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Chapter 37: When he occasionally lowered his head, he looked extremely cute.
“I haven’t heard such a sarcastic joke in a long time.”
Yang Erci stared at the “merchant” on the screen and said, “Purchasing baby girls at a high price is not because they like girls, but because they don’t like children born from artificial wombs. They want natural wombs.”
Whether it was because of this video or for some other reason, Zhong Yirou felt a strong chill, as if she had been thrown into an ice well; no matter how much she struggled, she wouldn’t get any warmth. Her hands were almost stiff, and even moving her fingertips seemed difficult.
In the video, the chubby man’s hands moved skillfully, attentively introducing these “hot potatoes” to this rare guest.
[No need to say more.] The voice of Josh, also known as D03, appeared again in the recording. [I’ll take all these kids. I’ll come to pick them up early tomorrow. Please take care of them tonight.]
The other party wished him, “God bless you,” smiling with layers of fat piled together, making it almost impossible to see those eyes filled with greed.
[If you still need baby girls, just find me. I’ve been in this business for over a decade. The first batch of little girls I sent out are now grown up and have children. Those kids are very healthy. You know, those wealthy bastards only like kids growing up in human wombs. Those ones raised in fake wombs and synthetic amniotic fluid are no different from specimens in their eyes…]
He was proud of the “products” he sent out, like a successful industrial chain merchant, just temporarily bending down to this dirty, chaotic, and narrow subscription studio.
D03 didn’t say much; he just silently paid the advance, agreed on the handover time, and left alone.
The video ended like that.
There was only one file left in the folder, the last one, an audio file named [(A02) Phone Recording 11090].
Josh clicked play directly, but An Wujiu was concerned about the naming convention. In parentheses, it said A02, probably indicating the phone recording target. What about the 11090 at the end? If it was the sequence number of the recording file…
In the audio, two voices appeared. D03’s voice was clear, not filtered or compressed through other media; it was clearly a recording made by him.
[I’ve got it sorted out. It’s wise of you not to come. It’s really scary in there. As soon as you enter, there’s the smell of baby excrement and food mixed together. I don’t know how the kids live there, enduring so much hardship. We’ll have to examine them thoroughly when they’re sent to us.]
Sure enough, An Wujiu’s voice appeared on the other side; the call was with A02.
[I’m afraid I won’t be able to handle seeing that situation. Thank you for doing this.]
[Why say such formal things? We’re best friends, right? Just treat me to a drink when the time comes. You’ve postponed our meetups twice recently; you can’t postpone it again this time.]
[No worries, I promise.] A02’s voice in the recording was soft and gentle.
[Alright, how about I bring the wine A01 gave me for my birthday later? Let’s meet at the circus on the second floor at X o’clock.]
An Wujiu frowned; the time was muted.
And it was at the circus again.
Was tonight for the kids to watch the circus performance, or was it the appointment of these two employees?
A02’s tone carried some nostalgia. [Haven’t watched a performance in a long time. It’s quite nostalgic. When we were kids, we used to sneak in to watch.]
[Yeah. But are you willing to drink the wine A01 gave you? I thought you’d keep it as a collection.]
A02 chuckled softly.
For some reason, though the voice was his own, An Wujiu felt strangely unfamiliar with the situation. Like this laughter, it was sweetened as if from someone in love.
[He won’t blame me. Wine is meant to be drunk by people.]
[Okay, okay. But you’re the one who told me to drink it.]
Wu You noticed something wrong, turned to look at Shen Ti, glanced at his front, and sighed before speaking, “You’re A01.”
Shen Ti raised an eyebrow, presenting a dignified appearance that resembled that of a proper palace lady. However, the words spoken were quite provocative, “What’s wrong? Am I not good enough? You always have so many opinions about me.”
Wu You felt that he should change his name to Wu Talks-a-Lot.
“The relationship between A01 and A02 seems unusual.” Nan Shan continued to smile, but his speech slowed down significantly.
