Gamers Are Fierce-Chapter 687 - 685: The Light Goes Out
Li Ang leaned against the elevator, standing in the corridor of the fifth floor and looking around. At the end of the corridor on the left side hung a round clock, indicating the current time was 11:23. The floor of the corridor was covered with a deep, dark red carpet, the wallpaper was pale red, and at intervals along the wall hung two flower-shaped orange lampshades, radiating a warm glow.
Behind Li Ang, the elevator, like the rest of the hotel, was filled with a retro ambiance. The floor in the elevator was made of aged wooden boards that creaked when stepped on. The inner walls of the elevator had three brass handrails, clean enough to reflect a person's face, positioned at an average person's waist level, ready to be gripped for support. The elevator doors were made of a thick, dull gold material, with rectangular windows on each side through which the interior of the elevator could be seen. Green marble tiles were installed around the outer frame of the elevator door. Above it was an arc-shaped brass indicator that resembled one-third of a clock face. When the elevator moved, the pointer on the indicator would turn, and the squares below would light up with white light, emitting a DING sound.
To the right of the elevator, a red fixed telephone was in place. This was supposed to be the only phone in the entire hotel, besides the one at the front desk, that could make outgoing calls, as mentioned in the lodging guide. Li Ang stepped forward, picked up the phone, and brought it to his ear, hearing a repeated BEEP-BEEP sound. In previous tests, the fixed phones on different floors could be used normally, allowing calls to any floor, room number, or the front desk. However, the front desk staff had gone missing, so there was no response when called.
Li Ang put down the phone and looked diagonally across from the elevator. There was the stairwell, marked with a green "EXIT" safety sign, through which the upper and lower floors could be accessed. However, considering the abnormal situations mentioned in the lodging guide, players would probably only enter the stairwell during a curfew in extreme situations. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎
"Hey! Can you hear me?" Li Ang stepped forward, pushed open the door of the stairwell, and shouted inside. The sound seemed to be absorbed by the cement walls, with no echo to be heard, let alone reaching the Plague Doctor upstairs or Mule downstairs. The hotel was exceptionally solid in construction and nearly impossible to destroy. It was untransformable by Alchemy and unable to conduct vibrations or even Divine Power. Li Ang lacked any effective means of communication—walkie-talkies were utterly useless here, and the vines, spores, or even hair he created would inexplicably wither and lose sensation after extending beyond ten meters from his body.
I can only stick to the original plan. He sighed, took out the key from his pocket, and unlocked Room 508 across from the elevator.
The room was dimly lit, but with the help of the corridor lighting, he could vaguely make out two curtains at the window at the far end of the room. Since the layout of the hotel rooms varied little, and the players had already searched the first and second floors, Li Ang nonchalantly reached for a three-rocker light switch next to the door frame and turned on the room's lights.
The living room of Room 508 was fairly spacious. It had a brown carpet, pale yellow-green wallpaper with a small floral pattern, and paintings on each wall. Each painting depicted different content. One showed a white-haired old woman in black clothes reading a hefty book to a group of similarly dressed children. The children's faces wore expressions of fascination and seriousness. This made Li Ang involuntarily recall a book titled "Baby's Quantum Physics," which he had shared at a school reading event many years ago in middle school. The book was written by an American popular science author and published by the Eastern University of Science and Technology Press. It had an adorable cover depicting a baby in diapers gazing at the stars. However, the content was outrageously absurd. It started with chapters on "Tangram—Proportional Patterning" and "Fun with Dots and Lines." Then, the following chapters suddenly jumped to "de Broglie waves," "operators, wave functions, and Hilbert space," without any transition, except for the sentence: "Alright, little baby, you've now mastered enough mathematical tools, let's start trying some new content~"
Heaven knows what the author of this popular science book and the publishing house responsible for it were thinking, Li Ang thought. How could 5-7-year-old kids possibly understand matrix mechanics?! At least eight years old would be required. Li Ang shook his head nostalgically, casting away the dumbfounded expressions of teachers and classmates from that book-sharing session.
Besides the oil painting of the old woman reading, other paintings depicted different scenes. One showed a sailing ship lost in a storm. Another featured a group of British nobles on horseback, leading hunting dogs and hunting in the woods. A third portrayed a young girl in a long dress sitting in a chair, her face obscured by a fan. Her specific features were unclear, but judging by her fair skin and sparkling eyes, she must have been quite beautiful. Li Ang took down the several oil paintings to check for secret passages or mechanisms behind them before rehanging them. In a corner of Room 508, there was a vertical beige floor lamp.
On the wooden table in the center of the living room, there was only a glass ashtray. It was exceptionally clean; touching it revealed no smears, and up close, there was no residual smell of smoke. It was just as pristine as the fireplace opposite the coffee table. To the left of the living room was the washroom: spacious, bright, and clean, with a bathtub and shower curtain. Li Ang tested it; hot water came out of the faucet, and there was no hair under the drain plug.
