Chapter 14 Cold Storage

Seeing the door open, Feng Bujue breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't rush out, but used the light from outside to walk to the cage where the monkey was kept. He opened the latch, lifted the gate, and took out the sleeping monkey.

[Name: Sleeping Tibetan Macaque]
[Type: Story-Related]
[Quality: Common]
[Function: Unknown]
[Can be brought out of this script: Yes]
[Note: A lively and brave monkey, now on the verge of extinction]

"A story item that can be taken out of the script, huh…" Feng Bujue pondered. He tried putting the monkey in his bag and succeeded. Then he walked out of the room.

Outside the door was a corridor, mostly made of metal. The ceiling was still four or five meters high, with normal lighting, and still no windows. There were some doors and forks on both sides of the corridor, but they were either unable to be opened or blocked by large debris. The real path was clearly only one. Red spray-painted arrows occasionally appeared on the wall to guide Feng Bujue. After several futile attempts, he realized there was nothing useful to be found on this stretch of road, so he sped up and followed the arrows. After about seven or eight minutes, he came to the end of the corridor, where there was another metal door marked in red.

This door had no handle. In the center was a round valve handwheel. Feng Bujue stepped forward, grasped the handwheel, and tried to turn it. He felt considerable resistance. He used a lot of force to turn it.

After turning it more than halfway, the door moved a little, and a burst of cold air seeped out from the crack. Feng Bujue had an ominous premonition. When he pushed the door open, he realized that the metal door was very thick, and the room was clearly a sealed freezer. As soon as the door opened, a strong gust of cold air rushed out.

The interior of the room was truly a "world of ice and snow." The ground was covered with white frost, and there were signs of ice on all four walls. Looking up, besides the lighting equipment, he could see three pipes, each about a meter in diameter, in each of the corners of the ceiling. The moment the door opened, white snowflakes began to float out of the pipes. Fortunately, although the pipe openings were large, the snowflakes falling were only sporadic and not very many.

Feng Bujue took a deep breath, exhaled hot air into his palms, rubbed his hands, and walked into the room. After crossing the threshold, he realized that the ground depth in this room was wrong. The floor was lower than the bottom frame of the door and not on the same level as the corridor outside. Therefore, the seemingly thin layer of white frost on the ground was actually knee-deep snow. He stepped on it, and his ankle sank into the snow, freezing him so much that he quickly took a few small jumps, but it was useless. The snow was very soft, and the way to prevent your feet from sinking was to increase the contact area, so he decisively knelt down…

He didn't close the door. Kneeling, he went directly to the wall opposite the room, where there was another door, but there was no handwheel on it. There was only an electronic lock embedded in the door that required a password, with space for a four-digit password on the display screen. On the wall next to the door lock was a clearly movable iron plate, about ten centimeters long on each side, square, with a small handle. When Feng Bujue pulled open the plate, the iron door he had entered the room through automatically closed.

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

Feng Bujue took out the tape, then took out the walkman from his body, took out the original tape and put it in his bag, then put in the new tape and pressed 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, detailed observation of the room. He had noticed the most eye-catching thing in the room earlier: a newspaper that looked very new, stuck to one side of the metal wall. The wall had obviously been treated, and the icing around the newspaper wasn't too bad. Although it was filled with artificial snow, the humidity in the room wasn't too high, and the words on the paper were still very clear. The most eye-catching article was titled "They Are No Different From Us," accompanied by a photo of a group of homeless people warming themselves around a waste oil drum, with a snowy sky in the background and the ground covered in white. Of course, this report was also written by "Arthur Sieg."

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

Arthur, you have stood on the moral high ground more than once to criticize the indifference of the world and the injustice of the system, but your actual actions show that you have no idea what you are talking about.

Now, you have the opportunity to understand how those helpless people get through their difficulties. 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 beneath your feet to find that piece of paper.

Just like every person freezing on the streets on a snowy night is yearning for a glimmer of hope, you will have no time limit, but even if you find something, the best you can hope for is to make it to dawn…"

The recording ended, and Feng Bujue was already shivering from the cold. The clothing provided by the game guarantees the player's comfort in a virtual environment of twenty-odd degrees Celsius. If it gets hotter or colder, the player will have the corresponding physical sensations. This ice cave-like room was clearly below zero degrees Celsius, and the three pipes on the ceiling were still slowly increasing the thickness of the snow.

