CH 36

Chapter 36 – Double-Faced Knight

Non-professionals should not imitate

Double-faced knight?

“As the name suggests, double-faced knights can belong to the dark camp or the light camp.”

“Players who get the role of the double-faced knight will choose the camp they wish to belong to based on the rules, after the game starts. If the double-faced knight chooses to side with the ordinary players, they will need to do their best to help the good guys find the killer. Once the double-faced knight is ousted from the game, be it from them being voted as the killer or being killed, the killer will gain an extra escape clue. If the good guys emerge victorious in the end, the double-faced knight will be awarded 1.5 times their original points.”

It was like a gamble; dangerous as it was, the payoff was also quite considerable.

The good guys needed to protect the knight, and the knight should also do their best to help the good guys. Once the light camp was chosen, the knight would become the killer’s first target for murder. 

“On the flip side, if the double-faced knight chooses to side with the killer, they will join the dark camp. Once they escape, the good guys will get information on the killer’s identity, in order to speed up the process of uncovering the killer. Of course, if the dark camp wins the game, the double-faced knight will also be awarded 1.5 times their original points.”

Fang Juexia subconsciously calculated the probability of this character’s victory. If the double-faced knight could privately get in touch with the killer, and the killer had some key parts of the plot in their hand, this wasn’t really fair. The chances of attaining victory were higher if the killer’s camp was chosen. 

“You all must be thinking that if you get the double-faced knight’s role, you will choose the killer. But,” the narrator’s voice carried a hint of a smile as it warned, “it’s not going to be that easy this season.”

“In season two, the killer will no longer have the right to know the original story. Every player will receive a message about which role cards have been assigned to them only once the game starts. In other words, both the killer and the double-faced knight will be unaware of their own identity until they enter the escape room. Besides their own identity, they will not know anything else.”

It was at this moment that Fang Juexia’s slow senses finally started to grow excited.

He finally got the fun of this change. Under such a rule, the double-faced knight, the killer, and the players belonging to the light camp— all had equal odds of winning, along with the fact that every player was trapped in an isolated black box and couldn’t see any other player.

It was inevitable that everyone would be worried and suspicious of their fellow players, even if they were partners belonging to the same camp. Any word was likely to break this unstable cooperative relationship and push the other party into the abyss.

Too interesting.

“All the rules have been relayed. Good luck to everyone.”

“The game has officially started.”

The narration ended just as abruptly as it had started, with a murmur of static. This sudden silence worked to heighten the tension.

Fang Juexia took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and created a mental sketch of the manner in which the staff members had previously tied him up. 

First, they put the rope around the back of his neck, then the two ends of the rope passed through his armpits to spiral around his arms. They had then bent and bound his two arms to his back, in an imitation of a yoga pose. After that, they had tied his two wrists. Finally….

Fang Juexia was thinking about the last move when suddenly, he felt his foot being kicked.

It was from the person sitting opposite him.

Why did this person move in such a manner? It couldn’t be that he also couldn’t see anything?

Fang Juexia waited for the next movement, and when it didn’t come, he became even more sure of his judgment.

Yes, this person had entered the room later than himself, and so probably didn’t know there was a second person in the escape room.

“I’m opposite you.” Fang Juexia opened his mouth, and spoke softly, having no intentions of scaring the other person. “Be careful, I can’t see either. If you accidentally fall over or run into something, it will be difficult for me to help you for the time being.”

After this brief statement, Fang Juexia did not intend to continue to entangle with him. He continued to recall how he was bound up—after winding the rope around his wrists, the crew member seemed to have pulled upward. Yes, the two ends of the rope had gone through the one that was first wound around the back of his neck, before being pulled down and tied into a knot.

That was to say, as long as he could untie the knot hanging right above his wrist, he had a chance to get out of his bindings. 

After a brief silence, a slight laugh sounded out from the other side.

It was very short, with weak sound waves rolling up before floating across the darkness towards him.

For others, a laugh would carry very little information, but this particular laugh managed to break the calmness Fang Juexia had maintained since entering the escape room. 

“Pei Tingsong.”

Fang Juexia called out his name directly. He was very sure to the point that he didn’t even think about how the audience would react, especially the CP fans, after this episode was broadcast, as they watched him figure out the identity of the person opposite him so firmly and easily.

Another length of silence followed after this proclamation.

The continued silence made him more sure of his judgment.

“Really boring.” Pei Tingsong’s voice sounded out as expected, and even carried a trace of complaint as he commented, “I thought I would be locked up with new friends.”