In front of the washroom was the master bedroom. The bedding was tidy, the pillows soft, and a flat-shaped alarm clock on the bedside table displayed the time as 11:34, the same as the clocks in the room and hallway. At the corner wall by the foot of the bed, there was a wooden table, on which sat an old-fashioned television—TVs in American hotels can show free or premium channels, including some rather "mature" programs. Li Ang picked up the remote and pressed the button, but the TV, though plugged in, did not turn on.
Alright, I really shouldn't have expected any different.
Li Ang tossed the remote onto the bed and walked over to the window, crouching slightly. The windows were grimy, as if coated with a thick layer of dust, completely obscuring the view outside. Knocking forcefully only produced a dull, faint THUD.
The window won't open, and the sound when knocking is very faint. I can't use the window to exchange information with the floors above and below, Li Ang muttered to himself as he stood up, walked back to the living room, and pulled open the refrigerator door.
Inside the refrigerator were more than a dozen beer bottles of various brands, droplets clinging to the glass, looking cool and tempting. As a qualified player, Li Ang naturally wouldn't consume food from the scenario world, especially not from such a bizarre hotel. Players' inventory slots would typically be filled with enough compressed food and clean water to last for two weeks or even a month. Li Ang himself no longer needed food, as he could maintain bodily functions with Divine Power. Even so, Li Ang opened a few beer bottles, wafted them under his nose, then inserted tendrils to test the liquid.
"The production date on the bottle is June 2007, with a one-year shelf life," Li Ang said to himself. "The beer hasn't gone off, and it tastes normal. If the beer and fridge are normal, then it must be within three years after '07 now... At least I know the time, though I don't know what use this information will be."
After a round of exploration, the time had reached 11:45. With the 00:11 curfew approaching, Li Ang walked back to the living room. He closed the room's main door and took out three bags filled with soil from his backpack. Using Alchemy, he created several hollow iron pipes, assembled them into a structure, and firmly blocked the main door. Unfortunately, the fixed phone in the elevator lobby had a limited cable length, and Alchemy couldn't affect it. Otherwise, he could have fixed the telephone wire to the floor and brought the corridor phone into the room to communicate with other floors. For now, there was nothing to do but wait quietly. Li Ang moved a stool over, seated himself in the living room, and silently gazed at the door reinforced with iron pipes.
In Room 1408 on the fourteenth floor, Bai Haozheng, dressed in a suit, muttered to himself, "Judging from the shelf life and quality of the liquor, it might be post-2007—but that could be meaningless. Every corner of the Dolphin Hotel oozes eeriness; it wouldn't be surprising if this place were an alien research base studying humans." He casually placed the opened beer bottle back in the refrigerator. His room was a luxury suite, far more spacious and well-appointed than those downstairs.
Before separating, the players had discussed their strategy for the night. No one was to sleep on the first night. Instead, they would first search their rooms for any notes mentioned in the lodging guide. If no notes were found, they would sit in their living rooms, watching the door and waiting for the curfew. If nothing abnormal happened during the curfew, they would search the rooms again for notes. In addition to compressed food, players also brought various medicines. These included painkillers, medication for cardiac arrest resuscitation, allergy treatments, and stimulants to stay alert even without sleep for several days and nights. This precaution was due to the possibility of aberrations occurring at the Dolphin Hotel at night. No player wanted to wake up and discover a pale child with pitch-black eyes, meowing like a cat, crouching at the foot of their bed.
Bai Haozheng had previously given a few stimulant pills to Danfei and Kafei, who hadn't brought any. As an intelligence analyst for the Special Affairs Bureau, he handled hundreds of pieces of intelligence daily. He was privy to far more secrets than brokers like Mule and had some understanding of the backgrounds of most people in this scenario.
The Black Holy Son on the thirteenth floor was South Korean. His mother had once been a so-called "shaman," capable of divination, exorcism, and predicting wealth; she was deeply connected with conglomerate elites and wielded considerable family influence. The Ghost of Hidden Eye on the twelfth floor, judging by his demeanor and gaze, was likely a servant or subordinate of the Black Holy Son. Danfei and Kafei, on the eleventh and tenth floors respectively, were likely Haitians from the Voodoo Black Witch Clan. The resident below them, Bob, was an American. Bai Haozheng had seen Bob's photo in a report on local gang conflicts in the United States; the organization this elderly Black man belonged to was closely associated with the Voodoo Black Witch Clan. As for 13MARK on the eighth floor, he was an underling of one of The Seven Warlords of Brazil, known as the "Ant King."