Zhong Yirou, who was on the side, wanted to laugh, but a smile would cause pain in her neck, so she endured it.
In the recording, A02 and D03 discussed some issues related to the drug, mostly repeating what was said in the previous video.
At some point, An Wujiu realized that this game was not as simple as he had imagined.
If it were just a straightforward survival game, it would be nothing more than a confined space with puzzles and obstacles to escape.
But these videos and phone recordings seemed to be revealing some kind of plot to them, a story about this containment center, and even the roles they were playing.
A01 and A02 had some kind of intimate relationship, and A02 and D03 were close friends.
What about the other people?
As he pondered, suddenly, he felt that the outside voices were gradually disappearing. So he took a few steps toward the door, then walked back, standing next to Shen Ti, very close.
As if afraid of disturbing others listening to the recording, An Wujiu didn’t speak. Instead, he gently placed his hand on Shen Ti’s back, almost just the fingertips touching, like a dragonfly that had touched the water and was reluctant to fly away.
Shen Ti crossed his arms and glanced at him, feeling a tiny sense of pleasure due to An Wujiu’s actions, though he didn’t know why.
He raised an eyebrow at An Wujiu, indicating, “What’s wrong?”
In his eyes, An Wujiu was a strange person, beautiful but not flamboyant, with a contradictory beauty that was both fragile and resilient.
With a face like this, relying on appearance alone, he might be able to thrive, even if he were foolish. Even if he was willing to flatter, someone would take care of him. Those self-proclaimed strong guys liked dumb people who were easy to control and had good looks.
But An Wujiu was strangely intelligent and even stubborn.
Seeing Shen Ti’s response, An Wujiu quickly withdrew his hand, speaking softly, “The rainbow herbicide spray over there may have stopped.” The slight angle at which he tilted his face made him appear delicate, but it was just an appearance.
If someone else spoke like this and made such gestures, Shen Ti would feel nothing, even a bit repulsed. But precisely because it was An Wujiu, his mind and that stubborn kindness made this face, no matter how beautiful, not vulgar. It was different from everyone else Shen Ti had encountered.
So, when An Wujiu occasionally lowered his head, he looked extremely cute.
Shen Ti understood his meaning but pretended not to and leaned close to An Wujiu’s ear, deliberately choosing a term he would surely reject, “Do you want to command me?”
“No.” An Wujiu denied it earnestly, his eyes bright. “I just want you to help me keep an eye out. The rainbow may come out later, and I always feel that the printed words on it might be a clue.”
Shen Ti laughed in his ear, then straightened up quickly. “What about you?”
An Wujiu pointed to the screen. “The recording sounds a bit strange; I need to listen to it.”
Shen Ti didn’t say much and compromised exceptionally quickly. He casually made an OK gesture, put his arm around Wu You’s neck, and walked away.
“What are you doing?”
“Accompany me to check over there.”
“Just go by yourself!”
“But I’m scared~”
The voices of the two gradually faded as they walked away. An Wujiu then turned back and walked to the screen.
The laughter from earlier had passed, but his ears belatedly felt a bit itchy.
However, this sensation lasted only a moment. An Wujiu immersed his mind once again in the conversation of the recording. These audio files must contain very important information.
In the conversation, after discussing transition medicine, their topic returned to the appointment at the circus.
D03 asked: [When do you get off work? I’ll come find you.]
On the phone, A02’s voice became a bit noisy, as if someone was calling him.
[How about this? About meeting at the circus on the second floor at X o’clock tonight, let’s push it forward by two hours. E06 came to find me; I’ll go over first. She seems to be in a bad mood recently after a breakup.]
The time he mentioned was muted again.
[Okay, let’s push it by two hours. Only you can comfort her. I can’t handle this. I’m on my way; see you at nine!]
With a beep, the audio ended.
“E06 is Miss Zhong,” Nan Shan said slowly. “The relationships among the employees here seem very good. It doesn’t seem at all like people working in such an inauspicious place.”
