CH 40

Chapter 40 – Hidden Door

My little pet accidentally scratched me

The next second, after Pei Tingsong posed his question, the AI locks on both the white gate and the black gate answered simultaneously, “No.”

Pei Tingsong stepped back, looked at Fang Juexia, and pointed at the white door. “Then this one is the real exit.”

So that’s how it was. Fang Juexia now understood; he let them answer with each other’s answers, and the AI who only told the truth would answer with the lie that the other AI would say, while the AI who only uttered falsehood must lie about the truthful door’s answer. Both their answers would then be consistent and always contrary to the facts. A positive answer would mean that this door was the false exit, and a negative answer would indicate that this is the real exit. Using this way, you could find the real door by asking only one question.

“Congratulations, correct answer.” With a click, the white door opened out automatically. “Please leave the clinic.”

Xia Xiqing stretched. “Let me see who escaped their rooms?”

Fang Juexia walked out after him. Outside of their room was a small reception hall with elegant furnishings. There was an open door on the left side, and a showcase embedded into the wall on the right, with paintings and medals hanging from it. Directly opposite them was the reception hall’s door, which was marked with the sign of the final exit.

It seemed that as long as you could get out of this room, the game would be over.

As soon as he exited, he saw a tall figure—it was Zhou Ziheng, the person he had met on the campus of P University. Right next to him stood their senior brother Shang Sirui, and the two of them seemed to be examining something. 

Hearing Xia Xiqing’s voice, Zhou Ziheng turned his head and smiled at him. “You came out.”

Shang Sirui first saw Xia Xiqing walk out in front. “Xiqing!” Soon, he also noticed Pei Tingsong and Fang Juexia, who were following behind Xia Xiqing, and said, “It turns out that you guys were all locked in together ah.”

Fang Juexia nodded, but accidentally glanced and caught sight of Zhou Ziheng tidying up Xia Xiqing’s mic, and then saw Zhou Ziheng take advantage of Shang Sirui’s current posture, which was blocking the camera lens, to embrace Xia Xiqing’s waist for a second. Fang Juexia blinked several times after seeing this, then hastily turned his face, walked quickly towards the sofa, and sat down like a little robot with rusty limbs.

Noticing his strange behavior, Pei Tingsong, who was behind him, opened his mouth and asked, “Hey, what are you doing?”

Fang Juexia shook his head. “Nothing.”

Pei Tingsong had noticed long ago the direction he had just been looking in, so he also glanced over there, and after understanding the situation immediately, laughed rudely as he sat down with him.

“Who are you laughing at?” Fang Juexia asked him.

“Who else can I be laughing at but you ah?” Pei Tingsong could clearly see that he really didn’t understand the situation and felt even more amused. “You’re not about to tell me that you don’t know the relationship between them ba.”

“I know ah.” Fang Juexia showed an ‘I understand very clearly’ expression while saying this. “Last season, weren’t they just…just a CP?”

“CP? How long have you been disconnected from the Internet?” Pei Tingsong laughed so hard his stomach hurt, and then he suddenly fell on Fang Juexia’s shoulder. Fang Juexia felt puzzled and tried to push him away, but Pei Tingsong grabbed his wrist and pulled him towards his shoulder instead. His palm was forced to cover the scene of Pei Tingsong’s mouth and his own reddening ears as they met.

“They are really in love.”

Pei Tingsong’s low voice twisted up a warm air current, and giant waves started shifting under the iceberg. 

In-in love?

With that, Pei Tingsong tossed Fang Juexia’s hand aside, leaned against the sofa, and looked at him sideways, while wearing a smile on his face the whole time. Fang Juexia’s face was filled with shock, and he also looked like he couldn’t quite dare to believe it. He turned his head and stared at Pei Tingsong with wide eyes, which only served to make Pei Tingsong feel that this was even more interesting.

“Is what you’re saying true?”

Pei Tingsong stuck up three fingers in an okay gesture.

Fang Juexia breathed out a deep breath and subconsciously rubbed his neck. He felt that this was unimaginable and asked, “Then… does everyone know?”

