Chapter 1

On the wall against which the bed was placed, there were many faint carvings, all of the same pattern... four parallel vertical lines, plus a diagonal line across the four.

This was usually a kind of mark used by prisoners to count the days. If it were Chinese, they might carve the character "正" (zheng, meaning "correct"), but on the wall in front of him, all were these marks of four vertical lines and one diagonal.

"Hmm... the number of people who've carved marks on this wall is no less than six..." Feng Bujue's eyes wandered over the marks as he muttered.

It wasn't hard to come to this conclusion. Although they were just carved lines, the depth, length, and angle differed from person to person. Moreover, to avoid mixing up the marks with others, each person's marks were spaced apart from the others.

"To leave marks on a stone wall like this, you can't do it with fingernails; you need a tool." Feng Bujue knelt on the bed, close to the wall, and touched and felt the marks with his palm. "These people all used the same thing..." He looked around the room again. "And that thing isn't in this room right now..." An answer appeared in his mind in a second. "Is it the cutlery..."

He carefully scanned all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor of the entire room. "Hmm... all the carvings are on this wall next to the bed, and there's not a single one anywhere else..."

"Assuming they can only get cutlery when they eat, and they must return the cutlery and plate together after eating, otherwise they will be punished in some way," Feng Bujue analyzed, "then the time to carve these marks is their mealtime..." He cast his eyes on the carvings again, "Because they eat sitting on the bed, they conveniently carved them next to them after eating..."

"No!" Feng Bujue immediately denied this conjecture.

He quickly went to the iron door, first peering out through the iron window above. The corridor outside the door had a wooden floor, and the walls on both sides were also stone. The height of the ceiling was slightly higher than in this room. At the angle where the walls and ceiling met, a fluorescent tube was installed every so often. Looking out from the cell, there was nothing noteworthy within sight, and anything beyond twenty meters was dark and indistinguishable.

After a cursory glance for a few seconds, Feng Bujue immediately lay down on the ground to observe the rectangular opening at the bottom of the iron door. He almost pressed his face to it, even sniffing the smell, and finally touched the edge of the opening with his hand and licked his finger... before standing up with satisfaction.

"The upper and lower edges of the food slot have been stained with food, indicating that someone is indeed using this slot for delivery." His eyes then turned to the corner of the room farthest from him, "And the plastic bucket for excretion is placed in the other corner of the room..." He returned to the bed and pondered, "The prisoners' range of activity clearly covers the entire room... they can go to the door to get food, and they can go to the other corner of the room to relieve themselves. If these marks were carved with cutlery, they could carve them on any wall."

"So... let's assume there's no such thing as cutlery at all..." Feng Bujue stood up again, standing in the center of the room, striking the signature pose of Kudo Shinichi, one hand propping up his elbow, the other holding his chin.

He looked at the door, his eyes seeming to replay past scenes. In the image that he conjured in his mind, there was only one bread and a plastic plate containing soup handed in through that opening.

"Hmm... it's more likely that there is no cutlery." Feng Bujue turned his eyes to the marks on the wall again, "Okay, then what were these carved with? And they must be carved on this wall..."

Having eliminated the wrong assumptions, the answer was right in front of him.

A flash of inspiration appeared in his mind, and a smile appeared on the corner of Feng Bujue's mouth. He stepped forward and lifted the bed sheet (note: the sheet and mattress on this bed are the same thing), seeing what he was looking for.

This bed was a whole unit, and no part could be separated. The four legs were welded to the ground. The frame of the bed was completely made of iron, and the bed board was not a wooden board, but metal springs wound together.

However, among these springs, several had broken. Although these broken metal springs could not be completely pulled away from the bed board, he could pull the broken end and bend it to the wall to make marks.

"No wonder the carvings are all on the wall next to the bed, and all below a certain height. Because of the pulling force of the other end of those spring strips, they couldn't write stably either, they could only barely carve straight lines." Feng Bujue spent five minutes inferring the origin of the carvings. For him, this process of observing the environment, collecting information, reasoning and solving problems was simply infinitely pleasurable... allowing him to forget the faint pain in his body.

"This room has no windows, so you can't see the sunrise and sunset. The people locked up here have to judge how many days have passed... they must rely on feeling, their biological clock, and corroborate it with the number of times the people outside give them food." Feng Bujue paced back and forth, "And the tool for carving these marks isn't easy to find..." He thought to himself, "Hmm... it seems that there have been far more than six people locked up in this room. It's just that among the many prisoners, only six or seven are still relatively calm, have relatively clear minds, and haven't given up on survival."

"The carvings all stop at the ninth mark, indicating that the days these people stayed here did not exceed ten days. When they see the marks left by their predecessors, they should also be able to infer... that something will definitely happen on the tenth day, or on the ninth night. Judging from the current atmosphere, there's a 1% chance of being released, a 1% chance of changing rooms, and the remaining 98% is being killed..." Feng Bujue snorted coldly, "Hmph... even so, all they can do is record the number of days they've been imprisoned on the wall."