An Wujiu caught something from the last sentence.
The description of “very good relationship” was inaccurate; it should be that, currently, A01, D03, and E06, as mentioned in the conversation, have very good relationships with A02.
From several video records and audio information, it wasn’t difficult to find that A02 was a kind and upright person, serving as a link to other characters.
After the audio ended, nothing else popped up on the screen. Everyone thought it was over.
Unexpectedly, the next moment, a message appeared on the screen, resembling an electronic card.
Upon opening it, there was a text:
【Dear D03, A02 invites you to watch the circus performance today!
Please remember, the time is:
MLCRFPCC
RUMXCPM
Don’t be late!】
Immediately below the text, there was a line of red letters —
Fill in the correct time to receive the electronic invitation card.
___:___
So, it was because of this that the time mentioned in the recording was muted.
“What is this? It looks like a string of gibberish.” Josh frowned. “Are these numbers representing the time?”
Yang Erci glanced at it and concluded it was some kind of code. “I guess so. These two strings of characters should be ciphertext obtained through some encryption method, converting numbers into letters.”
“Then… can’t we process the muted file from earlier? Maybe we can get the results.”
Josh’s suggestion was not accepted by Yang Erci. She shook her head, “Providing ciphertext and then attempting to recover the audio is essentially brute force cracking. Besides, we currently don’t have the tools to recover audio files.”
An Wujiu remained silent. The guesses about Yang Erci’s identity from earlier seemed to be confirmed. Behavior can be disguised, but a person’s way of thinking and knowledge are easily revealed.
Faced with this ciphertext, Yang Erci used various classical methods of decoding. She found that they didn’t seem correct. “If it’s a correspondence between letters and numbers, it’s usually according to the order of the alphabet. But if it’s like this… it’s 131231861633, and the next line is 2331613182113…”
Without a pen, she could only calculate in her mind each possible decoding method for these letters, orally arranging them according to the sequence of the alphabet. This demonstrated her ability.
However, after obtaining the numbers, Yang Erci felt a bit puzzled. She muttered to herself, “Then decipher the number sequence? Isn’t the difficulty too high…”
All these calculations were beyond Josh’s comprehension. He tried to comfort her, “Don’t worry, you’ll definitely figure it out.”
An Wujiu stood quietly in the background. He didn’t calculate; instead, he repeatedly recalled the words in the recording.
Zhong Yirou felt physically weak and exhausted, and her throat hurt. She dragged a chair over and sat down, weakly proposing an idea, “Could it be a grouped encryption code? Try matching the two sets of numbers. If that doesn’t work, we can try shifting…”
“You look really pale.” Yang Erci felt that something was off with her but couldn’t focus on it. She took off her white coat, wrapped it around Zhong Yirou, and continued decrypting. “It seems like grouping may not be feasible.”
Encryption was not Nan Shan’s expertise, and his current condition wasn’t great. He worried it might be a problem with his central nervous system. So he suggested going to the Rainbow Corridor to find Shen Ti and Wu You.
Having said that, he left.
“No, it’s not grouping.” After repeated calculations, Yang Erci confirmed that this method wasn’t feasible.
What was it, then? Could it truly be the result of nested encryption methods?
“Could it be that we’re overthinking it?”
An Wujiu’s calm voice appeared behind her.
Yang Erci turned around, scrutinizing An Wujiu’s face. He was different from the people they had encountered before—intelligent but non-aggressive, and his way of offering suggestions was gentle and mild.
“Did you come up with a solution?”
“Well, indeed. The straightforward approach is to substitute letters for numbers. A equals 1, B equals 2, and C equals 3—that’s the most intuitive number substitution.” An Wujiu’s tone was light. “I initially thought the same way. However, just now Yirou mentioned shifting, and it made me wonder if we were overcomplicating things.”
“Shifting?” Yang Erci found it impractical. “Shift by how much? Blindly try shifting according to the alphabetical order?”
