Chapter 042: Eating Watermelon at the Ladder Apartment (8)
Liu Tang was not frightened to the point of losing his mind by the height.
He turned back calmly and shouted to Mo Qianhe behind him, "We must have broken the rules. We walked down two spiral staircases in a row!"
Mo Qianhe exerted force with both hands, and the veins on his arms bulged.
He quickly moved himself to Liu Tang's side.
Liu Tang looked at the door of Reservoir Room 3, which was just a short distance away, and suggested, "When the stairs swing closest to the door, we'll just rush over!"
"No need to take that risk." Mo Qianhe said, throwing out a vine in his hand.
The vines immediately stuck to the walls of the apartment as firmly as if they had taken root.
Mo Qianhe hugged Liu Tang tightly, and Liu Tang hugged his waist in tacit understanding, and grabbed the vine in his hand with his other hand.
The two of them jumped up, holding on to the vines and swinging to the door of Room 3 of the reservoir by inertia, kicked the door open, and rolled in.
As the two people landed, the waving spiral staircase outside stopped moving and returned to its original position quietly.
The vine in Mo Qianhe's hand gradually disappeared.
He began to explain, "This tool is called 'Ape Vine', and its function is as you can see."
Liu Tang stood up and gave Mo Qianhe a thumbs-up: "I told you to save the times for you to use at the critical moment, and it turned out to be true."
The live broadcast room cheered:
"Ahhh, he's a little handsome, what's going on?!"
"Liar Mo has survived another day!"
"They hugged! Damn it! They hugged each other!"
"I'm going to make a scene! I'm going to complain to Tangtang!"
"The 'River' CP is in danger!"
Mo Qianhe clearly felt that the temperature of the ground had further increased and was already a little hot.
He pulled Liu Tang without stopping and went straight through the door on the right into the next room of Reservoir Room 3.
At the same time, Ji Zehan speculated based on his own experience: "It seems that in this instance, trying to go downstairs directly via the spiral staircase outside would be considered cheating. So, going down two floors in a row activated the supervision mode."
Mo Qianhe agreed: "No wonder the rules at the beginning of the dungeon said 'Don't rely too much on the outer stairs', so this is what it means."
Liu Tang thought for a moment and said, "Although the stairs moved just now, the awakened boss didn't appear. Does this mean that we haven't violated the most important rule yet?"
Mo Qianhe closed the right door and shook his head, "Not necessarily. Maybe this entire apartment is actually the dungeon boss itself."
Hearing this, Zhou Songyang on the other side of the sound transmission wall felt a chill.
His voice trembled as he asked, "So, we are in Boss's belly now?"
Liu Tang looked around and said, "They're both Bosses, but the difference is a bit too big."
Mo Qiangan: "..."
The images in the room began to play, and a small figure suddenly fell into the calm water, stirring up countless bubbles.
They saw that it was the little rabbit that had been "drowned" before, and now it was struggling, as if it had come back to life.
So in front of Liu Tang and the others, they saw the "resurrected" little rabbit drowned again.
Liu Tang clearly remembered that after the little rabbit drowned, it was fished out by an otter, and then there were voices of discussion on the shore.
For a moment he was confused as to what had happened.
Mo Qianhe spoke in a deep voice: "It seems that I was right. The little rabbit did not die the first time it drowned. It was rescued after being fished out by the otter."
Liu Tang's eyes went blank as he continued, "So now, after the little rabbit was rescued, I don't know what happened, but it fell into the water again..."
Mo Qianhe's voice became calm and serious: "Probably, the otter pushed him back into the water."
"The otter saved the little rabbit, and then killed the little rabbit."
There was dead silence inside the sound transmission wall.
Liu Tang had never felt so cold inside.
Although all this was just an illusion, I felt a deep fear creeping into my heart.
Feng Xiansu complained: "So this otter has already... killed two people? It's really killing like crazy."
Zhou Songyang asked, "Did you see the otter push the rabbit? If not, it doesn't necessarily mean the otter killed the rabbit, right?"
Ji Zehan thought for a while, understood Mo Qianhe's reasoning behind his conclusion, and explained, "There are three reasons to support this speculation:
"First, after the otter rescued the little rabbit, common sense would dictate that he should have stayed by the little rabbit's side to continue rescuing it. If anyone else had done it, they wouldn't have been able to escape the otter."
Zhou Songyang disagreed: "It's possible that the murderer asked Otter to do something and sent Otter away."
