Li Zheng pulled Qiao Qiao out for some fresh air. He had a thin straw between his lips, and his mouth was full of the bitter taste of medicine.
"The moisture in the building is heavier than yesterday." Qiao Qiao rubbed his wet arms.
"I have eczema." Li Zheng sighed.
"What is eczema?" Qiao Qiao gave him an innocent look, "Where is it? Let me see."
Li Zheng sucked the empty medicine bottle in one gulp and said seriously, "Only my future wife can see that place, no one else can."
Qiao Qiao blinked: "On the penis?"
Li Zheng: “…”
"Miss, I don't want to sit on this unicycle. Please let me off quickly. I'm scared." He, a tall man, acted shyly.
Qiao Qiao hit him.
"Hiss, it hurts, it hurts, be gentler." Li Zheng screamed in pain exaggeratedly, but stood still. He stared at the girl in front of him and felt that she had outstanding temperament. She looked pure, yet a bit aloof and cold. The corners of her eyes and eyebrows were neither thick nor thin, just right. Everything about her was the best.
Li Zheng's heart was filled with soda, bubbling: "Qiao Qiao."
The girl tilted her head as she looked downstairs, her face glowing with radiance: "Ah?"
Li Zheng looked at her blankly: "I like..."
"What is that?!" Qiao Qiao exclaimed in vain.
Li Zheng choked: "Where?"
"That, right there!" Qiao Qiao stretched his hand down and pointed to the second floor opposite. "Can you help me see if there is anything hanging in the corridor there?"
"It looks like there's someone hanging... Damn, it's a person, there's a person hanging..." Li Zheng stood there stupidly for a while and then ran downstairs, not forgetting to grab Qiao Qiao.
Li Zheng was young and strong, full of energy. He quickly blew up half of the building by himself.
Chen Yang and his gang gathered outside the door of 201. In front of them was a female corpse hanging upside down, the second one today. The work ID card on the ground indicated the identity of the headless corpse.
Chen Yang picked up his work permit and suddenly heard a whisper in his ear: "There is a smell of cigarettes here."
Smell of cigarettes? Chen Yang's heart beat faster: "Left by the monster?"
Chao Jian leaned on his crutches: "Maybe."
Chen Yang waved the flashlight calmly, but didn't find any cigarette butts nearby, but he believed in Chao Jian's sense of smell. If Chao Jian said there was a smell of smoke, then there must be one.
Even though he didn't smell it at all.
Chen Yang's mind was working rapidly. There were ten men still alive in the team.
Zheng Zhitan and Pan Lin did not come down from the fourth floor. There were eight men present at this time. Excluding him and Chao Jian, the remaining six were Yu Ge, Wang Hao, Li Zheng, Mr. Zhang, Liu Liu, and Xiao Sun.
But women also smoke, not just men. So there was no way to rule it out. Chen Yang's thoughts were stuck. He scratched his nose and put his hand to his mouth. He asked Chao Jian in a low voice, "Can you lock the target by the smell of smoke?"
"No." Chao Jian said.
Chen Yang suppressed his disappointment and observed the current situation. At this moment, he and Chao Jian were the only ones standing next to the corpse, while everyone else was standing ten feet away.
Sister Wang vomited once in the morning and now she vomited again. The mucus she vomited was laced with blood. She was almost dying. Qiao Qiao and the mute were each taking care of her.
Yu Ge and the other men all had blank eyes. The repeated shocks had weakened their nerve endings and they couldn't stay tense anymore.
Chen Yang didn't find anything unusual. He pursed his lips and looked at the corpse. This one was just like the previous one, both were hanging upside down on the ceiling, without a head.
A bloody hexagon was reflected on the glass wall.
Chen Yang was puzzled. The hexagon and the corpse had no head, what kind of taboo hint could these two pieces of information constitute
The death of the girl with glasses caused a greater reaction than the previous one, not for any other reason, but because she had a lolita face and a mature figure, and her clothes were relatively fresh. When she wore glasses, she had a bit of the temperament of a scholarly family.
"Miss Chen is such a nice-looking girl, how could the monster have the heart to kill her?" Xiao Sun blew his nose sadly. He was only 170cm tall, wearing a shirt and trousers, with thin arms and legs and a big head, like a toothpick supporting a steamed bun.
There was another 170cm tall man in professional attire in the team, Liu Liu. His company was next to Xiao Sun's, but they did not form a small team.
