Looking at the door that was swung open, Feng Bujue breathed a sigh of relief. He was not in a hurry to rush out. Instead, relying on the lights shining into the room, he walked to the cage where the monkey was held, unlocked the lock and opened the gate, carrying the drugged monkey out.
“Name: Sedated Tibetan macaque”
“Type: Plot item”
“Quality: Normal”
“Function: Unknown”
“Can it be taken out of the level: Yes”
“Note: A species of macaque which is both lively and courageous, currently on the verge of extinction.”
“A plot related item yet it says that it can be taken out of the level, hmm…” Feng Bujue pondered. He tried to place the monkey into the inventory and succeeded. Then he left the room.
Beyond the door was a passageway. The walls surrounding it were practically made of metal. The roof was still four or five meters tall and the lighting was normal. As usual, not a single window could be found. Some doors and forks could be found on both sides of the passageway, but the doors were unopenable and the forks were blocked by various large chunks of debris. There was undoubtedly only one true passage. Occasionally, a red painted arrow would appear on the wall showing Feng Bujue the correct path. After several futile attempts, he realized that there wouldn’t be anything useful to find on this route and so he hastened his pace and ran after the arrows. After approximately seven to eight minutes he reached the end of the tunnel, where a metal door, which was marked red, appeared once more.
There was no handle on this door. At its center was a circular wheel. Feng Bujue walked in front of it and tried turning it a little. Feeling strong resistance, he used a fair amount of strength to rotate it.
After rotating for a good while, the door moved a little. From the gap in the door, a burst of chilly air seeped out. At that moment, Feng Bujue had a bad feeling about it. He opened the door just to realize that the metallic door was very thick and that the room was clearly a sealed freezer chamber. He felt a surge of cold air after he opened the door.
The interior of the room truly lives up to the description of ”snow and chilly”. The ground was covered with white frost and its wall shows traces of ice forming. Raising his head, he was able to see pipelines with a diameter of a meter on three separate corners of the ceilings excluding the lightings. It was at that moment when the door was open did the white snow began to waft out of the pipelines. Thankfully, even though the opening was big, the white snow that was wafting out of it was sporadic and not much.
Feng Bujue took a deep breath, breathed hot air onto his palms, rubbed his hands and entered the room. After crossing the doorsill, he realized that something was wrong with the depth of the floor. It was lower than the frame of the door and was clearly not on a level with the passageway that lies before the door. What he’d seen as a thin layer of frost on the ground was actually knee-deep snow. He placed one of his feet into it and everything below his ankle was stuck inside the snow, chilling him to the point that he quickly did a few small jumps, but it was useless as the snow was very soft. The way to prevent his feet from sinking is to increase the area of contact, thus he quickly kneeled down..
He did not close the door and came to the opposite side of the room on his knees. There was another door there but there was no circular wheel on it. Only an electronic lock was embedded in the door, with space for four digits on its display. On the wall next to that door’s lock was a movable plate of iron, about ten square centimetres, with a small handle. When Feng Bujue pulled the board open, the iron door through which he’d entered the room automatically closed.
Behind the movable plate of iron was a very small space containing a cassette tape. What he should do next was very clear…
Feng Bujue took the cassette out and again took out the walkman he’d brought along with him. He took the tape that was originally inside it and placed the tape inside his inventory. Then he placed the new tape inside and pressed the play button.
“Merry Christmas, Arthur. This is a day when family gather. At the same time, the Christmas spirit also carries a sense of selfless giving and benediction…”
Feng Bujue listened to the recording while starting his second detailed examination of this room. He had been noticing ever since the start that the item in the room which stood out the most was a newspaper stuck on a wall, which seemed to be in relatively new condition. That wall had obviously been used before as the ice had not seriously formed around the newspaper. Even though the newspaper was covered with artificial snow, the humidity in the room was not very high,so the words on the paper were still very clear. One of the most eye-catching reports had a title “They are no different from us”. Beside it was a group of vagrants huddling over an oil drum for warmth. It was snowing in the background and the ground was also white in colour. Needless to say, this article was also by “Arthur Seagal”.
“You often attend charity events and show yourself in the spotlight in front of cameras. But all of us know you have not given any private donations to any organization. You called on people not to discriminate against homeless people, but you yourself never give any respect to people that are of lower social status than you. Your harsh and snobbish demeanor makes everyone around you nauseous. You also have spoken for the elderly, claiming that they ought to receive more attention and understanding, yet every year you are using your work as an excuse to decline their invitation to spend both Christmas and Thanksgiving day together.”
