Chapter 24

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Chapter 24: Star Death Reality Show (VII)

The three people discussed the current situation, but there were still too few clues to build a clear picture. Qi Leren proposed to search Jing Siyu’s basement again to see if there were any clues. Besides, Jing Siyu was still in her sister Jing Sixue’s house, so her house was empty at present.

Dr. Lu readily agreed and Du Yue didn’t complain. He had a special reverence for this Leren-qianbei. In an exaggerated way, he was a “fanboy” of Qi Leren’s. He naturally had no objection to his proposal, and the three men set off for the house in good time.

“Shall we turn on the tracking camera? There are no secrets now, anyway,” Dr. Lu asked.

“…Okay,” Qi Leren said after thinking for a while. Keeping them off wasn’t necessary, and if they found any answers they may as well be shown.

The invisible cameras around them were turned on by voice command again. Dr. Lu put on a vain display: “Hello audience and friends, we are the EDM group, and many things happened during the day. We’re going to explore the basement at night to see if there are any secrets hidden in the basement in Jing Siyu’s house. Everyone, please wait and see.”

After that, Dr. Lu came over and whispered to Qi Leren: “Is this how TV hosts talk when they’re on live?”

“Maybe, I don’t watch live broadcasts.” Qi Leren wasn’t sure since, although he played games and watched movies, he didn’t watch live broadcasts very much.

“…I only watch live sports,” Du Yue said.

“Whatever, it works,” Dr. Lu muttered.

When they came to Jing Siyu’s house, the door was locked and the windows on the first floor were also locked. It wasn’t difficult to break the windows by force, but if there was a big noise, it might attract other contestants who lived nearby. Dr. Lu and Du Yue discussed how to open the windows without disturbing others. Qi Leren circled around the hut and had an idea in his heart.

“The floors of this building aren’t high. If you throw me up, I can climb it alone.” Under Chen Baiqi’s careful guidance, Qi Leren had learned a lot about wall climbing—thanks to the teaching assistant three-headed hellhound, he could now climb trees and walls faster than a monkey, fully activating the ancestral tree climbing skills of apes. However, faced with a smooth wall, he was still unable to grasp anything.

“Well, Du Yue, come and stand here. If I stand on your shoulders I can barely reach the window on the second floor. How’s your load-bearing ability?” Qi Leren asked.

“I haven’t tried it, but it should be okay, I’m quite strong,” Du Yue said confidently.

Qi Leren found a good position and let Du Yue set himself into a stance. He borrowed his arm strength and easily stood on his shoulders. Dr. Lu was amazed: “Great, you can perform acrobatics.”

Qi Leren glanced bitterly at Dr. Lu on the ground. God knows what he has experienced in the past half month. When he thought about it, he would feel that this was not a life for humans.

The window on the second floor was unlocked and Qi Leren opened it smoothly. He grabbed the window frame with his hands hard, and his legs pushed on the wall to arch his body easily. At this time, he couldn’t take care of his posture. He tried his best to be quick, so he climbed into the window and breathed a sigh of relief.

“I’ll open the door below, and you can wait by it,” Qi Leren said to the two men, leaning out of the window.

“Okay, okay!” Dr. Lu rushed to pull Du Yue, who was still applauding Qi Leren, and went to the door.

Qi Leren is also ready to go downstairs. The ceiling height of Jing Siyu’s house was very low, and the second floor is lower than the first floor, which makes one feel very claustrophobic. He couldn’t help but look up.

It was too low. The ceilings of other rooms were normal. Was it because the owner of this building was very short? From the outside, the building wasn’t as low as it felt inside, probably because the roof was pointed and created the visual effect that it would be higher…

But it was also possible that this building had an attic.

Qi Leren paused, took out a flashlight, found nothing, and simply went downstairs and opened the door.

Dr. Lu, who was outside the door, was already in a hurry, and was relieved when he saw Qi Leren: “I thought you’d gone were missing, too.”

“It’s not easy for a living person to disappear from inside,” Qi Leren laughed.

“Who knows, didn’t He Yi and Mark disappear this morning?” Dr. Lu murmured.

Qi Leren suddenly had an epiphany: “When we searched Annie’s house during the day, did you pay attention to the attic?”

“Ah, is there an attic in her house?” Dr. Lu was confused and pulled Du Yue aside. “Did you notice?”

Du Yue also shook his head. At that time, everyone’s attention was focused on “there is a basement in Jing Siyu’s house”. When looking for someone in Annie’s house, they naturally focused on finding the basement. This mindset made them completely ignore the possibility of having an attic in the house.

“I just suddenly thought of the attic. If there’s a hidden attic in Annie’s house, maybe He Yi and Mark are hiding in it to create the illusion that they’re missing?” Qi Leren made a bold guess.

“But why would they do that?” Dr. Lu asked.

“…Well, I’m just saying one possibility. As for motive… We’ll see if we find them. Let’s go to the basement first!” Qi Leren quickly changed the subject.

The basement was still like earlier. Du Yue helped to pull away the rug on the ground, and then pulled the wooden trap door up to reveal the black hole. The three people went through a routine of “you look at me, I look at you, I don’t want to be the first to go down.”

“…Forget it, I’ll go first.” Qi Leren played the “leader card” and was the first one down the stairs, followed by Du Yue, and finally Dr. Lu.

