The third day of the daughter's country came as scheduled. Lin Huai opened the paper window, and what he saw with his eyes was still the gray sky and the white wall that blocked the surrounding fields.
It is still the same cloudy sky, it is still the village with no wind, it is still the high white wall. Under the red building, there are villagers lined up, fetching water one by one, and leaving one by one.
After all the villagers left, he stared at the high wall for a long time, until Lu Jin finished washing, and asked him behind him: "Lin Huai, I've gone to breakfast, what are you doing?"
Lin Huai said, "I'm looking forward to an Attack Gundam."
Lu Jin:
It wasn't until he sat down on both sides of the wooden table that he realized Lin Huai's meaning—he was expecting a hero of the world, riding a colorful Gundam, showing a familiar face from behind the high white wall.
After eating a bowl of dog food early in the morning, Lu Jin couldn't help losing his appetite.
Same as his loss of appetite, there is also an ordinary man sitting opposite him. Compared with yesterday, his appetite seems to be less. Apart from finishing his tea and apples, he barely moved at all from the porridge for breakfast.
However, what caught Lu Jin's attention even more was the strange behavior of the man. He was wearing long sleeves, and he scratched the skin under his arms from time to time, as if he had some skin disease. After scratching for a long time, he looked at Lin Huai and gave him a friendly smile. The smile that almost reached his ears scared Lu Jin to hide behind Lin Huai.
The other three were not aware of the man's actions, they just frowned, thinking of ways to break the situation. While Lin Huai was drinking the porridge unhurriedly, the three of them had already finished their breakfast and left the red building. After them, the ordinary man also scratched his arm and walked downstairs with a slightly weird posture.
Lu Jin kept staring at his back, always feeling that his movements were full of inexplicable sense of disobedience. It wasn't until the moment the man took another calf that he suddenly realized that the man's walking posture, with his hips swayed and hips twisted, looked like a woman wearing high heels!
The "woman" walked to the last step, and he rubbed his arm harder, leaving the sight of the two of them.
After he left, Lu Jin said tremblingly: "Lin Huai, don't you think that man... is a bit weird?"
Lin Huai didn't speak. He put down his pretending chopsticks and climbed to the place where ordinary men eat.
After seeing the porridge bowl left by the man, Lin Huai raised his eyebrows. Then, under Lu Jin's terrified eyes, he stuck his chopsticks into Lu Jin's porridge bowl.
"Fuck!" Lu Jin screamed, "You should have told me earlier if you weren't full, I still have more here!"
"..." Lin Huai held a grain of rice between his hands, showing contempt in his eyes.
"Look," he said, "he drank all the rice soup, but left the rice grains."
He picked up the bowl and held it towards Lu Jin.
The rice grains at the bottom of the bowl are dense and crystal clear. The only thing missing is rice soup.
"... this." Lu Jin was puzzled, "Maybe he doesn't have a good appetite?"
Lin Huai did not respond to his answer. He walked to the stairs leading to the third floor and looked directly at the top of the black hole: "Do witches never appear in the morning?"
"Uh, yeah..."
"Not only in the morning, but even during the day, she never appeared. The only time I can see her is at night..."
Lin Huai was thoughtful, while Lu Jin said anxiously: "Lin Huai, you haven't answered my man's question yet, I think he's weird and looks like a woman, he can't be..."
"already dead?"
Lin Huai turned his back to him, still looking in the direction of the third floor: "Is this what you want to talk about?"
"No, I want to say that he may have been possessed by a ghost." Lu Jin hurriedly said, "So he..."
"Isn't that just right?"
Lu Jin looked up in horror.
Lin Huai's words were flat and casual, as if he was just explaining an extremely objective matter: "You have to know, there were only five players in this dungeon. Isn't it just right that he died?"
"you… "
"120 people, 6 human females, a symmetrical hexagon, and on this floor, six rooms symmetrically arranged on the circumference. It seems that all this is set up for 6 people. But... you still Remember that female corpse on the beach?" Lin Huai tapped her chin unconsciously with her fingers, "Ghosts don't die, only people die, so, from the very beginning, in this 'White City', there have been Only five human women. There used to be one more player, and now…”
"Exactly."
He so lightly described the death of a player as a "just right" event. The layers of cold hair on Lu Jin's back finally exploded bit by bit.
