Chapter 8 – Perfect Clearance

Xiao Lou quickly cracked the numerical puzzles on two walls. At this time, he only used 30 seconds. The hour and minute hands on the pendulum still pointed to 19:00 and only the second hand pointed to 30 seconds.

30 seconds to crack two maths problems, this was thanks to Xiao Lou playing many secret rooms. He had a wealth of game experience and could think of a solution when seeing the question.

The harvest of two special effects cards made Xiao Lou full of power. He put away the card and headed to the third wall.

The third wall was different from the first two.

He saw four Chinese characters on the wall:

田、王、屮、日.

There were no hints for this question and he could only use his imagination.

The four Chinese characters represented the final password. It wasn’t as simple as the strokes in the Chinese characters. If it was the strokes then only a few words would be written, not four words.

Common ground must be found to convert the Chinese character into numbers.

Xiao Lou shone the flashlight on the wall, carefully observed for 10 seconds and quickly came to a conclusion.

Don’t think of them as Chinese characters or surnames and phrases. Simply treat them as graphics.

The thing these four characters had in common was that there was a ‘symmetric axis’ in the middle that could be folded.

田, if folded symmetrically from the middle would become the number 8.

王, if folded symmetrically from the middle would become the number 3.

屮 became 4 after being folded symmetrically. (The font makes this character look a bit different. Click here for an example of a symmetrical version)

日 when folded up and down became the number 0.

The four characters all had a symmetry axis and happened to become numbers after folding. This was the logic of this puzzle.

Xiao Lou didn’t hesitate to adjust the gears of the password lock to 8340.

As he expected, there was the unlocking sound and a card in the treasure chest.

[Tool Card: Folding Paper]

Rarity: A

Description: After solving the Chinese characters puzzle of the 2 of Diamonds secret room, it can be obtained from the treasure chest.

Note: Have you ever played an origami game? Use your imagination to fold the paper into the shape you want and it will quickly enlarge into the real object. For example, if a paper boat is placed into the sea then it will become a small boat. Fold a horse and you can have a horse mount. It isn’t recommended to fold into a plane, which is the origami technique that most people now. The folded aeroplane can easily crash when enlarged into a solid body.

Number of times used: Unfortunately, such a strong folding paper can only be used once.

Xiao Lou could only fold the simplest paper plane. Even if it was magnified by a hundred times, it couldn’t carry people and fly. He didn’t know any other origami and it was better to save this first. If he met people who were proficient in origami then he would give it to them. It had a rarity of A and the function of the real object must be very strong. It couldn’t be wasted. If a car or boat was folded at a critical moment, their lives could be saved.

Xiao Lou put the Folding Paper card away and turned to crack the last puzzle.

There was still a treasure chest left and opening it would pass the instance perfectly.

He shone the flashlight on the last wall and saw many messy arrow symbols on the wall.

←↓→↓←

→↓←↓→

←↓↓→↑←

→↓↓←↑↑

The corners of Xiao Lou’s mouth raised.

He happened to have done this type of puzzle.

At that time, he and his friends had been playing a vampire-themed secret escape room. They had encountered a similar mechanism in the secret room but it wasn’t arrow symbols on the wall. It was English letters such as RDDLUU, where U stood for up, D for down, L for left and R for right. It also meant up, down, left and right in the four directions.

What was the relationship between up, down, left, right and numbers?

As long as you followed the direction stated with your fingers and wrote it in the palm of your hand, you would get a number.

←↓→↓←，Left, down, right, down, left, this wrote out the number 5.

→↓←↓→，right, down, left, down, right, this wrote out the number 2.

←↓↓→↑←，the answer was 6；→↓↓←↑↑，the answer was 0.

The arrow code of this wall gave the result of 5260.

Xiao Lou quickly moved the gears of the password lock to 5260 and successfully opened the treasure chest, obtaining the last card of the 2 of Diamonds secret room.

[Tool Card: Four-way Arrow]

Rarity: A

Description: After solving the arrow puzzle of the 2 of Diamonds secret room, it can be obtained from the treasure chest.

Note: Can be used in a flexible way. In particular, when encountering a maze, you can use the arrow to give your teammates some tips so they won’t go to a dead end. The tool card has a very high viscosity and can be glued to any location on the ground, branches, buildings, etc. Once the tool card is left in place, it can be customized to seven colours to prevent people with bad eyes from seeing it.

Number of uses: Unlimited.

Xiao Lou looked again at the description and found a key word mentioned in this Four-way Arrow tool card—maze.

This showed that in future Diamond rooms, it was very likely he would encounter a maze full of mechanisms!

Moreover, this card clearly referred to ‘teammates’, proving that the maze in the later period was indeed a team model and multi-path exploration. Perhaps a person stepping on the wrong mechanism meant all their teammates would be shot into a hedgehog.

If the Diamond room was developing in the direction of a ‘mechanism labyrinth’, challengers not only had to find their way out of the maze but also use their brains to solve puzzles and open the right mechanism, facing punishment that might arise at any time. A rain of arrows, a knife array, boulders, puzzles, poison, flames… there were too many ways of punishment and the difficulty if the late secret rooms would exceed his imagination.