Feng Xiansu retorted to her brother, "Are you stupid? The otter rescued the little rabbit. If he was sent away and later found out that the little rabbit was still dead, wouldn't he immediately know who did it?"
Zhou Songyang was stuck and couldn't find any words to refute.
Ji Zehan continued, "Secondly, the fox threatened him with a photo. Perhaps the photo didn't show him spending time with the rabbit mother, but rather a photo of him pushing the little rabbit back into the water.
"Once the photo is released, other people will know that he is the murderer. He will definitely go to jail or even be sentenced to death, so he can't let others know."
Liu Tang nodded when he heard this. "That seems more reasonable. It's just a photo of him and Mother Rabbit together. There's really no need to kill to silence him."
"No wonder the otter hasn't appeared in front of the mother rabbit since the little rabbit died. Maybe he's feeling guilty, right?"
Ji Zehan replied, "This is also my third point. The otter may have been feeling guilty and busy dealing with the threatening fox, so he didn't appear in front of the rabbit mother."
Mo Qianhe said to Liu Tang, "There is a way to verify our guess."
Liu Tang thought about it and understood: "That grassland room with a panoramic view of the apartment and the reservoir might be able to see what happened at that time."
Ji Zehan immediately called up all the markers and reminded the two: "'Fire Room 0', which has a panoramic view of the apartment, is one floor below 'Reservoir Room 1'."
Mo Qianhe and the other man were currently in "Reservoir Room 4." They immediately walked to the left door, passed through to "Reservoir Room 1," opened the main door, walked down one floor, and arrived at "Fire Room 0."
This time they did not trigger the "pendulum" on the apartment stairs, which verified the previous analysis of the copy rules.
What is certain at this point is that the apartment fire must have occurred after the rabbit drowned.
So, if you want to see the image of the little rabbit on the shore when it drowned, you have to trace back from the time when the fire occurred.
After arriving at "Fire Room 0", Mo Qianhe and the others turned left and began to check the images.
Zhou Songyang and his four companions finally found the image of the old fox burning paper money.
Several people stared at the old fox burning paper money, afraid of missing the scene where she accidentally caused the fire.
But she seemed quite cautious. She filled a wooden basin one-third with water and then placed the thick iron bucket used for burning paper money into the basin.
The water in the basin was like a moat surrounding the iron bucket. Even if sparks flew out when burning paper money, they fell into the water and did not spread.
At this time, Du Qiuyun looked at the window. She originally thought that the firelight on the window was the reflection of the old fox burning paper money, but when she looked carefully, she found that the firelight was coming in from outside the window.
"There's a fire! There's a fire outside!" Du Qiuyun reminded others to look out the window.
Feng Xiansu also became nervous after seeing clearly: "It's over, it's over, why doesn't this old fox run away!"
The burning smoke drifted into the house from the window, but the old fox was completely unaware.
Zhou Songyang frowned: "She herself burns paper money, which also smells like smoke, covering up the smell and burning sounds coming from outside the house."
It wasn't until a broadcast came from outside, notifying the people in the apartment that there was a fire in the building and they should escape quickly, that the old fox suddenly realized what was happening.
But it was too late.
When the old fox opened the door and tried to rush out, flames roared in from outside the door and completely engulfed her.
The video ended with the old fox's final hoarse cry.
The four of them stood there in a daze, their hearts gripped by fear.
Zhou Songyang swallowed his saliva and said to the sound transmission wall, "It's confirmed that the old fox's house is not the source of the fire."
"Okay, it's so hot." Du Qiuyun raised his hand to wipe the sweat from grandma's forehead.
Maybe it was due to the image, but she always felt like she was in a sea of fire.
Feng Xiansu turned and went to the main door, wanting to open it to get some fresh air. When she grasped the door handle and turned it, she realized that it was extremely hot.
"Ah! It's so hot!" she screamed.
When Zhou Songyang heard his sister's voice, he hurried over and checked her hand.
"It's okay, it's just a red burn. It will heal itself when we get back to the rest area." Zhou Songyang said.
This was the basic information he had learned during his week in the rest area of the underworld.
Any injury will be automatically repaired after the player returns to the rest area as long as he is not dead.
Feng Xiansu said impatiently: "Why bother with your nonsense? Of course I know it will recover, but it's hot now, really hot!"
Zhou Songyang was about to scold his sister for being spoiled when he saw that she had a look of surprise on her face and was looking over the railing.