“Arthur, it’s not the first time you’ve taken the moral high ground, accusing commoners of being apathetic and talking about how unfair the system is. But the actions you have taken in practice show that you have no idea whatsoever of what you talk about.
“Now, you will have the chance to understand the obstacles those who are helpless have to go through. In this room that is filled with snow, there is a piece of cardboard with the password needed to open the lock written on it. What you need to do is to stretch your hands into this pile of snow and find that piece of paper.
Just like how everybody enduring the cold of the snowy night in the street desires a bit of misty hope, you will not have any time constraints. But, even if you manage to find something, the most optimistic result will only tide you over until dawn…”
The recording ended. Feng Bujue was already shivering from the cold. The clothes which the game had provided ensured the comfort of the player in temperatures above 20 degrees. If it was any colder or hotter would give the player the corresponding sensation. Currently, the temperature in this freezer-like room was obviously below zero, and the three pipelines on the roof were still, very slowly, increasing the depth of the snow.
In order to ensure the flexibility of his fingers, Feng Bujue focused his breathing onto his palms. His mind replaying the recording once again at great speed, then he murmured the last sentence again. “Just like how everybody enduring the cold…find “something”… tide you over until dawn…” By his conjecture, that was the only hint available. Though pretty cryptic, it had to indicate something.
Feng Bujue stood up once more. Everything below his knees was already completely frozen. The two legs still in the snow no longer mattered because they were frozen to the point he could no longer feel them. He stumbled up to the newspaper, gazed at the report and image with keen eyes and started carefully searching the area for any possible clues.
Feng Bujue knew that this was the best time to search for clues. Manual labor could be left until there was no other option left. If he were to impatiently stick both hands and dig at the snow, five minutes later, even if his finger hadn’t broken off from the cold, he would have hastened the fall in his body temperature. If he ended up with the sluggishness of a hypothermia victim, with hazy consciousness, it would be impossible to solve the puzzle.
“Something that’s able to tide the homeless people over to the next day…” Feng Bujue spoke aloud in order to focus. “A few people huddling over a drum, keeping themselves warm by burning garbage all the way till dawn? No, that’s not it…” An image of a middle aged man wearing sunglasses suddenly flashed in his mind. “Got it…The three holy artifacts that MADAO* uses when spending the night in the streets: a carton, a dog and a radio.” Thinking of that, he started moving.
TL Note: MADAO is a term given to Hasegawa Taisou in Gintama. This nickname describes a good for nothing old man, though other abbreviations are available.
The newspaper was spread open with four small pieces of tape holding the corners down, sticking it to the wall. Judging that a large central portion of the centre would not be destroyed, Feng Bujue tried his best to tear the corners of the newspaper as carefully as possible.
“It’s not possible to have a dog, unless I make one out of snow. If it’s a radio…I guess the walkman should be considered one. As for a carton…” Feng Bujue had already removed the newspaper from the wall. Even though a little bits were missing from the four corners, it would not affect what he was about to do.
As previously mentioned, the newspaper was in relatively new condition and so the creases on it was very noticeable. The average person does not fold their newspaper more than twice, yet there were many creases on this newspaper, which undoubtedly showed that it had previously been folded into something.
Feng Bujue folded the newspaper using the creases which still remained. His hands hadn’t turned numb, but they were still affected by the harsh and cold environment. In fact, his menu already showed “frozen” as his special status beside his hp bar.
Even with the lack of corners on the newspaper, Feng Bujue was still able to fold out a shape that was completely consistent with the creases——A very small paper box.
Feng Bujue then took it in his hands and scrutinized it, rotating it through several angles. Finally, at a spot where several strips of paper overlapped, he found a string of consecutive letters and numbers.
On a newspaper, the letter cannot all be in the same format. Occasionally, text will come in different sizes and fonts. For instance, the letters used in a title or the caption of an image are different from those used in the article itself in format, not to mention case.
The string of letters that Feng Bujue had found were all of the same size and style. The letters were all in uppercase, but were different in that they were all in a different positions and layouts when the newspaper was opened, but after being folded up they were all moved together, where they became an organized line.
“FM27.3 Mhz…” Feng Bujue read it out aloud. “Is it the frequency of an amateur radio station…?” Saying that, he changed the walkman to radio mode.
Every frequency was just static, with FM 27.3 being no exception to it. But he was certain of the frequency, so he turned up the volume and waited. Sure enough, after 40 seconds of continuous static, a hoarse voice began to read out. “Nine, five. two. seven.” The static resumed afterwards.
