Chapter 156: Truth Clock!

Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo were at the front of the group with their torches, the other three following closely behind them.

Schrödinger's steel fortress consists of an evenly spaced corridor of steel. The silvery bronze walls are so cohesive that there is not a single gap to be found. On either side of these corridors, one or two small, imperceptible doors appear from time to time. The doors are integrated into the walls and the door handles are inconspicuous, so the five men walk slowly to avoid missing any of them.

When the first door is opened, Tang Mo stands to the rear and Fu Wenduo walks to the door.

Rule 6 of the game: Schrödinger's room may contain Schrödinger's inventions. There are successful inventions, and there are failed inventions.

Tang Mo: "Be careful."

Fu Wenduo nods his head.

At this point, the two men no longer hide the fact that they know each other.

Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo's relationship with each other is clear, as they definitely know each other and should be teammates. Tang Mo's choice to reveal his relationship with Fu Wenduo is also a way of hiding Li Miaomiao's identity.

As it turned out, Zhao Xiaofei and Grea were not surprised by Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo's relationship, but neither did they think about Li Miaomiao.

Fu Wenduo readied himself and quickly opened the door. The door was empty, and everyone sighed with relief. As they entered the room, blue footprints began to disappear from the edge of the door. There was no place to hide in this room and they immediately stepped out, back into the corridor, and continued their search for other rooms.

Tang Mo soon realised that all of Schrödinger's rooms looked exactly the same.

There is no furniture, no extra layout, just a room made of steel. All six sides are made of silver steel, and there are no windows, so you can basically see everything in the room at a glance.

Zhao Xiaofei: "There's nothing in any of these rooms. We have already searched four rooms, and there are 108 rooms in total at the Schrödinger. Not surprisingly, I think all the other rooms look the same, so you can spot a Schrödinger at a glance. If we do come across a room with 'Schrödinger's inventions' in it, we just have to shut the door quickly and we should be fine."

Li Miaomiao nodded, "So all we really have to do in this game is simply find Schrödinger and find more rooms?" As she said this, Li Miaomiao quietly glanced at Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo. When they didn't give her a response, Li Miaomiao grimaced, mentally reciting Ruan Wangshu and Practising Yu Zheng again, and said, "There are three opportunities to find the Schrödinger. Now it's the first time, so let's familiarise ourselves with the terrain and find as many rooms as possible."

Li Miaomiao's proposal was unanimously endorsed by all.

After leaving the kitchen, the five men chose to enter a sloping corridor, and when they reached the end of this corridor, they found another very similar sloping corridor. This time, Tang Mo contemplates for a moment and again chooses a corridor with a diagonal orientation. Every ten metres for the next ten metres they found a diagonal corridor or three, each with one to three rooms spread across it.

The five players were walking as if they were walking down a curved snake-like corridor, and they kept swaying from side to side. When they finally reach the end of the corridor, they hit a wall. At this point there are three corridors placed in front of the players, to the left, to the right, or to choose another sloping corridor.

Zhao Xiaofei looked strangely at the wall in front of her, and then at the three corridors next to it, and she said, "Does this scene seem very familiar to you?"

The player's memory is so much better than it was before Earth went online. Every corridor in the Iron Fortress goes exactly the same length, and it's hard to spot the difference except for the length and direction of the corridor.

Yet now this scene is one that all have seen before.

Li Miaomiao looked down at the footprints on the floor and, after making sure there were no blue footprints on the floor, said, "This place is particularly similar to the kitchen where we entered the corridor at the beginning!"

The three corridors in front of us, plus the fourth corridor where the player is staying, add up to the same "water and refraction" corridor as the one in the kitchen.

All are a straight corridor running horizontally, with two diagonally oriented corridors shooting in from the left and right. The four corridors converge into a point that becomes a four-way junction. The only difference is that this time there are no doors in the walls of the straight corridor, just simply four corridors.

