The library has a total of 9 floors. Apart from the first floor being a newspaper and magazine borrowing room and a self-study area, which does not meet the requirements, the other floors display books of different categories.
To find a book among them, without knowing what kind of book it is, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Let’s go to the second floor first and take a look. If there’s nothing wrong there, we’ll split up and search. That way it’ll be faster. If some monster like the one we encountered appears again, we’ll stick together.”
Ke Li spoke as he walked towards the library’s left staircase entrance.
He pushed the door, only to find the entrance was locked.
He tried turning the handle a few times and looked around the area, but couldn’t find the key, so he couldn’t open the staircase entrance.
To go upstairs in the library, there was only the left safety staircase and the elevator right in front of the main entrance. Ke Li initially thought taking the stairs would be safer, as after the experience in the dormitory building, he had a feeling something might go wrong with the elevator.
But now it seemed there was only one option left.
He pressed the button to open the elevator door, and the three of them went inside together.
The elevator door slowly closed, and the narrow space had stainless steel panels on all four sides, dimly reflecting the figures of the three.
The elevator slowly ascended, and a slight feeling of weightlessness came over them. The three of them stared at the numbers above the elevator buttons, changing from 1 to 2.
The elevator stopped.
Ke Li’s expression eased a bit, it seemed there was no problem.
A few seconds later, the button for the 4th floor lit up, and the elevator continued upwards.
It was as if there were other people in the narrow, confined elevator pressing the buttons.
“What’s going on?”
Ke Li rushed to press the open door key, but the closed door showed no signs of opening, and it kept ascending.
When it reached the 4th floor, the elevator paused again, and when they thought the door would open, the number 1 lit up again, and before anyone could react, it plummeted downwards.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
The feeling of weightlessness brought terror, causing Ke Li and Xue Li to scream. The smooth walls of the elevator gave them nothing to hold onto, and in the shaking, Xue Li almost hit her head on the elevator wall, unable to find her footing.
In this critical moment, Zhou Zhou, who had been standing silently at the back, quickly reached out and supported her.
“Be careful.” Zhou Zhou held Xue Li, while Ke Li also grabbed onto Zhou Zhou’s arm in panic.
The two of them clung to Zhou Zhou like a lifeline, screaming.
The elevator lights flickered on and off, illuminating two terrified faces, and in the middle, a face that seemed too calm to fit in.
“Don’t be afraid, I’m here.”
In such a perilous moment, Zhou Zhou was like a human coat rack, with the two people screaming while hanging onto him, yet he still had the heart to reassure them.
At that moment, the elevator finally stopped.
The display screen above the buttons showed they were now on the first floor.
“Zhou Zhou, thank, thank you.”
The two, still shaken, let go of Zhou Zhou and hurried towards the elevator door, only to find that no matter which floor they pressed from 1 to 9, the buttons had no effect, and the door wouldn’t open.
“I knew it, they’re pulling these tricks again.”
“Are they trying to trap us to death in here?”
“Open the door!”
Zhou Zhou watched the two of them frantically studying the elevator door and buttons, then looked at the metal door in front of them.
On the stainless steel door, four figures were dimly reflected.
Zhou Zhou saw that behind his own reflection, there was another person.
A person who was completely white.
The white figure reflected unclearly on the metal door twisted and turned, even swaying from side to side with the movements of the two people banging on the door…
Xue Li and Ke Li were still trying to figure out how to open the out-of-control elevator, and even though the shadow on the metal door seemed a bit off, they didn’t think too much of it.
The elevator began ascending again, and their hearts rose with it.
When it reached the second floor, the elevator started descending again, then ascending once more.
It was like bungee jumping, and the two of them felt like their hearts were going to jump out of their chests.
“Zhou Zhou, you come and take a look too, see if there’s any other way. This broken elevator can’t be old and malfunctioning, can it?”
After fiddling with it for a while, the constant ascending and descending of the elevator, along with the resulting feeling of weightlessness, the fear and suffocation brought on by the confined space, all gradually amplified with the passage of time.
Unconsciously, she sought a sense of safety from the other person in the elevator.
Turning her head, Zhou Zhou was standing not far away, looking at her with a very calm expression. He returned her gaze with a faint smile, and she didn’t feel so panicked anymore.
Then she looked at her brother.
“You think we’re going to suffocate to death? Or what if the elevator suddenly drops and we hit the ground, won’t we turn into meat paste! Hel～p～!”
Ke Li was pressing himself against the door in an odd posture, trying to pry it open.