Feng Bujue rushed to the exit immediately, entering the password while unhappily saying “What sort of password is this, is it trying to imply that people of low standing and dogs shouldn’t enter…”
Sure enough, the password was correct and the door opened. Feng Bujue stumbled out of the room in a rush. After reaching the corridor outside, he was cold to the point that he rolled on the ground twice, stood up again and did twenty deep squats with his arms outstretched. During the process, he took a look at his status in the menu. His health points had been reduced to 67%, but the frozen status was quickly cleared in a room temperature environment.
In any case, there’d been much less loss getting out this way rather than trying to bend to the ground and shovel at the snow with his hands. Feng Bujue had always had terrible luck with games, like the last requiring him to find a needle in the haystack by searching every nook and cranny in the room, to find a piece of paper under the snow.
After passing the 2nd obstacle. he did not immediately switch off the walkman. Soon enough, he discovered the rule behind that channel: Every minute or so, FM 27.3 would read out the four digit password once and the other frequencies were as always just constant static.
After regaining his usual body temperature, Feng Bujue moved on. He inferred that the level had not arranged or calculated the amount of time that it would take“Arthur Seagal” to do things like reach the hospital and receive help after escaping. The beginning of the recording had said that he had 40 minutes to find the exit, otherwise he would die from the toxins in his body. But Feng Bujue’s menu had never showed a “Poisoned” status and because of that he was unable to determine if the loss of his health points was due to the cold just now or the slow-acting effect of the toxin. In any case, it was not an explicit effect of the poisoning but some kind of plot-related events. To put it simply, he had to clear the level within forty minutes. or it would be GAME OVER.
Feng Bujue had already spent more than twenty minutes. He’d cleared the second obstacle rather quickly. Adding on the five minutes he’d wasted in the first room and the time he’d taken moving around, he’d have more or less fifteen minutes by the time he got to the third game. The system must have taken into consideration the possibility that the player would choose to dig into the snow, which will undoubtedly have caused a longer delay. Thus, considering the time restriction, the next game Feng Bujue would face, would probably be the last one, barring any accidents. With that completed, he would be able to clear the level.
Looking at the door that was swung open, Feng Bujue breathed a sigh of relief. He was not in a hurry to rush out. Instead, relying on the lights shining into the room, he walked to the cage where the monkey was held, unlocked the lock and opened the gate, carrying the drugged monkey out.
“Name: Sedated Tibetan macaque”
“Type: Plot item”
“Quality: Normal”
“Function: Unknown”
“Can it be taken out of the level: Yes”
“Note: A species of macaque which is both lively and courageous, currently on the verge of extinction.”
“A plot related item yet it says that it can be taken out of the level, hmm…” Feng Bujue pondered. He tried to place the monkey into the inventory and succeeded. Then he left the room.
Beyond the door was a passageway. The walls surrounding it were practically made of metal. The roof was still four or five meters tall and the lighting was normal. As usual, not a single window could be found. Some doors and forks could be found on both sides of the passageway, but the doors were unopenable and the forks were blocked by various large chunks of debris. There was undoubtedly only one true passage. Occasionally, a red painted arrow would appear on the wall showing Feng Bujue the correct path. After several futile attempts, he realized that there wouldn’t be anything useful to find on this route and so he hastened his pace and ran after the arrows. After approximately seven to eight minutes he reached the end of the tunnel, where a metal door, which was marked red, appeared once more.
There was no handle on this door. At its center was a circular wheel. Feng Bujue walked in front of it and tried turning it a little. Feeling strong resistance, he used a fair amount of strength to rotate it.
After rotating for a good while, the door moved a little. From the gap in the door, a burst of chilly air seeped out. At that moment, Feng Bujue had a bad feeling about it. He opened the door just to realize that the metallic door was very thick and that the room was clearly a sealed freezer chamber. He felt a surge of cold air after he opened the door.
The interior of the room truly lives up to the description of ”snow and chilly”. The ground was covered with white frost and its wall shows traces of ice forming. Raising his head, he was able to see pipelines with a diameter of a meter on three separate corners of the ceilings excluding the lightings. It was at that moment when the door was open did the white snow began to waft out of the pipelines. Thankfully, even though the opening was big, the white snow that was wafting out of it was sporadic and not much.
