【Countdown: 08:46】
Mu Shan reopened the ceiling light and quickly pulled down the blinds with both hands.
Sure enough—the window had a painting stuck to it. The paper blocked the outdoor light, keeping the room pitch black.
Mu Shan took down the painting, and bright sunlight flooded in instantly. But the window outside was a welded iron mesh security window, fitting the “escape room” definition; she could not climb out.
An empty flowerpot sat on the windowsill. Mu Shan moved the pot and found a door card pressed under the tray.
The card was plain white on both sides, encased in a transparent sleeve, with no markings.
Mu Shan took it to the door and tried it. The smart door lock panel beeped “beep beep,” but the latch showed no response.
As expected, it could not be that simple…
She did not get discouraged.
Since the game had prompted a time limit, the clock must have an issue too.
Mu Shan’s first thought was the mantel clock covered by the white gauze curtain. She lifted the cloth and immediately spotted the clue: the clock had no hands.
The empty dial bore only intricate patterns and 12 Roman numerals—no trace of an hour hand or minute hand.
“So, the task is to find the hands?” Mu Shan frowned; this difficulty was on par with finding the missing page.
She took a deep breath and looked again at the oil painting from the window.
It depicted an indoor scene, likely a library. A boy in a white shirt sat on the floor in front of the bookshelves reading. The sunset outside bathed the library in orange-red light, with a patch of white glow only on the boy’s head. His shadow cast a distorted shape on the ground.
She flipped it back and forth several times but found no hidden codes or text on the painting. She could only roll it up and toss it temporarily on the desk.
The jacket on the coat rack had two outer pockets and one inner; Mu Shan checked them all—empty.
Her anxious gaze swept left and right, and she subconsciously wanted to rummage through the books on the bookshelf again.
But reason held her back.
Everything the Main God System did was logical. If the hands and code were tucked into one of the hundreds of books, she could never search them all in 15 minutes.
No chance of success meant the mini-game was a failure.
Mu Shan stood before the bookshelf, deep in thought.
【Countdown: 07:32】
She turned her head and suddenly noticed the dusty radiator in the corner by the wall, with two filthy old socks draped over it.
New apartments nowadays had floor heating, yet this office still used old-fashioned radiators—rows of vertical porcelain pipes.
Mu Shan squatted down and reached out with her fingers.
She pulled a thin metal rod from between two rows of radiator pipes. When she held it in her palm, excitement nearly brought tears to her eyes.
It was the clock’s minute hand!
Mu Shan rushed to the mantel clock at once, opened the glass cover, and fitted the minute hand in place.
Click—it fit perfectly.
Hour hand, hour hand—she still needed the hour hand!
She scanned around: tea set, tea tray, every crevice checked—no hiding spots.
Inside the computer keyboard? No.
Under the chair cushion? No.
In the pen holder? Nothing.
Mu Shan even dragged over a chair, steadied the legs with books, climbed up, and tried to inspect the ceiling light overhead.
It could not possibly be hidden in the ceiling light, right?
The lamp had not been cleaned in who knew how many years. Mu Shan carefully felt along the lampshade edge but found nothing—instead, she got a hand full of black grime.
She brushed it off casually and jumped down from the stool.
【Countdown: 05:24】
Time ticked away second by second, syncing with the ticking of the wall clock.
Mu Shan’s reddened eyes darted around wildly before fixing on the trash bin under the desk, which held some shredded paper scraps.
She dumped them all out onto the floor, patiently unfolding and smoothing each one. Amid many meaningless white scraps, four bore black ink marks.
Mu Shan pieced those four together; the matching handwriting and jagged edges confirmed they were the notebook’s missing page.
The paper held only a string of numbers like a code, scrawled messily: 112233.
Found it!!!
Mu Shan scrambled up and dashed to the door, trembling as she pressed the digits in sequence on the mirror-smooth smart door lock.
Her faint gray fingerprints marked the lock.
Mu Shan stared intently. With a “beep beep,” the door remained still.
She tried the door card again while entering the code, but before she finished, a shrill electronic female voice broadcast abruptly in the room.
“Beep beep beep, Research Institute automatic disinfection device activated.”
