The emergency passage was cramped and narrow. Jian Jing could sit up straight, but Xu Scriptwriter and Kang Mu Cheng could only curl up and rest tilted to the side.
"I've written many adventure stories, but this is my first time experiencing it firsthand," Xu Scriptwriter said self-deprecatingly. "Look, no zombies, no monsters, no beetles, yet we're already in such a sorry state. From now on I'll have no right to complain that the protagonists win too easily in my stories."
Jian Jing laughed at his joke.
Hearing her laugh, Xu Scriptwriter changed the subject and joked, "But I'm getting old, I can't help it. Jingjing on the other hand is a lot like Bai Xiaomao, smart and nimble."
Bai Xiaomao was the female protagonist of White Kitten Detective, a genetically enhanced super detective girl.
"Mm, just missing the genetic enhancements," the usually stern Kang Mu Cheng unexpectedly also cracked a joke, perhaps because of the oppressive darkness.
Jian Jing said, "President Kang, this style doesn't suit you."
"I've always been like this," Kang Mu Cheng said, unexpectedly not admitting it. "It's just that I was stricter towards you before. After all, if I'm too friendly with authors, they're more likely to miss deadlines."
Jian Jing: "..."
"He's telling the truth," Xu Scriptwriter guffawed. "Without a stern editor watching us, authors are capable of anything to avoid turning in manuscripts. I've gone as far as getting surgery at the hospital before just to delay submission."
Jian Jing had to admit that was indeed true. In her eyes, Kang Mu Cheng was both brother and father. He took care of her daily life and strictly monitored her work. If he said a manuscript had to be submitted by a certain date, she couldn't be late by a single day.
She respected him somewhat feared him. She never dared to miss a deadline, like a grade schooler turning in homework.
"Then next time I'll deliberately miss the deadline," she said. "President Kang no longer holds any authority in my eyes."
Kang Mu Cheng scoffed, seeming to say: Are you sure?
Normally, Jian Jing would never confront Kang Mu Cheng head on. His care and concern for the other Jian Jing deserved her respect. But with everyone's nerves frayed right now, they needed the comic relief.
She indulged herself a little, lightly huffing in response to challenge him: We'll see about that.
Xu Scriptwriter laughed again and asked, "What does Jingjing plan to write next? To be honest, Devil Doctor is very suitable to expand into a series or adapt into a TV drama." After a brief pause, he unexpectedly sincerely said, "Actually, I'd like to connect you with a friend of mine. He recently wants to switch to producing TV dramas, and doesn't want overly long, draggy scripts, so episodic quasi-American dramas like Devil would be perfect."
Jian Jing was surprised by his candor.
Previously Xu Scriptwriter had hinted at similar intentions, but it seemed like he was just casually suggesting it, not actually enthusiastic. And Kang Mu Cheng wanted to bargain for a higher price, also not revealing any eagerness. It was as if they were engaged in business negotiations, still in the exploratory phase.
But now, Xu Scriptwriter's attitude was very sincere and forthright, not hiding his high opinion of Devil Doctor at all.
The three suddenly felt much closer to each other.
Sensing his change in attitude, Kang Mu Cheng also changed his tune: "I absolutely trust Xu Scriptwriter's judgement. Let's discuss more after we get out of here."
Jian Jing naturally agreed with him: "You two have more experience than me, I'll just listen."
"With you being so obedient, President Kang's job must be easy," Xu Scriptwriter remarked. "In our line of work, it's not easy to find a suitable partner."
A superior horse needs to meet a good judge of horses in order to achieve success. But usually, writers feel publishers don't understand their work and underestimate their talent. Publishers feel writers have inflated egos, and literature publishing is still a business after all.
Trust was always easier said than done.
A moment of contemplative silence descended on them.
After resting a while and recovering some strength, Jian Jing said, "I'll go check out what's ahead."
Kang Mu Cheng said: "I should be the one to..."
"I'm smaller," Jian Jing interrupted him.
He stopped. His height and long legs used to be an advantage, but in this passage, they were a hindrance, catching on the walls and ceiling. He could only caution her, "Be careful."
"I know," Jian Jing swiftly crawled forward with the night vision goggles. In no time, she reached a bend. Past the turn, she felt the passage angle downward, seemingly leading directly underground.
"It looks like there's a way down here," she said excitedly, quickly turning around and sliding down the incline like a slide.
The slide was straight with no bends, ending after five or six meters. Her feet landed on a steel plate with a small number lock. And through the thin steel plate, she could hear the sound of wind and rain outside.
If she could open this, they'd be able to get out.
Jian Jing was overjoyed and immediately looked for clues.
On the back of the steel plate was etched a string of letters: snegoustlw.
The number lock was also English letters.
With her English proficiency around level 4, Jian Jing searched her memory and deduced this was unlikely to be an actual word, but rather an encrypted password.
Given the small number of letters, the encryption method probably wasn't too complicated. For English letters there were two possibilities to consider: pronunciation or the English language itself.
Broken into initials and finals, the pronunciation was:
Initials: s, n, g, s, t, l, w
Finals: e, o, u
Clearly no match.
It should be based on the English language.
"Jingjing, are you alright?" Kang Mu Cheng's worried voice came from above.
"I'm fine," she casually responded. "Solving a password, wait a moment."
There was a classic type of English encryption called fence cipher.
snegoustlw happened to be 10 letters, able to be split into two rows:
snego
ustlw
Su...n? Sun?
Jian Jing immediately rearranged the letters combining the rows: sunsetglow.
Twilight, or afterglow.
She rotated the lock's letters to spell out these two words. With a soft click, the lock opened, and cold wind mixed with heavy raindrops poured inside, slapping her face.
Jian Jing felt like a huge weight had been lifted. Pushing the door open, she walked out into the downpour.
