He suddenly stood up: "The teacher said I can lead the singing, I can do it."
Suddenly, a blurry horizontal line of colored light flashed before their eyes, making them dizzy and causing them to close their eyes.
A few seconds later, he opened his eyes again, and the scene had changed once more.
They were in a high-rise building with unique living space features. The classrooms were elevated many floors, and the empty classrooms contained only a set of desks and chairs, and one person.
Even the projections and wall stickers in front and behind were hidden, leaving only a white wall.
Then a notification sound rang out, and a golden countdown suddenly appeared in mid-air. Xiao Yujin looked at his watch and said in his childish voice, "Ah, there's still half an hour left. I have to hurry."
"Aaaaaah!" Little Bitterly cried out in agony, "I'm going to die! I can't possibly get through this, you perverts! Look below!"
Outside the classroom is a bizarre spiral staircase, on which one or more black hole traps change every second.
Xiao Bisi is a mentally challenged player. It is said that he relies on trial and error to solve passwords (and is not as lucky as Xiao Yu), and he relies on trembling to solve traps (he retreats when the foot feels wrong). He relies on kiting to defeat bosses (he does have something in common with Wen Zheng). He has never reached the true ending in a large-scale dungeon.
Of course, he hasn't been playing games for very long, otherwise he would have been driven to quit long ago.
The grumpy guy looked at the ever-changing trap with a grim expression, and clicked his tongue: "Hey, this hole keeps opening and closing, I have a feeling that a gopher is going to crawl out."
Wen Zheng: "..." That's quite a vivid description?
Bei Sining looked around and saw that apart from Xiao Yujin's table and chairs, there was nothing else in the room.
"Use the ruler."
Wen Zheng didn't ask what it was for, and casually summoned it and handed it to Bei Sining.
"…Big Boss!?" The hot-tempered guy was suddenly shocked: "Is this the legendary Special Contribution Award!? Big Boss has received this award!? Damn! I'll have to grovel to the Big Boss and get me through this—"
Before he could finish speaking, Bei Sining threw the ruler down the stairs. The ruler wasn't spherical and didn't roll easily, but it still managed to hit the first solid step, bounce up, and fall down.
In an instant, a row of sharp spikes fell from the ceiling, pinning the ruler that had been suspended in mid-air to the ground.
Everyone seemed to see themselves as a ferocious hedgehog strung together.
The ruler was sacrificed, the grumpy guy shut up, and the four of them fell silent.
"Should we just give up?" Little Bie Si was quite pathetic. Although she knew they wouldn't show any real gore to pass censorship, and that she'd probably be teleported into the break room the moment she was pricked, it was still terrifying. This was a pattern-finding question; the difficulty wasn't the pattern itself, but getting it right on the first try. There was no room for experimentation or luck.
It's too mentally taxing for ordinary players like them.
The grumpy guy scratched his head: "I'm not reconciled..."
Suddenly, singing came from behind me.
Xiao Yujin seemed to be in a good mood. The boy's voice hadn't changed; it was still clear and bright, though his breathing wasn't very steady, carrying an indescribable simplicity and gentleness.
"Red dragonfly in the sunset, where are you... perched on the tip of that bamboo pole, that's a red dragonfly..."
There was a small mirror on his desk, and only a lipstick in his hand. Since no teacher was there to help him with his makeup, he did it himself, first applying the lipstick to his hand, then clumsily patting it onto his face, and looking at himself in the mirror from the side.
When no one was looking, he had already changed into a school uniform skirt, maybe it was his sister's, who knows?
"Sigh." Little Bie Si suddenly sighed, and hesitated, saying, "Why don't we give it a try? This little kid just wants to sing a song. If we get him downstairs in half an hour, won't he be able to sing?"
I doubt it.
Wen Zheng thought this to himself, but didn't say it aloud. He walked straight to the stairs and calmly observed the changing patterns of the trap.
