Chapter 246
Chapter 246
The wall behind the bed was covered in faint carvings—repeated patterns of four parallel vertical lines crossed by a single diagonal slash.
This was a common method prisoners used to track time, each day marked by a single diagonal slash across four parallel lines. A Chinese inmate might have carved the character "zheng" (meaning "correct" or "right"), but in this cell, only the unique four-vertical-one-diagonal pattern was present.
"Hmm… At least six different people have left these marks", Feng Bu Jue observed, scanning the grooves.
The conclusion was obvious. Though all were simple carvings, variations in depth, length, and angle revealed distinct individuals. Each person had also spaced their marks apart to avoid confusion.
"Fingernails couldn't leave marks on stone like this. They must’ve used tools", Feng Bu Jue muttered, kneeling on the bed to examine the grooves. He ran his palm over them, then surveyed the room. "Same tool… but it’s not here now." His eyes narrowed. "Dining utensils?"
He inspected every wall, ceiling, and floor. "All marks are on this wall beside the bed. Nowhere else."
"If they only received utensils during meals, and had to return them afterward under penalty", he theorized, "then mealtime was their only chance to carve." He gestured at the marks. "They’d eat on the bed, then carve nearby afterward."
"Wait—that doesn’t fit!" Feng Bu Jue abruptly corrected himself.
He rushed to the iron door, peering through the upper window. The corridor outside had wooden flooring, higher ceilings, and fluorescent tubes lining the walls. Beyond twenty meters, darkness swallowed the passage.
After a quick glance, he dropped to the floor, pressing his face against the rectangular hatch at the door’s base. Sniffing, he touched the edge, then licked his fingers thoughtfully before standing.
"Food residue on both edges of the hatch proves it’s used for passing meals", he noted, turning to a corner where a plastic bucket sat. "The waste bucket’s on the opposite side. Prisoners can move freely—collect food at the door, use the bucket. If they used utensils, why carve only this wall?"
He stood mid-room, striking Kudo Shinichi’s signature pose—elbow propped on one hand, fingers on his chin.
"Maybe there were no utensils", he mused. "What if only bread and soup were delivered through that hatch?"
His gaze returned to the wall. "So… what was used to carve these? And why only here?"
Discarding the wrong theory, the answer emerged.
A smile tugged at his lips. He lifted the bedsheet (which was fused with the mattress) and found what he sought.
The bed was a single iron structure, legs welded to the floor, the mattress a tangle of metal springs. Several springs were broken, their ends bent toward the wall—perfect for carving.
"No wonder the marks are low on this wall", he deduced. "The tension from the fixed ends made steady carving impossible. They could only scratch straight lines." It took five minutes to piece together the logic. For him, solving such puzzles was pure exhilaration—enough to forget his aching body.
"This room has no windows. Days pass by meals served and biological clocks", he paced. "Finding tools here isn’t easy. These six carvers… they’re the lucky ones. Most prisoners probably lost hope long before their tenth day."
The marks stopped at the ninth. "None stayed longer than ten days. They’d guess something happened on the ninth or tenth night. With the mood here, 1% chance of release, 1% of relocation… 98% of being killed." He snorted. "Yet all they could do was carve numbers."
Leaning against the wall, he measured his height. "No plot summary to tell me if I’m Mad Bu Jue or someone else… Hmm, height matches." He placed his hand at eye level—about 1.8 meters. "Clothes are mine." He checked his satchel menu: flashlight, *-500, moxxi's bad temper, vitality value supplement—all grayed out. "Tch. Expected."
"The guy dragging me in the intro was under 1.7 meters", he speculated. "Yet he carried me one-handed. Definitely above commoner strength—matches my 27th-level stats. If he controls rations, keeping prisoners weak is easy."
He approached the door. "What kind of creep sets this up? Serial killer? Sadist? Cannibal? Mad scientist?" Recalling the captor’s dialogue, he clenched his fist. "Scientist."
