Ten minutes later, the power was restored, and the young master finally began to seriously look for clues.
Ye Meng stood in the cage giving directions. “There’s a password box under the TV cabinet. Hand it to me and I’ll solve it. You go find the key, check thoroughly under the carpet and beneath the cabinets.”
Li Jin Yu took a look and casually tossed it to her. “That door isn’t locked, and there’s no unlocking mechanism visible to the naked eye. It’s a sensor door. What key am I supposed to find?”
“Just keep looking!” Ye Meng sat cross-legged on the ground, her attention fully on the password box, her tone unconsciously softening.
Li Jin Yu’s lips curled slightly.
The password box was quite elaborate—it used Morse code. Ye Meng had studied journalism with an initial plan to become a reporter in the future, so she had researched many types of codes before, including Morse code. She mentally calculated the conversions while silently complaining that the owner had gone too far in increasing the game’s difficulty, disregarding both the scenario setting and the players’ knowledge base.
After much effort and sweat, she finally opened the first box and obtained a key and several plot notes. The storyline was a cliché about a maid secretly in love with the young master, while the young master spent his days carousing.
Whether influenced by the plot or not, when Ye Meng tossed the key to the young master outside the door, her tone carried some resentment. “Here, take it and open it!”
Li Jin Yu, who had also gone through quite a bit of the plot on his side, was struck hard on the back by the key. He smiled and said, “Now you’re getting into character.”
Ye Meng: “This plot is so clichéd, it’s making me angry. How can there be such a perverted storyline—going out to find women and then locking up the maid who secretly loves him.”
Li Jin Yu gave a mocking laugh but didn’t respond. He casually half-sat on the cabinet next to the TV without searching for a single clue, holding a few papers in his hand, flipping through them, studying something unknown.
“My lord,” Ye Meng wedged her head into the gap of the iron cage, “at your speed, will we ever get out of here today?”
The escape room was already dimly lit, casting his tall, sharp silhouette, making him so handsome that it was difficult to look away. He didn’t even lift his head, his attention still on the papers in his hand, speaking leisurely: “Why, are you in a hurry?”
Ye Meng stared at him. “How about we switch places then?”
Li Jin Yu had somehow poured himself a glass of water. He took a sip and said methodically: “That won’t do. How could a maid bear to lock up the young master? Only the young master would do such a thing.”
Ye Meng teased: “Then how could a younger brother bear to lock up his older sister?”
The young master finally looked up at her from his papers, saying calmly: “I could.”
“Are you going to do this or not?” She grew impatient.
Ye Meng had a bit of claustrophobia. She enjoyed escape rooms, but she didn’t like the feeling of having her fate in someone else’s hands. She should have let him take the maid’s role.
But in the next second, Li Jin Yu pulled a remote control from his pocket and, still holding his glass of water, pressed it lightly.
Damn it, her door clicked open with a snap.
Ye Meng was so angry she wanted to run over and flick his forehead, and that’s exactly what she did. “You found it earlier?”
Li Jin Yu leaned against the TV cabinet. Seeing her running towards him, he instinctively tilted his head to dodge, laughing uncontrollably. “Would you believe me if I told you this was a bug?”
“Fine, tell me. If you can’t explain, I’ll bash your head in.”
Li Jin Yu tossed the password box he had cracked earlier to her, putting his hands back in his pockets. “This door requires two locks to be opened—one for control, one for unlocking. I couldn’t find the password box for the control, so I just tried randomly, and surprisingly it opened.”
Ye Meng took a look, and it was true. Moreover, the password box also used Morse code.
“You understand Morse code?” Ye Meng looked up at him.
“Don’t you?” He raised his chin, pointing to the key from earlier, with a half-smile saying, “Let’s go, next room.”
Only after Ye Meng came out did she see boxes scattered all over the floor, almost all of them using Morse code. He had solved them all. Ye Meng couldn’t remember every code; solving these codes involved a mix of guessing and luck. Sometimes with a stroke of good fortune, solving one or two might be lucky, but any more than that would be difficult. Li Jin Yu’s abundance of effortlessly solved password boxes made her heart skip a beat, and she couldn’t help but grow curious about him again—what had he experienced?
The following plot flowed surprisingly smoothly—the maid, heartbroken by the young master, drowned herself in the lake.
