Doomsday Wonderland

Startled by her expression, Ryuji muttered blankly, “Huh?”

“What makes you think that this is a locked-room murder sort of pocket dimension?” Lin Sanjiu turned back to stare at the dead body and asked.

“Isn’t that what you said?”

“When did I say that?”

Slightly confused, he blinked then continued, “You said that this is a locked-room pocket dimension. Someone died here, and the corpse has returned. You have to clear the mystery to get out. Isn’t that what a locked-room murder made of?”

“No…this is a locked-room escape…” Lin Sanjiu stopped midway through her sentence as she suddenly realized something.

This might just have been a coincidence. After all, judging from all the clues she found so far, nothing could prove that this warehouse had once been the site of a locked-room murder. Even though the window was locked, there was no evidence suggested that the main entrance was locked as well. After all, she had not even rebuilt the door yet.

Beset by doubts, Lin Sanjiu decided to go through the clue given by the pocket dimension once more.

To be honest, the clues were useless. “Find the correct key”, “open the door and go out”…Generally speaking, the escape route in the secret room escape game was often very complex, full of twists and turns. If she could just open the door with a key, then what made it any different from other normal rooms?

Suddenly, she realized something, so she smacked her hand to her forehead.

No, this indeed was different from the normal circumstances.

“What’s wrong?” Ryuji asked, looking at her. It seemed that he had grown interested in this pocket dimension as well although he still looked like a lamb that was about to collapse on the roadside because he had gotten lost.

“I told you before about the first clue I found, didn’t I? It’s simple.” Frowning, one word after another slowly spilled out from Lin Sanjiu’s lips. “The clue may seem simple, but it is actually a little strange.”

“Why?”

“I’m inside a room, so why would I still need a key to unlock a door and go out? I can just push it open, can’t I?” The words tumbled from her lips rapidly. She was glad to have a real person whom she could share her ideas with, and not just Mrs. Manas alone. This way, not only could she reorganize her thoughts through an actual conversation, but she could also spark different ideas as well. “Unless somebody has locked me inside this warehouse. That is the only situation that requires a key.”

“You are right.” Ryuji looked worriedly over at the corpse in the distance. The dead body was still dragging itself towards Lin Sanjiu, gradually coming out of the darkness.

“Both the window and the door are locked,” Lin Sanjiu said as she took the window holder for Ryuji to see though he maintained a straight, unenthusiastic expression. “But the keys are inside the building.”

She waved her hand and the card in her palm turned into a bunch of keys.

Slowly, Ryuji opened his mouth and said, “So…”

“Yes, this is a locked room, and this is a locked-room mystery just like the one in the detective fiction.”

“That used to be my favorite genre.” Ryuji scratched his head. “I’m not a cool kid in my school, so I kept to myself all the time. I don’t like to study, but I love reading fiction. Therefore, no matter where I went, be it eating or walking, I had a detective novel with me all the time.”

The second half of his sentence passed Lin Sanjiu’s ears as the wind.

The locks on the window were generally faced inward, but that was the opposite case for the main door. It required somebody to lock it from the outside. In other words, to leave both the keys of the window and the door inside the building, the murderer could not have left through either one.

However, there was something Lin Sanjiu could not comprehend. Why would the pocket dimension tell her that this was a “locked room escape” in the first place?

“Maybe it’s because this building is indeed a locked room for you.” Ryuji began to draw out his vowels after he heard Lin Sanjiu’s query. “You were thrown into a locked-room murder scene, so you have to think of a way to get out of here.”

Lin Sanjiu nodded thoughtfully.

It was not easy to get out of here. After connecting the pocket dimension, the dead body, and the traces, it occurred to her that she had to figure out how the murderer got out of here first.

“Look out, it is coming at you again,” Ryuji warned her again while she was deeply immersed in her thought. Lin Sanjiu took a quick glance and then barreled towards the other side of the warehouse. The dead body kept trailing her like a frigging shadow, and it made her very uncomfortable.

It seemed that a less motivated person would have a hard time standing up as well. Ryuji was still sitting in the bush, his face drawn. The only occasion he would jerk up was when the dead body walked past in front of him.

“Don’t you have any more torchlight?” After Lin Sanjiu went around the warehouse and returned to him, he suggested, “Take them out and put them around if you got more. It is too dark here and that freaking dead body is too scary.”

The grand prize had given her several back-up torchlights, but she lost most of them in Shamballa and the rest needed to be recharged. Waving her [Ability Polishing Agent], she replied, “Nope. I only have this one.”

Raising his head to stare at the silver bottle, Ryuji sighed, “Is this even a torchlight?”

“Nope. But I have been using it as one.” Even though Lin Sanjiu was having a casual talk, she was still thinking about the possibility of “locked room murder”. After she thought for a while, she asked, “Since you said you often read detective stories, what is your thought on this?”

Even if the topic of their conversation was something he liked, there was no spark in Ryuji’s eyes.

“Well, most of them are not really a locked room,” he said in a gloomy voice, “It is just some tricks the perp used to misdirect people into thinking that it is a locked room, but actually it is not. To achieve that effect, they would use something we called a “device”. There are plenty of devices, and some of them could be used to lock the door from outside. However, that is only applicable in novels as there are too many variables in reality.”

After hearing what he said, Lin Sanjiu threw a glance at him and asked, “Have you tried it before?”

“Yes, when I was in secondary school. There was one exhibition, and I was going to demonstrate how to close a door with a fishing line. But sadly, something went wrong and my demonstration ended up as a failure.”

In short, Ryuji had been branded as a “loser” since he was young.

So what was the “device” used in this locked room?

As she sank into her thoughts, she tried to rebuild the wall and the window. To her chagrin, the window restored from the glass fragments was so small a child might not be able to squeeze through, let alone the murderer, who had a high chance to be a grown-up male.

‘How good it is if I can imitate the grand prize or Nüwa…’ But Lin Sanjiu knew that both options had been crossed out from her list.

Just as she sighed inwardly, she heard a long note from the distance. For a moment, she thought her brain or her ears were playing a trick on her. It was only when she turned her head and saw the blinking blue spot on the communication device that she realized she was not wrong.

Ji Shanqing was calling her.

When the second long note came, the blue spot was blocked by a shadow. As if it knew Lin Sanjiu was going there, the dead body dragged itself over and stopped in front of the communication device.