To ensure the flexibility of his fingers, Feng Bujue exhaled into his hands, quickly reviewing the recording in his mind, then repeating the last sentence to himself, "Just like those freezing people… finding 'something' will get you to dawn…" According to his speculation, this was the only hint, quite obscure, but it must be predicting something.

Feng Bujue stood up again. His legs below the knees were completely frozen. Now it didn't matter if his feet sank into the snow, because he couldn't feel them anyway. He staggered to the newspaper, his eyes burning as he stared at the report and the photo, carefully searching for any possible clues.

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

"Something that can get a homeless person to dawn…" Feng Bujue said to focus his attention, "A few people huddling around a barrel, burning trash to keep warm until dawn? No, no, that's not it…" An image of an uncle wearing sunglasses suddenly flashed in his mind. "Got it… mAdAo's three street survival artifacts: cardboard box, dog, radio." Thinking of this, he took action.

The opened newspaper was fixed to the wall with four small pieces of tape at the corners. While ensuring that the large part in the middle of the newspaper was not damaged, Feng Bujue carefully tore off the corners of the newspaper.

"It's impossible to have a dog unless I make one out of snow. As for a radio… a walkman should count. As for a cardboard box…" Feng Bujue had already taken the newspaper off the wall. Although a small piece was missing from each corner, it didn't affect what he wanted to do.

As mentioned earlier, the newspaper was new, so the creases on it were very clear. Most people don'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 restored the newspaper according to the creases. His hands hadn't gone numb yet, but they were still affected by the extremely cold environment. In fact, in his game menu, the special status next to his survival value already showed "Frozen."

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

Feng Bujue took it in his hand and examined it, turning it at several angles. Finally, in a place where several paper edges overlapped, he found a string of consecutive letters and numbers.

The letters on a newspaper can't all be in the same format. Occasionally, there will be different font sizes and styles, such as the letters used in titles or photo captions, which are different from those in the articles. There is also the issue of capitalization.

The string of letters and numbers that Feng Bujue found were all the same font size and style. The letters were all uppercase. When the newspaper was unfolded, they were located in different layouts and positions, but when folded, they came together, becoming a neat little segment.

"fm27.3mhz…" Feng Bujue read, "The band of an amateur radio station…" As he said that, he adjusted the walkman to the radio listening state.

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

Feng Bujue quickly rushed to the door of the exit, entering the password while complaining, "What a lousy password, does it mean 'lower-class people and dogs are not allowed to enter'…"

Sure enough, the password was correct, and the door opened. Feng Bujue rolled and crawled out of the room. After reaching the corridor outside, he rolled around on the ground from the cold. After rolling around twice, he stood up and did twenty or so straight-arm squats. During this process, he looked at the status in the menu. His survival value had dropped to 67%, but the frozen state 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 digging through the snow to find the piece of paper. Feng Bujue has always had bad luck in games. For that kind of needle-in-a-haystack task, he wouldn't find the paper under the snow without turning every inch of the room over.

After passing this second level, he didn't immediately turn off the walkman. Soon he discovered the pattern of that frequency. About once every minute, fm27.3 would repeat the four-digit password, while the other frequencies were always just continuous noise.

After recovering his body temperature, Feng Bujue continued forward. He estimated that this script didn't arrange or calculate how long it would take for "Arthur Sieg" to escape and reach the hospital to receive treatment. The initial recording said that he had forty minutes to find the exit, otherwise he would die from the toxins in his body. However, Feng Bujue's menu had never shown the "Poisoned" state, and at this moment he couldn't determine whether the decrease in survival value was due to the cold just now or the slow action of the toxins. In short, this was not an obvious poisoning effect, but some kind of story event. Simply put, he had to complete the script within forty minutes, otherwise it would be game over.

Feng Bujue had already spent more than twenty minutes. His speed through the second level was 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 consider the possibility of players choosing to dig through the snow in the second level, which would undoubtedly take longer. Therefore, 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 script.