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Chapter 39: Great relationship progress!
Following the instructions, with his shoulder against the door, Wu You diligently entered the answers into the blank spaces, one stroke at a time.
Just as he finished inputting the first color, Wu You keenly sensed the floor beneath him crumbling.
Realizing the danger, his fingers trembled uncontrollably. Wu You had no choice but to press his entire arm and wrist against the door.
A cracking sound resonated, and the intact floor they stood on developed a crack, splitting straight toward the center.
At that moment, An Wujiu’s mind went blank for an instant. Saying he wasn’t worried would be a lie. The void was just a breath away, and his heartbeat accelerated. In an instant, a hand grabbed his hand—it was Shen Ti.
Shen Ti reached behind, gripping An Wujiu’s injured hand, avoiding the wrist wrapped in bandages. In this urgent moment, he bent An Wujiu’s arm, placing it between them.
The crack continued to extend.
Wu You entered the last word, and the door emitted two beeps.
“Josh! Try opening the door!”
“Okay!”
The crack reached the other end of the floor.
[D03, Welcome back!]
The door opened inward, and the floor beneath their feet almost completely collapsed in the next second.
The seven of them narrowly escaped at the last moment.
In that most perilous moment, claiming not to be panicked was impossible. However, at that time, An Wujiu was firmly held in Shen Ti’s embrace, and there was no time for his own body’s reaction. It was Shen Ti who, with him in tow, collided into the room and finally fell heavily on the doorstep.
But he didn’t feel pain because Shen Ti was beneath him, providing the maximum cushioning. His injured wrist, under Shen Ti’s preemptive precautions, did not suffer a second injury.
Feeling the impact, An Wujiu felt a bit guilty and moved, immediately getting up and pulling Shen Ti up from the ground.
“That was close…” Josh supported himself against the wall inside the door, feeling his legs go weak.
Outside the door was like a cliff; the murals on the wall were covered in a layer of hot red light, almost melting. The room was dimly lit, illuminated by the fire. It was slightly smaller than the room in the Doublle Angel Corridor, with a desk and a bookshelf that reached the ceiling but no display screens.
An Wujiu’s mind was filled with the mission. After pulling up Shen Ti, he began to search. On the desk, he found two mini hard drives, each labeled with [E06] and [E07], seeming to belong to two people. It was strange to find them on this level. There was also a box on the table. Opening the lid revealed a collection of small cards with childish handwriting.
The situation was urgent, so An Wujiu didn’t bother to take a look. He pocketed the mini hard drives and picked up the box.
Yang Erci glanced at the countdown timer in her field of vision.
Time was running out.
“Hurry, the key is on the top shelf of the bookcase.”
Two red-covered books on the top of the bookshelf held a key, or rather, a rainbow-colored access card, emitting a faint light in the dim room.
In a semi-daze, Zhong Yirou’s consciousness seemed to recover slightly. She raised her hand and pointed behind the bookshelf. “There’s a ladder there…”
A long and narrow retractable steel ladder leaned against the wall.
Wu You was about to approach when a figure flashed before his eyes, swift as the wind.
“Bring the ladder out and set it up in the corridor.”
It was Shen Ti’s voice, issuing instructions in a calm and light tone, quite different from his usual demeanor, precisely at the critical moment.
He leaped upward, reaching out with an upward sweep of his arm and directly grabbing the rainbow “key” stuck on the top shelf of the bookcase.
As Shen Ti landed on the ground, Nan Shan, who had been in a deep sleep, suddenly coughed violently amidst the shock. His whole body tilted along the wall, falling to the ground.
Wu You and An Wujiu were in the process of pulling out the retractable ladder. Seeing Nan Shan’s abnormal reaction, Wu You, worried that his medication wasn’t effective, said, “I’ll go check.”
Josh stepped forward to help. The ladder was quite heavy, and the two of them pushed it out together.
Placing the ladder on the ground, Josh, near the front end, crouched at the door, slightly sticking his head out and looking outside. A rush of hot air surged upward. Although the circus gate was not far from here, it still felt just a bit short.
“Can this really reach?”
An Wujiu, half-kneeling at the ladder’s tail, kept pulling the telescopic ladder outward while rapidly calculating, “The corridor is about 2 meters wide. Our room is different from the others; it’s the extra one between two room doors. So the distance is greater than one room but less than two rooms. I noticed earlier that the distance between two room doors on the corridor is no more than 3 meters. So, the maximum distance these two doors could be slanted is around 3.6 meters.”