Feng Bujue took a deep breath, breathed hot air onto his palms, rubbed his hands and entered the room. After crossing the doorsill, he realized that something was wrong with the depth of the floor. It was lower than the frame of the door and was clearly not on a level with the passageway that lies before the door. What he’d seen as a thin layer of frost on the ground was actually knee-deep snow. He placed one of his feet into it and everything below his ankle was stuck inside the snow, chilling him to the point that he quickly did a few small jumps, but it was useless as the snow was very soft. The way to prevent his feet from sinking is to increase the area of contact, thus he quickly kneeled down..
He did not close the door and came to the opposite side of the room on his knees. There was another door there but there was no circular wheel on it. Only an electronic lock was embedded in the door, with space for four digits on its display. On the wall next to that door’s lock was a movable plate of iron, about ten square centimetres, with a small handle. When Feng Bujue pulled the board open, the iron door through which he’d entered the room automatically closed.
Behind the movable plate of iron was a very small space containing a cassette tape. What he should do next was very clear…
Feng Bujue took the cassette out and again took out the walkman he’d brought along with him. He took the tape that was originally inside it and placed the tape inside his inventory. Then he placed the new tape inside and pressed the play button.
“Merry Christmas, Arthur. This is a day when family gather. At the same time, the Christmas spirit also carries a sense of selfless giving and benediction…”
Feng Bujue listened to the recording while starting his second detailed examination of this room. He had been noticing ever since the start that the item in the room which stood out the most was a newspaper stuck on a wall, which seemed to be in relatively new condition. That wall had obviously been used before as the ice had not seriously formed around the newspaper. Even though the newspaper was covered with artificial snow, the humidity in the room was not very high,so the words on the paper were still very clear. One of the most eye-catching reports had a title “They are no different from us”. Beside it was a group of vagrants huddling over an oil drum for warmth. It was snowing in the background and the ground was also white in colour. Needless to say, this article was also by “Arthur Seagal”.
“You often attend charity events and show yourself in the spotlight in front of cameras. But all of us know you have not given any private donations to any organization. You called on people not to discriminate against homeless people, but you yourself never give any respect to people that are of lower social status than you. Your harsh and snobbish demeanor makes everyone around you nauseous. You also have spoken for the elderly, claiming that they ought to receive more attention and understanding, yet every year you are using your work as an excuse to decline their invitation to spend both Christmas and Thanksgiving day together.”
“Arthur, it’s not the first time you’ve taken the moral high ground, accusing commoners of being apathetic and talking about how unfair the system is. But the actions you have taken in practice show that you have no idea whatsoever of what you talk about.
“Now, you will have the chance to understand the obstacles those who are helpless have to go through. In this room that is filled with snow, there is a piece of cardboard with the password needed to open the lock written on it. What you need to do is to stretch your hands into this pile of snow and find that piece of paper.
Just like how everybody enduring the cold of the snowy night in the street desires a bit of misty hope, you will not have any time constraints. But, even if you manage to find something, the most optimistic result will only tide you over until dawn…”
The recording ended. Feng Bujue was already shivering from the cold. The clothes which the game had provided ensured the comfort of the player in temperatures above 20 degrees. If it was any colder or hotter would give the player the corresponding sensation. Currently, the temperature in this freezer-like room was obviously below zero, and the three pipelines on the roof were still, very slowly, increasing the depth of the snow.
In order to ensure the flexibility of his fingers, Feng Bujue focused his breathing onto his palms. His mind replaying the recording once again at great speed, then he murmured the last sentence again. “Just like how everybody enduring the cold…find “something”… tide you over until dawn…” By his conjecture, that was the only hint available. Though pretty cryptic, it had to indicate something.
Feng Bujue stood up once more. Everything below his knees was already completely frozen. The two legs still in the snow no longer mattered because they were frozen to the point he could no longer feel them. He stumbled up to the newspaper, gazed at the report and image with keen eyes and started carefully searching the area for any possible clues.
Feng Bujue knew that this was the best time to search for clues. Manual labor could be left until there was no other option left. If he were to impatiently stick both hands and dig at the snow, five minutes later, even if his finger hadn’t broken off from the cold, he would have hastened the fall in his body temperature. If he ended up with the sluggishness of a hypothermia victim, with hazy consciousness, it would be impossible to solve the puzzle.
“Something that’s able to tide the homeless people over to the next day…” Feng Bujue spoke aloud in order to focus. “A few people huddling over a drum, keeping themselves warm by burning garbage all the way till dawn? No, that’s not it…” An image of a middle aged man wearing sunglasses suddenly flashed in his mind. “Got it…The three holy artifacts that MADAO* uses when spending the night in the streets: a carton, a dog and a radio.” Thinking of that, he started moving.
