The answers that came from the more experienced players gave the newbies the opportunity to march to their own beat for the first time since encountering Owl and being led by its rhythm time after time. It was like traveling on a ship in dense fog that finally dispersed, turning around, and catching side of shore.
Right, there was still the shore!
Xu Wang slapped a hand against his forehead. “I almost forgot!” He scooted up close to the purple prison and asked Long Legs, “What does the third stage entail?”
The other man unexpectedly shook his head. “I won’t tell you right now.”
“Why not now?” Xu Wang raised a brow, “When then?”
“When it’s almost 5 PM.” Long Legs went on matter-of-factly, “According to our agreement, we give you information and you don’t send us back into reality before time is up. Now we’ve given you info, but who knows whether you’ll really stick to your end of the deal? The control is in your hands, so we obviously have to maintain some kind of leverage to protect ourselves.”
He gave an easygoing smile, but it also seemed to say, Come, let’s all get rich together; don’t play tricks.
Skinny Pole’s sneakiness was written on his face, but Long Legs’ was hidden beneath his composure. Xu Wang had a sneaking suspicion that in real life, this guy must be one of those devious businessmen.
“Brother Xu, Brother Wu, I’m back,” came Kuang Jinxin’s voice from the ‘rabbit hole.’ Following his words, he came crawling out of the tunnel, arms and legs moving nimbly like a rodent.
Seeing that he came alone, Wu Sheng asked him, “Where’s Old Qian?”
Kuang Jinxin shot a look at the prisoners in the circle and carefully adjusted his words while they were in the presence of their opponents. “Er, about that, he’s still chatting it up with the pilot!”
In the cockpit.
Qian Ai loomed over the back of the pilot and co-pilot’s chairs, studying the flight route like an overseer. Once in a while, he knocked on one of their shoulders and said, “Hey hey, you’re going off-course, that way. Why would you fly into the clouds?”
The co-pilot wanted to turn back, but as if his neck was trapped, he could only vent whilst facing forward. “Please open your eyes wide and take a look here, my hands aren’t even moving, we’re on auto-pilot.”
The pilot’s movements were also limited so that he could only stare off into the distance, and he was similarly vexed. “Sir, we already followed your instructions and made the announcement over the PA, so would you mind leaving the cockpit? Not for any other reason, but so we can focus on flying this plane safely.”
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.
“I didn’t even do anything, besides, as you said, it’s on auto-pilot,” Qian Ai muttered, slightly thrown off since they were two versus one.
“Dea sbe rajcvlcu yftlcv er ulnfr er j iba bo qgfrregf, jcv la’r fjrs ab wjxf wlrajxfr lc tlut qgfrregf rlaejalbcr, ilxf revvfcis rklamtlcu boo jeab-qliba jcv atf qijcf nffglcu boo lar vfrlucjafv qjat, mjerlcu j ibrr lc rqffv jcv jialaevf—”
“Gbc’a atgfjafc wf!” Hljc Cl tjv rajgafv rkfjalcu qgboerfis.
The copilot forcibly turned his head around, enduring immense pain. “You’re the one threatening us!!”
There wasn’t anything wrong with the pilot or the co-pilot’s necks. Rather, it was the fact that Mr. Qian here had attached a “heavy lock” over their heads.
The object imprisoning them resembled shackles used in ancient times, except a lot heavier and thicker. They were three-dimensional wooden Chinese characters—One was the character 囡 for ‘child,’ and the other was the character 回 for ‘return.’ The wooden characters had been placed over the pilot and co-pilot’s heads so that it was almost impossible for them to move their head.
Most importantly, Qian Ai’s senses were connected to the characters and he was able to sense whenever someone tried to take them off or destroy them.
This was Qian Ai’s reward from the first stage, <[ATK] Words of Pearls>. In other words, the ability to materialise Chinese characters out of mid-air and turn them into weapons just by shouting.
The drawback was, while Qian Ai was capable of sensing the characters and making them disappear, his ability to control the characters only happened the instant he made them. If he wanted them to move, or to use them as a sword or shackles, his only opportunity was when he shouted the characters out.
But hindsight was always clearer. When he’d tentatively tried this item in the beginning, the only thought that had crossed his mind was—Who the hell could have guessed the unimaginably queer usage of this item based off its name?!?!
Qian Ai “gently” helped the co-pilot turn his head without injuring himself.
The co-pilot however, was not impressed. “Couldn’t you have shouted out the character 口 (mouth)? Why did it have to be 回?”
Qian Ai knocked him unceremoniously on the head. “With such a big mouth, would it still work as shackles? It would just be a giant necklace, for heaven’s sake!”
Even though the items were clearly not anything of the natural world, both the pilot and the co-pilot had accepted their existence without much struggle. Qian Ai could only conclude that as, “People of a lunatic world are all a bunch of lunatics.”
“From now, until we land, the plane will be on auto-pilot? You won’t have to pilot manually?” Qian Ai asked all of a sudden.
“We have to during landing. Even though the auto-pilot can land the plane, there are lots more variables, such as turbulence, air currents, and the environment on the ground. A tiny error could cause a huge accident, so it’s better to land manually.”
The mechanics of flight were beyond Qian Ai’s understanding, but he believed the pilot’s words.
He took a deep breath and shouted out: “000000—————”
If you had to come up with one great advantage to this item of his, it was the fact that its effect was long-lasting. The net they’d been attacked with, the casting into the winds, and even Wu Sheng’s whirlwinds had all been one-time items. They were powerful, but could only be used a single time. His item was a hassle to use—impractical, really, and its attack power was hard to predict—but the one good thing about it was as soon as you shouted, it was there.