"So close! This floor is so close to the ground!" Feng Xiansu shouted to others.
Du Qiuyun also helped her grandmother out of the room. She felt that her grandmother's condition was getting worse and worse, and she was becoming more and more silent.
Zhou Songyang stretched his sleeves, put them over his hands, then held onto the railing and looked down.
After carefully examining it for a moment, he confirmed, "We are on the third floor now."
"Really?!" Feng Xiansu supported her hand on the back of her brother's hand and looked down.
With this pressure, Zhou Songyang could feel the high temperature of the railing even through his clothes. He hissed and quickly broke free from his sister's hands.
Feng Xiansu gave her brother a malicious smile: "It's okay, it will repair itself when we return to the rest area."
Zhou Songyang looked at his scalded hands and angrily looked at his sister, but did not get angry.
At this time, Du Qiuyun's grandmother said to everyone with some worry: "Everyone, I have some unreasonable guesses that I want to share with you."
Du Qiuyun looked at his grandmother, who was clearly overly worried, with some surprise. Then he heard her continue, "I've discovered that the plot of this instance is somewhat similar to my childhood experiences."
When Liu Tang heard this, she immediately became excited. She kept opening and closing the door while encouraging the other party: "Grandma, just say it!"
Grandma Du continued, "I have a childhood memory that is similar to the experience of the kitten in this plot."
Grandma Du’s name is Qiu Li.
When she was a child, she went to play with a group of boys at the reservoir owned by the factory.
Among the boys, there was a boy named Xiaochuan who was not very good at swimming.
Several other boys threw him into the water and told him to learn how to doggy paddle.
At first, Xiaochuan could splash around in the water.
But after a while, his legs seemed to cramp and he began to struggle in the water.
This situation frightened the other little boys and they ran away.
Only Qiu Li went to seek help in a panic. By the time Qiu Li's mother was called, Xiaochuan had already drowned.
Grandma Qiu said, "I think the more similar thing is that I helped Xiaochuan's uncle deliver canteen meals to Xiaochuan's mother many times, and I also kept an envelope for Xiaochuan's uncle.
"After that, Xiaochuan's uncle also passed away, just like in the copy. After his death, I helped him pass the envelope to Xiaochuan's mother. Later, the staff dormitory where Xiaochuan's mother and her family lived caught fire.
"But maybe because I was too young at the time, my family didn't tell me the truth, so what I learned was that Ogawa's uncle died accidentally, not murdered."
Recalling Jiang Minxu and Fang Yiran's previous experience in the "Archives of Lies," Liu Tang quickly affirmed, "Grandma Qiu, your guess might be correct. The plot of a dungeon is sometimes based on the memories of eliminated players."
"So this plot is likely the same thing you experienced."
Mo Qianhe got straight to the point: "Then do you know who lived on the first floor of the staff dormitory at that time?"
Grandma Qiu said in a weak voice, "This is what I'm not sure about.
"Because the fire initially burned down the third and fourth floors of the staff dormitory, it did not start on the first floor at all."
Feng Xiansu, who was originally expecting to hear the answer, suddenly felt her face fall.
Mo Qianhe thought for a moment, realizing that the dungeon plot wouldn't necessarily be completely copied from the player's memory, so he asked, "Then do you know which family was the source of the fire?"
Grandma Qiu replied: "I'm sorry, I only saw the fire from a distance at the time. As for whose house the fire started, I'm not sure. But I know that Xiaochuan's grandmother lives on the fourth floor, and he and his mother live on the third floor.
"As for the otter, I was too young at the time. I really didn't know who was close to Xiaochuan's mother, let alone where his home was."
Zhou Songyang recalled that when the old fox's house was burned, the flames did spread from downstairs.
This is consistent with Grandma Qiu’s account.
He said, "So we can guess that the fire might have started from Mother Rabbit and Otter's home."
Feng Xiansu was speechless: "There are only a few NPCs in this dungeon. You, an old lady, have been talking for so long without any useful information. It's the same as if you didn't say anything at all."
Du Qiuyun glared at Feng Xiansu: "You are amazing, say something."
Feng Xiansu shook her hair and said proudly, "I do have something to say."
When Mo Qianhe heard that Old Lady Qiu didn't intend to say anything more, he simply didn't interrupt Feng Xiansu and let her continue.
Feng Xiansu said, "Aren't we on the third floor now? Why don't we just go down the stairs to the first floor?"
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