He walked to the wall and leaned against it, comparing his height. "Without a plot introduction, I can't determine whether I'm playing Feng Bujue, or someone else... hmm... the height seems about right." He put his hand at the height parallel to the top of his head, leaned against the wall, and then visually estimated it to be about 1.8 meters, "The clothes are my own, the knapsack..." He immediately glanced at the game menu. The flashlight, TM-500, Miss Moxxi's Bad Touch, and Survival Value Supplement in the knapsack bar had all turned gray, and were no longer retrievable. "Tch... as expected." He said with displeasure.

"Okay... let me think... the guy dragging 'me' in the opening CG was estimated to be less than 1.7 meters, but he could drag an adult of 1.8 meters with one hand, and it didn't seem difficult." Feng Bujue speculated on the strength of the Boss, "That must be combat power exceeding ordinary people... at least in terms of strength, similar to my level 27 player. If that guy controls the prisoners' food, and only gives them one meal a day, then he can completely suppress all the prisoners here without using weapons."

Feng Bujue walked to the door: "What kind of person would be responsible for this kind of imprisonment pLAy... a murderer, a sadist, a cannibal, a mad scientist..." Combining the Boss's few lines of dialogue in the opening, he smacked his palm with his fist, "Hmm! A scientist."

"Were those few sentences he said... addressed to me? Or was he talking to himself?" Feng Bujue muttered, "Or, were they addressed to me, and also talking to himself?"

While he was talking, he grabbed the iron bars of the small window above the iron door and tried to pull and push it a few times. The door only made a clanging sound. Obviously... the door was locked.

There were no door handles on either side of this iron door, only keyholes, because there was a small window at the top, so you didn't need a handle to pull the door.

Feng Bujue squatted down again, peering into the keyhole. This was naturally meaningless...

"Escape from the room... Heh..." Feng Bujue reconfirmed the task content in the taskbar, "Since it's an advanced-stage script of the game, and it's a single-player nightmare, then it must be tailor-made for me... Breaking through the iron door with brute force or something is out of the question. So, it's about finding a way to unlock it..."

He took out the pipe wrench and began a carpet search. Starting next to the door, he gently tapped inch by inch on the walls and floor, trying to find if there were any mechanisms or compartments, even the corners of the walls behind the small wooden cabinet and the plastic bucket were not spared. He stubbornly moved these two items away and carefully checked them again.

As a result, he found nothing...

So, he started tearing the bed sheet. This sheet was quite thick, but it was not stuffed with rotten cotton or goose feathers, but shredded strips of cloth, looking like they were made of old clothes that had been cut up. There were various colors and materials.

Feng Bujue found nothing but shredded strips of cloth in the bed sheet, so... he put all the shredded strips of cloth on the ground and tried to sort them...

He sorted them according to color, material, and even area... but the results were meaningless. It seemed that there was no pattern to these shredded strips of cloth. But he was still not reconciled, and even tried to complete a jigsaw puzzle with these variegated cloth strips...

After sitting on the ground and playing for half an hour, Feng Bujue finally gave up. After a series of attempts that no normal person would ever make, he came to a conclusion that a normal person would make in a few seconds: this is just a pile of useless rags.

"Oh... what a waste of life, a pile of garbage, even if I braided these rags into a rope, there's no place to hang myself in this room." Feng Bujue mocked, "Where else could the key be hidden?" He first looked at the small wooden cabinet. "The three drawers of this cabinet are already empty." He then looked at the blue plastic bucket. "That bucket... the bottom is piled with nearly three inches of excrement, so it's not impossible that a key is hidden there..." He swallowed, "The bottom of the bucket is too deep, and it's very inconvenient to bend over and go in to find it. But what if I pour out the contents of the bucket and find nothing, this place..."

He had to get the strange thoughts out of his head, and first came to the small wooden cabinet again. This time he simply pulled all three drawers out of the cabinet and placed them on the ground. Then he laid the small wooden cabinet on the ground and reached in to grope, but unfortunately, he didn't feel anything but dust. After carefully tapping the entire wooden cabinet, he didn't find any secret compartments or anything like that.

The three drawers were now placed side by side on the ground. The wooden boards were only that thick, and you knew without checking that there could be no compartments.

So... the puzzle was once again at a standstill.

"Is it really hidden in the shit... that's too much..." Feng Bujue turned his head and took a deep look at the plastic bucket in the corner, "What kind of script is this, pushing people too hard..."

He suddenly had another idea: "Hey! If I pour the contents of the bucket into the three drawers, then it won't make a mess all over the place... The drawers are shallower, so it's easier to find things."

Thinking of this, he was really about to do it. He immediately stood up, picked up a drawer, and walked towards the plastic bucket. Fortunately, just at this moment, his eyes swept over something.

"Oh!" Feng Bujue held up the drawer, looking at the bottom of the drawer, "Hahahaha!" After laughing wildly for a while, he turned the other two drawers over as well, placing them with the bottoms facing up.