“Not necessarily before.” Pei Tingsong added with a smile, “Now the entire world should know.”

He complained that Fang Juexia was the very last person to know.

Fang Juexia frowned slightly. “That’s because I haven’t been online for a very long time.”

“I know.” Pei Tingsong shrugged. “I mentioned it at the beginning, about Xiqing Ge’s public announcement of his relationship before, but you didn’t notice.”

“I noticed, but I thought you were referring to someone else. I didn’t expect it to be your university senior…” Fang Juexia couldn’t help but turn his head, wanting to look at them. He didn’t expect that as soon as he turned his head, he would see Xia Xiqing hugging his shoulders from behind the sofa. “Little Serious, how are your ears so red?”

After being rubbed up against just once, Fang Juexia immediately shot up from the sofa. Without saying a word, he looked up to see Zhou Ziheng’s expression. 

Unexpectedly, Zhou Ziheng was also amused and was actually laughing at this. Even so, he preserved his upright image, and walked over to pull Xia Xiqing away. “Alright, don’t tease him anymore.”

No matter how Shang Sirui looked at this scene, he felt it was strange; over on the sofa were two people, and over by his side were another two people, with only him being left all alone. “During the promotions for this season, didn’t they say there were going to be six people? Where is my little companion?”

“You don’t have a little companion,” Pei Tingsong mocked, “Single Domination SSR card.”

The two people then started creating an uproar, and Fang Juexia, who felt a bit flustered, wandered around the hall, in an attempt to ease his emotions after finding out this juicy piece of gossip.

Turning around, he stood in front of the last door alone. This door also didn’t have a lock, instead, having a display screen embedded into it. Just as he was about to touch it, to light up the display, another hand reached out to it first. Looking back, it was Xia Xiqing’s.

“This kind of door can usually only be opened after all the clues and the plot has been cleared.”

Fang Juexia nodded. The display screen showed what looked like a 6×6 chessboard, with 36 small squares all painted in different colors; it was similar to the painting they had seen in the consultation room before, but each grid here was of the same general size.

Xia Xiqing saw the question hanging above the grid and read it out loud, “Please select a button from the grid below. Note that if you make a wrong choice, you will need to wait for an hour before making the second choice.”

“Again the same.” He raised his eyebrows impatiently. “The answer must be hidden here somewhere. It’s impossible for them to want us to just guess at it randomly.”

Fang Juexia noticed a gray X in the lower right hand corner of the screen, and realised that it wasn’t that noticeable under the white light being emitted by the screen.

Zhou Ziheng also seemed to have joined the camp of ‘Poking fun at Shang Sirui’. He was even suggesting that Shang Sirui should pull in the members of his own group to play together with them next time. Just like Pei Tingsong and Fang Juexia, however things turned out, at least his own bandmates would also be there on the ticket.

Shang Sirui faced off against Zhou Ziheng and Pei Tingsong all on his own, and looked like he was actually having fun. “I’m just not going to, I want to keep my solo character. I won’t have a partner; I’ll be the number one golden bachelor of the entertainment industry.”

Pei Tingsong clapped before putting his palms on Shang Sirui’s head. “Vow to be single x2.”

Just as their argument was heating up, the room was filled with the sound of the program’s announcement voice declaring, “Please note, the last player has escaped from their initialization room.”

“Yi?” Shang Sirui looked completely confused.

Pei Tingsong released Shang Sirui’s head from in-between his hands.

Zhou Ziheng also frowned and asked, “There are still other doors here?”

Just when everyone was confused, a sound suddenly came from the showcase wall, and a door-shape from the wall was pushed open.

“So it turns out that this is an invisible door!” Shang Sirui clicked his tongue several times and commented, “The props group is really powerful, too rich.”

From the invisible door’s room came a tall girl, wearing a stiff black coat, with a shirt and riding pants inside, a pair of high leather boots on her feet and long hair that trailed over her shoulders, while her eyebrows and eyes carried a heroic air.

