SWBG - Chapter 27

Among the three lines of numbers, Wei Jiashi only recognized the last one. Judging from the expressions on Xiao Luo’s and Fang Ge’s faces, they were in the same situation as he was—none of them understood much.

Xiao Luo ventured tentatively, “The numbers in front are…?”

Without lifting her head, Gu Jingsheng explained, “I memorized the passwords from the first two chests. The numbers shouldn’t be wrong. If you’re worried, you can go check them.”

“…”

She could memorize the numbers with just a single glance—what kind of big shot had they ended up entering this instance with?

Only after Gu Jingsheng reminded them did Xiao Luo, Fang Qiju, and Wei Jiashi recall that the first two chests had already been open when they found them. Their lock bolts were retracted, which meant that whatever numbers were displayed were the actual passwords.

Gu Jingsheng muttered to herself, “Judging from the numbers we have, the iron chest passwords are all designed according to a specific pattern. I’ll bet fifty cents this was definitely Mr. John’s handiwork.”

When it came to sharing her thought process, Gu Jingsheng held nothing back. Wei Jiashi, however, felt like the kind of student who struggled below the passing line even after being singled out by the teacher for extra tutoring—no matter the exam question, he always managed to drag down the class average.

Wei Jiashi glanced at the other two companions and found that Xiao Luo’s and Fang Ge’s expressions were similarly composed on the surface, yet bewildered underneath. At last, he felt a bit of comfort in shared misery. Ever since entering the instance, the three of them had had their intelligence mercilessly crushed by Gu Jingsheng. If the first room was merely a disconnection, and the second room marked the start of a shutdown, then by the third room they had fully given up treatment and had been permanently banned. TAT

Writing down the numbers served two purposes: half of it was to give the other three a more intuitive sense of the password deduction process, and the other half was to speed up Gu Jingsheng’s own calculations. Her memory was good enough that she could have done everything mentally if necessary, but in such a dangerous instance, it was better to save time where possible.

“2042.”

As the four digits were entered, the third iron chest flew open.

Gu Jingsheng frowned. “Something’s off.”

Wei Jiashi immediately tensed. “Is there something wrong with the chest?”

Gu Jingsheng slowly shook her head. “It’s the room that’s wrong—don’t you think this password was a bit too easy?”

“…Not at all.” ×3

Since they had been pressed into the dirt from the moment they entered the instance, Fang Qiju didn’t mind admitting that even with the answer in hand, he still didn’t understand. “Why 2042?”

Gu Jingsheng said, “Each password is twelve digits long. Split them into pairs. Take the first set as an example: 3, 8, 21, 12, 14, and 9—six numbers in total. The first two and the last two provide the multipliers. The first number pairs with the fifth, the second with the sixth, and the third and fourth numbers in the middle are their respective products.”

Following her logic, Xiao Luo felt that his math skills—good enough to dominate kids under ten—were being openly insulted. “Uh, Y, right? Why do I feel like 3 times 14 doesn’t equal 21?”

Gu Jingsheng shot him a glance. “I’m not finished. If a number is composite, the multiplier it provides is its largest factor excluding itself. If it’s prime, then the multiplier is the number itself.”

Wei Jiashi suddenly understood. “I get it! Fourteen is composite, so its factor is 7. Seven times 3 equals 21!”

Xiao Luo: “…”

He felt that maybe he should go back to senior kindergarten and reinforce his fundamentals, otherwise he’d always lose right at the starting line when playing games.

Gu Jingsheng spoke in a low, brisk voice, not letting the discussion distract her from examining the iron chest.

Inside the third chest, besides the familiar private records, there was also a pack of [Expired Desiccant].

A look of obvious delight appeared on Xiao Luo’s face.

[Expired Desiccant: A pack of desiccant found in a locked iron chest.]

A nurse carelessly placed the desiccant into the combination-locked chest while organizing supplies.

“Desiccant is a very common item in the sanatorium.”

Item Level: ★

Remarks: This is a single-use item.]

Gu Jingsheng blinked, feeling her knowledge base expand a little further. “So desiccant can expire too?”

Wei Jiashi asked worriedly, “Then can it still be used?”

Gu Jingsheng replied, “I think it should be fine as long as it hasn’t clumped.”

[Damp Flint], [Expired Desiccant]—the correspondence between their names made the correct usage immediately obvious without much thought—

[Barely Usable Flint: A piece of flint found in an iron chest. It was severely damp. After using desiccant to absorb the moisture, it can now barely be used to strike a spark.]

Detective ▇▇ once considered pocketing this flint—if it hadn’t been stained with so much blood.

“Smoking is prohibited within the sanatorium.”

Item Level: ★

Remarks: Although it is not a single-use item, its usefulness is still very limited.]

After fully absorbing the moisture, the item description of the [Flint] changed accordingly.

Since there was still ample time, Gu Jingsheng wasn’t in a hurry to re-explore the large ward. She first took the records retrieved from the third chest and read them carefully, line by line.

“After the incident involving Andre, the sanatorium has tightened its supervision of patients.”

“The atmosphere inside ‘Rosemary’ has become increasingly oppressive. I feel deeply uneasy.”