Because they all think that the other is too weak, 0+0 equals 0, and it is better for them to be alone.
After listening to what Xiao Sun said, Liu Liu felt that he was an idiot: "Monsters still look at faces?"
The people around noticed this place after hearing the noise. Xiao Sun was afraid of being suspected by everyone, so he hurriedly yelled at Liu Liu: "Why are you looking at me when you ask this question? I'm not a monster."
Liu Liu was sprayed with saliva in the face. He wiped it off and said it stinked. At the end, he cursed: "Psycho."
Xiao Sun pushed him: "Who are you calling crazy? You are the monster!"
"I'm talking to you, you're crazy!" Liu Liu fought back immediately and pushed harder than him.
Brother Yu and Wang Hao stepped forward to stop the fight.
The fight went on and on, and somehow the four people ended up fighting each other.
Li Zheng was still struggling with how to stop the fight, but as soon as he got close, he was inexplicably punched. He didn't know who punched him, and he joined the fight with a cry of "Fuck".
The grown men couldn't find any clues, couldn't defeat the monsters, and couldn't escape. They watched their teammates dwindle in number, and coupled with the heavy humidity making their whole bodies feel uncomfortable, they were almost going crazy.
Liu Liu's elbow hit Li Zheng's chest, and the next second he was hit on the head by something.
It was a small bag, pink.
Liu Liu: “…”
Li Zheng: “…” He picked up the small bag and held it in his hand, dealing with the chaotic punches and kicks with one hand.
Chen Yang ignored Yu Ge and the others who were venting their anger. He was thinking about what Xiao Sun said. The monster was one of a group of taskers. Its thinking pattern retained human characteristics. Maybe it was really possible to judge by appearance.
If a pretty girl breaks a taboo, the company will be gentler and may even talk to her before striking, instead of just crushing her head.
The mute walked closer and shone the flashlight on the sticky note to show Chen Yang.
Brother, the number of people is wrong, two are missing.
Chen Yang's eyelids twitched. He counted quickly and his eyelids twitched even more violently. Logically, there should be sixteen people alive now.
Excluding Zheng Zhitan and Pan Lin who are working upstairs, and that crazy female white-collar worker who insisted that half of the team were monsters and who has been hiding and appearing in and out of nowhere during this period, there should be thirteen people here.
But when he counted them, he found that there were only eleven.
There were indeed two who were absent. Chen Yang thought about it and it seemed that they were a man and a woman, and they were not from the same company.
Just now, Li Zheng made such a loud noise in order to get everyone together so that they would not be unable to hear it.
"Stop fighting!" Chen Yang picked up Chao Jian's crutch and broke up the fight. He briefly explained what happened. Everyone put aside their personal emotions and checked each company one by one.
A moment later, Chen Yang and his team found the two taskers in 302, one dead and the other fainted in a chair.
The dead person was a young man.
When the first headless corpse appeared in the morning, the young man's thinking logic was still clear. In order to prevent more panic among everyone, he emphasized that the woman's death was not because she turned back to pick up her mobile phone, but because she violated a taboo.
Now he was hanging upside down in the office, becoming the third headless corpse in this round.
"Another one..." Brother Yu took out half a pack of cigarettes with shaking hands and distributed them to others, but he did not give them away. Some smokers had smoked too much in the past two days and had sore throats.
Brother Yu lit up a cigarette for himself. When he noticed Chen Yang's gaze, he handed the cigarette box to him.
Chen Yang waved his hand casually. He leaned against Chao Jian and looked at the hexagon on the wall, wondering what he was thinking.
"She's awake." Qiao Qiao pinched the fainted girl's philtrum, "She's awake."
The girl opened her eyes stupidly, she moved her eyeballs vaguely, and the next moment she held her head and screamed in terror.
"Ah!" The girl screamed like crazy, her whole body shaking violently. She was wearing a slim-fitting professional skirt with the hem at her thighs. Her legs were spread apart as she trembled...
Chen Yang, who was facing the girl, immediately moved the flashlight away. He looked around a little helplessly, as if he wanted to find something, but he didn't know what it was.
Just then, a coat was thrown past him and hit the girl's leg.
Seeing this, Chen Yang realized that this was what he was looking for. He scratched the back of his neck and whispered to Chao Jian who was throwing his coat, "You react really quickly."
The corners of Chao Jian's lips were pressed into a line, and she didn't want to talk to him.
