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1

Baishe was walking in the dark.

He still had a lot of green mucus on his body and the stench was making him shiver all over. He needed a hose or something to wash it off.

As he walked, he saw an arrow appear in front of him.

It was a styrofoam board arrow about as long as an arm with Wang Meng’s picture stuck on it.

The arrow was pointing in the direction he had just come from, which was the same place where he had seen Wang Meng just now.

It seemed to be telling him to go back.

Baishe decided to ignored it; instead choosing to step over the arrowhead and continue walking.

As he walked, he suddenly heard what sounded like a radio broadcast come from somewhere in the darkness up ahead, as if there was a radio here.

Turning in that direction, he listened to the radio and approached slowly.

“Is anyone there?” He asked.

No one answered, but he soon felt that he had reached the place where the radio broadcast was coming from. Using the dim light from his portable charger to take a look, he found that he was standing in front of a square table with a radio on it, and there was a person sitting next to it. But it was so dark that he couldn’t see clearly.

Baishe slowly walked over and saw that the person was actually an old man. The old man was obviously alive because he reached out and turned down the radio a little after he felt Baishe coming closer.

Baishe slowly walked up to the old man, who merely looked at him and said, “Your friend is behind you. Why aren’t you going back?”

“Who are you? Where is this place?” Baishe asked him.

“Me? I was the person who built this place back then. I was the chief architect. At that time, the factory gave me an impossible task. In fact, ordinary people couldn’t figure out how to build the structural support for this factory for a long time, but we came up with a solution for the cement,” the other party said. “But no matter how brilliant it was, it was abandoned in the end.”

“This is a factory?”

“Yes, it is.”

“Are you trapped here, too?”

Instead of answering, the old man motioned for Baishe to sit down. Baishe looked over and saw that there was a small bench sitting beside the old man’s table.

“Do you like to gamble?” The old man asked. “I’m worried that no one will make this bet.”

2

“We made the exchange,” Wang Meng shouted into the darkness. “Now what? What happens now?”

No response came from the surrounding darkness. Seeing his father slowly get up from the pile of bricks, he quickly shouted at him, “Look! Look around! Do you see any words? Any hints?”

His father ignored him and instead raised his trembling hand with the brick and the card stuck to it, as if he wanted to hand it over.

Wang Meng took the brick, turned it over, and saw that the card was a Queen of clubs.(1)

There was nothing on it; no hint whatsoever.

“It’s not here. There must be a hint somewhere else,” Wang Meng said.

His father stood there motionless for a moment before walking back to the pile of bricks and sitting down.

The position of the handcuffs on the gate was such that Wang Meng had to kneel. Feeling a little tired now, he knelt there and carefully tried to calm himself down.

Think, think.

At this time, the sound of rattling dice suddenly came from out of the darkness, as if a dice cup was moving around on a gambling table.

Wang Meng’s attention was immediately drawn to the darkness behind him, and so was his father’s.

3

Liu Sang’s ear strength had reached its limit.

It wasn’t actually a matter of how well he could hear but more of whether he could distinguish all the sounds or not.

Humans were very skilled at processing visuals, but an auxiliary sense like hearing wasn’t something that was easily recognizable.

Liu Sang, however, was different. In his ears, everything became like a code of the truth of the world.

There were countless sounds of fingers pressing on smartphone keypads, voices sending WeChat messages, thrumming pulses, and continuous heartbeats.

There was also the sound of stomachs digesting and bowels moving.

It was like his soul was standing beside everyone, looking at them all unwaveringly.

Tu Dian didn’t know that he had reached this level.

At this time, he suddenly heard something, but it wasn’t on the bridge—it was underneath.

It was a faint, heartbeat-like sound, too weak to be heard if his ears weren’t working at this level.

This sound was hidden amidst the noise of the flowing river water.

He jumped off of the car, causing everyone standing nearby to immediately scatter. He rushed to the bridge railing and saw that a boat was about to pass through the bridge’s arch.

“There’s a ferry here. Why is there a ferry when there’s a bridge?”

When he directed this question to the person beside him, they were so frightened that they immediately answered, “This boat is going to the village. It travels from the village upstream to the next village over, but it only makes one trip a day. In fact, you can drive across the bridge, but it’s cheaper to go by boat.”

Liu Sang immediately climbed over the bridge railing and jumped into the river, shocking Wang Guo who was watching nearby.

The current was so fast that Liu Sang quickly realized that he had been too hasty jumping into the water like that. But he gritted his teeth and began swimming upstream towards the side of the boat.

4

Wang Guo’s wife was discussing her husband’s condition with the doctor at the hospital.

A young kid who must have been around eighteen years old suddenly came knocking on the door. Wang Guo’s wife touched her ear, feeling a headache coming on.

“Wang’s team was chasing a thief on the bridge,” the kid said to Wang Guo’s wife. “He’s had an accident. You should go and take a look.”

Wang Guo’s wife froze for a moment before immediately standing up.

“There’s a car waiting outside,” the young kid said.

<What Are They Doing 2022 Chapter 26><Table of Contents><What Are They Doing 2022 Chapter 28>

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TN Notes:

(1) Per Tiffany: people in some regions refer to the letter “Q” (Queen) as Century Egg (梅花的皮蛋) when it comes to poker.

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