“Ms. Sophia suggested increasing patient patrols. I personally witnessed the head nurse pulling the door open a crack to spy on the ward.”

“Mr. John plans to resign. He said he found a new position in the Old Oak Free Trade Zone. He bid farewell to the patients, sincerely hoping these poor souls would recover soon.”

Wei Jiashi wasn’t as skilled at puzzle-solving, but he read quickly. “These notes seem to be purely background information for the instance. Not very useful.”

Gu Jingsheng nodded. “Which is why I think there must still be clues in this ward that we haven’t found yet.”

Xiao Luo hesitated. “Are you sure?”

After some thought, Fang Ge voted in favor. “I agree. At the very least, aside from the flint, we haven’t found anything that connects to the next ward.”

Gu Jingsheng stood up without a word, crossed her arms, and walked expressionlessly from one end of the room to the other, then retraced her steps in exactly the same way.

While she was thinking, Wei Jiashi and Fang Qiju were fine—one was inexperienced, the other worldly—but Xiao Luo found the sight unsettling. He had noticed that when she walked, her movements, expression, and even the length of each step never varied, precise like mass-produced products coming off the same factory assembly line.

After completing one round trip, Gu Jingsheng suddenly stopped. “The flying bird patterns.”

Fang Qiju asked, “You mean they follow some kind of rule?”

Gu Jingsheng said, “Yes. There are ten flying birds in this room in total—”

Xiao Luo frowned. “How do you know exactly how many there are?”

There was a hint of wariness in his tone, his expression screaming: Y, and you still say you didn’t read a guide?

Gu Jingsheng said flatly, “…I counted them.”

Xiao Luo: “…”

Nothing kills a conversation faster than sudden silence.

Gu Jingsheng pinched the bridge of her nose, skipped past the interruption, walked to the corner near the side door and window, and grabbed the pull ring on the iron chest. “We actually fell into a mental trap earlier. This pull ring isn’t meant to be pulled upward—it’s signaling that the chest is already in a ‘raised’ state.”

She pressed both hands against the top of the chest and leaned her weight onto it. “According to the calculation rules of the flying bird patterns, once we press this down, the hidden chest on the opposite side will rise up from beneath the floor.”

Before she finished speaking, Wei, Luo, and Fang watched as a new chest slowly emerged from the ground in the only corner of the large ward where nothing had been found before.

This chest bore the same flying bird pattern.

Gu Jingsheng brushed the dust from her hands and said with satisfaction, “That’s about it.”

“…”

After a moment of silence, Fang Qiju rewound the conversation. “What exactly do you mean by the calculation rules of the flying bird patterns?”

Gu Jingsheng answered succinctly. “Negative times negative equals positive.”

“…………”

Fang Qiju sincerely felt she might as well not have explained at all. ╮(￣￣)╭

Gu Jingsheng continued scribbling on the paper with her eyebrow pencil. “If we divide this ward into a 3×4 grid and place a marker at each intersection, using ‘1’ for flying bird patterns and ‘-1’ for those without, it looks like this—”

“-1, -1, 1, 1”

 “1, 1, -1, -1”

 “-1, -1, -1, -1”

 “1, -1, -1, 1”

 “1, 1, 1, 1”

Some of the flying bird patterns were on the iron chests, some on decorations, some on the walls. Once arranged this way, the structure did look much clearer—but—

Fang Qiju, no matter how hardened [Happy Board Games] had made him, was still only average when it came to academics. “Specifically?”

Wei Jiashi suddenly caught on. “It’s multiplication! Each row, left to right and right to left, uses multiplication—the first three numbers are the multipliers, and the last number is the product.”

Before Gu Jingsheng pressed the chest down, the first row from left to right could be expressed as “(-1) × (-1) × 1 = 1”, while from right to left it was “1 × 1 × (-1) = -1”.

All five rows on the paper followed this multiplication rule horizontally.

So when Gu Jingsheng changed the rightmost value in the first row from “1” to “-1” (no flying bird), because a negative times a negative equals a positive, the leftmost product changed accordingly.

Gu Jingsheng said, “The ‘negative times negative equals positive’ rule only applies horizontally. If [Happy Board Games] really wanted to make things difficult, it could’ve added a different rule on the vertical axis. Maybe because this is just a normal-difficulty instance, it didn’t dare crank the difficulty up too much.”

…This is already pretty excessive, honestly.

The password style of the fourth iron chest followed the same operational rules as the previous ones. Gu Jingsheng didn’t even need scratch work and easily retrieved the item hidden inside:

[“Tears Streaming Down the Face” Spray: This spray bottle has already been opened and used, but fortunately, the remaining liquid has not completely evaporated over time.]

Mr. ▇▇▇’s research indicates that this spray is very likely a mixture of swamp water and black rose extract.

“In the ‘Rosemary’ Sanatorium, many patients and staff have wept bitterly because of it.”

Item Level: ★

Remarks: It is hoped that whoever obtains this item will use it in the proper place.]

Happy New Year!!! Sorry for being away for so long :( ... Life got really busy with the addition of work, really had no time to edit and proofread new chapters. However, everything is a bit less busy now, so I will try to consistently post every week now!