Congratulations on Your Successful Escape

Chapter 110

The reverberation of that small sound was infinitely amplified in the darkness before tapering off. The now-silent corridor seemed to be stretching infinitely onward into the deep shadows too.

Jiang Yuanrou’s unspoken words came to an abrupt end.

The two turned their heads at the same time and glanced at the dark corridor behind them. There was no light or sound at all. It was lying behind them like a black hole, making one wonder if the sound they had just heard was real or just an illusion of their own.

Mo Yi and Jiang Yuanrou exchanged a look, noting the surprise in each other’s eyes.

But now there was no turning back anymore.

Now the monster on this floor already knew that the two of them were behind this iron fence, and based on their previous experience, she obviously possessed intelligence. Although she seemed to have gone far for now, she could be simply hiding at the end of the corridor and peeping at them. There was no way for them to know for sure if she was gone, and as long as they are unsure, they can’t afford to take the risk.

So their only option right now was to bite the bullet and move forward.

Mo Yi took a deep breath. There was a slight tingling pain coming from his shoulder. It was not severe, but it made his brain extraordinarily clear.

He turned on the flashlight in his hand and shone into the dense darkness

The pale beam of light couldn’t completely penetrate the darkness. It simply diffused in mid-air, revealing blurry outlines in the distance.

Mo Yi made a gesture to Jiang Yuanrou. Jiang Yuanrou nodded in understanding, and the two of them walked slowly towards the depths of the corridor.

Deeper and deeper, the cramped darkness in the corridor enveloped them, blurring their figures into the silent darkness as well.

Mo Yi moved his wrist a little and the beam of light moved along, illuminating their surrounding environment—

This was a very ordinary-looking corridor. The doors on both sides of the corridor were tightly closed, and the blurry glass window panels on the doors revealed the lifeless darkness behind each of them.

Mo Yi tilted the flashlight up to the sign above the door, only to see a few faded words under a layer of light dust.

Staff office.

He moved closer, trying to push on the door—it was locked.

Jiang Yuanrou, who was walking beside Mo Yi, moved to push on the door opposite in the same way, only to shake her head slowly.

It was also locked.

Furthermore, that strange sound earlier only sounded once, and never again.

The corridor in front of them had no visible oddities, as if the clear sound they heard just now was nothing but a bubble-like dream, as if it never happened, and it wouldn’t happen again.

Mo Yi’s brows slowly pulled together into a frown. There was a glint of doubt in the depths of his dark eyes—if it wasn’t that he remembered clearly how Jiang Yuanrou also turned around earlier, he would have really thought that the sound was just a hallucination.

They walked forward quietly in the darkness, and soon they came to the end of the corridor.

It was exactly the same as the -3F. There was an iron gate with interconnecting diamond patterns, which was welded to one of the walls flanking it. On the wall was a panel and a narrow card slot.

The elevator!

Mo Yi breathed a sigh of relief—it seemed that this was the way they could take to leave this floor.

But his expression quickly turned solemn again.

Firstly, they have yet to find the source of that sudden sound. Secondly, there was still a key on this floor that they had not used… Mo Yi didn’t think that this game would give clues which were completely irrelevant.

Therefore, he leaned closer and carefully observed the buttons and sockets of the elevator, then took out the employee card he found on the third floor from his pocket, and tentatively swiped it in the card slot.

As expected, the elevator was unresponsive.

On the contrary, Mo Yi breathed a sigh of relief.

So the props on one floor could only be used on that same floor.

He slid the employee card back into his pocket, then turned to survey his surroundings.

Just then, Mo Yi heard Jiang Yuanrou on the side say in a low voice, “Hey.”

Mo Yi followed the sound and saw that Jiang Yuanrou managed to push open the door beside her on the opposite side of the corridor. In the darkness, she raised his chin at Mo Yi and said in a low voice.

“This door can be opened.”

Mo Yi scanned the sign on the door with the flashlight in his hand, and read the dust-covered words.

Archive room.

He pursed his lips slightly. The trace of joy in finding a key breakthrough slowly surged in his heart, and he couldn’t help but pick up his pace a little.

And at this moment, Mo Yi suddenly stepped on something under his feet. An odd sensation came up along the sole of his shoe as a subtle crack resounded in the darkness.

Taken aback, he withdrew his foot and glanced down.

There was a vague outline in the darkness, but he couldn’t see what it was.

Mo Yi bent down and focused his light on the ground—only to see a small candy lying quietly on the dirty smooth-tiled ground.

He was really stunned for a moment, and it was only after a few seconds of pause that Mo Yi reached out and picked up the candy.

It was a fruit candy.

Strawberry-flavoured.

The light pink wrapper glinted brightly under the flashlight, refracting a hue of colours.

Mo Yi remembered this brand—in the real world, Wen Chen often gave him this brand of candy.

And… although he didn’t really want to admit it.

Mo Yi really liked this brand of strawberry candy.