“Hello, I’m Zhai Ying.” She lowered her head a little, then raised her head again. “It looks like I’m the last player.”

Shang Sirui felt she looked familiar. “Ah, I know. You’re the leader of Astar’s new girl group, aren’t you?”

Zhai Ying nodded.

Pei Tingsong instinctively looked at Fang Juexia, and noticed that the other party didn’t seem to have any response to this. Fang Juexia also realized that Pei Tingsong was looking at him and understood what he wanted to ask, so he directly shook his head at him, expressing that he didn’t know this person. 

Fang Juexia seldom had contact with the girl group trainees before leaving Astar, but he did pretty much recognize some of them. However, he didn’t really know this Zhai Ying; maybe she only entered Astar after he left, or maybe she was an airborne, like Pei Tingsong.

He just found it interesting that the resources that Liang Ruo had strenuously worked so hard to grab had, in the end, ended up with his own company’s junior sister. In light of this, Zhai Ying wasn’t someone who would be afraid of the difficulty of the script at all.

“Now that everyone is here, let’s sit down and check the plot ba.” Xia Xiqing took the lead in sitting down in front of the sofa, then he took out the sheet detailing his medical record, and put it on the coffee table. “The three of us have already discussed it briefly before. To save time, I’ll tell everyone about it again, and whatever I miss, Juexia can add in.”

“My room was probably a waiting room. Just now, I asked Sirui and Ziheng, and the structure of the three rooms we were in was the same, but the details weren’t, and these two people’s rooms were interlinked. Anyway, I think they were all waiting rooms. Juexia and Xiao Pei’s initialization room was the consultation room. Xiao Pei is playing the role of a psychologist, and Juexia was the first patient to see the doctor.”

Juexia nodded, and based on his words, took out the appointment form to show everyone. “This is the clue we found in the consultation room. If there’s not something we’re missing, then everyone’s character’s names should be found on it.”

[Reservation form:

Teacher Yan

Zaozao

Zoe

Xiao Xi]

Shang Sirui glanced at it and said, “It really has me yi. My character is the lead singer of a band, and his name is Zoe. There was a guitar bag in the room where I started, and there was also a flyer for our band’s performance.” Saying that, he took out the leaflet and put it on the coffee table. Pei Tingsong picked it up and looked at it; it had a very obvious underground-band style going on. “FactorX bar, 8:00 p.m., special invitation for the first spring performance of the band ‘Together’.”

Shang Sirui flipped to another pamphlet and said, “Oh, yes, this is my medical record.”

His medical record was similar to Xia Xiqing’s, with his symptoms noted on it, but his symptoms were different— mainly being manic anxiety, decline in memory, and a certain degree of anorexia.

Seeing that he had taken out his medical records, Xia Xiqing also took out his own medical records and Zaozao’s suicide note, and gave a general account about them. After that, he looked at Zhou Ziheng and said, “What about yours?”

Zhou Ziheng picked up a schoolbag from the armrest of the sofa. “This is the schoolbag that was in my room. There are some college-level physics and astronomy textbooks, and a note written to me by someone else, about an appointment to go study together tonight with me.”

As soon as he said that, Pei Tingsong immediately chuckled, and then Shang Sirui, while suppressing his smile, went ahead and high-fived Pei Tingsong. Fang Juexia didn’t get it at first, but soon remembered that Zhou Ziheng and Xia Xiqing’s CP name was ZiXi.

Zhou Ziheng cleared his throat and took out the note. There was indeed such a sentence in the note—

[Xiao Xi, let’s go study together in classroom 2 tonight ba, same place.]

“This is my medical record. It seems that my problems aren’t small, I suffer from weak nerves and paranoia.”

Shang Sirui would make use of every opportunity. “It’s what you get for studying quantum mechanics.”

Zhou Ziheng contended, “There is no such thing.”

Shang Sirui also pointed to the paper on top of the textbook. “Oh, yes, this is it. You can see what parallel universes and multi-universes he looks at all day long, and it must be because of reading all this that he grew paranoid.”

