Chapter 14 The Other Side of the Coin

“Well… this trick might work on female players overflowing with compassion.” Feng Bujue moved his eyes from the newspaper and glanced at the monkey in the cage. “If necessary, even in reality, I wouldn’t hesitate… especially since this is just a game.” He put down the newspaper, seemingly losing interest in its contents. “But… since they told me the precise weight, that should be a hint.”

He walked to the machine, squatted down, and brought his face close to observe it carefully. He circled the machine, knocked on its outer shell with his fist, and kicked it hard twice. Clearly, the machine's shell wasn't just a layer of iron, but a very sturdy iron plate, with tightly fastened screws at the joints, impossible to dismantle by hand, and impossible for one person to move.

He couldn't find any obvious gaps on the machine's surface, and the two gauges were firmly fixed. In the less than three minutes remaining, trying to find a loophole in the machine itself would probably be futile.

So, Feng Bujue tugged at the monkey's iron cage a few times, but it was welded shut and didn't budge. He looked around the room, but there was nothing besides the four walls.

He walked back to the center of the room, picked up the doll, and sat down on the small wooden chair. Because the chair was so small, Feng Bujue was almost squatting as he sat.

"To pass this room without killing the monkey… besides the 7.5 kilograms of this chair and the doll, I need to find another 7.5 kilograms of objects." He rested his right elbow on his knee, tilted his head, and gently tapped his forehead with his index and middle fingers.

"That walkman probably weighs two *jin* at most, and the syringe is even less. The clothes, pants, and shoes can’t be taken off because of system restrictions. Hmm… I suddenly miss that rock. At least it would have weighed half a kilogram or so." He smiled and said, "So… in this room with six bare walls, there's only one thing left that can be moved…" He raised his head and looked at the lighting fixture above.

It was a suspended fluorescent lamp, the tube about a meter long, embedded in a plastic casing, hanging from two wires attached to the ceiling. The wires were wrapped around the two suspension lines.

The ceiling in this room was much lower than outside, but still about four meters high. The hanging lamp wasn't flush with the ceiling, but it wasn't at a height Feng Bujue could reach.

He stood up, stepped onto the wooden chair, stood on tiptoes on the small stool, and stretched his arms. His fingertips were still about a foot away from the lamp. This distance wasn't long, but it wasn't short either; it was just out of reach. The chair under his feet was very small, and it was difficult to stand on it with both feet together. It was obviously impossible to jump straight up and grab something overhead while reaching out.

Time was running out. Feng Bujue had only 73 seconds left.

After measuring the distance, he glanced back at the timer, then smiled and muttered to himself, "It's difficult right from the start… Heh… just what I wanted."

After a moment of thought, Feng Bujue's gaze shifted to the doll. He seemed to have thought of a way. He quickly ran over, picked up the doll, took off the doll's black suit, and held it in his hand. Then he returned to the wooden chair, stood on it, grabbed one sleeve of the suit with his left hand, and threw it upward.

Although this little suit was only child-sized, it was long enough to go over the lamp. Feng Bujue raised his right hand and grabbed the other sleeve of the suit above the lamp. The suit was now like reins on a horse's mouth. Feng Bujue grabbed both ends and pulled hard, and the suspension line on one side of the lamp broke. One end of the fluorescent lamp casing drooped down, while the other end was still hanging by the wire, dangling under the ceiling like a sausage.

Now, Feng Bujue could directly grab the lamp. The lamp's three sides were plastic, so he didn't have to worry about breaking the glass. Although the room was plunged into darkness due to the loss of lighting, it wasn't too difficult to find the "swinging" lamp in front of him. After grabbing the lamp, he used a little force to tear off the other end of the wire, taking the one-meter-long fluorescent lamp along with its plastic casing in his hand.

From the beginning, Feng Bujue had been silently counting down the time. Now there should be about 35 seconds left. In the darkness, the machine was still running, rumbling. He didn't rush towards the sound. Instead, he carefully stepped down from the chair and felt for the doll on the ground. After memorizing the location of these two items, he calculated his steps and walked towards the machine.

Reaching the machine was simple. He could clearly tell the location of the round opening just by the sound. Feng Bujue tilted his head back and inserted the lamp into the machine. Two rows of gears crushed the fluorescent lamp and pressed it down, squeezing it through the gap in the middle. Although some small pieces of broken glass splashed out during the process, Feng Bujue was prepared and wasn't injured at all.

After three-quarters of the lamp had entered the machine, he let go, turned around, faced the direction he had come from, calculated his steps, and walked quickly in the dark. He deliberately controlled his stride, afraid of kicking the things he wanted to pick up with a big step. He didn't have time to lie on the ground and fumble around in the dark.

As expected, within ten steps, he gently touched the doll on the ground. Time was running out. Feng Bujue quickly squatted down, grabbed the doll with one hand, and the small wooden chair with the other. He turned around and ran towards the machine. This time, he didn't have to worry about turning back, so he took big steps and reached the machine in a few seconds. He quickly threw the doll in.

Feng Bujue had noticed that the back of the wooden chair was slightly longer than the diameter of the round opening, and he had kept it in mind. If he hadn't considered this, he would have found that the small wooden chair was stuck outside the opening and couldn't be inserted. But Feng Bujue wouldn't make such a mistake, never would. Before yanking the lamp down, he had planned out every step in the dark.

While the machine was still crushing the doll, he grabbed the back of the chair with one hand, tilted it on the ground, and stomped hard with his foot, deforming the seat board. In this way, a folded small stool could be easily inserted into the round opening.

The time he had calculated in his mind was only five seconds left. The crushed wooden chair was successfully filled into the machine. Almost three seconds later, the rumbling of the machine stopped. Because it was pitch black, Feng Bujue couldn't see the countdown timer or the readings on the gauges. He didn't know whether he had met the 15-kilogram weight requirement and stopped the game, or whether the time had run out, causing the machine to stop working.

The next few seconds were so long and agonizing. Nothing happened. Feng Bujue's heart gradually sank. Could it be that the lamp wasn't heavy enough? In real life, the suspended fluorescent lamp, even with the casing and tube, might weigh less than 7.5 kilograms, but the thing he had just held in his hand felt like it obviously exceeded this weight. He believed that this was the weight deliberately set in the game. Was the puzzle-solving approach wrong? Was the only way to escape this room to kill the monkey?

All doubts vanished with a strange "click," and the door to the next room opened at this moment. In fact, the机关's reaction time was only about ten seconds.

A beam of light shone in from the crack in the door, announcing that the game was still continuing…