Mo Yi’s fingers tightened unconsciously. The wrapped candy in his hand made a soft sound. His brows were slightly furrowed with a shallow crease between them.

His thoughts were momentarily jumbled. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it as countless questions piled up in his mind.

Was the sound just now made by this candy? Why did this candy appear here? Was it related to Wen Chen? If so, how did he manage to put it here? And why?

Mo Yi’s expression was pinched. His lips were pursed into a tight line and his lips were even a little pale.

Jiang Yuanrou’s voice sounded in the darkness. Her soft voice was lowered and her tone sounded a bit puzzled, “What’s the matter?”

Mo Yi was pulled out of his thoughts by her voice and couldn’t help being slightly startled. He looked up at Jiang Yuanrou who was standing not too far away, then sneakily stuffed the candy into his pocket as if nothing had happened.

“Nothing much.”

After brushing it off, Mo Yi straightened up and walked through the open door.

As soon as he entered the room, he was greeted by the smell of old rotting books, mixing along with a faint smell of dust into a smell of paper that an archive room should have.

Frowning, Mo Yi shined the flashlight into the room and slowly looked around.

The room was not big. There were several rusted metal shelves which were placed very close to each other, with neat stacks of documents on them. The documents looked aged, with their edges yellowed.

He walked further in, with Jiang Yuanrou following behind him. However, just when Mo Yi was about to head over to one of the metal frames, he felt his clothes being tugged on.

He glanced behind him, only to see Jiang Yuanrou letting go of the corner of his clothes. There was a trace of embarrassment on her face as she muttered hesitantly, “Well… I don’t have my backpack anymore, so—”

Mo Yi put two and two together. Since Jiang Yuanrou was caught by the monster previously, all the items she had brought in with her from the real world were lost. As such, he nodded in silent understanding and handed a spare flashlight from his backpack to Jiang Yuanrou.

She showed a faint smile to Mo Yi. “Thank you very much.”

Mo Yi shook his head, indicating that he doesn’t mind, and added in a low voice, “It will be faster if we searched separately.”

Jiang Yuanrou nodded, and the two walked off in different directions, each standing in front of two metal shelves full of documents.

Mo Yi switched the flashlight to the hand which had been dislocated before, and leafed through the documents casually with his uninjured hand.

Neither of them know how long the documents have been left untouched but the top area was covered with a thick layer of dust. A burst of fine particles would fly with even the slightest movement, dancing through the air illuminated by the flashlight.

He coughed several times, choked by the dust, then waved his palms before his face to disperse the dust in the air in front of him.

Next, Mo Yi frowned and casually pulled out a thin document to read in greater detail.

As he turned the pages, Mo Yi’s brows became more and more creased, and the movements of his hands became faster and faster, until finally he started to turn the pages at approximately one second each time—

His gaze deepened as he stared at the end of the page for a long moment, before he closed the folder.

Mo Yi frowned—this folder was empty.

The edges of the paper were wrinkled and yellowed due to the passage of time, but each page was completely blank, devoid of any information.

He set the file folder aside and pulled out another one to read.

It was also blank.

Mo Yi’s heart skipped a beat. An ominous premonition struck him. He hastily threw the file aside, then randomly pulled another folder out from the shelf—

Blank.

His movements became erratic. He strode towards the other shelves at a faster pace, and pulled out folder after folder as he moved, both thick and thin…

.

All of them were blank.

Unnerved yet suspicious, Mo Yi frowned. The pale light from his flashlight made his face look bloodless. He scanned the shelf in front of him with dark eyes, then raised his gaze to study the other corners of the room.

Jiang Yuanrou happened to raise her head from where she was in another corner of the room, her expression being one of bewilderment.

She tossed the folder in her hand away and came over. Stopping a small distance from Mo Yi, she shook her head slowly, and said in a low voice: “…It’s all blank.”

Mo Yi fell into a deep moment of contemplation—it was not rare to have similar locations like libraries or archives in an instance, in fact, many instances incorporate such places as an important way for players to obtain information, and they would usually have a mechanism which blurs out information irrelevant to the instance to prevent overwhelming and confusing the players.

But since these instances were all related to the real world, even if there was a blurring of information, the game would still use a method that conforms to reality.

For example, in his first and second instance, those books and files with irrelevant information were all unreadable due to water damage.

However, in this instance… the documents were blank?

This was too strange.

Unless… the fact that they were blank was in itself, a clue.

Just when Mo Yi was deeply immersed in his own thoughts, he suddenly heard Jiang Yuanrou’s surprised voice from several steps away, cutting into his ears clearly, “…Hey, come over and look at this.”

Mo Yi looked in Jiang Yuanrou’s direction, only to see that she was pointing her flashlight further into the archive room, training the bright beam of light on one of the shelves.

His gaze followed the light.

There was a small metal box on one of the shelves. Its lid was tightly closed and the silver-white keyhole on it glimmered under the light.