The girl was still shaking. Qiao Qiao had discovered something, but before she could control her expression, everyone else smelled... a foul odor.
The thin liquid dripped down the chair onto the ground. The girl was stunned for a moment. She covered her face and cried tremblingly. She had never been so embarrassed or so scared in her life.
"This, this..." Qiao Qiao glanced at her work ID, "Jia Jia, it's okay, as long as you're alive, nothing is more important than being alive."
Jia Jia was not comforted and she was crying and convulsing.
Qiao Qiao looked at the others in a panic: "You..."
The voice stopped abruptly.
The situation is a bit awkward now. It is inconvenient for men to get close to Jia Jia. There are only four of them including the women. One is nervous and erratic, one can't speak, and the other is barely breathing.
Qiao Qiao curled her lips and continued to comfort Jia Jia who was sitting on the urine. It took her a lot of effort to make her stop crying.
"Jia Jia, your company is not this one. Why aren't you in your own company?" Qiao Qiao took the opportunity to ask.
"I, I'm from A305," Jia Jia grabbed the coat on her legs to cover herself, "All my colleagues in the company ran away, leaving me alone. When I searched, I always felt that the office was still full of people..."
Chen Yang imagined the scene in his mind and got goosebumps all over his body. He stretched out his hand towards Jian.
Chao Jian took away the crutches expressionlessly and let him hold his arm.
"I was really scared. Yesterday was my limit." Jia Jia's shoulders twitched. "After another person died this morning, I was even more scared. I didn't want to go back to the company, so I begged Mr. Yang to let me know that I wanted to go to his company and stay with him... He's a very good person and agreed without much hesitation."
"When Mr. Yang was looking for clues, I followed him all the time, but I was still suspicious. I was afraid that a hand would stretch out from under the table, and a face would emerge..."
Chen Yang, whose goose bumps had just subsided a little: "..."
"Mr. Yang saw that I was scared, so he chatted with me to make me relax," Jia Jia said. Her tear-stained face turned even paler, and her voice was shaking. "We were talking when suddenly many tentacles stretched out from the darkness and twisted. They... they twisted his head off. There was a lot of blood."
Jia Jia scratched her face nervously and looked down.
"No... How could there be no blood? There was clearly so much blood splattered on my face..." Jia Jia thought of a possibility, and could only make a "ho ho" sound in her throat, unable to utter a complete syllable.
Everyone was silent. When they came over, there were only a few light bloodstains on Jia Jia's clothes, and no blood on her face.
She said her face was splattered with blood, which could only have been licked off by... the monster.
The scene is not difficult to imagine: a big tongue licked the blood off the girl's face and also licked the blood stains on her clothes. If it couldn't lick it off, it would hold it in its mouth and suck it off.
Jia Jia touched the bloodstains on her clothes and felt sticky. She vomited out in disgust: "Ugh—"
The sour smell of vomit filled the air, making it damp and smelly.
There was a little dirt on Qiao Qiao's white skirt, but she didn't care. Li Zheng pulled her back.
"Mr. Chen, don't ask anymore. She is dying." Li Zheng gestured to Chen Yang to look at the girl who was vomiting and dying. "In that situation, she couldn't have seen the monster."
“You can’t see it. It doesn’t need to get close to eat people. It can stretch its head so far…” Brother Yu recalled the horrific memories and took a long puff of his cigarette.
Chen Yang looked at the girl who was lying on the armrest of the chair and vomiting continuously. He knew that she was in a very bad condition, but he still had questions to ask.
"Jia Jia, what topic did you talk about with Mr. Yang before the monster appeared?"
He was answered with a sound that made him almost vomit.
"Mr. Chen, I think we should ask her later and let her calm down first." Wang Hao opened a bottle of water and gave it to Jia Jia.
Jia Jia took the water with trembling hands, but spilled it all before she even took a sip. She vomited so much that her whole body was convulsing.
Chen Yang actually thought that the girl should be given time to calm down, and he would have done so in the past. But this time he heard his own serious questioning and unusual persistence.
It's like if I don't ask, I'll never have another chance.
Chen Yang suppressed the strange thoughts in his mind, changed his tone, and asked gently: "Jia Jia, can you tell me what you talked about?"
The girl leaned her head on the edge of the chair, with sourness hanging from the corner of her mouth, and she gasped intermittently: "We were just chatting about which floor and which number our companies were on. It was just a casual chat, nothing else. I just started chatting with him, and he... Ugh..."