Zhao Xiaofei's eyes suddenly widened: "Wait a minute, in fact, every corridor we just walked along was particularly similar to this one! When we were walking just now, we also kept coming across a combination of one straight corridor and two sloping corridors, and we chose to take the sloping corridor every time. If we drew a map of the route we just took, it would probably ...... look like this?"

Zhao Xiaofei takes a lipstick out of her pocket - something no one would expect her to carry with her at a time like this - and draws a rectangle on the floor, followed by a curved zigzag line starting from one of the rectangle's vertices. The line was like an electrocardiogram and filled the entire rectangle. In this figure, numerous "water and refraction" corridors appear, exactly the same as the route they have just taken.

By the time she finished, Li Miaomiao had also realised. But then she thought, "No, the line doesn't start at the top of the rectangle, there would be two corridors, or four corridors, at each intersection of the corridors, never three."

If the line starts at the apex of the rectangle, it creates a scene where the 'three corridors' meet.

Zhao Xiaofei is frozen in place.

Tang Mo's voice was calm: "Turn this picture over and put it back together."

Zhao Xiaofei's eyes twinkled and she understood Tang Mo's meaning. She drew a mirror-symmetrical rectangle close to the rectangle she had just drawn and took her lipstick. When the rectangle is finished, Tang Mo crouches down, reaches out and erases the straight line between the two rectangles.

When Tang Mo had done this, the five men looked down.

It is a regular, neat rectangle with a diamond-shaped pattern in the central margin of the rectangle. Like a pattern woven by a weaver, the rhombus patterns were tightly connected one to the other and laid flat in a row, filling the entire rectangle. Looking at this diagram, all the players instantly understood the map of this level of the Iron Fortress.

Li Miaomiao was surprised: "If the corridors are really like this, we can easily find out exactly which rooms we have searched and which ones we haven't."

Grea laughed: "My lady, it's not that simple. Firstly you don't really know if this map is correct, secondly where do we start from and at which point on the map is that kitchen located ...... do you know?"

Li Miaomiao was speechless for a moment.

"A total of twenty-one lozenges have just gone." A low, male voice rang out.

Grea looks around with a slight flicker. There was Fu Wenduo, hands in his pockets, looking calmly at the map on the ground. He lifted his eyes and gave Grea a cold glance. Grea smiled innocently and said, "Well, that's twenty-one diamonds. So where are we now on this map again?"

Tang Mo points at the ground with his small parasol: "Here, or here." He points to the intersection of the corridor on the two short sides of the rectangle.

Grea's eyes flicked around Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo's bodies and the corner of her mouth curled up without saying another word.

Li Miaomiao: "Although we don't know if this map is correct or not, our immediate priority is to determine the distribution of corridors and rooms on this floor. So ...... which way do we go now?"

A few moments later, Tang Mo said, "Go here."

Tang Mo refers to the other side of the rhombic corridor.

Li Miaomiao looked at the group, "OK, I also think we should walk these rhombuses again and finish the other side of the rhombus. That way we can also be sure that the map is correct."

The five players turned back again and entered the corridor in a diagonal direction. As shown on the map, they had once again entered a curved, zigzag corridor. And at the intersection of the four diagonal corridors, Tang Mo shone his torch on two other corridors and found a single blue footprint - they had walked down the other side of the diagonal corridor.

All of the scenes confirm Fu Wenduo's and Tang Mo's speculations.

The map of this floor is a rectangle with a neatly arranged diamond-shaped corridor in the centre. The two women were somewhat pleased that everything was going the way they had guessed it would. Tang Mo, however, frowned slightly, and his expression grew even more serious when he opened a door and found another empty room inside.

Li Miaomiao also noticed: "We seem to have searched almost fifty rooms, and every one of them is empty? The black tower says that there could be Schrödinger inventions in the rooms, there are 108 of them and we haven't come across one yet. ......" After a pause, Li Miaomiao thought: "Are there very few Schrödinger inventions? Schrödinger's inventions are few and far between?"

The black tower only says that the room might contain Schrödinger's inventions, not how many Schrödinger's inventions there are, nor that there must be inventions.

