Chapter 5 The Fifth Floor

Li Ang leaned against the elevator, standing in the fifth-floor hallway, looking around.

A round clock hung on the wall at the left end of the hallway, displaying the time as 11:23 PM.

The hallway floor was covered with a deep, dark red carpet, the wallpaper was light red, and flower-shaped orange lampshades were hung on the walls at intervals, emitting a warm glow.

The elevator lobby behind Li Ang, like the entire hotel, was full of retro sentiment.

The floor of the elevator lobby was covered with aged wooden floors that creaked when stepped on.

Three brass handrails were installed on the inner wall of the elevator lobby, clean enough to reflect a person's face. They were positioned at waist height, allowing people to reach out and hold on for support.

The elevator door was made of heavy, dark gold material.

There was a rectangular window on either side, through which one could see the interior of the elevator.

The door frame on the outside of the elevator was lined with a circle of cyan marble tiles.

Above it was a one-third clock-like curved brass indicator.

When the elevator moved, the pointer on the indicator would rotate, and the square below the pointer would light up white and make a "ding" sound.

To the right of the elevator entrance was a red fixed-line telephone.

This should be the only phone in the entire hotel, apart from the front desk, that could make outgoing calls, as mentioned in the accommodation guide.

Li Ang walked over, picked up the phone, and held it to his ear, hearing a repeated "beep--beep--" sound.

In previous tests, the landlines on different floors could be used normally, and could dial the phone on any floor or room.

It could also dial the front desk, but the front desk staff had disappeared, and there was no response when dialing.

Li Ang put down the phone and looked at the opposite side of the elevator lobby.

There was a stairwell with a green "exit" sign. The stairwell could be used to reach the upper and lower floors.

However, considering the abnormal situations mentioned in the accommodation guide,

players should only enter the stairs during curfew in extreme cases.

"Hello! Can you hear me?"

Li Ang stepped forward, pushed open the door of the stairwell, and shouted inside.

The sound he made seemed to be absorbed by the cement walls, and he couldn't hear any echo,

let alone pass it on to the Plague Doctor upstairs or Mule downstairs.

The hotel's building materials were unusually strong and extremely difficult to destroy.

It couldn't be modified with alchemy, nor could it conduct vibrations or even divine power.

Li Ang also had no effective way to communicate—walkie-talkies were completely useless here, and the vines, spores, and even hair that he created would inexplicably wither and lose sensation after exceeding ten meters from his body.

"I can only follow the original plan."

He sighed, took out the key from his pocket, and opened room 508 across from the elevator.

The room was dark and dim. With the light from the hallway, he could vaguely see the two curtains at the window at the end of the room.

Since the layout of the rooms in the hotel was almost the same, and the players had already searched the first and second floors of the hotel,

Li Ang skillfully reached for the three-way single-control switch on the side of the door frame to turn on the room lights.

The living room of room 508 was quite spacious, with brown carpet on the floor and light yellowish-green wallpaper with small floral patterns.

Each wall had an oil painting hanging on it.

The content of the oil paintings was different.

An old woman with white hair and wearing black clothes was holding a large book and reading to a group of children also wearing black clothes.

The children's expressions were obsessed and serious,

which made Li Ang couldn't help but think of a book called *Baby's Quantum Physics* that he had shared at a middle school reading sharing session a few years ago.

That book was written by an American science writer and published by the Eastern University of Science and Technology Press.

The cover of the book was very cute, showing a baby in diapers looking up at the stars in the sky,

but the content was exceptionally outrageous.

The first two chapters were about "Tangrams - proportional arrangements" and "Fun points and lines".

The next few chapters suddenly jumped to "De Broglie's matter wave", "Operators, wave functions, and Hilbert space", without any transition in between.

There was only one sentence: "Okay, little baby, you have mastered enough mathematical tools, let's try some new content now~"

God knows what the science writer and the publishing house were thinking.

How could 5-7 year old children understand matrix mechanics?!

At least they should be eight years old.

Li Ang shook his head with some nostalgia, throwing the dull expressions of the teachers and classmates at the reading sharing session out of his mind.

In addition to the oil painting of the old woman reading,

the contents of the other paintings were a sailing ship lost in a storm,

a group of English nobles riding horses and leading hunting dogs in the forest,

and a girl in a long dress sitting in a chair, covering her face with a fan, making it impossible to see her exact appearance, but judging from her fair skin and bright eyes, she should be quite beautiful.

Li Ang took off the oil paintings, confirmed that there were no secret passages or mechanisms behind them, and then hung them back up.

There was a vertical beige floor lamp in each corner of room 508.

There was only a transparent glass ashtray on the wooden table in the middle of the living room. The ashtray was unusually clean. He couldn't feel any stains when he rubbed it with his hand, and he couldn't smell any residual smoke even when he got close to it—

just as clean as the fireplace opposite the coffee table.

To the left of the living room was the bathroom, which was spacious, bright, and clean, with a bathtub and a shower curtain.

Li Ang tried it, and hot water could be released from the faucet, and there was no hair under the plug of the bathtub.