After vomiting a few times, his face turned blue and he closed his eyes.
"She fainted." Brother Yu checked the girl's condition and asked, "Do you want me to pinch her again to wake her up?"
"No, let her sleep for a while." Qiao Qiao said reluctantly, "She is already in such a bad state."
Mr. Zhang, who usually speaks very little, also spoke up, with the airs of a big boss: "Yes, this child is pitiful. She got PTSD after seeing her teammates die. If she recalls it again, it will be twice as painful for her. Besides, we won't be able to get anything out of her."
As he said this, he looked at Chen Yang blamingly.
If it were another situation, and Chen Yang was his employee, it would not be as simple as just giving a look, but he would throw a document at him.
Chen Yang inexplicably became the bad guy. He didn't want to explain, but just pulled Chao Jian out.
The monsters in this round are all appearance-oriented. When dealing with the beauty in 201, he even had time to smoke, while when dealing with the man in 302, he was very simple and rough, very formulaic, and only cared about work efficiency.
Everyone in the office breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that Chen Yang and Chao Jian did not go upstairs and were just standing in the corridor.
Jia Jia's skirt was dirty and there was no way to clean it. Everyone had to wait until she woke up in this place where they could see the headless corpse if they turned their heads. If the two experienced old taskers outside the door left, they would feel uneasy staying here.
Now that they found out that the old tasker had not left, they felt much more at ease.
Liu Liu asked Qiao Qiao about the fortune of Gemini.
"Do you really need to know?" Qiao Qiao didn't really want to look up the horoscope book. She said awkwardly, "What if your fortune is not good? You will regret asking me."
"Don't worry, I won't regret asking." Liu Liu pleaded in a friendly manner, "Help me take a look, please."
Qiao Qiao exhaled softly: "Okay." She took out the horoscope book and turned to the page about Gemini. "Well, your fortune is not bad."
"What do you mean by OK?" Liu Liu was very dissatisfied with the result. His attitude was completely different from before. He said angrily, "Can I get out alive?"
"It's not written here." Qiao Qiao said speechlessly, "The constellation book is not a heavenly book."
Liu Liu felt frustrated and ashamed. He snatched the book, read it, and threw it to Qiao Qiao.
"Will you be gentle with women?" Li Zheng caught the book and hit him on the head, "Will you? Ah, will you?"
Liu Liu pushed him away forcefully: "Fuck off."
"Alright, alright, stop hitting me." Qiao Qiao stopped Li Zheng who was about to hit him with the book, "Stop hitting me."
Liu Liu snorted disdainfully. This woman really thinks she is a fairy. She thinks she can win him over with just a few words. How can she be so shameless? He was about to mock her when he heard her say distressedly, "The book is about to be broken."
Liu Liu: “…”
Xiao Sun thought Liu Liu was a coward. Qiao Qiao reminded him not to ask, but he insisted on asking and said he had no regrets, only to be slapped in the face.
He would never do such a stupid thing, so don't ask, and don't bother asking if you do.
Xiao Sun secretly asked Qiao Qiao about Taurus' fortune in the next few days.
Qiao Qiao looked at it again and again, hesitating to say: "Tomorrow is your disaster day."
The corners of Xiao Sun's smiling mouth fell instantly. He shouldn't have asked. He regretted it. He really regretted it. His face was slapped.
"Aren't horoscope books just something little girls use to kill time? It's better to pray more than to believe in them." Brother Yu flicked the ash from his cigarette. "Take disaster days for example. Yesterday was a disaster day for Aries, but Wang Hao was still alive and well."
"Yeah, I was so scared yesterday, but I managed to get through it." Wang Hao was still frightened, and he asked hesitantly, "Qiao Qiao, how is Aries' fortune today?"
Qiao Qiao flipped through the book: "Today is Aries' lucky day, good luck and prosperity."
Wang Hao was stunned for a moment, and then he reacted. He let out a long sigh, "That's good, that's good, that's good."
In the corridor, Chen Yang turned off the flashlight and sat on the wet ground eating milk tablets, replaying the information revealed by Jia Jia in his mind.
Mr. Yang was killed in front of Jia Jia. Before his death, he was chatting with her about "which floor and which number our company is on".
What is the connection between which floor and which number is taboo...
Chen Yang's index finger drew a hexagon on his leg. He traced it over and over again, but his thoughts still did not become clear.