Such probabilities do not always exist. No one knows whether there are inventions in the rooms until the doors are opened. Maybe there are inventions in all 108 rooms, or maybe there are none in all 108 rooms.

Tang Mo kept his head down, always feeling that something was wrong.

The Schrödinger has a very different personality to its appearance. With its disgust for humans and its desire to turn them all into collector's items, it could not have been kind enough not to let the invention in the room. Tang Mo doesn't show this fear, however, because it is he and Fu Wenduo who open the door.

Tang Mo looked up and exchanged a glance with Fu Wenduo before the two walked on to the next room.

As luck would have it, when the door was opened there was nothing inside again.

Zhao Xiaofei also muttered, "Is it really a rare invention of Schrödinger's?"

The five men walked down two more corridors and when they found room 61, Fu Wenduo walked up to the door and placed his hand gently on the handle. There was a creak and the steel door was pushed open. There was nothing unusual and Fu Wenduo stepped inside warily, followed by the other three. But just as the last man entered, numerous black rays of light shot out frantically from one side of the room. Tang Mo reacts quickly, sidesteps and escapes the room. Grea was also quick to dodge. Fu Wenduo, who was the last one out, was grazed by the light along with Li Miaomiao, and a burning sound came from where they had been hit by the light.

The black light grazed the skin and immediately turned into a black wound, the flesh and blood eroded and expanded. Fu Wenduo took out his dagger at once and cut away the flesh he had been touched by the light. Li Miaomiao also cut a piece of flesh from his thigh. Zhao Xiaofei was the worst offender, with four wounds, one of which was on his chest.

When she realised that the wound had actually started to erode the flesh next to her, the young woman gritted her teeth and took out a pocket knife to cut off four pieces of her own flesh.

The door had been closed, but the horrific scene from earlier still haunted the crowd.

"La-la-la-la-la-la-la~ la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la~"

Suddenly, a pleasant, cheerful humming sound resonated in the empty steel corridor. The soft, milky cat voice was humming a ditty with no lyrics. The crowd froze. Tang Mo reached up and wiped the thin sweat off his forehead, then he looked up, coldly through these cold steel walls, at the little black cat hiding in the steel fortress.

Once Zhao Xiaofei's body had stopped bleeding, the group continued their search for the next room.

The Schrödinger continued to sing, and after half a day, when no one paid any attention to its song, it could not resist saying, "Hey, hey, you shameless, bad humans, don't you have anything to say to His Excellency the Schrödinger?"

Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo walk at the head of the group, open a door without changing their faces, see that there is nothing in it and turn to leave again. Grea follows them gracefully with her short staff. Zhao Xiaofei, on the other hand, looks terrible because the piece of flesh she has cut away is one of her breasts. It was more than just physical pain, she was more than annoyed. But none of her four teammates said anything, and she would not speak.

Zhao Xiaofei hated cats so much for the first time that she wanted to cut Schrödinger into four pieces, just like the flesh she had just cut off with her own hands. But being influenced by Tang Mo and others, she didn't say anything.

Anger and complaints are pointless and only serve to make Schrödinger even more complacent.

"You ...... you stupid bad humans!!!"

The little kitten complained angrily that the humans in this session were not qualified at all, and even if no one had died under its 315 invention, it was not even angry. Tang Mo suddenly stopped in his tracks and Schrödinger, as if seeing the scene, surprised him by saying, "Eh, you're going to scold His Eminence Schrödinger? Are you angry and about to scold His Eminence Schrödinger?"

It was answered by Tang Mo's raised torch, which illuminated the path before him.

Tang Mo: "There's a staircase here."

The crowd immediately gathered around.

Li Miaomiao: "Is this the staircase to the other level? The black tower says that there are two levels of the Iron Fortress and we can get to the other level through this staircase?"

Zhao Xiaofei: "This must be it. So do we go down now, or do we continue to look for a room on this floor?"

Schrödinger: "......"

