Chapter 248: Brothers (Four)
Chapter 248: Brothers (Four)
"Magnet..." Feng Bu Jue read aloud the six letters engraved on the back of the false tooth. "Hmm... was this a false tooth used by Magneto?" he quipped half-jokingly.
He pocketed the false tooth and retrieved the earlier soap and small wooden comb, double-checking their item descriptions.
【Name: Filthy Soap】
【Type: Plot-Related】
【Quality: Common】
【Function: Unknown】
【Can Be Taken Out of Scenario: Yes】
【Background: Crude and shoddy craftsmanship, extremely basic in quality.】
"Both the soap and this false tooth can be taken out of the scenario", Feng Bu Jue mused.
【Name: Wooden Comb】
【Type: Plot-Related】
【Quality: Common】
【Function: Unknown】
【Can Be Taken Out of Scenario】
【Background: A plain wooden comb, seemingly used for several years.】
"But this comb, and the candle jammed in the middle of the iron bar, cannot be taken out of the scenario", Feng Bu Jue murmured.
At this point, he wasn’t sure if the distinction between items that could or couldn’t be taken out had any significance. It might be trivial, but he noted it down silently anyway.
As mentioned earlier, Feng Bu Jue’s mind functioned like an organized attic. He knew exactly where to find what he needed. Different pieces of information had different priorities, and useless clutter was discarded.
While navigating high-stakes puzzle scenarios, he placed all visible clues at the center of his mental attic, keeping them constantly in view. It was like a web of interconnected clues, with reasoning weaving through it. As more information emerged, countless hypotheses expanded the web, making it larger and larger. Only after resolving each issue would the web shrink again, collapsing back into a single point.
At this moment, Feng Bu Jue’s mental clue web had already spread out. Like the greatest detectives in novels, he possessed an uncanny intuition. He could faintly sense that the items capable of leaving the scenario might be the key threads connecting to the web’s core.
"Magnet... magnet..." As he pondered, Feng Bu Jue had already stowed the small story items into his pocket.
Then, he retrieved the pipe wrench again and began testing.
This was a simple test—he was merely using the pipe wrench to detect magnetic objects.
Feng Bu Jue first held the wrench a few inches above the trash pile on the ground, slowly sweeping it around. If there were anything magnetic mixed in, it should either be attracted upward or pull the wrench downward. But nothing happened.
"Alright, it’s not unusual for answers and hints to be in different places", he said indifferently, standing up and heading toward Cell One.
Next, he planned to test the iron doors of the cells. His hypothesis was that perhaps one of the doors, or a specific part of it, was magnetic. If none of the six doors worked, he’d return to the zero-numbered cell to try his luck. If that still failed, he’d resort to a carpet-style search, using the pipe wrench like a magnetic radar to scan every inch of the walls and floor.
If all these steps yielded nothing, there was only one remaining option: re-examining the significance of the "magnet" clue itself.
Five minutes later, the first three cell doors showed no magnetism. Feng Bu Jue even reached through the food slot, using the pipe wrench to probe the small patch of floor inside the door. Still nothing.
At Cell 4’s entrance, Feng Bu Jue followed his usual top-to-bottom pattern, slowly searching. This time, when the wrench neared the small iron window on the door, it suddenly reacted.
Following the sensation, Feng Bu Jue quickly located the magnetic source. "Is it this one..."
Like the other cells, Cell 4’s door had five vertical iron bars in its small window. But unlike the others, the central iron bar here was magnetic.
The magnetism wasn’t strong enough to pull the wrench from his hand, but it was sufficient to affect nearby metal objects.
The bar was about twenty centimeters long, roughly as thick as two fingers pressed together. Upon closer inspection, Feng Bu Jue noticed severe rusting at both ends of the bar.
He used the pipe wrench to grip the upper rusted section, squeezing firmly. After a few seconds, there was a clunk, and the top segment snapped off. Repeating the process, he removed the lower section, leaving only the middle portion in his hand.
"Now I’ve got a cylindrical magnet about ten centimeters long", Feng Bu Jue said. "So what?"
Actually, the next step was obvious—use the magnet to find a key.
He swept the magnet over the trash pile again, hoping to find a paper clip or wire (though he wasn’t sure if such a thing could pick the lock).
After failing, he returned to the zero-numbered cell. Its door could no longer be locked, allowing free access from either side.
Feng Bu Jue picked up some cloth strips from the ground and began braiding a rope. If Xiao Tan did it, it would be neat and sturdy—after all, they made a living with scalpels, so braiding was a trivial task.
But Feng Bu Jue... while he could do almost anything, this wasn’t his forte.
Strangely, despite his sharp mind, patience, and steady hands capable of precise work, he was utterly helpless at weaving or knotting. As a child, he’d taken two months to learn to tie his shoes, then wore slip-on sneakers for a year, only to forget the technique afterward.
Back to the task, Feng Bu Jue spent over ten minutes weaving a roughly two-meter-long rope. Though he’d carefully selected cloth strips of similar material and length, the result was thick and oddly shaped.
After triple-checking its durability—even jumping rope in the corridor—he tied the magnet to one end of the cloth rope.
Then, like fishing, he tossed the rope and magnet through the food slot, pulling them back after a moment. Repeating this for about twenty minutes, he confirmed there were no keys hidden under the beds or in blind spots of the six cells.
"Hmm... could it be..." After countless failed attempts, his thoughts circled back to one place.
"There’s still one item in the zero-numbered cell I haven’t used..." Feng Bu Jue walked back, "and once that door opens, I can return freely. These clues probably mean..."
(End of Chapter)
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