"Was he talking to me? Himself? Or both?" Feng Bu Jue mused, shaking the iron bars. The door rattled but held firm—no handle, only a keyhole. Peering through the lock hole was pointless.
"Escape? Heh." He checked his task bar. "A solo nightmare scenario in the game’s advanced stage? Tailored for me. No brute-forcing the door. Time to pick the lock."
Wrench in hand, he began a carpet-style search—tapping walls and floor inch by inch. He moved the plastic bucket, checked every corner, even tore open the mattress. Inside? Not cotton or feathers, but shredded rags of mixed fabrics and colors.
Finding nothing, he spread the scraps on the floor, sorting them methodically…
Feng Bu Jue sorted the fabric strips by color, texture, and even area, but the results were meaningless. It seemed there was no pattern among these rags. Yet he refused to give up, attempting to piece together a puzzle with the chaotic scraps.
After sitting on the floor playing with them for half an hour, Feng Bu Jue finally gave up. After trying things no normal person would ever attempt, he reached a conclusion that any normal person could have made in seconds: this was just a pile of useless rags.
"Ugh... What a waste of life. A bunch of trash. Even if I wove these rags into a rope, there's nowhere in this room to hang myself", Feng Bu Jue mocked himself. "Where else could the Key be hidden?" He first looked toward the small wooden cabinet. "All three drawers of this cabinet are already empty." Then he turned to the blue plastic bucket. "That bucket... the bottom has nearly ten centimeters of feces and urine. It's not impossible the Key is hidden there..." He swallowed hard. "The bucket's too deep. It'd be inconvenient to bend down and search inside. But if I pour out everything and find nothing, this entire floor..."
He tried to banish the grotesque thought, but still approached the small wooden cabinet first. This time he pulled all three drawers out of the cabinet and placed them on the ground. Then he laid the cabinet on its side and reached inside to feel around. Unfortunately, he found nothing but dust. He tapped every inch of the wooden cabinet thoroughly, but discovered no hidden compartments.
The three drawers now lay side by side on the ground. The wooden boards were so thin that he didn't even need to check to know there were no hidden layers.
Thus... the puzzle-solving hit another dead end.
"Is it really hidden in the feces? That's too much..." Feng Bu Jue turned his head, staring deeply at the plastic bucket in the corner. "What kind of scenario is this? It's pushing things too far..."
Suddenly, he had an idea. "Ah! If I pour the contents of the bucket into the three drawers, I won't make a mess all over the floor... The drawers are shallow, so searching would be easier."
As he thought this, he actually prepared to act. Immediately standing up, he grabbed a drawer and headed toward the plastic bucket. Fortunately, at that exact moment, his eyes caught something.
"Oh!" Feng Bu Jue lifted the drawer, looking at its bottom. "Hahahahaha!" After a bout of maniacal laughter, he flipped the other two drawers over, placing them bottom-up.
It turned out each drawer bottom had a word written in blood. Feng Bu Jue arranged them based on their original positions inside the wooden cabinet, revealing the message: the top drawer's back side read "bed", the middle one "key", and the bottom one "bracket."
"In other words, the Key is hidden..." Feng Bu Jue suddenly turned around, looking at the bed again. He walked over and tapped the bedframe with his Mario's pipe wrench, quickly discovering something suspicious.
The horizontal bracket on the bed's outer side, parallel to the bedboard, was hollow, while the one against the wall was solid. Starting from one end of the bed, he tapped the hollow bracket from bottom to top, inch by inch. Finally, when he reached the middle section, he heard movement inside.
"Actually hiding the Key in such a place... Is this meant for humans to find?" Feng Bu Jue muttered in frustration.
Truthfully, he had little to complain about. The drawers' backs had clearly given hints. This hiding spot required clues to identify. Otherwise, who would know to check such a location...
