Chapter 1 Imprisonment

Upon the wall against which the bed rested, there were many faint etchings, all of the same design... four parallel vertical lines, with a diagonal line across them.

This was a common mark used by those held captive to count the days. If this were China, someone might carve the character "正," but on the wall before him, these were all four vertical, one diagonal marks.

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

It wasn't difficult to reach this conclusion. Although they were just etched lines, the depth, length, and angle differed from person to person. Moreover, to prevent confusion with other people's marks, each person's marks were spaced a certain distance apart.

"Leaving marks on such a stone wall with fingernails is impossible; 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 is not in this room at the moment..." An answer appeared in his mind in an instant. "Is it cutlery..."

He meticulously scanned all four walls, the ceiling, and the floor. "Hmm... all the etchings are on this section of the wall next to the bed, and there are none anywhere else..."

"Assuming they can only get cutlery when they eat, and they must return the cutlery and plates after eating, or they will be punished in some way," Feng Bujue analyzed, "then the time for etching these marks is their mealtime..." He cast his gaze at the etchings again. "Because they eat sitting on the bed, they conveniently etch next to them after eating..."

"No!" Feng Bujue immediately rejected this conjecture.

He quickly went to the iron door, first peering through the iron window above. The corridor outside the door was floored with wood, and the walls on both sides were also stone. The ceiling was slightly higher than in this room. Fluorescent lights were installed at intervals where the walls and ceiling met. Looking out from the cell, there was nothing noteworthy within sight, and beyond twenty meters, it was dark and indistinguishable.

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

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

"So... suppose there is no such thing as cutlery at all..." Feng Bujue stood up again, stood in the center of the room, and struck Kudo Shinichi's signature pose, one hand supporting his elbow and the other holding his chin.

He looked at the door, his eyes as if reliving past scenes. In the image he conjured, only a loaf of bread and a plastic plate filled with soup were passed in through the slot.

"Hmm... it's more likely that there's no cutlery." Feng Bujue cast his gaze at the marks on the wall again. "Okay, then what were these etched with? And why only on this wall..."

Having eliminated the wrong assumptions, the answer was right before him.

A flash of inspiration struck him, and a smile appeared on the corner of Feng Bujue's mouth. He took a step forward and lifted the bed sheet (Note: the bed sheet and mattress on this bed are the same thing), and saw what he was looking for.

The bed was a single unit; no part could be disassembled, and all four legs were welded to the floor. The frame of the bed was entirely 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 detached from the bed board, the broken end could be pulled and bent to the wall to etch marks.

"No wonder the etchings 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, and could only barely etch straight lines." Feng Bujue spent five minutes deducing the origin of the etchings. For him, this process of observing the environment, collecting information, reasoning, and solving problems was simply endless pleasure... making him forget the faint pain in his body.

"This room has no windows and cannot see the sunrise or sunset. The person locked up here needs to judge how many days have passed... relying on feeling, biological clock, and the number of times the people outside give him food as proof." Feng Bujue paced back and forth. "And this tool for etching marks is not easy to find..." He thought to himself, "Hmm... it seems that more than just six people have been locked up in this room. It's just that among the many prisoners, only six or seven people are still relatively calm, have clearer thinking, and have not given up on survival."

"The etchings all stop at the ninth mark, indicating that these people have stayed here for no more than ten days. Seeing the traces left by their predecessors, they should also be able to deduce... that something will definitely happen on the tenth day, or on the evening of the ninth day. Judging from the current atmosphere, there is a 1% probability of being released, a 1% probability 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 were imprisoned on the wall."

He walked to the wall and leaned against his height. "Without a plot synopsis, I can't be sure whether I'm playing Mad Detective Feng or someone else... hmm... the height seems about right." He placed his hand at a 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 inventory..." He immediately glanced at the game menu. The flashlight, M1911-500, Moxxi's Bad Touch, and survival value supplements in the inventory were all grayed out, becoming unusable. "Tch... as expected." He said unhappily.

"Okay... let me think... the guy dragging 'me' in the opening CG is estimated to be less than 1.7 meters tall, but he can drag an 1.8-meter-tall adult with one hand, and he doesn't seem to be struggling." Feng Bujue speculated on the Boss's strength. "That's definitely beyond ordinary people's combat power... at least in terms of strength, it's similar to my level 27 player. If that guy controls the prisoners' food, letting them eat only 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 create this kind of confinement play... a killer, a sadist, a cannibal, a mad scientist..." Combining the Boss's few lines in the opening, he slapped 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 murmured, "Or perhaps, were they addressed to me and also to himself?"

As he spoke, 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 clanging sounds. Obviously... the door was locked.

There were no door handles on either side of the iron door, only keyholes, because there was a small window near the top, and the door could be pulled without a handle.

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

"Escape the room... heh..." Feng Bujue reconfirmed the task content in the task bar. "Since it's a script in the advanced stage of the game, and it's a solo nightmare, it must be tailor-made for me... Breaking through the iron door with brute force is out of the question. So, the key is to figure out how to unlock it..."

He took out the pipe wrench and began a carpet search. Starting from next to the door, he gently tapped on the walls and the floor inch by inch, trying to find any mechanisms or hidden compartments. He didn't even spare the corners behind the small wooden cabinet and the plastic bucket. He even moved these two items away to check carefully.

As a result, he found nothing...