Already used to Pei Tingsong’s banter by now, Fang Juexia didn’t take this comment seriously. He said frankly, “When you escape, you can find new friends.”

“My hands are handcuffed,” Pei Tingsong said.

“I know.”

Pei Tingsong laughed again. “How do you know?”

“Heard it.”

While dealing with him, Fang Juexia reached for that knot. Years of dance practice had given him a flexibility that ordinary people couldn’t attain. Although his wrists were bound, the program team had probably been worried that binding them too tightly would affect the guests’ blood circulation, so they had left a little room. He moved his wrist and tried to reach up as high as he could.

His fingertip really touched something similar to a knot.

But if he wanted to untie it completely, he would have to work harder.

Fang Juexia suddenly heard a sound that seemed to come out when a bunch of building blocks collapsed. He asked the opposite side, “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.” Pei Tingsong’s voice sounded very effortless, as if just like he had announced before, he was just here to play. “Although my hands are handcuffed, it’s just that I can’t separate them. As soon as I touched the table in front of me, it seems that I pushed down the pile of metal blocks there.”

He said it as though that was a matter of course. 

Fang Juexia heard some other sounds and guessed that Pei Tingsong was probably putting something together. Suddenly, he heard the sound of a click, as if something just happened to snap together. 

After hearing this sound several times in a row, he heard a didi sound. Strangely, it wasn’t coming from the speakers in the room, nor was it coming from Pei Tingsong’s side, but rather, it was from his own hood—

“Ding Dong.”

When the last tone ended, to Fang Juexia’s surprise, the square hood that was caging his face scattered, like a gift box bursting apart, each side falling in different directions.

Fang Juexia could see everything in an instant.

Pei Tingsong, whose head was also caged in by a hood, was sitting opposite him across a table, and his hands handcuffed. If Fang Juexia hadn’t been familiar with his voice, he feared that he wouldn’t have been able to guess his identity through the hood. 

“Hm?” Pei Tingsong made a questioning sound.

“My hood split open.” Fang Juexia looked around; the metal blocks that Pei Tingsong had been fumbling with were pressed into the table. “It should be the mechanism in front of you that controlled my hood.”

Looking around, this room looked like a counseling room with many books on psychology on the shelf to the side. He looked at Pei Tingsong’s clothes again— he was wearing a white shirt, with a name plate pinned to the front.

Maybe his character was that of a psychologist.

Looking down, Fang Juexia found a display screen embedded in the armrest of his sofa chair. He tried to bend to one side and touch its screen with his elbow.

The screen lit up and displayed a digital clock, with the hours, minutes, and seconds all formed of seven LED lines. 

At this point, a sound was emitted from the hood on Pei Tingsong’s head, a female AI voice.

“Excuse me, what time is it?”

Sure enough, it was a time? But this seemed to be oversimplifying it.

“What did you find?” Pei Tingsong asked.

“Hm.” Fang Juexia identified the LED numbers on the display—09:15:50

He tried out this answer, even though it was really too simple. “9:15:50 a.m?”

The hood made a harsh di sound. 

“Sorry, wrong answer.”

Fang Juexia had already expected this outcome. “Sure enough, it’s wrong…”

“It’s wrong, and yet you still said it,” Pei Tingsong murmured, “My ears are going to explode.”

“Shhh…” Fang Juexia examined the six numbers in front of him again. It really was a very common digital clock, and there was nothing wrong with it, so then why had his  answer been wrong? 

There must be something he was misunderstanding. 

He focused his attention on these numbers, and kept feeling as though something was wrong, but he couldn’t pinpoint it. These small LED lines clearly formed these six numbers. 

“We’re not going to get stuck at the smallest hurdle at the very beginning ba, that’s going too far.” Pei Tingsong began to say again and again, “I even wanted to take first place, but now it looks like I’m going to be the number one player after the winning order is counted in reverse.”

Fang Juexia couldn’t help frowning. “Don’t keep saying ‘first place’, ‘first place’, what number one ah….”

All of a sudden, something flashed through his head, and he leaned over again to look at the six numbers, especially at the number 1 after the first colon.

1……

He finally discovered what was wrong.

The vertical and horizontal lines in the LED display weren’t forming square rectangles, but were actually polygons with varying edges and corners, some of which were hexagonal. In previous digital clocks, the 1 was made up of “vertical lines”, but the left side would be slightly lower than the right side, thus forming a small slope, and looking more like a printed 1.

But now, the 1 in this display was reversed, and its left side was higher than the right side.

So that’s what it was.

