Their search was proving to be the correct choice of action. The group found lots of hidden messages and possible clues that could potentially help them in this dungeon instance. They also avoided going outside nor look out of the windows to try and avoid being influenced by those whispers.
As the leader, Shi Zuo collaborated with everyone and had suggested to bring all the evidence back to the ‘torture’ room as fast as possible since they were racing against a timer.
Unlike the other dungeon instances where their phone battery power did not deplete and could be used infinitely to check on the maps and stuff, Bin Yong’s handphone was indeed running out of battery. With each percentage decrease, it made Shi Zuo feel that he grown 10 years old for being so stressed out.
Hence, he had demanded Bin Yong to turn off all possible apps to reduce the amount of battery the phone was consuming. They did not know if it would help and they could only pray for the best. That was until Luo Bo found a dusty old handphone battery lying in one of the abandoned office desks.
Shi Zuo then remembered Bin Yong’s phone was so old that they would actually work with replacement batteries, unlike the newer ones the rest of them had which did not have a replacement cover to remove the battery pack. Still, he did not want to risk removing the battery since it would mean powering up the old phone again unless it was absolutely necessary. With the way this dungeon instance was clearly not pulling its punches, he’d rather find out when the battery died out. (or hoped not to find anything at all.)
Back in the torture room, they laid out all the clues they had found. Luo Bo had brought in a few weird looking pamphlets. She arranged them in the same pattern she had found them, in case that was of importance. Bin Yong went back to the room where they had found the cryptic looking quote the first time and noted it down by using the random scraps of pen and paper around the place.
Meanwhile, Jia Le had searched the entire building and found out that there was a door that was sealed shut with a weird combination lock. She tried to utilise her cultivation, but the door would not even budge a single inch. In fact, it felt like the door itself was defending itself from the blow.
True enough, Jin used the exact same kind of door that was previously used to block away potential intruders from the shop’s basement for the dungeon instance. But instead of Grade 19, he used a Grade 15 door since he yet to encounter anyone of that level around the area. (It was highly unlikely that the Tiger Lord would visit him) Even if there was a Grade 15 cultivator that coincidentally entered Jin’s store, the System would automatically swap the door for the Grade 19 one. (well, that’s not to say if a Grade 19 or 20 cultivator comes in, then Jin guessed he would probably allow him to destroy a normal door as a bonus for being that high level.)
Talking about the basement door, the store’s basement was cordoned off from the public since the shop instance handled all the entrances to everything from service instances to shopping instances. The library on the second and third floor was surprisingly popular since some students used that area as a studying corner while others used it to grab a bit of snooze time before going back to the shopping district. (Some guys even used that place as a place to pass the time to wait for their girlfriends in the shopping district.)
Jin did not care about those two parts of the store for now as his shop instance was sufficient to cater to almost every need he has. Even the mini garden park previously used by Lynn and the other cultivators while waiting for their turns became a gathering place for some people. (Mostly the elderlies before they enter the shop for their dungeon instances early in the morning).
On a separate note, Jia Le did find an interesting fragment piece that was glowing…eerily dark. She was a little afraid to hold on to it and decided to take a trashcan which she nonchalantly emptied the contents on the floor and used it to hold the fragment emanating such dark energy. When the rest of the group saw it, they too got wary and commended Jia Le on such an innovative idea. Who knew what might happen to her if she held on to the fragment without any care.
“So, remember, think simple. Most escape rooms are meant to be solvable. If we overanalyse it too much, it might backfire on us. But Bin Yong, go ahead and overanalyse stuff” Luo Bo emphasised the last part which made Bin Yong rolled his eyes in annoyance before they gathered together to look through the clues.
“I tried to decipher the cypher. It might fall into one of two categories, but I am willing to bet it is a prime number to alphabets decryption kind of code.” Shi Zuo told them as he was used to having this kind of puzzles and probably the best analytical mind among the four of them. (Even though they said Bin Yong overanalysed things too much, as a tech guy he fulfilled the cliché of loving the crack puzzles.)
“Why would you say that? I do not see any numbers at all? Its all dots, curves and lines along with cursive alphabets. Are you sure you are not overanalysing it?” Bin Yong asked with a little sarcasm in it as he borrowed the tattered handbook to flip through.
“Well you are not wrong, my dear Watson. That was what I thought as well…until I saw this.” Shi Zuo took out a piece of folded paper and as he unfolded it, there were scribbles of numbers and a few weird patterns. Bin Yong looked through it a bit confused at first before he understood that it seemed to correspond the odd patterns to the numbers.
He then noticed there was actually a page that has seemingly been purposely removed from the tattered book. Shi Zuo added it was not that hard to find, but if he had not seen a few of those bloodied patterns on that tattered handbook, he would have thought that it was merely just scribbles too.
“Hmm, but the quote that we found, it still does not make any sense nor fulfil any of that cypher code. I copied every single word and even the way it was written and where it was written to make sure we do not overlook any patterns.” Bin Yong said. “The only clue I can make out from this entire quote is the possible missing letters, but I can’t make any heads or tails from it.” Bin Yong sighed.
“What are the letters that are missing?” Luo Bo asked and Bin Yong said it was Y, H and A.