Xue Li: …Is it too late to get a new brother?
“Ding!”
At that moment, the elevator door surprisingly opened, and Ke Li, who was leaning against it, tumbled out.
“Quick, quick! Let’s get out of here, I’m never taking the elevator again.” Ke Li sat on the ground, still shaken.
Xue Li hurriedly pulled the slow-moving Zhou Zhou out of the elevator. Zhou Zhou looked back, but the elevator was empty.
The white figure was gone.
The elevator had finally stopped on the 8th floor – Ancient Literature.
After sitting on the ground for a while, they finally recovered.
“What did we come here to do again?” Ke Li asked as he stood up, his legs still trembling.
“To find a book,” Zhou Zhou replied in a timely manner.
“Oh right, I remember now, we need to find a book here.” It was only then that Ke Li had the mind to check their surroundings, his gaze met with nothing but bookshelves filled with rows upon rows of paper books.
“Don’t tell me we have to find the book here?” Looking at the endless bookshelves, his head started to hurt.
It was no surprise that this was an official game production. They had just reviewed history, and now the players were being made to read books and find books. Was this an attempt to firmly grasp education within the game?
“It shouldn’t be. We only have three days, there’s no way we can check book by book. There must be some clue we haven’t discovered,” said Xue Li, also getting up from the ground.
Zhou Zhou looked back at the elevator, his large eyes full of confusion. Didn’t it just give a hint?
“Huh? Could it be a book about romance, since the previous clue was related to that.”
“It couldn’t be that simple, right? And what kind of book is a romance book? It should at least have a name.”
“Aren’t you wondering about it?”
“Oh, and one more condition, ancient literature category, from thousands of years ago.”
“Then it’s even more unlikely we’d know,” Ke Li sighed like a poor student.
Seeing the two siblings still racking their brains over what book they had to find, Zhou Zhou blinked his eyes. “I know.”
“Zhou Zhou, you know?”
“Know what?”
The two immediately gathered around him. Zhou Zhou pointed at the elevator, “It gave a hint just now.”
The two stared blankly at the closed elevator doors.
After a while, Ke Li suddenly had an epiphany, “I know too!”
Xue Li immediately asked, “What?”
Ke Li smiled slightly, a hint of smugness showing in his smile, and stated confidently, “It’s about falling in love in the elevator.”
Xue Li had a black line on her head, “…Is that a book?”
Zhou Zhou looked confused, “Huh?”
“Zhou Zhou, just tell us directly what the hint was,” said Xue Li, no longer wanting to talk to her brother, as it was too detrimental to her intelligence.
Zhou Zhou nodded, then walked over to the neatly arranged machines on the side of the library, which could search for electronic versions of all the physical books in the library.
Zhou Zhou tapped on one of them, and the screen lit up.
The two people behind him craned their necks to look at the screen, watching as Zhou Zhou entered four letters into the search box, and then several book titles appeared.
“It’s among these.” Zhou Zhou pointed to the book titles on the screen, indicating that the book they were looking for should be one of them.
The two pondered for a while but still didn’t understand what those four letters meant.
“The numbers on the elevator buttons lit up by themselves just now,” Zhou Zhou explained.
They waited for a moment, but he didn’t continue, so they asked, “And?”
“The numbers correspond to different letters.”
Xue Li recalled, “But the numbers that lit up on the buttons weren’t just four, were they?” Although she hadn’t paid attention to which specific numbers lit up, there were definitely more than four.
“The elevator paused for different lengths of time,” Zhou Zhou finally added another sentence.
The floors that had lit up were 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 9, 8.
Based on the varying pause lengths, they formed the four numbers 24, 12, 19, 8, which corresponded to the letters x, l, s, h according to the alphabetical order.
This time they understood. The different pause lengths meant that some numbers weren’t single digits but double digits. So that’s how it was.
What a ghost! Who would have the heart to observe such things while trapped in an elevator? Was this really a beginner’s game? It was too difficult! Not only did it scare them for their lives, but it also tested their observation skills and intelligence?
If it weren’t for Zhou Zhou, they could have stayed in that elevator forever and never figured it out.
Ke Li looked relieved and patted Zhou Zhou’s shoulder, “It’s a good thing you’re here.”
Xue Li also looked touched, “It’s great to have you.”
Zhou Zhou politely replied, “You two are great too.”
After a bit of vague praise, the three of them quickly searched for the books.
The entire floor of the library was vast, and they initially searched together but found it to be too inefficient, so they had to split up, though they didn’t go too far from each other.