The ladder extended longer and longer, finally reaching its full length.
“This ladder is four meters wide. It should be enough,” An Wujiu said, holding the right side of the ladder and finding the right angle. Josh held the left side, and the two slowly pushed the long ladder outward.
One end of the ladder continued to extend toward the circus.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Wu You laid Nan Shan flat and began resuscitating him according to Zhong Yirou’s instructions.
“Undo his clothes… He needs air.”
Yang Erci and Shen Ti also approached, holding the ladder in the door to stabilize it and helping them push it out. The end of the ladder extending outward was getting closer and closer to the circus gate, with only about a meter of distance to the surviving floor in front of the door.
“Loosen the collar a bit, or else it’ll be hard to breathe…”
Wu You did as instructed, but when he loosened Nan Shan’s work uniform collar, he discovered something incredibly eerie.
There was a bruised and purple ligature mark on Nan Shan’s neck.
A chill ran down Wu You’s spine. He looked at Zhong Yirou, and the firelight illuminated her face, shining like she was sitting under the afterglow of the setting sun. His gaze moved downward to her neck.
There was an identical ligature mark, just like Nan Shan’s.
“What’s wrong? Hurry, overlap your hands on his chest…”
Wu You’s hands were numb, almost paralyzed. He nodded, responding, and then placed his hands on Nan Shan’s chest. Before he could press down, Nan Shan coughed, opening his eyes instinctively.
“Cough, cough…” He reached out, grabbing the hands on his chest as if holding onto a last straw.
At this moment, Wu You finally woke up completely, helping Nan Shan to sit up. “Are you okay? You…” He also held Nan Shan’s hand, trying to feel his temperature.
There was barely any temperature difference between them.
What exactly was the cause of this ligature mark?
The distance was slowly shortening.
The top of the ladder finally landed steadily on the floor in front of the circus gate.
“Alright!” An Wujiu pushed the ladder out a bit more to make the bridge more stable. “Shen Ti, go first. Once you’re across, stabilize the other end of the ladder.”
Shen Ti refused his command.
“I’ll go last; you go first.” After saying this, Shen Ti tossed the card he had obtained earlier to Josh. “You follow him and enter once the door is open.”
An Wujiu noticed that whenever danger approached, Shen Ti became unusually calm, even indifferent.
Indifferent to death.
So he turned to other individuals. “Josh, you go first; be quick.”
Both of them hesitated, but Josh understood the weight of his responsibility.
“Alright. I’ll wait for you guys on the other side.”
And so, the originally most timid Josh was the first to walk onto the bridge built by the ladder. Below the bridge was a raging lava; a single misstep would be irreversible.
The ladder swayed a bit, and Josh knew that on the other end, they were holding it for him. He comforted himself inwardly, almost walking with trembling legs. However, his hands were firm, and he tightly clenched the rainbow key.
This was everyone’s hope.
“I’m here!” Josh shouted with his back turned to them, giving others confidence. He pressed the rainbow access card against the sensor on the circus gate, and indeed, the double doors slowly opened inward.
“We did it!”
The moment Josh entered, he turned around, crouching down and pressing his hands on the end of the ladder. “Hurry!”
An Wujiu didn’t move; he just instructed others to cross in order. Following his instructions, Shen Ti closely followed the just-awakened Nan Shan, and Wu You assisted Zhong Yirou, trailing behind.
Everyone left, leaving only An Wujiu. He looked at the countdown.
Ten seconds remaining.
In the final moment, An Wujiu picked up the box containing the cards and stepped onto the long ladder. As no one was stabilizing the other end, the ladder swayed unusually, so An Wujiu had to quicken his pace.
Suddenly, the door behind him collapsed with a loud crash, a whole door falling into the bottomless lava, igniting a blaze.
“Wujiu! The floor is cracking too. Hurry!”
Josh’s words were not yet finished when An Wujiu felt a void beneath his feet. Out of instinct, he threw the box in his hands toward them.
The tail end of the ladder fell.
“No—”
In the final moment, Shen Ti tightly grasped the top of the ladder. He didn’t know how he could muster such great strength in an instant, and he didn’t have time to think about it now.
An Wujiu’s hand also firmly grabbed the ladder’s crossbar, suspended above a sea of flames.
The mechanical skeleton endowed him with gripping strength and endurance beyond that of an ordinary person. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to hold on, let alone endure.