Bang! Bang! Bang! He hammered and twisted the iron bed, but not even a dent appeared.
"What does this mean?" Feng Bu Jue asked. "Even a Fine-grade pipe wrench leaves no mark. Could this be hinting... the feces bucket hides a chainsaw?"
He sat cross-legged on the ground, having finished cosplaying Kudo Shinichi, now channeling his inner temple boy Genyo for inspiration...
"I've got it!" Soon enough, Feng Bu Jue truly had an idea.
With the mentality of "trying won't make me pregnant", he used the [less hasty repair] skill on the bed. Unfortunately, the skill failed... Despite a 60% success rate from Apparatus Proficiency d-level and a 10% bonus to active skill activation success rate from [ice alchemist's perseverance], he still failed...
This made Feng Bu Jue doubt whether his idea was correct.
Still, wasting 200 stamina value wouldn't make him retreat. Since this skill had no cooldown, he immediately used it again. This time, the skill succeeded, and the bed changed appearance.
"Exactly! This counts as a mechanical object!" Feng Bu Jue rejoiced. This purely metal, non-disassemblable bed looked structurally simple, yet it reasonably qualified as a mechanical object.
After using the skill to restore it to [common] quality, all the rust disappeared, and the broken, curled springs in the bedboard section returned to their original positions.
The most critical change occurred at both ends of the outer bracket - the two connection points where the iron bar joined the bedhead and bedfoot. Two metal locking wedges appeared there. Originally, these areas had rusted shut and worn smooth, completely losing their outlines. But now, Feng Bu Jue could simply lift them using the pipe wrench.
Next, he worked quickly for several minutes, successfully removing the metal bracket from the bed.
Once separated from the bedframe, the bracket became a two-meter-long hollow iron rod. Any man holding such an object would naturally feel the urge to mimic a certain monkey's movements. Strangely, this passion hadn't faded with adulthood, and who knows if it would disappear after middle age...
Back to business, Feng Bu Jue lifted the hollow support bar, tapping it twice on the ground. He expected the Key to fall out through the hollow tube, but nothing dropped when he removed the rod.
"Yah!..." Feng Bu Jue held up the iron rod, closing one eye while peering through it with the other. He could see light coming through from the other end, and there was definitely a small object's outline in the middle section. It must be the Key. But for some reason, it wouldn't fall out.
Feng Bu Jue tried flipping the rod upside down, checking if anything would happen from the other end. The result remained unchanged. Annoyed, he sat on the ground, holding the rod horizontally and hammering it with the pipe wrench... Yet when he picked it up again, the Key's position hadn't changed.
"What kind of setting is this... The object moves when I tap the tube, so it's not fixed or welded to the inner walls. But when I hold the tube upright, it still won't fall out..." He repeatedly confirmed the metal bracket had no narrowing at both ends with a wider middle section. "This is only the first puzzle. Why make things this difficult? What else do you want from me?"
This self-reflective "What else do you want from me?" suddenly gave Feng Bu Jue inspiration.
"Wait, could it be..." He thought while reaching into his shirt pocket. The previously obtained soap, candle, and comb were all casually stored there.
"Up to this point, aside from the reasoning part... In actual actions, my skills [less hasty repair] and equipment [Mario's pipe wrench] have both been essential. Without these two, I couldn't have progressed this far", Feng Bu Jue said. "Since the system designed this scenario specifically to challenge me..."
At this moment, he retrieved the [anti-gravity launcher] from his satchel. This item hadn't turned gray, so...
Feng Bu Jue pressed the catapult's grab button, making the candle float. Then he adjusted the candle to a suitable angle with his hand. Next, he inserted one end of the candle into one end of the hollow support bar. As expected... It fit perfectly, sliding in seamlessly.
"Well, designing puzzles this way has its advantages. At least when solving them, it's easy to confirm I'm on the right track..." Saying this, Feng Bu Jue pressed the launch button.
(End of Chapter)
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