Before that, even though he was extremely unlucky enough to fall into this game, there was always a layer of fog called "Lin Huai" between him and the world. The gags between them and the daily life of familiar people still make him take it for granted that in this world, safety is a natural "existence".
Until this sentence, "just right".
"A human female died. There should only be 119 white-clothed women left in the village. However, yesterday, we searched Districts C and D. There were no vacant houses, and there was no sound of women going out on the street. —Except for the morning when they came to pick up the water, they seemed to get the signal to open the door only when the wind chimes sounded. After waking up today, I lay down on the balcony, counted all the women one by one, and came to pick up the water Yes, there are 119 of them. And those who left the well with the kettle..." he said lightly, "there are 120 of them. That is to say..."
There is a "person" who mixed with these women and left this red building!
"This would explain the ritualistic nature of all the women fetching water every morning—not just to fetch water, but to create an opportunity for a 'human' to mingle with them and leave the red building to create the illusion that the 120 residents were full. "
"But why did they create such an illusion?" Lu Jin murmured, "If there were only five players entering this game, even a house is empty. The players know that there are only five surviving human women , nor will it affect their…”
"And it won't cause them to fight, because everyone survives, right?"
Lin Huai suddenly grabbed the handrail of the stairs and took a step up.
Lu Jin's eyes widened: "You..."
"The fact that the game wants to hide through this incident is not that one of the six human females has died—this is a very habitual thinking. The key to the survival of the players is to find the six human females that can keep them alive. Individual human women, so people tend to focus all their attention on 'human women'. Just like after a black dot appears on a piece of white paper, people often don't notice the subtle wrinkles on the white paper , etc. are not the focus of attention."
"However, after careful thinking, players will find that it is meaningless to conceal the fact that a woman has died. At the same time, the game has even hinted at this point, and the woman's body is a reminder. Therefore , what the game really wants to remind is not the death of the human female, but... "
"A Witch's Exodus During the Day."
He said this, and walked up the steps to the third floor step by step: "The night before yesterday, when I was wandering on the first floor, I saw the picture of the man being attacked by the female ghost in the well. Even though it was just a glance, I also noticed Her chin is very similar to that of a witch... at night, the female ghost hiding in the well is the witch."
"If you think about it, we never actually saw the witch enter the third floor scene. All we saw was her disappearing into the stairwell - because the witch's residence is on the third floor and 'nothing should be approached', we consider it a forbidden place , and acquiesced that the witch has been staying on the third floor, which is completely wrong when you think about it carefully. For the other three behaviors, the measure given by the witch is to 'kill', but for the third floor, don't bother if you have nothing to do—”
Lin Huai's footsteps kept ringing on the stairs, and Lu Jin was startled.
He opened his mouth, wanting to follow, and dragged the dying Lin Huai down the stairs. However, at the moment about to step on the stairs...
He was timid.
"Therefore, all the above clues point to the concealment of one thing, that is, 'there are no guards above the third floor'. No one is allowed to enter, and now my job is to find clues for this game. And this clue points to the fact that there is something we need above the third floor."
What appeared in front of Lin Huai was a door made of mahogany. There is no wind chime on the door.
He put his right hand on the cold brass handle.
"...what if?"
Lu Jin's voice came from downstairs.
"What if your reasoning is wrong?" he said dryly. "What if you open the wooden door and the witch is sitting inside... what should you do?"
Lin Huai smiled.
"There is no perfect reasoning in this world, there are only detectives betting on clues." He said, "The difference is that detectives bet on justice, but I bet on..."
"It's fate."
Lu Jin was rare and taciturn. Lin Huai said again: "The examiner wanted to play a brain game with me in the mist. She showed sincerity, so I respect her and let her get what she wants. Then—"
He went down and twisted the handle.
"Let's take a gamble!" He laughed loudly, "Let me see if the reasoning of a gambler or the ravings of a madman is correct?"
The mahogany gate suddenly opened, and what appeared in front of him was a dusty world.
There was no one in the huge room.
In this empty room, there is only one fuchsia cushion. A string of silver wind chimes was placed on the mat.
He entered the hall and picked up the wind chime. The wind chime swayed in his hand and made a crisp sound. On it were six short silver sticks of the same length.
Standing in the empty room, he followed the dome of the red building and the skylight falling through the gap of the brass bell, and saw the bottom of the wind chime.
On it, seven numbers are written at the junction of each silver pillar and silver plate.
Seven zeros.
Together, it is:
"0000000".