As for when the item’s effect would run out; whether its time limit was based off the stage duration, the number of characters created, or some arbitrary time limit… who cares? There was that line of poetry: Take what blessings of life that comes, why dwell¹?
Following Qian Ai’s holler, six wooden zeroes materialised out of thin air as if the sky had suddenly started raining numbers. He fixed his gaze on them, brows creased in concentration as he mentally willed the objects to do his bidding.
All at once, the zeroes stopped mid-descent and separated. They floated over to the pilot and the co-pilot, three on each person, imprisoning them within their seats from their waist down.
Shackles get!
The bomb’s timer started at four hours, which meant that the flight had to last at least that long, but this was Owl. Who knew whether they’d suddenly be beset by some “emergency landing” situation or the like. And so, it was better to be safe than sorry.
“I’ll come set you free when it’s time to land. And also, I’m not a bad person, I really am a righteous, hot-blooded young man!” Qian Ai exclaimed. He didn’t bother waiting to see if either pilot understood him; at the very least, he’d satisfied his own urge to explain himself, so without further ado, he lifted the round piece of glass back up and crawled back into the “rabbit hole,” making his way through the tunnel to the food service area.
When he got there, he called out, “Wu Sheng!” to the only person he caught a glimpse of from below. When the other man peered down, he felt his nerves tighten. “Where are the other two?” he asked guardedly.
Qian Ai’s paranoia was always as bountiful as his figure.
“Deep inside the food service area, they’ve been there for a while,” Wu Sheng explained, then added, “They’re either coming up with some brilliant plan or secretly eating from the food carts.”
“Do I need to come up?”
“That’s an incredibly illogical question.” Wu Sheng knelt and stared at Qian Ai disapprovingly like a homeroom teacher reprimanding a hopeless student. “There’s three more hours until the explosion. Besides us, there’s 92 passengers and 6 flight attendants. If we start from the front of the plane and question everyone, we’d be able to spend at most 1.8 minutes on each person. If we have multiple people question the passengers at the same time, the total interrogation time doubles depending on how many people speak to them—”
“Enough, I get it!” Qian Ai interjected before crawling out of the hole at the speed of lightning (the first time in his life he’d ever moved so fast.)
His quick understanding and actions made Wu Sheng nod in satisfaction.
Qian Ai smiled at him, then strained his neck towards the food service area. “Xu Wang, Xiao Kuang, come out if you’re done in there, we don’t have enough time!”
(Most importantly, I miss you guys…. TAT)
As if they heard his internal plea, the other two popped out not a minute later. There was nothing in their hands, but just judging from their attitudes, it was clear that they’d decided on some sort of “secret battle strategy.” They approached the purple prison, whereupon Xu Wang patted Kuang Jinxin’s shoulders deliberately and said solemnly, “I’m leaving this to you.”
“Leave it to me!” Kuang Jinxin slapped a hand against his chest.
At ease, Xu Wang noticed Qian Ai had returned and assumed that to mean the cockpit was under control. Without asking what exactly happened in there, he laid out the plan. “Xiao Kuang will watch these four while the three of us look for the password.”
“No problem,” Qian Ai said. “Where should I start?”
Xu Wang didn’t reply; rather, he looked towards Wu Sheng—the man completely lacked external communication skills, but when it came to strategising, he was worth trusting.
Wu Sheng took over eagerly as if he’d been raring for the opportunity to finally go ahead and immediately said, “Just as I said before, we have 180 minutes—no—178 minutes left at present. There are 96 people. The three of us will start from three separate starting points, and let’s try to minimise our talking with each person to about 4 minutes. That way, we’ll have 50 minutes left to make deductions and disarm the bomb. If it’s alright with you guys,” he swept a glance across the plane cabin until his gaze rested on Xu Wang, “Old Qian will interview first class, I’ll interview business class, and you interview economy. If the two of us finish early and don’t have anything, we’ll come join you in economy and keep interviewing.”
Xu Wang didn’t have any objections, but still: “Why am I delegated to economy, where it’s the most chaotic with the most people?” he asked, confused.
“Why do you guys all keep asking such stupid questions today?” Wu Sheng was equally confounded. “You never shut up, so you talk fast.”
Qian Ai turned and left for first class before the former head of their school sports committee caught the gleeful look on his face. He felt a lot better knowing he wasn’t the only one getting roasted by the class representative.
As Qian Ai went off to first class in high spirits and Wu Sheng went off to business class after getting kicked in the leg and Xu Wang started off in economy after regretting that he only kicked Wu Sheng one time, the young handsome man in the purple prison suddenly shouted: “If you notice anything off, stop talking immediately, don’t stay—”
He really went all out with his shouting, so that even Qian Ai heard him from where he was walking in business class. In fact, even if he’d already made it to first class, he would’ve heard the man.
His words rang clearest in Xu Wang’s ears, and the worry in the warning also struck him the sharpest. But given the warning had come from their opponent, whether it was true or not was up in the air, not to mention they really didn’t have any more time to waste on those four.
But it was always better to proceed with caution and keep one’s ears open.
Thanks for the chapter!
thanks for the chapter! <3
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Thanks for the chapter!! (˘︶˘).｡*♡
Thanks for the chapter!!! (´∩｡• ᵕ •｡∩`)