Everything in the universe has its own rules, and games are no exception; there must be ways to break them.
The comments scrolled by line by line, leaving no trace in Wen Zheng's eyes. Observation, capture, deduction—simple logical connections.
The measuring ruler had been returned to the package, and the cooldown period had ended. He took it out and gently tossed it over the area where he needed to figure out the pattern of the falling spikes.
He threw the item three times during the five-minute cooldown period, and twenty minutes had already passed.
"Not ready yet?" The countdown was getting shorter and shorter, and Xiao Si dared not urge him. He was almost bursting with pent-up frustration when he finally asked. The irritable guy glared at him fiercely: "Stop bothering the big boss!"
"You should have clung to his coattails earlier, now it's too late!" Little Biesi rolled his eyes: "You only acknowledged him as your big brother because he had props, how opportunistic."
"!?!" The hot-tempered guy said, "I see you're not surprised at all. Did you already know all along?!"
"Not only do we know... he's a top streamer, and we're being watched by hundreds of millions of people right now."
"..." The hot-tempered guy seemed to have been struck by lightning, stammering out a string of "this, this, that, that, that," and before he knew it, someone had picked him up!
"Holy crap!? What are you doing!?" The big shot in his eyes suddenly did this, which almost scared him so much that he had diarrhea. Bei Sining grabbed his luggage and gave it a quick lift, ready to get off.
Ignoring the protests of the person on his shoulder, Wen Zheng said, "I'll go first. You count to three and follow the path I'm taking. You can't go a single step wrong."
Bei Sining: "Do you need to tell me?"
The hot-tempered guy's heart tightened, and with the feeling of weightlessness as he was lifted into the air, he opened his mouth and couldn't help but scream "Ahhhhh!"
That was so exciting!
The traps on the ground made him think he was about to die several times, and the spikes above his head grazed his scalp several times. If he didn't know they were fake, he thought he would have fainted by now.
The big boss is indeed a big boss; even the handsome man following behind him doesn't flinch at all!
This challenging staircase was set up in three-floor repeats, and it took him a full five minutes to reach the bottom. He finally arrived just when he was about to give up.
The outdoor air was even fresher under the sunlight. The grumpy guy was casually thrown on the ground by Wen Zheng and gagged for a while without caring about his image.
The trap staircase returned to normal, and a short while later, Xiao Yujin emerged from the stairwell wearing a skirt.
He greeted the ghosts, then happily lifted his skirt, humming a song, and ran towards the lecture hall equipped with multimedia equipment.
"Can we go now?" Little Bie Si's legs went weak, and he stumbled to his feet, the four of them running after him.
Wen Zheng gently shook his head.
The auditorium doors were tightly closed, but the host's voice could be heard coming from inside, spilling out through the cracks in the doors via the amplification equipment.
Flowers, applause, and praise from the crowd were all locked inside the door.
"How could this be?" Xiao Bi couldn't take it anymore: "We've worked so hard for so long, and we still can't get in? How the hell are we supposed to beat this?!"
The hot-tempered guy wanted to unleash a barrage of insults, but if he hadn't been told he was on TV, he would have already started swearing... Now he can only bottling it up! Ah, he also wants to bottle up his anger!
Xiao Yu Jin stood there, staring at the door. The spark in his eyes gradually turned into confusion, but he still refused to leave.
Suddenly someone came out from inside.
It was that little bully who was asked by the teacher to relay a message, and he especially liked to bully him, along with his few followers.
"Isn't this my little brother...? Oh, should I still call you little sister? Hahaha!"
"Fuck you!" The hot-tempered guy was furious and threw a punch at his face, but due to Mr. Ghost's character setting, he missed.
"Oh, I was wondering why I forgot something." He slapped his forehead, and despite his young age, an unsettlingly malicious expression appeared on his face: "The teacher said they'd choose someone else, and you're not needed anymore. I forgot to tell you."
