Chapter 1 A Slap

Pa.

Li Ang pressed the light switch on the wall of the reception room, but the light in the room didn't go out. The bulb continued to glow.

This outcome didn't exceed Li Ang's expectations. When he was exploring outside just now, he discovered that the village's electrical system was also "frozen."

The utility poles and wires were motionless. Even if he threw small stones at the wires, he couldn't make them shake or sway.

"The light doesn't change when the button is pressed..."

Li Ang pondered for a moment, further solidifying a certain guess in his mind.

Wang Congshan saw the expression on his face and couldn't help but ask, "What's wrong? Did you find a clue?"

"It's just a guess."

Li Ang shook his head, walked out of the reception room, and stood in front of the washroom in the hallway.

Wang Congshan subconsciously glanced at the entrance, at the shoe cabinet hiding the ghost's arm, silent and still.

The flower pot placed in front of the shoe cabinet was still silently tilted, not falling over.

Li Ang didn't pay much attention to the shoe cabinet.

Before entering the house, he observed the structure of the house from the courtyard through the glass windows.

The washroom and bathroom in this house are separated by a wall.

The bathroom and shower room are connected, with a shower curtain as a barrier.

Standing in the house, the two found that the washroom door was open, with a toilet inside that had long since stopped flushing.

The bathroom door was closed.

Reaching out to pull the door handle, they found that it was frozen solid and could not be turned.

"They don't want us to go in?"

Li Ang raised an eyebrow. The bathroom's outward-facing glass window was sealed, meaning the only way to enter was through the front door.

Even if he returned to the courtyard, there was no way to enter the bathroom and shower room by pushing open the window.

The doors to the reception room and washroom were open. Why was the bathroom the only one blocked?

Could it be...?

Wang Congshan narrowed her eyes and said in a deep voice, "The glass windows throughout the entire village are all frosted, reflecting blurry images.

There are no ponds or lakes in the village.

The photo frames we saw earlier weren't fitted with common transparent glass either.

The only bathroom with a mirror is sealed off, preventing us from entering.

Is the system trying to prevent us from seeing our own faces?

Is seeing our faces that important?

Or is there another reason?"

"It's hard to say right now."

Li Ang released the bathroom door handle and said casually, "There are still too few clues.

Maybe this script mission is sponsored by Unified Lao Tan Pickled Cabbage Beef Noodles, and the theme is 'Someone is imitating my face, someone is imitating my noodles'.

In this script mission, seeing a character's face means death."

Without enough clues, there were too many possibilities. Wild guessing was useless.

Li Ang and Wang Congshan walked into the living room. This room was covered with tatami mats, and the most important piece of furniture was a large television.

This television was a product of the late 1970s, quite old in Li Ang's eyes, and didn't have functions like playing videotapes.

Li Ang pressed the button for a long time and managed to turn it on, but the screen was full of snowy static, emitting a slight rustling sound.

"No signal, huh?"

Li Ang wasn't too surprised. The surrounding environment was strange and bizarre. It would be abnormal if it could display a normal picture.

He was about to get up and leave, but Wang Congshan's expression changed slightly. "Wait a minute."

She squatted down, put her ear close to the speaker openings on both sides of the television, listened carefully for a while, and her expression gradually became serious. She kept pressing the volume up button and said softly to Li Ang, "Listen carefully."

"..."

Li Ang narrowed his eyes. As the television's volume increased, he heard faint, dense, and chaotic sounds hidden beneath the static.

Screams.

The cries, screams, laments, and wails of thousands of people were mixed together. They seemed to be suffering from some great torment, constantly crying out.

In a completely silent environment, it was incredibly eerie.

The cries continued without wavering for five minutes until Wang Congshan turned the volume down again, and the room became quiet.

Weird crying sounds coming from somewhere.

Li Ang recorded the event in his mind. He lacked relevant props to trace the source of the crying, so he had to continue exploring and searching.

The next search location was the homeowner's bedroom.

This master bedroom was the largest room, decorated in a Japanese style, with bedding spread on the floor and storage cabinets in the corners.

The adjacent room was used to store clothes and bedding.

The photo frames placed on top of the cabinets also had blurry faces.

The clothes in the closet belonged to adult men and women, and appeared to belong to the Fujimura couple in the pictures.

After searching, the only thing in the room that seemed suspicious was a safe.

This safe was placed on the bottom layer of the paper sliding door compartment, square and solid, painted green, made in Germany, using a mechanical compass lock, six-digit password, not dependent on power, shock-resistant, impact-resistant, high-temperature resistant, and corrosion-resistant.

Even modern construction machinery would take some time to break it open violently, let alone Li Ang and Wang Congshan, who had no suitable tools on hand.

"That's strange,"

Li Ang frowned and said, "Judging from the furnishings in the room, the Fujimura couple should just be ordinary residents. According to the social atmosphere of the Japanese islands in the 1970s,

the husband was a salaryman, and the wife stayed at home with the children.

There's no need for such a complex and expensive safe at all.

Unless there's a special need."

Li Ang filtered out completely unreliable guesses such as "The Fujimura couple are actually foreign special agents," "The Fujimura couple are actually Heaven Ranking assassins," "The Fujimura couple are actually retired Ultraman human hosts,"

and studied the safe for a while, successively trying passwords such as 000000...

After failing, he tried the numbers that had appeared in this script mission.

For example, the birth dates of Ogasawara Tetsuhei and Ogasawara Ayaka, the disappearance incident of Ogasawara Masayuki, the landslide incident in Okamori Prefecture, etc.

Still couldn't open it.

Li Ang and Wang Congshan came to the shoe cabinet in the entrance and asked the shoe cabinet again, but still got nothing.

Li Ang and Wang Congshan had to return to the master bedroom and stare at the safe.

"Well... since a safe has appeared in the script mission, it means that a relevant password must be hidden somewhere."

Li Ang thought for a while and asked Wang Congshan, "By the way, can your Cardinal Cube assimilate this safe?"

"Huh?"

Wang Congshan was stunned for a moment, then quickly reacted.

The Cardinal Cube can assimilate objects it touches into intricate machinery similar to the cube itself.

If she devoured and assimilated the safe, then as the cube's owner, she would naturally be able to open it easily.