Mo Yi’s heart skipped a beat.
He used his forefinger and thumb to pinch the hard key buried deep in the internal organs, and pulled his hand out of the cold belly of the corpse with a little force.
There was a sticky rubbing sound, and the smell of blood and rot in the room became stronger.
Mo Yi held his breath slightly to suppress the surging nausea in his stomach, and then shone a flashlight at his hand.
Amidst the dark red blood and internal organs, a small key lay quietly on his palm, reflecting a slight halo from his flashlight.
Its surface was not smooth, and it even felt uneven. Dark maroon marks were deeply imprinted on the key, and it was impossible to tell whether it was rust or blood.
Mo Yi struggled to open his backpack with one hand. He pulled out several tissues and cleaned the blood off of his palm before carefully wiping the key.
The full appearance of the rusty key appeared in front of his eyes.
Mo Yi scrutinised it over and over for a while but found nothing special, so he slipped it in his pocket.
He glanced down at his watch. There was not much time left until the time limit of ten minutes, and it was time to find Edwin.
Mo Yi rose to his feet. Making a sudden movement after crouching for so long made his eyes darken slightly, and he blinked his eyes vigorously before stretching his stiff legs, and then walked towards the door.
He opened it and the dim light in the corridor instantly streamed in from the widening gap.
Familiar scenes reappeared before his eyes, the long and narrow corridor, the dull green wallpapers, and the blurry window.
Mo Yi’s gaze fell on the blurry glass.
The handprint he left earlier was still on it. The foggy white mist had nearly completely disappeared, leaving only half of his palm lines on the cold surface of the glass.
And through the glass, Mo Yi could see Jiang Yuanrou standing stiffly in the corridor. Her petite figure was facing away from him, her back and limbs tense while she stood in place in the middle of the corridor without moving forward or retreating, as if her attention had been attracted by something.
Edwin’s voice came from behind, and his immature voice sounded a little eager. “Have you found the key?”
Mo Yi turned his head and glanced at the tightly closed door panel. The mottled door panel was of various colours, resembling an old and dirty canvas.
A thin childlike voice came through the cracks in the welded steel plates under the door, and it sounded a little more anxious than before.
“Did you find it?!”
Mo Yi gave a ‘mn’ of affirmation. “But how could I be sure that you would fulfil our promise after I open the door?”
Edwin’s voice turned sinister. “You can’t, but without me, she will surely die.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
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“Yxjs atfc…”
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“But… which key is it?”
Edwin was obviously choked for a while, and he didn’t make a sound for a long time. After a few seconds, he spoke grimly. “What do you mean?”
Mo Yi, “I found three keys in that room, which one is the key to open your door?”
His fingers reached into his trouser pockets, slowly picking up the three keys inside. Two were the copper keys and the silver key used on -2F, and one of them was the rusty key found inside the human corpse in the room just now.
The sound of clanging metal rang in his pocket.
Mo Yi continued without changing his expression. “I found one in the belly of a doll, one in the belly of a mouse, and one in a human corpse.”
Edwin’s voice suddenly rose, and he cried in disbelief.
“How could there be three? Impossible! Impossible!”
Mo Yi had some ideas in his mind—although the bosses on the previous two floors were limited by the physical conditions of each floor, they seemed to have no communication abilities, so Mo Yi was unable to confirm the extent of abilities of this ‘Edwin’ who could communicate and even negotiate with him.
But if Edwin was unable to dispel even this simple lie of his, then the person who was locked inside the door probably did not have the kind of control over this corridor that he feared.
This would in turn prove two things.
One would be that the Jiang Yuanrou seen in that window was fake, and the other would be that… Edwin had seen Jiang Yuanrou before.
Mo Yi already had concrete guesses in his mind, but he remained calm on the surface, and deliberately asked, “Or… should I try them one by one?”
The atmosphere behind the locked door turned even more oppressively sour. There was a dead silence in the narrow corridor. After a while, Edwin responded in a gloomy voice.
“Don’t use it for now…”
Sure enough.
Mo Yi lowered his eyes knowingly—according to Edwin’s paranoid nature and fickleness, since he found that the development of the matter was completely different from what he imagined, he naturally didn’t dare to try things out lightly, for fear that it was a trap.
Furthermore, if what Edwin told him was true, then the bosses on the other two floors were Edwin’s other two personalities, and the relationship between them was not harmonious… and this rift between them would just make it more difficult for Edwin to see through Mo Yi’s lie.