“Climb up.”
He heard Shen Ti’s voice, so he struggled to reach his feet onto the ladder. With Shen Ti and the others pulling, the ladder didn’t fall. So, step by step, An Wujiu climbed upward.
Finally, in the last second of the countdown, An Wujiu reached up and firmly grasped the edge of the floor.
Shen Ti reached out a hand, pulling him up.
The ladder fell heavily, splashing sparks into the sky. Shen Ti looked at An Wujiu. Clearly exhausted, An Wujiu’s first reaction to surviving such a close call was to smile.
An Wujiu left a somewhat weak but grateful smile for Shen Ti. His beautiful face was indistinct in the backlight; only his eyes shone brighter than the sparks.
“Fortunately, it was me at the end, or it would have been troublesome.”
Shen Ti didn’t feel fortunate. Seeing his smile and the box and scattered cards on the ground, an unexpected displeasure welled up in his heart. He couldn’t explain why, as it was an experience he had never had before.
No one could dictate his emotions.
“You really are crazy,” Shen Ti said, standing up.
Though it had always been like this before.
An Wujiu didn’t quite understand. Enveloped by the immense joy and relief from others for his survival, he couldn’t sense that happiness because of Shen Ti’s words. His attitude left him puzzled.
Somewhat baffled, An Wujiu remembered the crucial clues he had. He absentmindedly reached into his pocket, took out the two mini hard drives, and handed one to Nan Shan and the other to Zhong Yirou.
After that, An Wujiu stood up and followed Shen Ti into the circus tent, questioning him, “Why?”
“I haven’t changed; why do you think I’m crazy?”
An Wujiu also didn’t understand why he took it so seriously.
Shen Ti turned around to face him. His expression wasn’t particularly pleasant, unlike his usual carefree indifference. His voice was low, audible only to the two of them.
“Only a lunatic cares only about the life and death of others.”
Stunned for a second, An Wujiu quickly raised his eyes. Looking into Shen Ti’s transparent eyes, he saw a rare seriousness.
An Wujiu’s eyebrows were slightly furrowed. Clearly, he was someone with a complex mind, adept at manipulating others between his hands with his strategies. However, the words he spoke were straightforward, without any concealment.
“If you don’t care about yourself but care about my life and death, aren’t you also a lunatic?”
Looking into his eyes, Shen Ti’s heart suddenly raced. So fast that he finally felt the existence of his own heart.
A panic, like an invisible hand, gripped the location of his chest. It felt stuffy, and breathing was difficult.
“If I’m a lunatic…” An Wujiu’s clear eyes gazed into the depths of his soul. “Then, so are you.”
“We’re just two sides of the same coin.”
A lump of air blocked his chest. Shen Ti wanted to erupt and wanted to say something, but the next moment, An Wujiu’s actions startled him.
This guy reached out and grabbed Shen Ti’s coral earring.
He innocently stated his reason, “Your earring is swinging and bothering me.”
Swinging back and forth, back and forth.
It made people anxious.
It was just grabbing the earring. An Wujiu didn’t think much of it, but Shen Ti, like a cat, showed a stress response, finding it hard to breathe and coughing.
Seeing him like this, An Wujiu immediately let go, instinctively raising his hands as if surrendering to the culprit of his sudden coughing fit.
The confrontation just now was thrown out of his mind. Seeing him cough so severely, An Wujiu felt worried. So, he casually placed his hand on Shen Ti’s back, gently patting him. “What’s wrong with you?”
Thinking of Zhong Yirou and Nan Shan both having symptoms of coughing, he was quite concerned. “You’re not infected, are you?”
“You… cough, you’re hoping I get better, right?” Shen Ti covered his mouth with the back of his hand and coughed a few more times.
Every inch of his back that An Wujiu touched seemed to ignite a dense spark, a subtle electric current penetrating under the skin, making it tingle.
He couldn’t adapt at all. He was feeling a very, very unfamiliar reaction.
This body seemed not to be his own, at least not now.
The control keys were briefly taken away by An Wujiu.
“It’s a bit older in here than I imagined.”
Josh’s voice interrupted Shen Ti’s unrealistic speculation. He endured the urge to cough, grabbed An Wujiu’s hand that was patting his back, and held onto his wrist tightly, preventing him from moving.
An Wujiu felt like he couldn’t figure out what was going on with this guy.
Sometimes good, sometimes bad.
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Your honor they are both equally fruity and insane, good for them, good for them.