Xiao Yujin lowered his head, biting his lip: "I don't know..."
"What? You didn't know? I told Yu Lan, and her whole class knows. Your class should know too... Didn't anyone tell you?"
Xiao Yujin's face suddenly turned deathly pale.
He seemed to be having some difficulty breathing, his thin wrists gripping the shirt at his chest. After a long while, he said, "I don't believe it... I want to go in and see."
The school bully and his henchmen laughed heartily, and after they finished laughing, they said, "I'm afraid that won't work. The performance has already started. It's not like you can just walk in whenever you want. Go back!"
After speaking, the group retreated back into the lecture hall and slammed the heavy soundproof door shut.
"The next program is a children's choir singing 'Red Dragonfly'."
The host's voice reverberated on the ground as they listened to the filtered audio, which sounded as ethereal as it had been in the classroom that day.
Xiao Yu Jin stood stubbornly, facing the door, his unevenly applied lipstick revealing a faint white cast beneath. He was small, only reaching Wen Zheng and the others' waists.
But he didn't cry. The sunlight shone brightly in his eyes. He was just unwilling, still unwilling, unable to accept it.
"Is there no other way?" Little Bie Si muttered, while the irritable guy scratched his head, shouted, and squatted down again.
Just then, ripples appeared on the gate, and a blue light screen appeared.
"Damn it!" The grumpy guy and the suffocating guy jumped up simultaneously, practically glued to the door, wanting to gouge their eyes out to see the password: "Masters!! Masters!! Password, crack it quickly! If you crack it, we can definitely get in!!!"
Bei Sining remained silent, appearing to be the calmest one. Until now, he kicked aside the two people blocking the door, pointing to a line of inconspicuous small print: "Don't block the message, Wen Zheng!"
Seeing that Wen Zheng didn't react, he asked again in confusion, "Wen Zheng?"
——Save me.
Wen Zheng was stunned, a strange feeling flashing through his mind, but he couldn't grasp it in time.
Although it was a common English phrase, it was not frequently seen in a Chinese context. He felt that he had definitely seen it somewhere recently, and repeatedly at that.
He hadn't watched any English TV shows or movies, nor had he spoken to any Allied friends. The latest version of Living Space doesn't seem to include this phrase either.
Where have I seen you before?
Why would he care so much?
Wen Zheng's stunned silence calmed the irritable guy and the two suffocating duo down as well. Thinking there was something wrong with the hint, they leaned closer to him from either side. Bei Sining didn't recognize him and leaned back to let them see.
"Save me?" Little Bie Si said, "Is this the protagonist's cry for help? Does it match some kind of code from before?"
The grumpy guy said irritably, "There must be clues. Were there any scraps of paper, calendars, notebooks he took, or anything like that before...?"
"This?" Bei Sining suddenly pulled a notebook out from her back!
"Where did this come from!?" The grumpy guy was overjoyed. He took the notebook and flipped through it quickly, exclaiming, "Damn, isn't this the Gomoku (Five in a Row) notebook?! Why did you hide it!?"
Bei Sining said indifferently, "He gave it to me voluntarily."
"!?!" The hot-tempered guy was shocked: "How come I didn't have it?"
"I don't know. I defeated him in the twelfth step, and then he gave me this notebook."
The hot-tempered guy who boasted that he would win in five moves: "…………"
Sure enough, hidden within the gray-lined grid notebook was a seemingly disordered reference table. Wen Zheng solved the string of numbers in just one minute, but the moment he read the numbers aloud, he was suddenly struck dumb.
He remembered where he had seen this phrase and these numbers before.
Among the twenty kilograms of luggage that Yu Jin gave him was the blue spiral notebook that he had emphasized he should read first!
"I'm very interested in you."
"I just wanted to see you. Is it like this in real life too?"
"Le City? I went there because I wanted to... It was on my own initiative."
"Rongcheng is not bad either."