The rules are never what we expect, and normal ways of thinking don’t work.
"Do you have any idea?" Chen Yang turned his head and searched for Chao Jian's outline in the dim light.
Chao Jian said, "I just thought of it."
"What?" Chen Yang asked him immediately.
Chao Jian said nothing.
Chen Yang peeled a milk slice and put it to Chao Jian's mouth: "Give me a hint."
Chao Jian lowered his eyes to glance at the milk slice, then lowered his head to take a bite.
Chen Yang hissed, "You bit my hand."
Chao Jian said without apology: "I can't see."
"That's right." Chen Yang nodded, "Can you let go now?"
Chao Jian bit the milk slice and lightly swiped it with the tip of his tongue. He said amid Chen Yang's gasps, "Hexagonal, no head."
Chen Yang's thoughts were dragged away by these five words in an instant. He rubbed his bitten fingertips and said, "I know that the monster left a hexagon and the body has no head. I know all this, but what I can't figure out is what taboo these two points combined represent."
Chao Jian said: "You have to break out of your fixed mindset."
"It's not that easy." Chen Yang bit his finger subconsciously. Hexagon, headless body, what year is everyone's company in? Could these three pieces of information really form a taboo? He couldn't think of any connection between them.
The mute came out and saw Chen Yang in a daze. Chao Jian looked at him in a daze, with sugar-coated eyes.
The light from the flashlight brought Chen Yang back to his senses. He turned around and asked the mute, "How is Jia Jia?"
Still unconscious.
The mute walked to the side, smoothed her denim skirt and sat down carefully.
Brother, is there a taboo in the topic of “what number?”
"Probably." Chen Yang said.
But we are all different. Each of us has a different company address and we have nothing in common.
Chen Yang was about to say "yes" when the two words popped onto the tip of his tongue but stopped the moment they slipped out from between his teeth.
No, there are commonalities.
All the company's house numbers have something in common.
There is one!
That is…
Chen Yang opened his mouth and uttered that sound silently. He turned around and knelt down in front of Chao Jian: "No head, it doesn't just refer to the corpse, right?"
"Besides the corpse, there are other things without heads." Chen Yang pressed Chao Jian's shoulders, his face almost touching his. His breathing was rapid and hot, and his eyes were dark and bright.
A hoarse response came out of Chao Jian's throat: "Yeah."
Chen Yang's heart was beating like thunder. The moment he confirmed that this direction was correct, the fog in front of his eyes began to dissipate little by little.
When the first corpse of this round came out, the three information prompts indicated were: regular hexagon, upside down, and no head.
After the second body came out, there were still the same three clues, but everyone unanimously summarized the clues into two: a regular hexagon and the body had no head.
Then the third corpse appeared, and the prompt was still the same. When everyone communicated with each other, the information prompt was even more omitted, and it directly became "hexagon, no head".
During this time, Chen Yang kept chewing the two clues over and over again, trying to chew out something. He chewed them countless times but got nothing.
Now he understood the reason.
He had been thinking of the two hints separately, but they were really together.
Hexagonal shape with no head.
A hexagon has no head.
The difference of one comma makes a huge difference in meaning.
"I know..." Chen Yang said as he drew a hexagon on his leg, "I know what the taboos are for this round."
The mute ran back to the office and called everyone out. She sat obediently next to Chen Yang and watched him solve the puzzle.
Yu Ge and others couldn't help but get excited. They suppressed their curiosity with difficulty and held up their flashlights to shine light on Chen Yang.
Chen Yang drew a large hexagon on the notebook, outlining it in thick strokes.
"Look at this hexagon. Does it look like it has no head?" Chen Yang pointed at it lightly with the tip of his pen.
Everyone came closer to take a look: "Looks like it."
"After Mr. Chen's reminder, I seem to understand a little bit..." Qiao Qiao narrowed his eyes.
"What do you understand?" Li Zheng looked confused.
There were several other people who were equally confused.
"Hexagon, the corpse has no head, the hexagon has no head." Chen Yang said, "Now let's add the head to it."
He drew upwards along the lines of the left and right sides of the hexagon to create a top.
"The body is upside down and has no head." Chen Yang added, "We use the same method to add the head under the hexagon."
At this point, one third of the people present had seen the taboo, and two thirds were still confused.
"What's this?"
"Can you tell what it is?"
Chen Yang drew a dotted line in the middle of the hexagon with two heads added.
"And now?"