It turned out that on the bottom of each of the three drawers, there was a word written in blood. Feng Bujue arranged them according to their vertical position when they were inserted into the wooden cabinet, and the information he got was: the back of the top drawer said "bed", the middle drawer said "key", and the bottom drawer said "bracket".

"That is to say, the key is hidden in..." Feng Bujue suddenly turned his head and looked at the bed again. He walked over and knocked it around with the pipe wrench, and soon discovered the trick.

The horizontal support on the outer side of the bed, parallel to the bed board, was hollow, while the one against the wall was solid. Feng Bujue started from one end of the bed, knocking inch by inch from bottom to top, and finally, when he knocked on the middle section, he heard movement inside.

"To actually hide the key in this kind of place... is this for people to find?" Feng Bujue cursed in a low voice.

Actually, he had nothing to complain about. The back of the drawer had the hint written on it. It was originally a hiding place that required a hint to confirm. Otherwise, who would know in this kind of place...

Bang bang bang, hammering and twisting, the iron bed didn't even have a dent.

"What does this mean?" Feng Bujue said, "The excellent-grade pipe wrench doesn't damage it at all when I hit it, does this mean to imply that... there's a chainsaw hidden in that shit bucket?"

He sat cross-legged on the ground, finished cosplaying Kudo Shinichi, and was now learning from Ikkyu to think of ideas...

"Got it!" Before long, Feng Bujue really came up with an idea.

He hugged the attitude that trying wouldn't get him pregnant, and used [Not-So-Careless Repair] on the bed once. Unexpectedly, he encountered a skill failure... Even with the 60% success rate of Machinery Specialization D and the 10% increase in the activation success rate of all active skills from [Ice Sorcerer's Tenacity], he still failed...

This made Feng Bujue begin to wonder if his idea was correct.

However, 200 stamina points being wasted couldn't make him retreat. Anyway, this skill didn't have a cooldown, so he used it again immediately. This time, the skill was successfully cast, and the appearance of the bed changed.

"Sure enough! This is counted as a mechanical creation!" Feng Bujue was overjoyed. This bed, made of pure metal and non-detachable, looked simple and clear in structure, but it was also reasonable to be classified as a mechanical creation, because it had, and only had, one mechanism.

Just like the communication equipment that Feng Bujue repaired in Divine Grace Village, this bed was also the kind of object that could not be observed in the game menu, but could be repaired. After Feng Bujue used the skill to restore it to [Normal] quality, all the rust on the bed disappeared, and the broken and warped springs on the bed board were also restored to their original positions.

And the most critical change was at both ends of the outer support, that is, the two joints where the iron bar connected the head and foot of the bed. There were two more metal wedges there. Originally, these two parts had rusted and worn smooth, and the outlines were completely invisible. But at this time, as long as Feng Bujue lifted them with the pipe wrench, he could activate them.

Then, he busied himself nimbly for a few minutes, and successfully removed the metal support from the bed.

Leaving the bed frame, this support became a hollow iron rod two meters long. Any boy, when holding something similar, would have the impulse to imitate a certain monkey. For some reason, this passion had not subsided even after adulthood. I don't know if it will disappear when I enter middle age...

Back to the point, Feng Bujue stood the hollow support up and slammed it on the ground twice. He thought the key would fall out along the hollow tube, but when he took the rod away, nothing fell out.

"Ya heh..." Feng Bujue picked up the iron rod, closed one eye, and looked through the other eye. He could see some light coming through from the other end. There was indeed a small object in the middle of the rod. It should be the key, but for some reason, it just wouldn't fall out.

Feng Bujue also tried turning the rod over to see if turning it upside down would have any reaction, but the result was the same. He became angry and sat on the ground, holding the rod horizontally and hitting it with the pipe wrench. He picked it up and looked at it. The position of the key still hadn't changed.

"What kind of setting is this... It moves when I hit it through the tube, indicating that it's not fixed or welded to the inner wall, but it doesn't fall out when I stand the tube up..." He confirmed again and again that the metal support was not narrow at both ends and wide in the middle, so it wasn't that problem either. "Is it necessary to make the first puzzle this difficult... What else do you want me to do?"

These words of self-talk, "What else do you want me to do," suddenly gave Feng Bujue inspiration.

"Wait, could it be..." As he thought, he reached into his upper pocket. The soap, candle, and comb from before were all casually stored inside.

"So far, ignoring the reasoning part... in the actual actions, my skill [Not-So-Careless Repair] and equipment [Mario's Pipe Wrench] are both necessary. Without these two, it's impossible to get to this step." Feng Bujue said, "Since the system is designed to make it difficult for me, then..."

At this time, he took out [Anti-Gravity Ejector] from his knapsack. This item had not turned gray, so...

Feng Bujue pressed the ejector's grab button to make the candle float, then used his hand to adjust the candle to a suitable angle. Then, he inserted one end of the candle into one end of the hollow support. Sure enough... it fit perfectly.

"Okay, designing the puzzle this way has some advantages. At least when I'm solving it, I can easily know that I'm not wrong..." Feng Bujue said, and pressed the launch button.