Chapter 110

[Tell them that it has found the right door. It will start looking for the key.]

[Don't let it find the right key.]

-

A few hours later.

In the living room of the villa, Xu Ming rubbed his eye sockets tiredly, put down the notebook in his hand, picked up the mobile phone for the nth time, and read these two sentences.

These two sentences were sent by Tian Yiliang. In an emergency, he simply added Gu Ming's WeChat and directly sent these two "hints" from the dream - the originally ambiguous sentences, in this case, suddenly became clear.

On the other side of the sofa, Qiu Yufei, who had just got off work, was listening to Guo Shuyi's explanation, nodding in confusion. The atmosphere in the living room was so solemn that she didn't dare to speak for a while. She sat there and pondered for a while. After she was sure that she had roughly understood the situation, she tentatively spoke:

"In other words, those mutant roots are the keys... right? Because some powerful thing wants to open the 'door', so they were all summoned away?"

"From the current point of view, that's about it." Xu Ming sighed and closed the notebook in her hand. What

she held in her hand was the notebook left by her aunt. Because the investigation of the matter had not made any progress, she could only try to find some guidance from it - it was a pity that although there were a lot of useful information in the notebook, it seemed that there was nothing that could really come in handy at this moment.

However, some of the content in it matched the clues provided by Tian Yiliang.

Just as Xu Ming had speculated before, Auntie had investigated "what's behind the door" in the past, and one of the conclusions of the investigation pointed to the role of the alien roots -

[The door is a defense, but also a passage. If it wants to further penetrate into this world, it must rely on more [doors]. And when it tries to open a new [door], it must find a sufficiently matching key from the world... What is certain at present is that the alien roots are regarded as one of the materials of the key.]

In fact, Auntie has a deeper speculation about this conclusion. For example, she believes that the so-called "door" may be regarded as a kind of protective force, such as the embodiment of order, and the alien roots, as the embodiment of abnormality, themselves represent the collapse of rational rules. The so-called use of mutant roots to open the door is actually probably just the implantation and expansion of abnormalities...

However, these are obviously not helpful for the current situation, so Xu Ming did not look at it carefully.

Qiu Yufei nodded as if she understood, thought about it, and asked softly: "What is the relationship between the missing employee of Anxin Gardening and the disappearance of mutant roots?"

"It's still unclear now." Xu Ming said truthfully, "Shi Mian said that they are still investigating."

But without the help of the mutant root consultant, it is really difficult to speed up the investigation - after all, it is sometimes not so easy to capture abnormal traces from daily life.

Now they can only be sure that the employee's disappearance is definitely related to a certain supernatural forum, but it is still unclear which one it is. Because that employee... was quite active online, and was quite keen on posting in the forum. He left too many browsing and speech records, all of which were related to the supernatural. It would take a long time to check and confirm them one by one.

I can only say that there was a reason why he was chosen for this job.

As for whether this was the only person missing... it is impossible to confirm now. After all, if the other party's disappearance was really related to a supernatural forum, then in such a crowded cyber place, it is very likely that more than one person was affected.

It's just that now it is impossible to lock the specific forum and post, and it is impossible to further lock the scope of the victims.

"So now, it's actually two missing cases..." Qiu Yufei nodded thoughtfully, as if she remembered something, and her eyes swept to the side of Xu Ming again.

"Come to think of it, I wanted to ask just now." She couldn't help but said, "The other mutant roots have been taken away, why are you still here?" "

......?"

The whale blubber man who was digging his feet next to Xu Ming looked up blankly.

After a few seconds, he spoke uncertainly: "Maybe because I'm afraid of death and smart?"

... What kind of reason is this?

Qiu Yufei paused for a moment. Xu Ming on the sofa covered his face and couldn't bear to look directly.

"Although it's outrageous, it tells the truth." Xu Ming said.

"......?!!" Qiu Yufei's expression immediately became more surprised.

Lu Yueling next to her looked at her with understanding. She had almost the same expression when she found out that the Blubber Man was still at home.

It might even be more exaggerated than this expression... After all, the appearance of the Blubber Man at that time was really scary.

At that time, Xu Ming had just found out that Landor had been abducted, and was calling everyone to discuss it. In full view of everyone, her home coat on the back of the sofa suddenly bulged up -

then a brown thing crept out of her coat pocket, looked around carefully, and then, like a big cockroach, it crawled down the sofa by itself, rustling under everyone's astonished gaze...

and then was slapped by Xu Ming, who was overly alert. After flattening it, he picked it up and stared at it in confusion for a while, then turned over the jacket of his home clothes, and sure enough, he found the book of rule number nine from inside.

Combined with the whale fat man's own intermittent explanation, everyone finally understood the situation -

almost at the same time when Landor disappeared, this guy also felt something was wrong.

In its own words, the air in front of it seemed to have suddenly opened up. Behind the gap was a hanging head, with a glowing red butterfly resting on its lips, a pair of eyes staring over, and hair hanging like a brush...

Even for the mutant root, this scene was a little too scary.

More importantly, it could feel a certain attraction. A strong pull, so natural and irresistible, like an invisible big hand, strangled its voice and dragged it to the back of the gap...

Fortunately, its voice was strangled, but its hands could still move and its brain could work - so after realizing that something was wrong, it decisively threw away the work card hidden in its body. It just so happened that Xu Ming was on the first floor at that time, not far from its location, and the rule book was in her home jacket...

So, after losing the work card binding, the whale fat man directly restored the original binding relationship with the rule book. When he woke up again, he had already clung to the cover of the rule book.

