Chapter 16 A Sleeper Awakes

Seeing the door open, Feng Bujue breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't rush out, but using the light from outside, he walked to the cage holding the monkey, opened the latch, lifted the gate, and scooped out the sleeping creature.

[Name: Sleeping Tibetan Macaque]
[Type: Plot Related]
[Quality: Common]
[Function: Unknown]
[Can Be Brought Out of the Scenario: Yes]
[Remarks: A lively and brave monkey, now on the verge of extinction]

"A plot item that can be brought out of the scenario, hmm..." Feng Bujue mused, and tried to put the monkey into his knapsack, which worked. Then, he exited the room.

Outside the door was a corridor, mostly metallic walls, still four or five meters high, with normal lighting, and still no windows to be found. There were doors and forks in the corridor, but they were either unopenable or blocked by large debris. Clearly, there was only one real path. Red spray-painted arrows occasionally appeared on the walls, indicating which way Feng Bujue should go. After several futile attempts, he realized there was nothing useful to be found along this route, so he sped up and followed the arrows. After about seven or eight minutes, he reached the end of the corridor, where another metal door, marked in red, awaited.

This door had no handle, but a circular valve handwheel in the center. Feng Bujue stepped forward, grabbed the handwheel, and tried to turn it. He felt considerable resistance and used a great deal of strength to turn it.

After turning it more than halfway, the door shifted, and a rush of cold air leaked out. Feng Bujue immediately had a bad feeling. When he pushed the door open, he found that the metal door was very thick, and the room was clearly a sealed freezer. A strong blast of cold air hit him in the face.

The interior of the room was truly an "icy world." The ground was covered in white frost and snow, and there were signs of ice forming on all four walls. Looking up, besides the lighting, he could see three pipes, each about a meter in diameter, in each corner of the ceiling. The moment the door was opened, white snowflakes began to fall from the pipes, but fortunately, although the openings were large, the snowflakes fell only sporadically and not in large quantities.

Feng Bujue took a deep breath, exhaled into his hands, and rubbed them together as he walked into the room. After crossing the threshold, he realized that the ground level was off. The floor was lower than the door frame, not on the same level as the corridor outside, so the seemingly thin layer of white frost on the ground was actually knee-deep snow. When he stepped in, he sank below his ankles, freezing him so much that he quickly hopped back a few steps, but it was no use. The snow was very soft, and the only way to keep his feet from sinking was to increase the surface area in contact with the snow, so he decisively knelt down...

He didn't close the door. Kneeling, he made his way to the wall opposite the door, where there was another door, but it didn't have a handwheel. Instead, it had an electronic lock embedded in the door that required a password, with spaces for four digits on the display screen. Next to the lock, on the wall, was a clearly movable iron plate, about ten centimeters square, with a small handle. When Feng Bujue pulled the plate open, the iron door he had entered through automatically closed.

Behind the iron plate was a small space containing a cassette tape. The next thing to do was clear...

Feng Bujue took out the tape and then took out his walkman, removed the tape that was already inside and put it into his knapsack, and inserted the new tape, pressing the play button.

"Merry Christmas, Arthur. This is a day for family reunions, and the spirit of Christmas also means selfless giving and blessings..."

While listening to the recording, Feng Bujue began a second, careful observation of the room. He had noticed earlier that the most conspicuous thing in the room was a newspaper pasted on one of the metal walls, which looked quite new. The wall around the newspaper had obviously been treated, as the ice formation was not yet severe, and although artificial snow filled the room, the humidity wasn't too high, so the words on the paper were still clear. The most eye-catching article was titled "They Are No Different From Us," accompanied by a photo of a group of homeless people huddled around a waste oil drum for warmth, with snow falling in the background and the ground covered in white. Of course, this article was also written by "Arthur Siegel."

"You often attend charity galas and show your face in front of the cameras, but we all know that you never donate to any organization in private. You urge people not to discriminate against the homeless, but you yourself have never shown any respect to anyone with a lower social status than you. Your meanness and snobbery disgust everyone around you. You have also spoken for the elderly, claiming they need more attention and understanding, but you use work as an excuse to refuse to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with your own parents every year.

Arthur, you have stood on the moral high ground more than once to accuse the world of indifference and institutional injustice, but your actions show that you have no idea what you're talking about.

Now, you have the opportunity to understand how those helpless people manage to get by. In this snowy room, there is a piece of cardboard with the password needed to unlock the door. All you have to do is reach into the snow at your feet and find it.

Just as every person freezing on the streets on a snowy night craves a glimmer of hope, you will not be limited by time, but even if you find something, the best you can hope for is to make it until dawn..."

The recording ended, and Feng Bujue was already shivering from the cold. The clothing provided by the game could ensure the player's comfort in a virtual environment of twenty-odd degrees Celsius. If it was hotter or colder, the player would have the corresponding physical sensation. Now, this ice-cave-like room was clearly below zero, and the three pipes in the ceiling were still increasing the thickness of the snow at a very slow rate.

