The Dark Room
Translator: Cinder Translations
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"That Yu Man,"
Jiang Cheng paused for a moment, then said calmly, "She's most likely been captured by the village chief, or she might be dead."
It's quite common to encounter the deaths of teammates in nightmares, but usually, it's caused by ghosts. It's rare for someone like Yu Man to be harmed by an NPC in a mission.
Chen Xiaomeng didn't want to speculate about what Yu Man might face if she fell into the hands of the village chief and others. In fact, she even hoped that Yu Man would die before being captured.
"Don't think so much," Jiang Cheng's voice came through, "Instead of worrying about others, you should focus on yourself. No matter what happens to Yu Man, it's already a fact, and neither of us can change it."
"If you don't want to end up like her, pull yourself together, find the clues, and get out of here as soon as possible."
Chen Xiaomeng's earlier hesitation was only based on empathy as a fellow woman, but after a brief moment, a look of determination returned to her face. "Let's go in," she whispered.
Jiang Cheng held a metal piece in his hand and was the first to crouch and slip through the secret door.
Chen Xiaomeng followed behind him.
The space inside was very narrow, and they could only move forward by bending over.
But this also made Jiang Cheng, who was leading the way, less nervous.
He judged that Li Lu wouldn't choose to ambush them here.
After turning several corners, they kept going upward. Jiang Cheng mentally counted the steps until they reached the top of the stairs.
Above them, there was a trapdoor with a simple wire handle on it.
Based on the number of steps, they were now on the third floor of the inn.
Both of them realized that behind this trapdoor was the secret room where Qian Jianxiu lived.
Success or failure depended on this moment.
Jiang Cheng gripped the handle and looked back at Chen Xiaomeng. She nodded at him, signaling that she was ready.
After taking a deep breath, Jiang Cheng quickly flipped open the trapdoor, dashed out of the revealed hole, and immediately stepped sideways to clear the opening.
Chen Xiaomeng appeared shortly after.
Though the room was dark, Jiang Cheng immediately recognized it as not a secret room but the room they had stayed in earlier, Room 307.
The secret door was hidden under the wooden table and was very concealed. Once closed, it was hard to spot the crack from inside the room.
A chill ran through both of them simultaneously.
Who would have thought that a secret passage was hidden in the room they had stayed in? If they had fallen asleep, the innkeeper and his people could have burst in, and the consequences would have been unthinkable.
At the same time, Jiang Cheng also realized another thing that had happened earlier.
No wonder the innkeeper, Qian Jianxiu, had immediately grabbed a knife and rushed to Room 307 after noticing someone outside. He hadn't just been suspicious of them; he had been confirming whether the secret passage had been exposed.
The bloody footprints disappeared here.
Jiang Cheng and Chen Xiaomeng worked in perfect sync, checking under the bed, in the wardrobe, and in the bathroom, places where people could hide. They found nothing.
Opening the door, they saw the same lonely candelabra at the end of the hallway.
The placement of the candelabra was odd—it was positioned in the exact middle of the wall, neither higher nor lower, which made its illumination quite limited.
Behind the wall at the end of the hall was the secret room where Qian Jianxiu lived.
Chen Xiaomeng's eyes grew strange.
The two of them carefully walked toward the end of the hallway, one behind the other.
Chen Xiaomeng, keeping a one-meter distance from Jiang Cheng, stayed alert to any movement around them. In her mind, the door to the room could open at any time, and someone could rush out with a knife.
They reached the end of the hallway, where the wall stood.
The wall was dark, and even with the candlelight, it gave off an unsettling feeling. From beyond the wall, it felt as though a chilly wind was leaking out. Chen Xiaomeng subconsciously swallowed.
Jiang Cheng found the crack in the secret door on the wall, gently pressed on it, and the door opened slightly.
This made them both sigh in relief.
Their biggest worry was that they couldn't open the secret door. After finding the clue, if they failed to open the door, everything would have been for nothing. They would probably be so angry they could spit blood.
Jiang Cheng gripped the crack in the secret door, and his arm slowly exerted force.
The weight of the door was beyond their expectations, and he didn't want to make too much noise, so after widening the crack, Jiang Cheng cautiously leaned closer to the gap and peered inside.
It was very dark inside. He couldn't see the white candles that Zhou Rong had mentioned earlier. He could only vaguely make out some blurred, deep black shapes, likely furniture.
As his gaze swept around the room, he suddenly noticed what seemed to be a cylindrical object standing in the back, about as tall as a person, like a high stool.
However...
Just as he focused his vision to figure out what this object was, a cold flash of light suddenly passed through the darkness. At the very last second, Jiang Cheng fell backward.
Almost immediately, a gleaming dagger appeared where Jiang Cheng's eyes had been.
If he had been a half-second slower, that dagger would have pierced his eye socket.
After the failed strike, the dagger quickly retracted, and the already slightly opened secret door slammed shut with a loud noise.
Everything happened so quickly that when Chen Xiaomeng reacted and rushed forward, the secret door had already closed, and the gap was nowhere to be found.
"Bastard!" Chen Xiaomeng kicked the secret door.
The door was so thick that it didn't even tremble.
Jiang Cheng quickly got up.
Without a doubt, they had once again fallen into Li Lu's trap.
That cylindrical object behind the secret door was where Li Lu had been hiding, waiting to ambush them.
He had been wondering why Li Lu had been so cautious along the way and hadn't made a mistake like leaving the secret door open. It turned out this had been another trap.
Now the secret door was completely shut.
Finding the mechanism to open it might not be too difficult, but it would take up precious time, and time was exactly what they lacked.
A few seconds after the door closed, the thing they had been most worried about finally happened.
"Vroom…"
Both Jiang Cheng and Chen Xiaomeng's hearts skipped a beat.
The door appeared.
A faint light flashed, and the iron door appeared in Qian Jianxiu's secret room.
In a certain sense, this game was already over.
Li Lu was the ultimate winner.
She would undoubtedly get all the rewards.
As for Jiang Cheng and Chen Xiaomeng, all they could do now was enter the secret room before the door disappeared and go back to their own world through the door.
There was no point thinking about rewards; surviving would be good enough.
Just as the two of them stood in front of the door, trying to figure out the mechanism to open it, they suddenly heard a loud crash.
The sound came from downstairs, and it sounded like a door had been forcibly opened.
Then came a flurry of chaotic footsteps, rushing up the stairs.
"Old Four!!"
A heart-wrenching shout came from downstairs, shaking Jiang Cheng's eardrums.
It was the village chief from Xiao Shijian Village. If Jiang Cheng hadn't heard it with his own ears, he wouldn't have believed that the village chief, in his sixties, could have such explosive power.
(End of the Chapter)
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Translated 4 Series, 1.5K+ Chapters and 1.78M+ Words.