In front of the bathroom was the master bedroom. The bed was neat, the pillows were soft, and a flat alarm clock was placed on the bedside table.

The time displayed was the same as the clocks in the room and the corridor, which was 11:34.

In the corner of the bedroom, against the wall at the foot of the bed, there was a wooden table with an old-fashioned TV set on it—American hotel TVs could watch free or paid channels, including some more "mature" programs.

Li Ang picked up the remote control and pressed the button, but the TV, which was plugged in, did not turn on.

Well, he shouldn't have had any expectations.

Li Ang threw the TV remote control on the bed, walked to the window, and squatted down slightly.

The window was hazy, as if covered with a thick layer of dust. He couldn't see the outside scene at all.

When he knocked hard, he could only hear a dull and slight "dong dong" sound.

"The window can't be opened, and the sound of knocking is very slight. There is no way to use the window to communicate information with the floors above and below."

Li Ang muttered to himself, stood up, walked back to the living room, and opened the refrigerator door.

There were more than a dozen bottles of different brands of beer in the refrigerator.

Many water droplets hung on the glass bottles of beer, looking refreshing and tempting.

As a qualified player, Li Ang would naturally not eat the food in the script world, especially the things in this so strange hotel—

the players' inventory would at least contain enough compressed food and water to support them for two weeks or a month.

Li Ang himself no longer needed to eat food. He could maintain his physical functions with divine power.

Having said that, Li Ang still opened a few bottles of beer, put them to his nose, and gently fanned the air,

and then extended a vine into it to test the wine.

"The production date on the bottle is June 2007, with a shelf life of one year. The wine has not deteriorated, and the taste is normal."

Li Ang said to himself: "If the beer and the refrigerator are normal, then it should be after 2007, within three years...

I finally know the time, although I don't know what use this information is."

After a round of exploration, the time had already come to 11:45.

Seeing that the 00:11 curfew was approaching, Li Ang walked back to the living room, closed the front door of the room, and took out three sacks filled with dirt from the backpack column.

He used the soil to refine a dozen hollow iron pipes, pieced them together to form a support, and firmly blocked the front door.

Unfortunately, the length of the telephone line of the landline at the elevator entrance was limited, and alchemy could not work on it.

Otherwise, he could have fixed the telephone line to the floor, taken the corridor phone into the room, and contacted the upstairs and downstairs.

Now, he could only wait quietly.

Li Ang moved a stool, sat upright in the living room, and silently stared at the door that had been reinforced with iron pipes.

————

"Judging from the shelf life and quality of the wine, it may be after 2007—this time may not be meaningful. Every place in the Dolphin Hotel reveals a strange atmosphere.

It is even possible that this is a base for aliens to study humans."

In room 1408 on the fourteenth floor, Bai Hao, wearing a suit, was muttering to himself, and casually put the opened bottle of beer back into the refrigerator.

His room was a deluxe suite, which was much more spacious and luxurious than the rooms downstairs.

Before the players separated, they had discussed the strategy for tonight. Everyone should not sleep on the first night, but search the rooms for any memos mentioned in the accommodation guide.

If there were no memos, they should sit in the living room with chairs, watch the door, and wait for curfew time.

If there was no change during the curfew, they would search the room again to find memos.

In addition to compressed food, players would also bring some drugs with different functions, such as pain relief, anesthesia, resuscitation from cardiac arrest, treatment of allergies,

and drugs to invigorate the spirit, so that they would not be tired even if they did not sleep for several days and nights—there might be changes in the Dolphin Hotel at night.

No player wanted to find a child crouching at the head of his bed, pale, with black eyes, and making cat sounds when sleeping at night.

Bai Hao had previously distributed several drugs that could allow him to stay awake without sleeping to Dan Fei and Ka Fei, who had not brought them.

As an intelligence analyst for the Special Affairs Bureau, he handles hundreds of pieces of intelligence every day, and knows far more secrets than intelligence peddlers like Mule.

He knows the details of most of the people in this script mission.

Hei Shengzi on the thirteenth floor is a South Korean. His mother used to be a so-called "shaman" who could divination and exorcise evil spirits, predict wealth, and had deep connections with some chaebols and dignitaries. Her family was quite powerful.

The Mu Yin Zhi Gui on the twelfth floor is likely to be Hei Shengzi's servant or subordinate, judging from his words, deeds, and eyes.

Dan Fei and Ka Fei on the eleventh and tenth floors should be Haitians from the Voodoo Black Witch Group.

Bob, who lived downstairs from them, was an American.

Bai Hao had seen Bob's photo in a report on local gang fights in America. The organization to which this black old man belonged had a close relationship with the Voodoo Black Witch Group.

As for 13mArk, who lived on the eighth floor, he was a subordinate of one of the Brazilian Shichibukai, known as the "Ant King".

Shichibukai...when did these Brazilians also like to play with memes so much.

Bai Hao shook his head, and the figure of Yu Yi Xin Zhong appeared in his mind.