Fang Juexia thought out loud, “So one of you is Xiao Xi, the other one is Zoe, but we still have one…” Then he looked at Zhai Ying, who was the last to escape from the initialization room.

Zhai Ying said quietly, “I wanted to say something at the start of Xiqing Ge’s speech, but I ended up waiting for you guys to finish talking first.” She pointed to the door to her room. “My room isn’t a waiting room. If you guys want to see it, you can go in and have a look. As for my role…” She glanced at the appointment form. “It’s not that of a patient with an appointment.”

Fang Juexia looked at the now open invisible door, and the room behind it seemed dim and dark. He had originally thought that the script had clearly designated roles, that was, the psychologist and his patients, but now it seems that it wasn’t so simple. The reason why the program group had created the door to her room as invisible must be to indicate the peculiarity of Zhai Ying’s role.

Zhai Ying took out a letter and put it on the coffee table. “This is the clue I got after unlocking the password for my room. It’s an anonymous letter.”

Xia Xiqing opened the letter and read it out loud, “Hello detective, what I want to ask you to do this time is to find a fugitive. He is steeped in crime and is very good at hiding his identity. All I know is that his last appearance was at the most famous private psychological clinic in the city. Please be sure to find him. Yours truly.”

After this letter was read out loud, all of their previous suppositions were pretty much overturned.

Shang Sirui sighed and commented, “Wow, a female detective. So cool ah.”

“So, there is still a criminal here,” Pei Tingsong said.

Hearing this point, Shang Sirui clapped his hands. “I said it before ma, the program group always conforms the killers’ identity with murderers and criminals ah, but here, everyone is either a doctor or a patient, and I kept wondering how we could find the killer. Now, this makes some sense.”

Zhou Ziheng said, “This letter points out that the fugitive should be in this clinic, so doesn’t that mean that one of us here is the fugitive?”

“That’s why Zhai Ying’s room was behind the wall.” Pei Tingsong glanced at it. “I think that if we want to get a clear view on the situation now, I’m afraid we’ll have to go to her room to look around again.”

Zhai Ying lifted her hand and concurred, “I agree. Anyway, right now, only my room is different.”

So they decided to first go to the detective’s room to check for clues. Fang Juexia deliberately slowed down his pace; if the room was really short on light, he would need someone to stand in front of him to ensure that no accidents happened. 

As he walked to the door step by step, Fang Juexia confirmed his conjecture from before. The room was indeed very dark, and although there seemed to be a faint light source in the interior, in Fang Juexia’s case, he pretty much couldn’t see anything. 

He heard Shang Sirui’s voice say, “It’s so dark in here, it’s a little scary. How could they let a girl start in this kind of room ah?”

Zhai Ying said lightly, “I am not afraid.”

He also heard Zhou Ziheng’s voice, as he spoke very quietly, “Are you ok? Turn around and go out, when I come out, I’ll tell you what was there.”

“No need, the door is open.” Xia Xiqing replied.

Fang Juexia stood at the door and held the door frame, then took a deep breath. Just as he was about to step in, his shoulder was caught.

“Don’t stand in the entranceway ah.”

It was Pei Tingsong’s voice.

He could feel Pei Tingsong’s slow steps approach him, and his foresight enabled him to feel the fluctuating air currents that were disturbed when Pei Tingsong reached out his hand towards him, and his sensitive senses allowed him to clearly feel the strength being put into Pei Tingsong’s grasp on his shoulder—all of this made it seem as if he had grasped his breath instead.

His heart suddenly calmed down, with every heartbeat moving with the second hand of his internal little clock, and he could hear it loud and clear in the dark. 

“I started right in front of this table.” Zhai Ying took the others inside and headed towards the light that looked very weak.

Shang Sirui was curious. “What mechanism did your room have?”

“A code lock cracked with Morse code,” explained Zhai Ying as she opened the drawer, and there was a safe in the drawer. “This safe has a mechanical lock and two passwords. You have to collect the pieces of the puzzle scattered in this room to open it. Once you open it, you’ll find a book inside.” She opened the door of the safe, took out a book from it, and put it on the table. “The key to the room was hidden in the book.”