Because Xu Ming was busy communicating with others at the time, he didn't bother to use the rule book for a while. So much so that for a while, she really didn't notice its existence - God knows, before gathering everyone, she went to take a look at the place where it slept.

And it turned out that the whale man's judgment was right. Although his head was confused for a while because of the impact, he was not taken away like Landor.

In a way, he was indeed like what he said, afraid of death, but smart.

"But I don't really understand." Gu Yunshu, who had been silent all the time, suddenly spoke, subconsciously pulling his mask with one hand, straightening his back, "Why can't the work badge be used?"

Obviously, the work badge is also a kind of binding relationship.

"Maybe it's because it's not tight enough?" Guo Shuyi tried to make a guess, "At least it's not as close as the connection between the mutant roots and the existence behind the door..." "

?" Gu Yunshu could understand the first half of the sentence, but the second half was a bit confusing. Xu Ming understood what Guo Shuyi meant, and nodded thoughtfully: "You mean, there is a certain connection between the mutant roots and the existence behind the door?"

"Yes." Guo Shuyi nodded lightly, "Of course it's just a guess, because the two phenomena are actually very similar..."

When the blubber man returned to the rule book, he was directly "pulled" back. And according to the description of the blubber man, the disappearance of Landor and the others was also directly "pulled" away. And both, in essence, have completed an instant transfer in space...

If this is the case, can it be inferred that the power that pulled Landor and the others away also originated from some kind of mysterious binding relationship? This binding is tighter than the connection of the work badge, but looser than the binding relationship of the blubber man, so Landor, who is wearing a work badge, can be forcibly pulled away, but the blubber man who is in another relationship cannot be pulled away.

"Oh, I understand what you mean." Lu Yueling suddenly realized, "It's just like being in a relationship. The level of love is higher than ambiguity, and the level of marriage is higher than love. The relationship between Xu Ming and Landuo is almost equivalent to ambiguity, and Haitang and Xu Ming is equivalent to marriage..."

"Its binding is with the rule book, not with me, thank you." Seeing that the topic was getting more and more outrageous, Xu Ming finally couldn't help but hurriedly stopped. Turning around, he saw Qiu Yufei took out her mobile phone at some point and was sitting aside, swiping it non-stop, with a frown on her face, looking a little anxious. Xu Ming

thought she suddenly had something urgent, and quickly said that she could go and do it if she had something to do, and not to bother him; but Qiu Yufei shook her head, looked at her subtly, and quickly returned her gaze to the mobile phone.

"No, it's just... Didn't Haitang say just now that it saw a crack?" Qiu Yufei was not sure if she was thinking too much, and she was a little hesitant when she spoke, "A hanging head with a red butterfly on its mouth... I just suddenly remembered that I have seen similar descriptions."

"......?"

Xu Ming was stunned and sat up suddenly: "Where?"

"In the forum, Baican Square." Qiu Yufei said softly, showing her mobile phone to Xu Ming, "There is a building, the one I told you about before. Its theme is to describe a scary room... I saw a floor yesterday, and the content described is very similar to what Haitang said."

So after listening to the description of the whale fat man, she immediately took out her mobile phone to flip through the post. But strangely, the post was about that floor, and she couldn't find it no matter how hard she tried.

Xu Ming roughly flipped through the post with her mobile phone. With a slight movement in her heart, she thought about it and confirmed it again: "Are you sure you remembered it correctly, is it in this building?"

"Of course!" Qiu Yufei said without hesitation, "And it happens to be the 100th floor. I just watched it last night and was particularly impressed."

After all, he just happened to take her place.

Xu Ming's eyes moved again, and he hurriedly asked her if she still remembered the ID of the owner of that floor. Qiu Yufei recalled it roughly, and Xu Ming immediately took out his mobile phone, sent the ID, and asked Shi Mian if this was the number of the missing employee.

Shi Mian quickly gave a positive answer, and even more puzzling things also appeared-

Shi Mian said that they had checked all the comments and browsing records under this ID. No traces related to the post "Lights on the Haunted Building" were found.

There was no record of speech, nor of browsing history - and therefore, they did not connect the incident to "Lights in the Haunted Building" at first.

But now thinking about it, it is rather strange. "Lights in the Haunted Building" is the forum's anniversary event post. How could someone who is specifically responsible for watching the forum never click on it once?

Starting from this point, Anxin Gardening finally focused the investigation on "Bai Candle Square" and "Lights in the Haunted Building". Xu Mingyi calmed down, logged into the forum with her mobile phone, started again from the beginning, and carefully read through the post.

Soon, she discovered another concerning point.

The first post of this post had been modified.

The modification was made last night, and the id of the modifier was a string of asterisks.

Qiu Yufei also noticed this and couldn't help but exclaimed.

"How strange. Can the administrators of this forum modify each other's comments?" She wondered, "The ID of the original poster yesterday was not this one."

She remembered very clearly that when she saw it yesterday, the original poster's ID was still a poem, and the content of the first post was also very simple. It just briefly stated the rules of the second post, including but not limited to not replying to the first 100 posts, not writing irrelevant content, and writing the theme, etc.

As mentioned before, the theme of this post is "Describing a Horror Room" - to be precise, it is "If you are trapped in a horror room."

On this basis, there can be a simple storyline. In addition, there are other regulations that all descriptions involving the plot can only be referred to as "you", and no other pronouns or names can be used. Because the theme is "trapped", the story cannot involve any "leaving".

I guess it's because the "lighting up" of the 100th floor has been completed, and now this post has opened up the right to reply and comment. The rules of the first floor have also been modified accordingly. But I don't know if she is too sensitive...

I always feel that this version of the revised rules is a bit weird.