The basement was filled with a rotten smell. The three people had only two flashlights. Dr. Lu was responsible for finding items and was assigned one. Qi Leren and Du Yue shared one. The three people searched in this not too big basement.

“This should be something like an experiment record, but unfortunately I can’t understand this alien text,” Qi Leren whispered, turning over the notebook on the desk.

Du Yue gave up after a glance: “I’m most afraid of learning a foreign language! If it’s a foreign language, I’m sure I’ll fail the exam!”

It seemed that even though he hadn’t experienced the college entrance examination, the horror of learning was deeply imprinted in the brain of this slacker student who had an indelibly terrible memory. Qi Leren’s own heart had been full of anxiety from this. For years after he had finished the college entrance examination, he would be woken up by the nightmare of not knowing any answers in the middle of the night. However, he would rather go back to the past and have these nightmares than his current ones of his recurring deaths.

He continued to leaf through it, turning quickly from page to page. In the last few pages of the notebook, Qi Leren found a drawing.

It was an octopus-like animal, perhaps a species from this planet. It has thirteen tentacles, no suckers and no eyes. He wondered if it was simply not drawn or if this creature truly had no eyes.

“An octopus. I like to eat takoyaki,” Du Yue said.

“I like them too!” Dr. Lu, who was looking from east to west, responded.

“Dr. Lu, come and have a look at this.” Qi Leren thought more than Du Yue. He suspected that the octopus had something to do with the glowing stone.

Dr. Lu approached him and stretched his neck to see: “Wow, an octopus!”

“Du Yue, I remember you got the card from inside an octopus?” Qi Leren remembered the suspicious clue again—Du Yue said that he had received the task because a cat was carrying half an octopus, and the task card was stuffed in the octopus, which may be a hint.

Qi Leren felt a pain in his waist. Dr. Lu gave him a hard twist and glared at him. We haven’t turned off the tracking camera right now. Don’t talk thoughtlessly!

Qi Leren, who came to his senses, smiled casually and continued: “The owner of that fresh food shop is quite creative. How much was that discount card for?”

“Ah? What card? I didn’t…” Du Yue, who couldn’t keep up with their rhythm, gave a blank look.

“Eighty percent! Let’s eat together when we finish the show!” Dr. Lu hugged Du Yue’s arm and laughed, acting awkwardly.

I really want to turn off the cameras, but if I turn them off now, will we look suspicious? Qi Leren was depressed for a while and had to continue pretending that nothing had happened. For him, though, the clues at present are enough to deduce what the monster in the luminous stone was—the task had started from an octopus, the sketch of an octopus was in the notebook, and Annie had spoken of Leviathan, which was a creature that had destroyed a civilization. The implication was everywhere.

But from the audience’s point of view, they were just a group of poor people who didn’t know what kind of danger they were in. They shouldn’t know this, or at least they shouldn’t find out the truth yet.

They had to find some important clues and make up a logical chain of reasoning, otherwise, in the eyes of the audience, the three of them would suddenly discover the final boss as easily as opening their eyes, which would be very suspicious.

Qi Leren finally understood the difficulty of this task—how to play an ordinary person in front of a group of audience members who had God’s perspective, and this ordinary person should not only discover his own situation and find out how to deal with it, but also couldn’t understand it at random!

Dr. Lu obviously understood it too. He shivered twice, made a wry smile, and went on looking for items.

Qi Leren sat down in a chair with the notebook and thought about what to do next: First, after leaving the basement, he should take a look at the glowing stone in the church—only after seeing that the stone was broken could he show proper doubts.

Secondly, talk to Xue Jiahui and show her the notebook. She once said that she had done a program related to the alien amphioctopuses, so she must know something about it. Although she hadn’t seen that the glowing stone was the octopus’s egg, because there were so many possible glowing minerals that ordinary people wouldn’t think of space aliens at all, if she was shown pictures of the octopus, she would surely recognize it. He remembered Xue Jiahui saying that the octopus was a parasitic space alien… Their situation was very bad.

Finally, they had to enter Annie’s house again to see if there was an attic—this step was a bit troublesome. He hadn’t thought about whether to do this stealthily at night or break in the next day… There must be some missing clues there.

“Qi Leren! Look at this! Come here!” Dr. Lu suddenly let out a cry and surprised Qi Leren enough that he jumped up from his chair. “Du Yue, help me move this bookshelf, I can’t pull it!”

Du Yue answered the call and easily pushed the bookshelf aside, revealing a dusty iron door behind the bookshelf.

The three men stared at the door for a long time, and Dr. Lu said: “…Well… It seems that there really are many secrets down here…”

“I don’t know much, is it dangerous?” Du Yue scratched his hair and was very upset.

“I don’t know, but we have to find the tool to open the electronic lock first. It seems that some kind of ID card is needed?” Dr. Lu said and pointed to the electronic lock.

Qi Leren said coldly: “The main point is that the power plant in this village has long been out of operation and the circuits of all the buildings in the village have no electricity. Why is this electronic lock operational? Don’t tell me it has a nuclear battery inside.”

Dr. Lu swallowed dryly and said nervously: “According to the routine in horror films, there’s probably an underground… er… factory behind this door.”

Qi Leren understood what he was trying to say because he also thought of the same thing—behind the basement door, there perhaps was a huge biological laboratory, and what they found might be Leviathan.

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