The soft voice said angrily, "Don't you have anything to say to His Excellency the Schrödinger!"

Tang Mo: "Keep looking for this floor first."

"Good."

The utterly ignored Schrödinger: "......"

You guys are the worst class of humans I've ever seen!!!

Tang Mo seems to be ignoring the Schrödinger's presence, but in fact he's thinking to himself: the Schrödinger can observe everything that's going on in their place and knows their whereabouts.

I'm afraid this little black cat has been in a room somewhere, watching their every move.

With the lesson learned from the black ray room, the crowd was more cautious when they entered the room again. But many times it is impossible to guard against it. Until all five people have entered the room, there is nothing unusual about it. There were times when even Fu Wenduo and Tang Mo were the only ones to enter the room and there were accidents. But before they enter, nothing will happen. Only when they enter the room will there be an accident.

On this floor, they looked for a total of eighty-six rooms.

When they had almost reached the end of the diamond-shaped corridor, Tang Mo suddenly stopped in his tracks and raised his torch. Li Miaomiao looked in the direction Tang Mo was pointing and exclaimed, "Eh? There's a staircase here?"

A dark staircase appeared in front of the crowd.

This staircase was already at the end of the corridor, and after examining the rooms next to it, the five Tang Mo men unanimously decided to take this staircase down to have a look. Following this revolving staircase, the five of them reached another floor. They had just stood still when they saw a small door.

Tang Mo walked up to the door and pressed the handle.

A male voice with a laugh sounded, "You can't always make a lady work."

Tang Mo turned his head towards the blonde man.

The tall, thin blonde mulatto took off his bowler hat and gave Tang Mo a small smile. Grea stepped forward and said, "To the other floor, let me, a gentleman, do such hard work for you."

Tang Mo did not let go.

Grea looked at him in amazement.

Tang Mo: "No need, Mr Grea."

At Tang Mo's wary look, Grea blinks aggressively and walks back in with her cane. Tang Mo grabs the small parasol and opens the door with a snap. It was empty again, but Tang Mo didn't let his guard down. He walked into the room alone, ready to observe what was inside. The moment his foot was inside, a familiar and unfamiliar clattering sound sounded. Reacting quickly, Tang Mo pulled at the door with one hand and quickly jerked his foot, trying to close it behind him.

However, time seemed to stand still as a blinding blue light instantly illuminated the entire room and corridor. The light wrapped all the players, including Fu Wenduo, who was standing outside the door, with absolute speed. When Tang Mo opened his eyes again, he turned his head and saw that all five players had entered the room.

Tang Mo drew his small parasol straight away, ready to attack. He surveyed all the objects in the room and his eyes snapped open when he saw something like that in front of him. Tang Mo looked at it incredulously, his pupils twitching gently.

It's a giant blue clock!

The blue light makes up each number of the clock and its hour, minute and second hands, and its second hand clatters along, the clattering sound Tang Mo heard earlier being the sound of the second hand walking. Every number on this clock is familiar to Tang Mo because he once stood on this clock and played a life and death match with another player.

The other players also saw the clock and Zhao Xiaofei turned to run out of the room, but she found her feet pinned to the floor, unable to move. The terrifying pressure was like a small mountain, weighing down on the shoulders of the five players, and the weaker ones, Zhao Xiaofei and Li Miaomiao, even breathed heavier and were overwhelmed.

On the truth clock, the second hand is still ticking away. When the three hands converge on the same point and point together at "12".

Dang!

A loud bell suddenly rang out.

Dang! Dang! Thud!

After the twelve chimes, a calm, powerful female voice rang through the room: "Welcome to the world of the Truth Clock. I am the great Truth Clock, chiming accurately for the great Lord Schrödinger. The black tower intruders Fu Wenduo, Tang Mo, Zhao Xiaofei, Li Miaomiao and Glea Sykes have entered the world of the Truth Clock."

"Respect for all truth."

"Follow all truth."

"To be the truth, or to crush the truth."

"Five The black tower intruders, what is your choice?"