had adapted to the environment.
She saw that Cui Zhongming, who was originally standing not far from her, had moved to her left front at some point. He pointed at the location of the dressing table with one hand, and the surprised expression on his face was still seen by Xia Yingnuan 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 was half a person's height and much larger than the other dolls in the room.
What was originally a dusty mess where nothing could be seen clearly became clearer as the room changed.
Xia Yingnuan noticed that it was wearing the same clothes as the maid, and even had the same emerald green headband on its head. Except that it was slightly shorter than the one Xia Yingnuan picked up, even the pattern on it was exactly the same.
It was closest to the two of them, so Xia Yingnuan and Cui Zhongming could hear her heartbeat more clearly. The beats from her heart were 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, Xia Yingnuan could feel that his body was tense, 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 Xia Yingnuan was right, but his tense body did not relax and he continued to stare around nervously.
Xia Yingnuan ignored him.
There is not much time left. If I keep standing like this, these things might really move.
Xia Yingnuan strolled around the room nonchalantly and confirmed that the door they had originally entered 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 it might trigger."
Cui Zhongming finally finished inspecting the surroundings. He turned around and saw Xia Yingnuan's movements. He angrily 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 Xia Yingnuan at first, but now that he saw the layout of the room had changed, he naturally regarded her as a backer.
Xia Yingnuan stood up straight. After confirming the situation of the dolls, she did not explain anything, but just pouted angrily at Cui Zhongming.
"Look, the puzzle has already been laid out. Just solve it."
Following Xia Yingnuan's gaze, Cui Zhongming discovered that under the empty wall, there was a doll as big as himself hanging on the wall.
He looked at the empty spaces on the wall again and finally caught up with Xia Yingnuan'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 bending over, his fingers frozen in mid-air, and he didn't even finish his words.
"It's not that simple. You shouldn't have forgotten the mission instructions. Didn't I say that the doctor has a special understanding of cleanliness? This means that these puppets must have a certain order."
After Xia Yingnuan finished looking at the doll on the wall, she walked towards the doll standing on the ground, not noticing that Cui Zhongming's voice was cut off mid-sentence.
She checked the standing doll's headband again, and found it was exactly the same as the one she had picked up, before turning around.
"What are you doing? Pick up the doll and let me see it."
When Xia Yingnuan had seen enough and turned around, she saw that Cui Zhongming was still bent 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, Xia Yingnuan could still feel that his voice seemed to be trembling a little.
Xia Yingnuan walked over quickly and squatted on the other side.
Before, Xia Yingnuan was far away and the room was very dark, so she could only vaguely see the shape of the doll and could not see its appearance clearly at all.
Only when I squatted down could I see it clearly.
No wonder Cui Zhongming was surprised. He saw six dolls scattered in the corner of the wall.
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 Xia Yingnuan'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 Xia Yingnuan.
The doll near Xia Yingnuan's feet was wearing the same clothes as Cui Zhongming and also had no facial features.
The remaining few are simply scaled-down versions of Li Shuai, Liang Yu and Xiaoxue.
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 is not very beautiful, but her eyes are very distinctive, the kind that are both charming and enchanting.
Although this doll cannot move and is clearly supposed to be a dead object, its eyes are exactly the same as Bai Wei's.
Xia Yingnuan picked up the remaining five dolls without facial features, put them to her 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 a heartbeat."
Although this statement was somewhat contradictory, Cui Zhongming at least understood it.
"Then how should we rank them? We can't just sort them by life or death, right? There are still five of us alive."
He seemed to realize that his reaction was a bit extreme. He paused beside Xia Yingnuan, adjusted his mood, and then asked.
"Probably not."
Xia Yingnuan rejected Cui Zhongming's clueless answer and immediately 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 Xia Yingnuan could think of anything, the system prompt sounded. They had just wasted some time and only had five minutes left.
"We still have five minutes left. How about we try some permutations? There aren't that many combinations with six dolls. Let's try them all. There's bound to be one that's right, right?"
From the clock incident just now, Xia Yingnuan had already realized that solving puzzles was indeed not Cui Zhongming's strong point, but Xia Yingnuan did not immediately respond to the solution actively proposed by the other party.
She pondered for a moment, then asked another question without further context, "Do you have any skills or items that can help me quickly arrange and combine things? If not, I can go to the mall and see if I can buy such items?"
Xia Yingnuan 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 search in the warehouse and the mall without thinking much about it.
Originally, Xia Yingnuan 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's a permutation and combination accelerator product. It's not very expensive. The product description says that if the permutation and combination results are within 1,000, you can try them all and find the final answer within three minutes. The price is not expensive either, so I bought it right away."
Cui Zhongming did a quick calculation and found that there were only 720 possible combinations of their six dolls, which was within the usable range and there was still enough time. His tone of voice finally softened a little.
"The system doesn't restrict purchases?"
Xia Yingnuan grasped the key point of the matter.
“Why does the system restrict…”
Cui Zhongming was originally very puzzled. He finally came up with a solution. Xia Yingnuan suddenly asked 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."
Xia Yingnuan did not forget the line of small words below when she was shopping in the mall before.
[Note: The prices of all items in the mall will fluctuate depending on the player's dungeon status.]
The system will allow players to use skills or props to fight against in-game situations, but the use of such skills and props will not necessarily disrupt the fairness of the game.
The core 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 Xia Yingnuan only needed to explain it with one sentence and he understood.
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 of person who sits and waits for death. He can't just sit there and do nothing, waiting for the mission to be completed. While speaking, he had already picked up several dolls from the ground.
It seemed as if if Xia Yingnuan said she had no ideas, he would immediately hang the doll on the wall.
"Wait a moment."
After Xia Yingnuan uttered a few words, she frowned and thought about her own things.
This is the doctor's room, the system has reminded me, 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--
Xia Yingnuan suddenly had an idea and thought of something.
It was already past 9 o'clock in the evening, but the players' work was far from over. However, the guests returned to the room one after another, and Xia Yingnuan had finally found out the whereabouts of the girl.
"Hanqi, I saw the room that girl is staying in. It's 505."
505?
"What's wrong?" Xia Yingnuan noticed that Ning Hanqi's expression was a little strange.
"Nothing, I just think this room number is unlucky."
Because the owner of this hotel is very superstitious, the hotel's house number jumps to 5 every time it is 4, which means that the girl's real house number is actually 404. The 404 in the previous copy has died tragically. I don't know if this room full of buffs in the horror story is a trap left for players.
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