Xiao Lou was just thinking this when two lines popped up on the suspension box.

[Congratulations to the challenger Xiao Lou for perfectly clearing the D-grade secret room ‘Numerical Puzzle’ in 58 seconds, the instance clearance score is greater than 99% of the challengers!]

[This instance clearance is evaluated as S-grade. A perfect clearance will get an extra lucky draw chance. Please return to the personal space for settlement of the rewards.]

Xiao Lou saw the perfect clearance prompt and pressed the ’exit’ button to return to the personal space.

***

At the same time, the 2 of Diamonds secret room.

Yu Hanjiang looked at the equations on the wall and frowned slightly.

He hated maths the most. Seeing 4894=1236, he only had a splitting headache.

Just then, red letters suddenly filled the suspension box above his head.

[Congratulations to challenger Xiao Lou for perfectly clearing the 2 of Diamonds secret room, Numerical Puzzle, in 58 seconds, refreshing the 2 of Diamonds’ world record!]

Yu Hanjiang who hadn’t solved a question in one minute, “…”

Entering the room, moving and turning the password gears for four walls took time. A 58 second perfect clearance meant answering four questions. In other words, Xiao Lou took an average of 10 seconds to clear each question.

This Xiao Lou, wasn’t the speed at cracking the numerical mechanisms too fast?

Yu Hanjiang frowned and looked at the announcement again.

The Xiao Lou he knew was a professor in the Department of Forensic Medicine at the medical university.

Their first contact was because a girl from the medical university fell to her death. Once the investigation started, the students mentioned that her last class was Professor Xiao’s class. The students also evaluated Professor Xiao very highly. In the beginning, Yu Hanjiang thought that the highly respected Professor Xiao would be an old expert around 40 or 50 years old. He hadn’t expected Xiao Lou to be so young.

It happened to be raining the day that Xiao Lou came to the police station to make a statement.

The man’s black hair was wet from rain and it was attached to his ears, lining a clear face. His eyelashes were long and thick. The rain on it covered the black and clear eyes with a gentle layer of water.

He wore a white shirt and his clothes was wet from the rain, but he didn’t look embarrassed. The man’s posture was straight and upright. He had a clean temperament and his laughing eyes made people feel friendly at first sight.

Yu Hanjiang had been exposed to people from all walks of life but Xiao Lou’s temperament was undoubtedly unique. Gentle, graceful and talented, this was the student’s evaluation of him. The medical students regarded him as a male god and it was said that his class was always packed. In the university where the class rate was extremely serious, his class actually had students from other departments come to listen.

In the process of writing the statement, this man was always calm and it could be seen that his psychological quality was very high and he was well-bred.

Yu Hanjiang’s first impression of him was very good.

The girl’s case was quickly resolved and he thought they would have no more intersection. Then the Major Crimes unit encountered a bad poisoning case. Yu Hanjiang went to send the poison to the Forensic Identification Centre and he met Xiao Lou again.

The two people became familiar with each other and added each other as friends. Xiao Lou helped a lot during the investigation of the case and Yu Hanjiang wanted to invite him to dinner. It was just that the Spring Festival was approaching and Xiao Lou pushed the dinner back.

Unfortunately, on the seventh day of the new year, there was no time for Yu Hanjiang to meet Xiao Lou…

The familiar name caused countless memories to rush through his mind. Yu Hanjiang took a deep breath and quickly stabilized his mind.

A person who could perfectly pass the numerical puzzle secret room in 58 seconds was obviously a master of numerical puzzles. Was this Xiao Lou and the young forensic doctor he knew the same person? Yu Hanjiang couldn’t determine this.

He only knew that Xiao Lou was widely acclaimed at school. As for whether he played puzzle games in private, Yu Hanjiang didn’t know.

Perhaps later he could find a chance to contact this Xiao Lou and check?

Yu Hanjiang put away his confused thoughts and continued to focus on the mathematical puzzle on the wall.

***

Back in Xiao Lou’s personal space, he also saw the news of the 2 of Diamond’s world record being refreshed.

He felt some surprise.

Spending 10 seconds on a question was normal for him. After all, he played too many secret room games and the most common mechanism in a secret room was a numerical puzzle.

Perhaps the people who came to the Card World didn’t have as high a psychological endurance as him and the people who often played numerical puzzle games were less likely to be seen. Thus, he picked up this world record for cheap.

The 2 of Diamonds room wasn’t difficult. As long as the interference of the clock’s ticking sound was ignored and the challenger calmed down and carefully observed to find the logic of the numbers, the answer could be quickly obtained.

The 15 minute numerical puzzle room was perfectly cleared by Xiao Lou in 58 seconds.

What card would he get from this perfect clearance draw?

Looking at the 2 of Diamonds on the card wall, there was a green ‘passed’ in the lower right corner. Xiao Lou calmly declared, “Where is the keeper of the Diamonds room? Come out and meet me.”