To ensure the flexibility of his fingers, Feng Bujue breathed into his hands. He quickly went over the recording in his mind, and then repeated the last sentence to himself: "Just like those freezing people... if you find 'something', you can make it until dawn..." He guessed that this was the only hint, quite obscure, but it must foreshadow something.

Feng Bujue stood up again. His legs below the knees were completely frozen, and now it didn't matter if his feet were in the snow, because he couldn't feel them anyway. He staggered to the newspaper, his eyes burning with focus on the article and photo, carefully searching for any possible clues.

Feng Bujue knew that now was the best time to search for clues, and the physical work could wait until there was no other way. If he impatiently plunged his hands into the snow and started digging, then in five minutes, even if his fingers didn't freeze off, his body temperature would drop, and if it developed into the slow reaction and hazy consciousness of someone freezing to death, solving the puzzle would be impossible.

"Something that can help a homeless person make it until dawn..." Feng Bujue said aloud to focus his attention. "A few people huddled around a barrel, burning trash for warmth until dawn? No, no, not like that..." An image of a sunglasses-wearing uncle suddenly flashed in his mind. "Got it... mADAO's three street-sleeping treasures: cardboard box, dog, radio." Thinking of this, he started to move.

The unfolded newspaper was fixed to the wall with four small pieces of tape, one at each corner. Feng Bujue carefully tore off the corners of the newspaper, making sure that the large central part of the newspaper was not damaged.

"There's no way I'm getting a dog, unless I make one out of snow. As for the radio... the walkman should count. As for the cardboard box..." Feng Bujue had already removed the newspaper from the wall. Although small pieces were missing from the four corners, it didn't affect what he needed to do.

As mentioned earlier, the newspaper was very new, so the creases on it were very clear. Normally, people wouldn't fold a newspaper more than twice, but there were many creases on this newspaper, which undoubtedly showed that it had been folded into something.

Feng Bujue followed the creases and restored the newspaper to its original shape. His hands hadn't gone numb yet, but they were still affected by the extreme cold. In fact, the special status next to his survival value in the game menu already showed the word "Frozen."

Although the newspaper was missing corners, Feng Bujue was still able to fold out a shape that matched the creases perfectly—a small paper box.

Feng Bujue held it in his hand and looked at it carefully, turning it at several angles. Finally, in a place where several paper edges overlapped, he found a series of consecutive letters and numbers.

The letters on a newspaper couldn't all be in the same format. Occasionally, there would be different fonts and styles, such as the letters used in headlines or photo captions, which would be different from the letters in the text. There was also the issue of capitalization.

The letters and numbers that Feng Bujue found were all in the same font and style, and the letters were all capitalized. When the newspaper was unfolded, they were located in different sections and positions, but when folded, they came together into a neat little string.

"fm27.3mhz..." Feng Bujue read, "An amateur radio band..." As he said this, he adjusted the walkman to radio mode.

All the frequencies transmitted noise, and fm27.3 was the same, but he locked onto the frequency and turned up the volume, waiting patiently. Sure enough, after about forty seconds of noise, a hoarse voice read, "Nine, five, two, seven." Then there was more static.

Feng Bujue quickly rushed to the exit door, entering the password while saying unhappily, "What a crappy password, does it mean 'lowly people and dogs are not allowed in'..."

Sure enough, the password was correct, and the door opened. Feng Bujue scrambled out of the room, and after arriving in the corridor outside, he rolled around on the ground from the cold, and after rolling around twice, he stood up and did twenty straight-arm squats. During this process, he looked at the status in the menu. His survival value had been reduced to 67%, but the frozen status was quickly lifted in the normal temperature environment.

In any case, coming out like this was less of a loss than lying on the ground and digging through the snow by hand to find the piece of cardboard. Feng Bujue had always had very bad luck in games. For that kind of needle-in-a-haystack task, he wouldn't have been able to find the cardboard under the snow unless he searched every inch of the room.

After passing this second level, he didn't immediately turn off the walkman. He soon discovered the pattern of that frequency. Every minute or so, fm27.3 would repeat the four-digit password, while the other frequencies were always just static.

After recovering his body temperature, Feng Bujue continued forward. He estimated that this scenario didn't bother to arrange or calculate how long it would take for "Arthur Siegel" to escape and reach the hospital to get treatment. The initial recording said that he had forty minutes to find the exit, otherwise he would die from the toxins in his body. But Feng Bujue's menu had never shown a "poisoned" status, and at this moment he couldn't tell whether the reduction in survival value was due to the extreme cold just now or the slow effect of the toxins. In short, this was not an obvious poisoning effect, but rather a plot event. Simply put, he had to clear the scenario within forty minutes, or it was Game Over.

Feng Bujue had already spent more than twenty minutes. His speed in passing the second level could be considered fast. Adding the five minutes spent in the first room and the time spent running, he should have about fifteen minutes left when he reached the third game. The system must have considered the possibility of the player choosing to dig in the snow in the second level, which would undoubtedly take longer. So, considering the time factor, the game that Feng Bujue was about to face should be the last one. As long as he completed it, he could end this scenario.