This East Asian girl in a sailor suit was a Japanese. Her original name was Mizuhara Yumi, and she worked in the Ninth Division of the Japanese Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau—

The Japanese Extraordinary Affairs Investigation Bureau often cooperated with the Special Affairs Bureau to jointly resolve some extraordinary events, and the two sides would occasionally send personnel to exchange experiences, so they were relatively familiar with each other.

The Plague Doctor on the sixth floor was a member of the Evil Demon Scientist Alliance.

Li Risheng on the fifth floor had appeared in many documents of the Special Affairs Bureau before. He had assisted in solving the Mirage Dragon and Sheng Nan Wang incidents, and was highly respected by Xing Hechou and Chu Yin.

He was intelligent, brave, kind, and orderly.

He was a cooperative object.

However, the other party seemed to have some concerns and had always refused the invitation to join the Special Affairs Bureau...

Mule on the fourth floor was a very famous intelligence broker, Liu Wudai on the third floor and Wanli Fengdao on the second floor had a close relationship with the Special Affairs Bureau.

And Ω on the last floor...

Bai Hao sat in the chair in the living room, his brows slightly frowned.

He didn't know the details of the Fish Tank Head. The other party acted mysteriously, and the system of extraordinary power he displayed was also temporarily unclear.

However, when the change officially started, the other party would probably not be able to hide it.

The intelligence analyst quickly reviewed the information of everyone, and glanced at the clock hanging on the wall of the living room.

It was already 11:56...

I don't know what they are doing downstairs.

————

On the thirteenth floor, Hei Shengzi, covered in blood, knelt on the ground, put the blood-stained dagger in a golden plate, chanting words, and the carpet in front of him was covered with strange patterns.

On the twelfth floor, Mu Yin Zhi Gui held a book and recited softly.

On the eleventh floor, Dan Fei, who came from the Voodoo Black Witch Group, sat there bored, with a circle of strange-shaped puppets placed around the chair.

The Voodoo Black Witch Group had its own set of techniques to prevent evil spirits. No matter what the "change" in the Dolphin Hotel was, Dan Fei, as an Lv16 player, was confident that he could resist it to some extent.

His younger brother Ka Fei lived downstairs, and his best friend Bob lived on the ninth floor—the three of them had been together since they were teenagers.

If something happened, he believed that Ka Fei and Bob would rush to rescue him regardless of everything,

just like he would save them.

"Five minutes left..."

Dan Fei muttered to himself, and suddenly heard a dull knocking sound from under his feet.

"Um?"

Dan Fei frowned, stood up, and stared at the carpet under the coffee table in the living room.

Dong dong, dong, dong dong dong.

The knocking sound was very regular, as if someone downstairs was knocking on the ceiling with a stick.

"This is, Morse code..."

On Dan Fei's thin, dark face, his eyebrows raised slightly. He moved the table away, lifted the carpet, and found that a piece of the wooden floor where the knocking sound came from was recessed.

He could see the recessed and broken concrete bricks through the broken wooden board.

[Brother, I, am, Ka Fei.]

The knocking sound conveyed information through Morse code.

[Here, ceiling, very thin, seems, can, transmit, sound. Can, hear, me?]

Dan Fei breathed a sigh of relief, looked up at the clock, it was already 00:09, and there were only two minutes left before curfew time.

If he rushed out of the room now and ran downstairs to ask his younger brother Ka Fei, it might not be safe.

He hesitated for a moment, took out an obsidian battle axe from the backpack column, and gently smashed the recessed part of the floor with the axe handle, [Can hear, you okay?]

[Okay.]

A intermittent knocking sound came from downstairs, [We, will, be okay, right?]

[Yes.]

Dan Fei knocked, [I, will, protect, you.]

Both of their parents were Haitian immigrants in America. They had originally smuggled into America to live a good life, but before they could live there for a few years, they were targeted by the Immigration Bureau, deported, and returned to Haiti.

Both parents died of illness in poverty. The two brothers, who had no food or clothing, were forced to join the Haitian gang and supported each other to survive to this day.

Perhaps other brothers and sisters would do anything to protect themselves in the Killing Game,

but Dan Fei believed that even death could not separate their brothers.

Da.

The minute hand made a sound. Dan Fei looked up and saw that it was already 00:11.

His breathing stopped involuntarily. Dan Fei tightly squeezed the obsidian battle axe in his hand, staring vigilantly at the wooden door.

One second, two seconds,

The lights in the open living room were bright and dazzling, and the second hand on the clock continued to turn.

The only sounds in the room were the buzzing of the refrigerator and Dan Fei's own heartbeat.

There was no ghostly howling, and there were no changes.

Dan Fei breathed a sigh of relief and dared not move his feet away from the evil spirit defense circle he had set up.

Dong, dong.

The knocking sound came from the floor again. This time, the knocking interval was much longer than before.

[Brother.]

The call came from Ka Fei.

Dan Fei hesitated for a moment, but still squatted down, held the battle axe blade, and used the axe handle to smash the recessed concrete floor, [What's wrong?]

[The, lights, why, are, off?]