“Type II gas will be released in this room in 60 seconds. All personnel inside please evacuate promptly.”
“60, 59…”
Mu Shan’s eyes widened, her heart sinking with a thud.
She stood frozen in disbelief, even hearing her organs rapidly secreting hormones, blood surging faster through her veins.
At death’s door, she barely felt her limbs. Her brain overloaded, every organ and cell screaming to survive!
Mu Shan whipped around to the desk phone, grabbed the receiver, and pressed the 【Redial】 key.
After a light “beep,” a man’s voice came through.
“Hello, Director! This is Xiao Wang. The replacement clock hands have been delivered to you. Contact me for any quality issues.”
Mu Shan hung up, eyes bloodshot, scanning the tiny office inch by inch.
Logistics had resent the hands—the phone was the system’s proof. The missing hour hand had to still be in the room!
“55, 54…”
Her gaze swept over the sofa, tea table, leather chair, desk, finally landing on the pitted, gap-riddled floorboards.
This office floor did not match the Research Institute at all. Earlier, when checking the trash bin, tiny paper flecks had fallen into the cracks.
Mu Shan practically lunged at it.
She shifted angles repeatedly, staring deathly at the depressions and gaps. Finally, in one millimeter-wide wooden floor seam, she spotted a metallic glint!
Mu Shan pulled out the fruit knife to pry, but the blade was too wide. She used a steel wire hairpin to dig, trying several times, fingers even shaking.
“44, 43…”
She extracted a metal rod—the hour hand!
Mu Shan shot to her feet, brain dizzy from blood loss, vision blacking out. She stumbled to the mantel clock and jammed the metal hour hand onto the dial.
“39, 38…”
The door showed no reaction.
Mu Shan braced both hands on the clock face, eyes scanning frantically: “How, how could this be… What did I miss?”
The ticking of the hands sounded like a death knell in her ears.
She snapped back to her senses.
“Time, time—the system kept hinting at time.”
Mu Shan took a deep breath, forcing calm. “Which time hint have I not used?”
“30, 29…”
She suddenly remembered something and looked at the rolled-up oil painting tossed on the desk—the first one found.
The library at sunset, orange light dyeing the shelves red, the boy’s shadow dragging long and jagged on the floor like a ghost.
Mu Shan glared at the painting, then impulsively flipped it upside down.
Boy, bookshelves, sunset.
In the boy’s shadow, she saw three rows of crooked characters, symbols warped—impossible to make out without close scrutiny.
Mu Shan clutched the painting in her left hand, grabbed a pen from the desk with her right, and quickly copied the symbols from the oil painting.
She barely made out three rows of numbers.
330=090
600=180
=015
“10, 9…”
In the final ten seconds of the countdown, Mu Shan gritted her teeth and adjusted the clock hands to 6:30.
The next instant, “click”—a new door card dropped from the base of the mantel clock.
In a flash, her blood nearly boiled.
Mu Shan snatched the card and bolted to the door. The moment she swiped it and escaped, the countdown ended.
“Hiss—” White mist sprayed rapidly from the ceiling vent, instantly filling the room, sealed inside by the door.
From momentum, Mu Shan crashed to the floor.
Ears ringing violently, the backlash of anxiety and tension surged back.
She pushed up from the ground on her hands, sweat dripping down her cheeks onto the tiles, spreading out. She gasped like a fish for a long while before her senses slowly normalized.
After a moment, Mu Shan stood, glancing back at the room she had just fled.
A sign hung by the door—【Deputy Director’s Office】.
Not Sun Lizhou at all.
【Player successfully completes mini-game: Escape Room
+50 Gold Coins
Strength +1
Health +1
Defense +3】
【Player unlocks achievement: Immovable
Maintains high-speed thinking ability in desperate straits
Spirit +3
“Though enemy armies besiege with thousands of troops, I remain immovable.”】
Finding the hands was only step one; solving the painting puzzle was step two. The office everywhere hinted at time’s importance, including the painting.
330 translates to 3:30, clock hands at 90 degrees;
600 means 6:00, hands at 180 degrees.