[Task completed, system calculating rewards]
The cold rain drenched her body, but she only felt the relief of surviving disaster. "President Kang, Xu Scriptwriter, you can come down now. We can get out!"
Two minutes later, they also successfully escaped the villa.
In the storm, the three looked at each other and spontaneously burst into laughter.
"Phew..." Xu Scriptwriter seemed to want to say something, but couldn't find the words, simply shaking his head while laughing. "Not easy, not easy at all."
Just as Jian Jing was about to say something, she suddenly heard someone yelling, "Is anyone there?"
"Who is it?" She walked towards the voice.
"It's me." From a small room near the exit, someone was banging on the door, shouting, "Hurry and reset the password on the outside control box."
Recognizing her voice, Jian Jing called out: "Mrs. Qin?"
Xu Scriptwriter and Kang Mu Cheng also came over: "Mrs. Qin? Why are you here?"
"I came to check the power room circuits, but I don't know what happened. The security system suddenly rebooted, and my phone has no signal either, so I can't get the new password. I'm trapped in here," Mrs. Qin anxiously explained. "The external control box can manually reset the password."
Kang Mu Cheng found the control box concealed as a birdhouse behind the power room. Opening it revealed an intelligent control panel inside.
Mrs. Qin instructed: "Press reset password. It will ask for the current password which I can't receive, so choose to restore factory settings."
Kang Mu Cheng did as told. "It's asking for a factory code."
"sko03725jolxmhod," Mrs. Qin read out the code.
The system displayed success, prompting him to enter a new password.
Per Mrs. Qin's request, Kang Mu Cheng set it to 8 zeroes.
After the success message displayed, Mrs. Qin entered the new code into the power room and finally got the door open. Her complexion was ghostly pale, her face filled with gratitude and guilt. "Fortunately you all managed to escape, otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do. To invite everyone to view the exhibition, yet this happened...I'm terribly sorry."
Of course no one could blame her for anything. They all hastened to reassure her: "Just an accident, don't worry about it. Let's find the others first. Being trapped for so long must have tired everyone out."
"Yes, we could all use a hot cup of coffee now," Mrs. Qin joked, taking the lead to unlock the café.
It was empty inside.
She turned on the lights and called out, "Is anyone here?"
"Who?!" There was a response not too far away.
Mrs. Qin hurriedly went over.
As the hallway lights all switched on at once, the figure collapsed in the middle became glaringly obvious. "Dear?!" Mrs. Qin ran over in shock, shouting for her husband. "Dear, how did you... Ah!"
She screamed and crumpled to the floor.
Jian Jing's scalp tingled as she rushed over, immediately seeing President Qin's rigid body.
Dead as a doornail.
*
At 3am, the downpour eased into a light drizzle.
It was also around this time that the police finally arrived, one car with two officers, one auxiliary officer, and one medical examiner. Dark eye circles hung heavily under their eyes, appearing exhausted.
On one hand Jian Jing deeply sympathized with their heavy workload, working overtime so late into the night. On the other hand, she felt resigned towards the police's slow response time - it took three hours after calling to show up, the food had gone cold.
However, while shorthanded, the police were still meticulous in their work. After examining the corpse, the medical examiner preliminarily determined the cause of death to be toxic gas poisoning leading to asphyxiation.
The police first questioned Mrs. Qin after getting an account of tonight's accident.
"Could you introduce us to your security system?"
Mrs. Qin was very cooperative: "We're a private museum, with many precious artworks in our collection, so we applied for Grade B security. Once the security alert is triggered, all the doors will lock, but considering potential accidents, each room also has an emergency password."
The police officer nodded. "Are you able to open it?"
"I can use the admin password to unlock everything, but the system rebooted directly today due to an electrical failure. After rebooting, the admin password becomes invalid, and the new password is sent to my phone. " Mrs. Qin explained.
The officer asked, "You didn't receive the new password?"
"That's right. It seems like a system bug occurred, which activated the signal jammer at the same time, so my phone couldn't receive any messages normally. And I just happened to be locked in the electrical room, unable to manually reset the password." Mrs. Qin looked despondent. "I didn't consider things thoroughly enough..."
The police interrupted her confession: "What's the deal with the released gas? Why did it kill people? According to relevant regulations, lethal devices are not allowed in Class B systems."
Mrs. Qin looked embarrassed and hesitated before saying, "The space was too big, compliant anesthetic gases were too expensive, so my husband found someone to buy some...uh...not totally standard mist sprays. He said anyone who would trigger the alarm must be up to no good, so we don't need to be too courteous with them."
The police asked, "So you're saying your husband knew the gas was lethal?"
"Yes," Mrs. Qin answered very quickly.
"Knowing that, why would he still trigger the mechanism?" the police retorted.
Mrs. Qin frowned: "Perhaps it wasn't necessarily him who triggered it. There was another person at the scene. Officer, I hope you can get to the bottom of this. My husband would never knowingly commit a crime."
"Thank you for your cooperation," the police temporarily halted the questioning.
The next person to be questioned was Editor-in-chief Guo.
She truthfully recounted the process of President Qin's death, but was vague about why the two of them were in the storeroom.
The police did not let this loophole slide and probed further: "Why were you in the storeroom?"
"I wanted to get some fresh air through the back door, so I went that way," Editor Guo said. "Officers, I don't think this is important. President Qin's death...I suspect it wasn't an accident, but murder."
The police did not betray any emotion: "Why do you say that?"
"The villa's security system, we don't understand it, but shouldn't the owner be familiar with it?" Editor Guo emphasized, "When he saw the emergency button then, he was very happy and pressed it without a second thought. The only explanation for him doing this is that someone told him it was safe. Who would be most familiar with the villa's design?"
The two questioning police exchanged a glance with inscrutable expressions.