The corners of Mo Yi’s lips curled up slightly, but there was still a look of embarrassment on his face. He seemed to be pondering for a while before he continued.
“Then Yuanrou…”
There was silence inside the door.
Mo Yi hit the iron while it was hot, and said in a somewhat eager voice, “I, I can go to several other places on this floor to find the whereabouts of other keys. If you can guarantee Yuanrou’s safety during this period…”
This proposal was very reasonable.
Edwin’s voice came from inside the door. The childlike and tender voice combined with his gloomy tone made it sound strange through the thick door.
“Go, but if you try anything else… don’t forget that your companion is still in my hands.”
Mo Yi’s face remained unchanged, but his tone turned eager and uneasy.
“I, I know.”
Immediately afterwards, he spoke hesitantly and somewhat weakly. “Do you have any places you find suspicious? Or rooms where you think the key might be? I would at least need some area to search in…?”
Mo Yi held his breath slightly, waiting for Edwin to step into this trap.
The instance gave him too few clues and the corridors on this floor were far too complicated. Blindly searching would waste too much time, which was a luxury they did not have, so he had to try fishing for information from the boss…
After all, the place where the key may be hidden must have a special status in this instance, and it may very well be the key point of this breakthrough.
Mo Yi’s heartstrings tensed—
After a short silence, Edwin’s childish voice sounded again, his tone cold and gloomy.
“There is a room in the other corridor… If there is no key in that previous room, then the other possibility would only be there.”
Mo Yi continued to ask calmly. “The layout of this floor is too complicated. I might not be able to find it with so little information…”
There was another gloomy silence.
Next, there was a ‘squeak’ from rusty metal, followed by a dirty ball of paper tossed out from under the metal partition. It rolled twice on the thin and greasy carpet, then came to a stop on the ground.
Mo Yi raised his lips restrainedly. He stepped forward a few steps, bent down and picked up the paper ball from the carpet.
With the rustling of paper against paper, his fingers deftly unfolded and smoothed the ball of paper, revealing the crumpled paper surface.
A crooked simple map was drawn on it with crayons. The lines were immature, and it looked like a child’s drawing.
Mo Yi rolled his eyes. However, he knew that this was the best result he could get, so he accepted it as soon as he saw it.
“Please protect Yuanrou. I, I will definitely come back as soon as possible.”
His voice was firm. There is a trace of urgency mixed in, and along with just the right amount of fear and anxiety, sounded very realistic.
After finishing speaking, Mo Yi stepped forward without hesitation and turned up the light of the flashlight to the highest level, before walking off quickly towards the depths of the corridor, leaving the closed door far behind him.
The light in front of him was getting dimmer, and the surroundings looked more and more ghostly under the flickering light of his flashlight. Heavy shadows swayed atop the dark green wallpaper, making the dark green butterflies look as though they were moving slowly.
Mo Yi roughly sketched the outline of the map drawn on the piece of paper in his mind, and then he speeded up his pace with ease, shuttling through the maze-like corridors.
The nearly identical corridors gave people some sort of visual fatigue, while the repeating similar scenes everywhere subconsciously numbed people’s attention.
Mo Yi lowered his head again to look at the crumpled paper in his hand, then slowly stood still.
A little further forward should be the room marked on the simple map.
He stared at the crooked lines on the paper for a few seconds. Next, he carefully smoothed and folded the paper, and stuffed it into his pocket.
After doing all this, Mo Yi raised his head and took a deep breath, then finally walked towards the depths of the shadowed corridor ahead.
A door was quietly inlaid at the end of the corridor. The paint surface on the wooden door was mottled and peeled off, making it look very old.
Unlike the rooms that Mo Yi passed by along the way, the door of this room was half-closed, and deep, lightless darkness seeped through the cracks of the door, as if something was peeping behind the door.
Mo Yi let out a breath slowly, then strode forward hastily.
He stretched a hand out to push the door open, but just when his cool fingers were about to touch the door panel, his movements stopped.
Mo Yi narrowed his eyes slightly. He changed the direction of his outstretched hand, and slid it down the side of the wooden door.
Following his movements, fine pieces of sawdust drifted down and floated under the beam of the flashlight, looking like falling dust, and the expected rough texture came along his fingertips—
This door had been destroyed by force …In other words, it was smashed open.
Moreover, the traces on it were very new, which meant that this should have just happened not long ago…
An expected name slowly came to Mo Yi’s mind.
Jiang Yuanrou.
Oh, I’m nervous
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