So, he started tearing the bed sheet. The bed sheet was quite thick, but it was not filled with rotten cotton or goose feathers, but with strips of shredded cloth. It looked like some old clothes had been cut up, and there were various colors and materials.

Feng Bujue found nothing but shredded cloth in the bed sheet, so... he put all the shredded cloth strips on the ground, trying 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 cloth strips. But he still didn't give up and even attempted to complete a puzzle with these motley strips of cloth...

After playing on the ground 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 reach in a few seconds: This is just a pile of useless rags.

"Alas... what a waste of life, a pile of garbage. Even if I braid these rags into ropes, there's no place to hang myself in this room." Feng Bujue mocked himself. "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. "The bottom of that bucket... is filled with nearly three inches of excrement and urine. It's not impossible that the key is hidden there..." He swallowed. "The bottom of the bucket is too deep, and it's very inconvenient to bend over and look inside. But what if I pour out the contents of the bucket and find nothing, this whole place will be..."

He had to drive the strange thoughts out of his head and still went to the small wooden cabinet first. 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 horizontally on the ground and reached in to grope around, but unfortunately, he found nothing but dust. He carefully tapped the entire wooden cabinet, but found no hidden compartments or the like.

The three drawers were now lined up side by side on the ground. The wood was so thin that it was obvious without checking that there could be no hidden compartments.

So... the mystery was once again at a deadlock.

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

He suddenly had another idea: "Hey! If I pour the contents of the bucket into the three drawers, won't it avoid making a mess everywhere... The drawers are shallower, making it easier to find."

Thinking of this, he was actually preparing to do it. He immediately stood up, holding a drawer and walking towards the plastic bucket. Fortunately, at this moment, his gaze swept over something.

"Oh!" Feng Bujue picked up the drawer and looked at the bottom of the drawer. "Hahahaha!" After laughing wildly for a while, he turned the other two drawers over and placed them bottom up.

It turned out that there was a word written in blood on the bottom of each of the three drawers. Feng Bujue arranged them according to their upper and lower positions when they were inserted into the wooden cabinet. 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 around with the pipe wrench, and soon discovered something fishy.

On the side of the bed facing outward, the horizontal support parallel to the bed board was hollow, while the one against the wall was solid. Feng Bujue started from one end of the bed, from bottom to top, tapping the support inch by inch. Finally, when he tapped the middle section, he heard movement inside.

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

Actually, he had nothing to complain about. Wasn't the hint written on the back of the drawers? It was originally a hiding spot that needed a hint to confirm. Otherwise, who would know in such a place...

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

"What does this mean?" Feng Bujue said, "Even a fine-quality pipe wrench doesn't cause any damage. Could it be suggesting to me... that there's a chainsaw hidden in the dung bucket?"

He sat cross-legged on the ground, having cosplayed Kudo Shinichi, and was now trying to come up with ideas like Ikkyu...

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

He used [Not So Hasty Repair] on the bed with the attitude of trying it wouldn't hurt. Unexpectedly, he encountered a skill failure... With a D-level 60% success rate in Device Mastery and the 10% increase in the activation success rate of all active skills from [Tenacity of the Ice Refining Alchemist], he still failed...

This couldn't help but make Feng Bujue wonder if his idea was correct.

However, 200 stamina points had been spent in vain, which wouldn't let him back down. Anyway, the skill had no cooldown, and he immediately used it again. 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. Although this pure metal bed, which could not be disassembled, looked simple and clear in structure, it was also reasonable to classify it as a mechanical creation, because it had, and only had, one mechanism.

Like the communication equipment that Feng Bujue had repaired in Divine Grace Village, this bed was also the kind of object that could not be observed for attributes from 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 restored to their original positions.

And the most crucial change was at both ends of the support on the outer side, that is, the two junctions where the iron bar connected the headboard and footboard. There were two more metal wedges there. Originally, these two parts had rusted and worn flat, and the outlines were completely invisible. But at this time, as long as Feng Bujue lifted them separately with the pipe wrench, he could activate them.

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

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

Getting back to the point, Feng Bujue stood the hollow support up and stomped it on the ground a few times. He thought the key would fall down along the hollow tube, but when he removed the rod, nothing fell out.

"Ya heh..." Feng Bujue picked up the iron rod, closed one eye, and looked inside with the other eye. He could see some light shining through from the other end. There was indeed a small object in the middle of the rod, which should be the key without a doubt, but for some reason, this thing just wouldn't fall out.

Feng Bujue also tried turning the rod over to see if it would react by sliding down from the other end, but the result was still the same. He became angry and sat on the ground, holding the rod horizontally, and banging it with the pipe wrench for a while... When he picked it up and looked, the position of the key was still unchanged.

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

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

"Wait, could it be..." While thinking, he reached into his upper pocket. The previous soap, candle, and comb had all been casually put in there.

"So far in solving the puzzle, aside from the reasoning part... in the actual action, my skill [Not So Hasty Repair] and equipment [Mario's Pipe Wrench] are necessary. Without these two, it's impossible to proceed to this step." Feng Bujue said, "Since the system designed this script to make it difficult for me, then..."

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

Feng Bujue pressed the catapult's grab button, causing the candle to float up, and then adjusted the candle to a suitable angle with his hand. Then, he stuffed one end of the candle into one end of the hollow support. Sure enough... it fit perfectly, just right.

"Okay, designing the puzzle like this also has certain benefits, at least when I'm solving it, it's easy to know that I'm not wrong..." Feng Bujue said, and pressed the launch button.