TL Note: MADAO is a term given to Hasegawa Taisou in Gintama. This nickname describes a good for nothing old man, though other abbreviations are available.
The newspaper was spread open with four small pieces of tape holding the corners down, sticking it to the wall. Judging that a large central portion of the centre would not be destroyed, Feng Bujue tried his best to tear the corners of the newspaper as carefully as possible.
“It’s not possible to have a dog, unless I make one out of snow. If it’s a radio…I guess the walkman should be considered one. As for a carton…” Feng Bujue had already removed the newspaper from the wall. Even though a little bits were missing from the four corners, it would not affect what he was about to do.
As previously mentioned, the newspaper was in relatively new condition and so the creases on it was very noticeable. The average person does not fold their newspaper more than twice, yet there were many creases on this newspaper, which undoubtedly showed that it had previously been folded into something.
Feng Bujue folded the newspaper using the creases which still remained. His hands hadn’t turned numb, but they were still affected by the harsh and cold environment. In fact, his menu already showed “frozen” as his special status beside his hp bar.
Even with the lack of corners on the newspaper, Feng Bujue was still able to fold out a shape that was completely consistent with the creases——A very small paper box.
Feng Bujue then took it in his hands and scrutinized it, rotating it through several angles. Finally, at a spot where several strips of paper overlapped, he found a string of consecutive letters and numbers.
On a newspaper, the letter cannot all be in the same format. Occasionally, text will come in different sizes and fonts. For instance, the letters used in a title or the caption of an image are different from those used in the article itself in format, not to mention case.
The string of letters that Feng Bujue had found were all of the same size and style. The letters were all in uppercase, but were different in that they were all in a different positions and layouts when the newspaper was opened, but after being folded up they were all moved together, where they became an organized line.
“FM27.3 Mhz…” Feng Bujue read it out aloud. “Is it the frequency of an amateur radio station…?” Saying that, he changed the walkman to radio mode.
Every frequency was just static, with FM 27.3 being no exception to it. But he was certain of the frequency, so he turned up the volume and waited. Sure enough, after 40 seconds of continuous static, a hoarse voice began to read out. “Nine, five. two. seven.” The static resumed afterwards.
Feng Bujue rushed to the exit immediately, entering the password while unhappily saying “What sort of password is this, is it trying to imply that people of low standing and dogs shouldn’t enter…”
Sure enough, the password was correct and the door opened. Feng Bujue stumbled out of the room in a rush. After reaching the corridor outside, he was cold to the point that he rolled on the ground twice, stood up again and did twenty deep squats with his arms outstretched. During the process, he took a look at his status in the menu. His health points had been reduced to 67%, but the frozen status was quickly cleared in a room temperature environment.
In any case, there’d been much less loss getting out this way rather than trying to bend to the ground and shovel at the snow with his hands. Feng Bujue had always had terrible luck with games, like the last requiring him to find a needle in the haystack by searching every nook and cranny in the room, to find a piece of paper under the snow.
After passing the 2nd obstacle. he did not immediately switch off the walkman. Soon enough, he discovered the rule behind that channel: Every minute or so, FM 27.3 would read out the four digit password once and the other frequencies were as always just constant static.
After regaining his usual body temperature, Feng Bujue moved on. He inferred that the level had not arranged or calculated the amount of time that it would take“Arthur Seagal” to do things like reach the hospital and receive help after escaping. The beginning of the recording had said that he had 40 minutes to find the exit, otherwise he would die from the toxins in his body. But Feng Bujue’s menu had never showed a “Poisoned” status and because of that he was unable to determine if the loss of his health points was due to the cold just now or the slow-acting effect of the toxin. In any case, it was not an explicit effect of the poisoning but some kind of plot-related events. To put it simply, he had to clear the level within forty minutes. or it would be GAME OVER.
Feng Bujue had already spent more than twenty minutes. He’d cleared the second obstacle rather quickly. Adding on the five minutes he’d wasted in the first room and the time he’d taken moving around, he’d have more or less fifteen minutes by the time he got to the third game. The system must have taken into consideration the possibility that the player would choose to dig into the snow, which will undoubtedly have caused a longer delay. Thus, considering the time restriction, the next game Feng Bujue would face, would probably be the last one, barring any accidents. With that completed, he would be able to clear the level.