“So now I’m solving an escape room with a ghost,” Li Jin Yu said while searching for clues, bending down to pick up a password box. This time it wasn’t Morse code, but a string of numbers.
Ye Meng knocked on the bricks of the wall, discovering a few hollow ones—secret compartments. She responded, “Whose fault is that? Who told you to go carousing every day?”
Li Jin Yu leaned against the wall, casually trying a few passwords.
Ye Meng asked offhandedly, “What are you entering?”
“The master’s birthday and the maid’s birthday,” he said lazily.
“Oh, the young master even remembers the maid’s birthday? Impressive.” Ye Meng laughed so hard she got a stitch in her side. He was really in character.
Ye Meng couldn’t remember anything about the young master’s or the maid’s birthday.
The storyline took a twist in the final escape room—the day after the maid drowned herself, the young master retrieved her body from the lake and placed it in the small cage where Ye Meng had been earlier. The first three rooms were all about the maid’s psychological journey, while the last study room revealed the young master’s true feelings. There was a large safe in the bookcase, which locked away the secrets of the castle. Only those who knew this secret could open the outermost door. This time, the password used double encryption.
The first layer was Morse code. Li Jin Yu immediately wrote down the corresponding numbers on paper. Watching his reaction speed, Ye Meng thought it was as if the Morse code table was imprinted in his mind.
“Have you ever considered becoming a secret agent?” Ye Meng asked seemingly out of nowhere, her question not quite following the previous conversation.
Li Jin Yu was focused on solving the puzzle. He glanced at her when he heard this, circled some numbers on the paper, and said casually: “Why, do you have connections? Does it pay well? I’ll consider it.”
Ye Meng smiled, looking at the paper he had scribbled all over, like a thick fog, difficult to navigate.
She had a vague intuition but couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was.
2931021045242721028
“Don’t you think this string of numbers looks strange?” Ye Meng said. “Could it be the twenty-six letters?”
Li Jin Yu showed her the lock on the password box with a helpless expression—it was all letters.
Wasn’t that obvious?
Ye Meng’s mind worked quickly. “Or perhaps like this: 29, 31, 02, 10, 45, 24… Could these be coordinates?”
“No,” Li Jin Yu said calmly, redividing the numbers according to his thoughts, marking them one by one. He seemed to already know the answer. “It should be 29, 310, 210, 45, 24, 27, 210, 28… If we consider them as coordinates, it should be like this, because no object can start with 0, at least from the physical items we have access to now. Haven’t you noticed that none of the first digits exceed 4?”
Ye Meng instantly thought of it. “Computer keyboard.”
“Smart,” Li Jin Yu smiled.
So, according to the corresponding letters on a computer keyboard: 29 (second row, ninth column) = I 310 (third row, tenth column) = L 210 (second row, tenth column) = O, and so on.
I LOVE YOU
Click, and the lock opens.
The safe was empty. The only secret of the castle was this password. Unlocking the young master’s heart simultaneously opened the castle’s main door. They handed over the walkie-talkies, and the owner asked expectantly: “How was it?”
“The storyline is a bit clichéd, but everything else is fine. There are too many passwords, and few people can solve Morse code—except for him, of course,” Ye Meng said frankly.
The owner nodded. “But many escape room enthusiasts are quite good at solving them, and I remember I put a Morse code table up there, didn’t I?”
“There was a code table?”
Ye Meng was surprised. Beside her, Li Jin Yu finally couldn’t hold back his laughter anymore. He said to the owner: “Alright, I’m leaving.”
Just as the man had stepped out the door, Ye Meng, still concerned, quietly went back to ask the owner: “Was there a power outage just now?”
The owner shook his head innocently. “No, there wasn’t.”
“…”
As Ye Meng went downstairs, she saw Li Jin Yu standing at the building entrance, unwrapping a candy for himself, preparing to get a taxi.
She stood there for a while, thinking, and slowly walked over, asking softly, “Want to have a meal together?”
He looked down at her, his candy-chewing motion slowing down. “Eat what?”
Ye Meng was inexplicably nervous: “Anything. I haven’t been back for long and am not very familiar with the town. You choose?”
Li Jin Yu looked at her for a moment and asked, “Would you like to eat crab?”
“Sure.”
“Let’s go, I’ll get a taxi,” he said.