An Wujiu shook his head gently. “Do you remember? In the recent call recording between D03 and A02, some phrases were repeated several times—‘postponed twice,’ ‘pushed two hours,’ ‘if we push forward two hours, then push forward two hours.'”
Suddenly, Yang Erci understood. “Are you suggesting that this hints at us pushing it back twice?”
An Wujiu’s gaze was fixed on the ciphertext on the screen. He mentally tried pushing each number back and then looked around. He found the medicine can that Yang Erci had opened earlier, took out an orange pill, and demonstrated it to Josh.
“The first line of the ciphertext is MLCRFPCC… If we push M back two, we get O. Push L back two, and we get N. Push C back two, and it becomes E.”
As he spoke, he wrote these letters forcefully on the wall, not following the prescribed format of dividing them into two lines.
ONETHREE:TWOZERO
After completing it, An Wujiu found a spot in the middle of the string and drew two vertical bars.
ONE|THREE:TWO|ZERO
“Ah, 13:20!” Josh exclaimed, thrilled that they had found the correct answer.
“No.” Yang Erci shook her head. “This is not for the evening.”
“Yeah.” An Wujiu nodded. “Because it’s not only shifting the positions of the letters but also the numbers. If letters need to be pushed back twice to get the word for the numbers, then numbers also need to be shifted back twice.”
All the numbers were cyclically shifted back by two places. The 1 originally in the first place moved to the third place, the 3 moved to the fourth place, the 2 shifted twice and reached the first place, and the 0 came to the second place.
An Wujiu didn’t continue writing the answer but announced, “20:13. That should be the answer.”
“Oh, I see.” Josh immediately inputted these four numbers in the correct order.
The screen displayed the result.
【Correct answer! Congratulations on successfully decoding A02’s secret code. Please extend your hand to receive this invitation card.】
Soon, several blue lasers appeared, branding a square shape onto Josh’s palm.
“Is this the invitation card?”
He raised his hand and observed. It wasn’t a single square, but many overlapping but not entirely identical squares.
The final prompt appeared on the screen.
【Please find the rainbow key and be on time for the appointment.】
Following the game progression, it seems the mission of the Double Perfect Angels has concluded.
“The rainbow key should be related to the task in that half of the corridor. Once obtained, we can probably open the door to the circus. To save time, let’s quickly solve the Rainbow Baby’s puzzle,” Yang Erci suggested. Seeing that Zhong Yirou appeared fatigued, An Wujiu considered carrying her, but Yang Erci intervened.
“I’ll do it,” she said, kneeling down with her back turned to Zhong Yirou. “Get on.”
Zhong Yirou, lacking the strength to resist, complied with Yang Erci’s request. Her back felt warmer than anticipated, different from that cold face.
“Heavy, isn’t it?”
“It’s bearable.”
As the others left the room, An Wujiu turned his head for one last glance.
The birth of these children relied on these adults, yet their lives were also ruined by them.
This was only a world in the game. In reality, the abandoned angels weren’t those with two sets of “perfect” organs or those who were “doubled.”
They were just girls, nothing more.
Passing by the mural again, in a trance, Zhong Yirou once again saw the child behind the tree. Although she couldn’t discern the child’s features or clothing, she seemed to hear the sound of a childish laugh.
As they proceeded along the Angel Corridor until they were about to reach the place where they initially entered the second level, the Rainbow Corridor happened to not be spraying any chemicals. An Wujiu saw Shen Ti’s back.
“Shen Ti.”
Hearing the voice, Shen Ti turned around. Standing in different areas, the two simultaneously noticed that at the junction of the Rainbow Corridor and the Angel Corridor, where there had originally been an entire wall, a colorful door had appeared.
On it was the word “Circus.”
At the same time, in their normal field of vision, two lines of timing appeared.
The first line displayed the current time: 07:55.
The second line showed a countdown, constantly changing. Currently, there were approximately 64 hours remaining—
The author has something to say:
The encryption method is the Caesar cipher, but the numbers were shifted once again afterward.
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