“015” required adjusting to 15 degrees. From the prior patterns, integers only—multiple possibilities!
The sole breakthrough was still the painting.
Sunset was another time hint.
It could be 5:30 or 6:30. Mu Shan bet on 6:30—and luckily won.
The corridor lights were stark white. She braced against the wall, moving forward slowly.
She had wondered from the start why the flowerpot door card and notebook code did not open the lock. If unrelated, the system was too malicious.
Now out, Mu Shan understood: the notebook owner and card owner were not the room’s occupant!
The occupant was not Director Sun Lizhou—he was a deputy director!
In workplaces, deputies were often just called “director,” bureau vice heads “bureau chief”—subordinates showed respect without full titles like “Deputy Director Wang”…
Mu Shan had not expected even the instance world to follow such workplace unspoken rules. The logistics call’s “Director” was the system’s misdirection.
Not long after walking, she spotted anxious Zhang Haiyang.
He craned his neck peering around. Seeing her, he let out a shrill yell: “Sis, where’d you suddenly go?! You scared me to death!”
Zhang Haiyang rushed over, dazed. Seeing her fine, he sighed in relief: “The system suddenly notified me: your teammate entered a solo mini-game, contact impossible. I thought you’d been pulled into an instance-within-instance! Good thing you came out quick, or I’d have gone to Brother Feng for help.”
“It was an independent game in the instance—close enough.” Mu Shan nodded wearily.
“I need to go back to that office.”
She retraced her steps to the office she had searched, where the journal that triggered the mini-game upon touch still lay untouched on the desk.
Mu Shan picked it up.
《Science World Issue N25-91》
The cover showed a side profile of a man around fifty: fat, beer belly, balding—every stereotype of a middle-aged man. The bottom right corner named him.
[C City Digital Medical Research Institute Director, Leader of New Era Scientific R&D, Father of Research]
[—Sun Lizhou]
Mu Shan eyed the old man critically. Unexpectedly, he did not look very “scientific.”
A diamond gold watch adorned his wrist, a gold fountain pen poked from his lab coat pocket, and his belt casually revealed Mercedes keys.
Below that, there were also reporters tracking the story, saying it was about to enter production lines, with many big factories expressing willingness to invest in buying the patent technology.
To be honest, as a woman, Mu Shan was quite interested.
But just as the Old Driver had said, this guy’s scope of involvement was a bit too broad.
From cell regeneration to cure terminal illnesses, to gender transformation, and even medical cosmetology. Mu Shan felt that if she dug around more, she might even find things like gene programming, species cloning, or adult sterilization.
She wouldn’t even be surprised if Sun Lizhou was researching hybrid rice.
Mu Shan glanced at the blank access card and password paper she had just brought out from a certain deputy director’s office, then tucked them into her pocket.
Temporary use unknown.
“Sister, have you finished searching over there?”
The Old Driver and Li Mei walked over from the corridor, cursing under their breath. “These researchers are way too poor. There’s not even a snack in the desk drawers. I only found a bottle of quick-acting heart-relief pills that’s somewhat useful!”
The Old Driver spun the wheelchair around and pointed that way. “But I found an important clue. Want to go check it out?”
Mu Shan nodded. The four regrouped and headed toward the place Feng Wei had indicated.
It was an idle corner area on the second floor, with two vases placed there. A huge KT board hung on the big white wall in the middle.
It was the complete staff list for the entire research institute, with a one-inch headshot for every person.
Mu Shan scanned it at a glance and quickly found Sun Lizhou’s name.
He was the only director in the whole institute. It specially noted behind his name: Director Sun possessed 15 technological achievements, the research institute’s annual outstanding employee honor, and he consistently held the “Hygiene Model Worker” title.
Ranked below him were three deputy directors. One was Wang Siqiang; he looked quite old in the photo, wore glasses, and had an unsmiling expression.
One was Xing Wei, a woman who could almost be ruled out.
The last deputy director was Qian Bo, a middle-aged man smiling like Maitreya Buddha, with an amiable face.
All three had 1-2 technological achievements and also held “Hygiene Model Worker” titles.
Mu Shan pondered. Which person’s office had she entered earlier?