Shang Sirui couldn’t help but sigh emotionally. “This mechanism looks so difficult ah.”

Xia Xiqing’s attention was attracted by the wall the desk rested against. Some notes were pasted on that wall, on which were written the names of all the characters being played by the other players. In the middle of it all were some arrows and lines interconnecting them all. 

With Pei Tingsong’s guidance, Fang Juexia also came to the table. He held the edge of the table and looked at the character relationship diagram displayed on the wall under that faint light.

Shang Sirui teased them, “You two are practically stuck together, Xiao Pei has changed ah.”

“Have I?” Pei Tingsong smiled.

“When your whole group appears together, you two aren’t actually so sticky. Once you two come out alone though, you keep following after each other like shadows. And you’re even denying it.”

“That’s because…” Pei Tingsong thought for a while and said, “We each form one-sixth of our group, but when it’s only the two of us that come out, we become one-half of a group, so of course, we have to take care of each other.” Pei Tingsong gripped Fang Juexia’s shoulder and asked, “Right, other half?”

In the dark, Fang Juexia nodded. “That’s right.”

After joking around, they once again focused their attention on the relationship diagram left by the detective.

“Teacher Yan, high school math teacher,” Xia Xiqing went down the line, “is Zaozao’s teacher.”

Zaozao had more than one arrow connected to her, and the other one pointed to Zoe, with the word “fan” written on the arrow, thereby describing her relationship with the band’s lead singer.

“So Zaozao is Zoe’s fan?” Shang Sirui, who played Zoe, poked at Xia Xiqing with a big smile. “Little fan.”

Xia Xiqing grinned and looked at the picture again. “The college student studying astronomy is Zaozao’s neighbor, and he was the one who introduced Dr. Tian to Zaozao.”

Fang Juexia stared at all these lines, and realized that the ones who had the most lines surrounding them were Zaozao and Dr. Tian. This high school girl had become one of the key characters in connecting all the other characters, and they were all also patients of Dr. Tian.

“This picture was left behind by the detective.” Zhou Ziheng analyzed, “When we regard this character relationship diagram as one of the clues, we are imperceptibly also accepting the impression of the detective having a positive image. It’s relevant, but we’re still not sure whether the detective character is reliable or not.”

His words acted as a reminder to everyone. Shang Sirui immediately nodded and added, “That’s right, previously, the program group often liked to add this kind of a twist, with the character who looked like a good person finally turning out to be the big boss.”

Pei Tingsong smiled, put his hand on his shoulder, and joked, “Wasn’t that you? Senior brother.”

Shang Sirui was about to hit him, but then he discovered this person was wearing a glove on that hand. Upon seeing that, he remembered that Pei Tingsong had also been wearing gloves during the charity party in Shanghai, so he asked curiously, “Why do you always wear gloves these days? Doesn’t it feel uncomfortable? “

Hearing this, Fang Juexia’s attention shifted away from the relationship map on the wall. He couldn’t help but listen in on their conversation, fearing that the truth of his drunken behavior would be exposed. Although he knew that that wouldn’t happen; at the very least, Pei Tingsong wouldn’t expose him while they were in front of the camera.

“Ah, that.” Pei Tingsong’s voice was understated as he explained, “My little pet accidentally scratched me and broke the skin on the back of my hand. It looks a bit bad on camera, so the stylist gave me gloves.”

As Fang Juexia listened with one ear, his head lowered unconsciously, and his hand was grasping the edge of the table.

“Really? Then you have to go to the hospital for an injection.” Shang Sirui wanted to pull the glove off. “Shall I see if it’s serious?”

“It’s not serious. It’s a pretty small wound, and medicine has been applied to it.”

Shang Sirui patted him on the shoulder. “Ah, that’s what pets are like. My friend’s hands always end up scratched whenever he gives his master cat a bath. So fierce, and not obedient at all.”

“Is that so?” Pei Tingsong chuckled. “My little master is pretty obedient.”