Seven Martial Seas... when did these Brazilians start enjoying such gimmicks, Bai Haozheng shook his head, and the image of Yuyi Xinzhong flashed in his mind. This East Asian girl, dressed as a sailor, was from the Japan Islands. Her real name was Mizuhara Yumi, and she worked for the Ninth Department of the Japan Islands' Bureau for the Investigation of the Unusual. This bureau often cooperated with the Special Affairs Bureau to tackle various abnormal events. They also occasionally exchanged personnel to share experiences, so they were quite familiar with each other.
The Plague Doctor on the sixth floor was a member of the Demon Scientist Alliance. Li Rising, on the fifth floor, had appeared in numerous Special Affairs Bureau documents. He had helped address the Mirage Dragon and King of Shengnan cases and was highly regarded by Xing Hechou and Chu Yin. He was brave and intelligent, kind and orderly—a potential ally. However, he seemed to have some reservations and constantly refused the Special Affairs Bureau's recruitment invitations. Mule on the fourth floor was a well-known Information Broker. Liu Wu Dai on the third floor and Wanli Fengdao on the second floor both had close ties with the Special Affairs Bureau. And as for Ω on the first floor...
Bai Haozheng sat in the living room chair with slightly furrowed brows. He was not clear about the details of the man with a fishbowl for a head, whose actions were shrouded in mystery and whose system of extraordinary powers was not yet understood. However, once the aberration began, the other party would probably not be able to stay hidden. The intelligence analyst quickly reviewed the information on all the individuals, his peripheral vision glancing at the clock on the living room wall.
It's already 11:56 PM... I wonder what they're doing downstairs.
On the thirteenth floor, the blood-soaked Black Holy Son knelt on the ground, placing a blood-stained dagger in a golden tray and murmuring incantations; the carpet in front of him was covered in strange patterns.
On the twelfth floor, the Ghost of Hidden Eye held a book and chanted softly.
On the eleventh floor, Danfei from the Voodoo Black Witch Clan sat bored, a circle of bizarrely shaped dolls arranged around his chair. The Voodoo Black Witch Clan had their own techniques to ward off evil spirits, and as a Lv16 player, Danfei was confident he could withstand whatever "anomaly" the Dolphin Hotel held. Downstairs, Kafei was his younger brother, and on the ninth floor, Bob was his close friend—the three had been together since they were teenagers. If anything happened, he believed that Kafei and Bob would rush to his rescue without a second thought, just as he would do for them.
"Five minutes left..." Danfei muttered to himself and suddenly heard a dull THUDDING sound coming from beneath his feet.
"Hmm?" Danfei frowned, stood up, and stared intently at the carpet beneath the coffee table in the living room.
THUD THUD, THUD, THUD THUD THUD.
The knocking sound was rhythmic, as if someone downstairs was tapping the ceiling with a stick.
This is Morse code... On Danfei's lean, dark face, his eyebrows slightly raised. He moved the table, lifted the carpet, and discovered that a piece of the wooden floor had sunk in, allowing him to see dented and broken concrete blocks through the damaged planks.
The tapping conveyed a message through Morse code: [Brother, it's me, Kafei.]
[The ceiling here is thin. Seems it can carry sound. Can you hear me?]
Danfei breathed a sigh of relief, glanced at the clock—it was now 00:09, with only two minutes left until curfew. Heading out of the room now and running downstairs to check on my brother Kafei might not be safe. He hesitated for a moment, then took out an Obsidian Battle Axe from his backpack and tapped the sunken area of the floor lightly with the handle: [I can hear you. Are you okay?]
Intermittent tapping came from downstairs: [I'm okay.]
[We'll be okay, right?]
Danfei tapped back: [Yes.]
[I will, protect, you.]
Their parents were Haitian immigrants in the United States who had smuggled themselves into the country hoping for a better life. However, they hadn't been there long before immigration services targeted them and deported them back to Haiti. Their parents later died in poverty due to illness. Left without support, the two brothers were forced to join a Haitian gang, relying on each other to survive. Perhaps other siblings would do anything to save themselves in these murderous games, but Danfei believed that even death couldn't separate them.
TICK.
The minute hand made a sound. Danfei looked up; it was 00:11. His breath involuntarily hitched. Danfei's hand gripped the Obsidian Battle Axe tightly, warily eyeing the wooden door. One second, two seconds... The bright lights in the living room were dazzling, and the second hand on the clock continued to move. The room was filled with only the hum of the refrigerator and Danfei's own heartbeat. There were no ghostly wails or howls, no anomalies. Danfei exhaled softly, careful not to step outside the evil spirit defense circle he had set up.
THUD, THUD.
The floor once again transmitted knocking from downstairs, this time with longer intervals.
[Brother.] It was Kafei.
Danfei hesitated for a moment but still squatted down, holding the blade of the battle axe, and tapped the dented concrete floor with the handle: [What's wrong?]
[The lights, why did they go out?]