“I see, you have to flip it around.” Fang Juexia tried to turn around and identify the numbers, “05, 51, 60…”

Fang Juexia touched the screen again, and the voice from Pei Tingsong’s hood once again asked, “Excuse me, what time is it?”

“5:52 in the morning.”

Two seconds later, a “ding dong” sounded out. Pei Tingsong’s hood also scattered in the same way his hood had, which was a little funny to Fang Juexia’s eyes, for it made Pei Tingsong seem like a surprise gift that had been wrapped up, and which was now appearing in front of him.

As soon as light hit his eyes, he saw that Fang Juexia was smiling. Pei Tingsong frowned and asked, “What are you smiling for? You’re even all tied up.”

Fang Juexia disapproved but still kept a smile on his face. “I can untie this rope, do you believe me?”

Pei Tingsong looked at the rope on his body from all angles. His hands were completely tied behind his back, with his arm having been bent into his back as much as possible— there was almost no possibility of this person being able to move at all.

However, he did not dare to say that he did not believe him. Based on Fang Juexia’s character, if he wasn’t completely sure of himself, he wouldn’t say anything. 

So Pei Tingsong sat back in his chair, and even with his hands handcuffed, he possessed the bearing of a master. He faced Fang Juexia and said with a smile, “Please.”

Fang Juexia straightened up his upper body, and noticed that the ties at his wrist had loosened a lot due to the activity just now.

With great effort, he reached up and grabbed that huge knot. His fingers groped around, following the twists and turns of the winding on the rope to reach the end. This kind of binding, carried out using only one rope, even if it was more complicated, both of its ends must eventually overlap somewhere. 

Pei Tingsong quietly watched the whole thing. Under his gaze, Fang Juexia’s body was tightly bound by the snake-like rope, and the intertwined rope rubbed against the fabric of his clothes, outlining a clear inverted triangle figure.

As he made movements to escape, the contours of his muscles also started moving. When he turned his head to look behind him, the curve of his neck elongated, looking beautiful and slender, containing a fragile sense of beauty. The thick rope slipped down the collar of his shirt and rubbed against the back of his neck, turning his sensitive skin red.

The delight of watching wasn’t immediate, but it was very novel.

“Got it.”

He heard Fang Juexia murmuring to himself. The tight grip of the binding made his breathing tighten, and he gasped a little, with the pale skin on his forehead now covered with sweat, which shone with a delicate luster under the light.

This performance didn’t last too long. Although every move seemed to linger in Pei Tingsong’s heart, Fang Juexia, true to his word, managed to untie the knot hanging on his back using his amazing flexibility and memory recall.

He turned his neck, and he could now put his arms down, for they weren’t bent anymore, but there was still a knot around his wrists.

Being able to go to this extent, Pei Tingsong already couldn’t help but applaud him. “Too strong. But what about the rest, can your fingers twist around and untie the knot on your wrists?”

Fang Juexia glanced at him, then looked at the camera on the table pointed at him before taking a deep breath.

“I hope that for the next segment, the program team will help me put up a warning notice when it’s broadcast.” After saying this, Fang Juexia moved forward on the chair as far as possible, as if to make room for his back. He then moved his shoulders and slightly pulled at his wrists, which were tied up behind him. “The following movements are very dangerous. Non-professionals should not imitate them, especially children.”

Pei Tingsong wore a completely puzzled expression, for who would have known that in the next moment, Fang Juexia would raise his bound arms backward and suddenly jerk them forward. He managed to turn his arms, which were tied behind his back, all the way to the front!

“You…. How did you do that?!” Pei Tingsong was so flabbergasted that he couldn’t say anything more, and instead just started laughing. He felt as if he was watching an acrobatic performance, that seemed to violate the way human bodies were designed to work.

80% of the directors in the program group were also startled right now, at the fact that this kind of position, where his hands had been tied behind his back, had been solved by the person himself. This was just too exaggerated.

Fang Juexia rolled his joints, lifted his bound wrists, and tried to bite at the last knot with his teeth. He explained, “I’m very flexible; I started learning how to dance all the way back in kindergarten.”

At this moment, vibrations sounded out from the cellphone in his pocket. At the same time, the same sound of vibration also resounded from Pei Tingsong’s side. 

Putting aside the knot for the time being, Fang Juexia took out his cellphone with his bound hands and lowered his head to unlock it.

The screen lit up, and a sentence popped out—

[Escape For Your Life: Hello player, welcome to the card drawing segment. Your role in this round of games is….]

The text disappeared, and two cards appeared on the screen. One was a picture of a knight in black armor, while the other was that of a shining white knight.

[Double-faced knight.]

[Please select your camp.]