“Coincidentally, those were the words there seemed to be missing in these three pamphlets as well.” Luo Bo had noticed a possible correlation as she showed the rest. It was a picture of a lottery draw to the holiday vacation to the city of Las Vegas. However, the word Y was deliberately missing from the word ‘city’ from the first pamphlet and so was the ‘A’ in Vegas in the second. “Win a Ooliday trip.” Luo Bo purposely emphasised the missing H in the word Holiday in the third.
“Perhaps, write those letters in that particular cursive writing on the pamphlet as per the quotes?” Jia Le suggested and they just gave it a try. To their surprise, it did work as the three pieces of advertisement suddenly glowed. The glowing caused lines and dots to appear on the paper throughout the picture, turning it bloody red which made Luo Bo scream a little before the glow faded away.
“Now, this is something to look forward to.” Shi Zuo tried to use the cypher code to decrypt the lines and what he got was 4-7-9 which correspond to D, G and I according to the alphabetical list.
“D-G-I? Dig? Gid?” Jia Le tried solving it out loud. “Are we looking for some place to dig? or is it a combination with Y-H-A? I see no pattern at all.” Jia Le was getting even more confused than before.
“What if we turn it back to numbers? You said you saw a lock, right? is it a number combination lock or alphabetical lock?” Bin Yong asked and Jia Le shook her head.
“It was neither, it’s more of a key kind of thing, and somehow I think it has something to do with this particular fragment here.” Jia Le replied and then Luo Bo emphasised the group that they needed to think simple.
“Let’s just do what the clue seems to provide us with. Dig. Well, we can only dig at the bottom of the ground I presume? I am sure Boss Jin is not that evil to make us dig every corner we can find… right?” Luo Bo asked and everyone agreed.
So far, it was either their luck or them accepting the mission, but they had not encountered any Deep Ones, and they hoped it stayed that way since they have to weapons with them. Not to mention, with four cultivators in the dungeon, it also meant that the difficulty level of the dungeon by dishing out more Deep Ones or stronger fish men.
They collectively went to the basement of the abandoned building without a hitch which was incidentally a carpark with a rusted old broken car at the center of it all. Other than that, there was only solid, concrete ground everywhere, making it impossible to dig with their bare hands. Unless…Yeah, everyone who was at the carpark thought the same.
To remove that damn busted car away.
True enough, beneath the car was a pile of moveable rubble and soil which Shi Zuo and Bin Yong had the honours of digging whatever possible clue up, since their girlfriends refused to help. (Poor guys…) After a few minutes of digging, Shi Zuo noticed there was a glimpse of something metallic which prompted them to uncover the contents even more aggressively to reach it.
It was some lockbox with a weird keyhole to it. When shown to Luo Bo and Jia Le, they both were at a loss of what kind of lockbox it was supposed to be…until Jia Le incidentally compared it with the fragment that was left in the trashcan.
“Say, does anyone want to risk holding the fragment and try to insert it into this keyhole? Somehow I feel that it might fit in quite nicely.” Jia Le commented and everyone looked at each other for a while.
“Erm, let’s search insides of the car first. Perhaps there are some safety gloves or maybe some thick cloth or something that might help us avoid holding it directly.” Bin Yong gave a reasonable rationale and they started rummaging the broken down vehicle.
“Hey, I found a wire here, looks like something Bin Yong could use! Does the car have a USB port to jack it in?” Luo Bo managed to pull the backseats open and squeezed through to check the trunk of the car. Meanwhile, Shi Zuo could not help but watch his girlfriend’s butt poking out of the car seats.
“Oh, Baby, you are so hot.” Shi Zuo remarked bluntly.
“Of course! I’ve known that for a long time. Still thanks for noticing, my darling monkey.” Luo Bo teased her boyfriend a bit as she pulled her arms back and handed Shi Zuo the USB cable.
“Hey, quit flirting in the middle of the mission. A Dungeon Instance is not the right place for that.” Bin Yong said a bit annoyed as he checked the phone’s battery. It was starting to get dangerously low at 5% before he passed it over to Shi Zuo.
“That’s not what I heard, dear Bin Bin. Weren’t you and Jia Le all touchy in the Dungeon Heist Instance when all of us were stuck in that lift, and it broke down of all a sudden?!” Luo Bo refuted his complaints and Bin Yong immediately kept quiet. Clearly, he still felt very guilty about that seeing how Jia Le was quite vulnerable during that dungeon instance since it was barely their second dungeon out together at that point of time. (Oddly, they did not blame Boss Jin for it.)
“Hey, look! It’s charging! This is fantastic!” Shi Zuo shouted in delight when suddenly they heard growls coming from the dark isolated corners of the underground carpark. It was undeniable that Shi Zuo’s excitement awoke the feral Deep Ones.
“I guess we are on the right track if there are Deep Ones not disguising themselves as those Black Suits.” Bin Yong said as he cracked his knuckles but Jia Le tapped him on his shoulders while she stepped forward.
“I diligently watched your dungeon stream during the afternoon lunch break. I suggest you to take the back seat and watch. Without your weapons, I believed I am way better than you.” Jia Le sniggered a little as she summoned her cultivation with ease.
Silhouettes of five Bellflowers bloomed so wildly and vividly above her head that a scene of the wind blowing the purple petals into the far end could be seen.
It was definitely a breathtaking sight.
