Chapter 3.12 You’re Crazy and I’m Stupid (Extra)

“Yes, it’s true.” I typed back before going to sit on the sofa and rubbing my back.

The sofa was made of real leather that had cracked and peeled off after so many temperature changes. It looked very old, but the spring and foam inside were equally comfortable. It was a finely crafted sofa.

It used to be brown, but was now a grayish white and its four legs were stuck in the cement.

It didn’t make sense. The sofa had to have something to do with the girl’s sudden disappearance just now.

No text came back. The heat from the lights had dried the sweat all over my body, but then I broke out in another layer of sweat. The other party still hadn’t responded.

I looked at my phone and thought about his last words. He didn’t know that there were other people here, and was very surprised that I had seen someone else. If it was normal, he should be thoroughly investigating the matter at this time and had no time to reply to me.

But it wasn’t normal.

I wiped my face and thought about it again. Not only was it abnormal, but there were also problems with the logic.

I used the notebook app on my phone to list all the details I had noticed.

She hid her hands when I wanted to see them.

When I was chasing the girl, he kept chatting with me and giving me a lot of shocking information, which led to me slowing down.

The lights in this room had been designed in such a way that if all of them were suddenly turned off and turned back on again, then they would burn the eyes. It was the best place to cast a smokescreen, and considering how hellbent the girl was on getting back to this room, the reason was obvious. Moreover, the smokescreen couldn’t be used by people who weren’t familiar with mechanisms, indicating that the girl knew about it.

I clearly saw that Seven Fingers had sent a text to this girl, because she found the opportunity to push me away as soon as I read it. But now he was pretending to be surprised. If he didn’t know there was a girl here, then did that mean she wasn’t one of his own? If so, that meant there was another person hijacking another phone base station and communicating with this girl. Was this a variety show with Group A and Group B? No, it couldn’t be that complicated.

The timing of his texts and the girl’s behavior had a very good sense of rhythm, and it was obvious he knew how far away I had been from her.

Fatty’s enumeration method was very useful for sorting out ideas, and finding the many abnormal issues.

There were more and more contradictions between Seven Fingers’ texts and what I had seen, which made the matter even more complicated and incomprehensible. It was just like what happened with me and Uncle Three back then.

But if things were very simple, and I only believed everything I saw, then this girl definitely wasn’t the mysterious fourth person who had appeared here. It was very likely that this girl was Seven Fingers.

If that was the case, then she started this whole game by creating an atmosphere with the piano’s sudden appearance, and then trapped us and separated me from Xiao Hua. In order to make me feel afraid and disoriented, she pretended to be Xiao Hua above me on the staircase. But she didn’t expect me to move so fast. She didn’t have time to escape in her panic, and I managed to kick her down.

In order to escape, she first sent herself a message with her phone, and then took the opportunity to push me away and send me a message while running. In a panic, she had to break the news, which shook me.

Based on the clues, it was impossible to determine if Seven Fingers really was a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl. There had to be a story there, but either way, it didn’t matter whether she was a descendant of Seven Fingers or if Seven Fingers was a monster.

When she finally managed to get to this room, she controlled the lights with her phone, started the mechanism, and then managed to escape. But the story had been broken. Mysterious buildings and strange architects before liberation… terrible secret rooms that broke through the sense of time and space… These premises had already gone pear-shaped, and she had no coherent way to explain her appearance.

From beginning to end, there were only three people in this place— me, her, and Xiao Hua.

That was about it.

My heart-rate gradually slowed once I thought of it. If I was right, she was now racking her brains to try to figure out how to reasonably explain everything I had seen.

I stood up and went over to the spot where she had just been. After turning the lights off with her phone, she must have started the device manually.

When I raised my hand and reached up to touch the nearest hot bulb, the hair on my hand immediately curled up. I touched the surrounding bulbs one by one with my fingers, and shrank back when I found ones that were too hot. After trying for more than half an hour, I finally felt a light bulb that wasn’t as hot as the others and could be held in my hand.

I yanked on it hard, while placing one hand on the sofa. The minute the sofa in front of me tilted up, I was thrown to the side and landed directly in the intersection where I had first come in.

At the moment when the lights were dim, the girl had used this trick to jump over my head and get behind me.

“It’s just a magic trick.” I suddenly lost interest and looked up. I saw a rope hanging down in the darkness above the corridor and grabbed it. I was immediately pulled up into the darkness above.

In an instant, the corridor lit by the decorative belt of gas lamps quickly disappeared, and then a black thing slipped by in front of me, and I entered an all-black well-shaped passage.

The rope was very fast and dragged me all the way up, finally stopping after about six or seven seconds. I felt around with my hands and caught a railing-like iron bar in the darkness. I then felt around with my feet and finally touched the ground.

It was dark, and there was only a small dot of light far ahead.

I turned on my phone’s flashlight and looked around. The floor was covered in steel bars that were sticking out of the cement one by one. If you fell down here, you’d definitely become a shish kebab.

They were also on the wall, so I carefully stepped on the middle of the steel bars and approached the dot of light, bit by bit.

“I found you.” I said to the light. It was obvious that it was a phone’s screen light. “Girl, I know it’s you. You don’t have to pretend.”

With a click, a desk lamp turned on, and the yellow halo pierced the darkness. I saw a sofa in front of me that was in the same style as the one before, and a desk lamp beside it.

I saw the girl sitting on the sofa, trussed up and looking at me in horror. I turned my head and saw Xiao Hua walk out from behind the desk lamp, holding a cup of tea in his hand.

“Sorry, I got here first.” He sat down on the sofa and said, “Is your back alright?”

I was stunned for a moment, and could only stare at Xiao Hua’s slightly smug expression as he crossed his legs and put the teacup on his knee. I secretly scolded in my heart, you bastard, do you want to steal my sense of accomplishment like this? I thought we were friends.

I clutched my aching back as I walked over to him, and saw a big swollen lump on the girl’s head.

“Beating women, none of you are men!” The girl cried.

I grabbed her hand and secretly smiled when I saw a scar on the outside of her little finger. Was she really Seven Fingers, and the two extra fingers had been removed in an operation?

I turned to Xiao Hua and asked, “When did you arrive?”

Xiao Hua drank a mouthful of tea, “Half an hour ago. I’ve been following you.”

“You were behind me? Didn’t you fall for her trick?”

“You mean on the stairs? How could that kind of trap hold me? I just thought she couldn’t tell if I fell for it or not, so I didn’t bother speaking up. I didn’t expect you to immediately climb up. Your hands are good, but now your physical strength needs to be increased. You have to quit smoking.”

“Don’t talk about that yet. And then what happened?” My face turned red as I suddenly realized that during everything that had happened just now, Xiao Hua was looking at me from behind. Fuck, it was so embarrassing.

“Then, I followed you all the way to the light bulb room. Just as the woman came out and grabbed the rope, I ran up and grabbed the end of the rope. You know I’m good at playing with rope, so I trussed her up.” Xiao Hua raised the teacup and asked me if I wanted some.

I covered my face and felt like an idiot. So stupid. How could I be so stupid?

“Then I found that there was a tea set here, and I remembered that you were very engrossed down there, so I decided to take a break—”

“Stop, don’t say anymore.” I looked at the woman and decided to change the subject: “Who are you? Can you tell the truth now?”

<Extra 3.11> <Table of Contents><Extra 3.13>

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Ahahahahaha I love Xiao Hua