They looked for the general category using the labels on the bookshelves, then checked each book’s title one by one. Although slow, knowing the book titles made the search much easier.
Muttering the book titles while scanning the shelves, Xue Li felt someone approaching from behind. Thinking it was Zhou Zhou searching in the neighboring area, she was about to ask if he had found anything when she turned around, but there was no one there.
An illusion? But she had clearly felt someone behind her, a very strong sensation of someone being extremely close, almost right behind her.
Xue Li turned back suspiciously, her gaze towards the bookshelves. The next moment, she whipped her head back, but there was still no one behind her.
It was indeed an illusion.
Xue Li then resumed her search for the book.
“Thud.”
The sound of a book falling came from behind her.
Xue Li turned around at the sound to see an open book lying on the ground.
What happened? Wasn’t there no one there?
How did the book fall?
“Ke Li? Zhou Zhou?”
It was only then that Xue Li noticed the unusual silence around her. On this floor, there were only the three of them, and since they weren’t far apart, she should have been able to hear the others flipping through books or muttering. But now, there was no sound at all.
“Are you there? Say something.”
Xue Li was now standing in the middle of the bookshelves, with tall shelves on both sides. Not daring to move randomly, she could only call out loudly to the other two.
“Whoo~” A sound like the wind blowing came from the other side.
Xue Li was a bit startled and immediately turned her head, catching a glimpse of something white, like a piece of clothing, flashing past from the side of the bookshelves.
“Who’s there?”
No one responded.
“Who is it?”
After waiting for a while, there was still no sound or movement.
Xue Li took a deep breath. Now that she was alone, she could only rely on herself.
She pulled out one of the thickest books from the shelf, its weight comparable to a brick.
Gripping the book tightly with both hands, Xue Li took one step at a time towards the direction where she had seen the suspicious object.
“Come out, or I’m coming over.”
“I’m really coming over.”
It took Xue Li a full minute to cover the two or three steps, attempting to scare the other party out while loudly encouraging herself. It would have been better if Ke Li and Zhou Zhou could hear her.
She slowly approached the corner of the bookshelf, not daring to look around it, afraid of what monster might be there.
No, she couldn’t be afraid!
Xue Li’s heart was pounding with anxiety as she raised the book high and swung it fiercely towards the corner of the bookshelf.
The library has a total of 9 floors. Apart from the first floor being a newspaper and magazine borrowing room and a self-study area, which does not meet the requirements, the other floors display books of different categories.
To find a book among them, without knowing what kind of book it is, is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
“Let’s go to the second floor first and take a look. If there’s nothing wrong there, we’ll split up and search. That way it’ll be faster. If some monster like the one we encountered appears again, we’ll stick together.”
Ke Li spoke as he walked towards the library’s left staircase entrance.
He pushed the door, only to find the entrance was locked.
He tried turning the handle a few times and looked around the area, but couldn’t find the key, so he couldn’t open the staircase entrance.
To go upstairs in the library, there was only the left safety staircase and the elevator right in front of the main entrance. Ke Li initially thought taking the stairs would be safer, as after the experience in the dormitory building, he had a feeling something might go wrong with the elevator.
But now it seemed there was only one option left.
He pressed the button to open the elevator door, and the three of them went inside together.
The elevator door slowly closed, and the narrow space had stainless steel panels on all four sides, dimly reflecting the figures of the three.
The elevator slowly ascended, and a slight feeling of weightlessness came over them. The three of them stared at the numbers above the elevator buttons, changing from 1 to 2.
The elevator stopped.
Ke Li’s expression eased a bit, it seemed there was no problem.
A few seconds later, the button for the 4th floor lit up, and the elevator continued upwards.
It was as if there were other people in the narrow, confined elevator pressing the buttons.
“What’s going on?”
Ke Li rushed to press the open door key, but the closed door showed no signs of opening, and it kept ascending.
When it reached the 4th floor, the elevator paused again, and when they thought the door would open, the number 1 lit up again, and before anyone could react, it plummeted downwards.
“Ahhhhhhh!”
The feeling of weightlessness brought terror, causing Ke Li and Xue Li to scream. The smooth walls of the elevator gave them nothing to hold onto, and in the shaking, Xue Li almost hit her head on the elevator wall, unable to find her footing.
In this critical moment, Zhou Zhou, who had been standing silently at the back, quickly reached out and supported her.
“Be careful.” Zhou Zhou held Xue Li, while Ke Li also grabbed onto Zhou Zhou’s arm in panic.
The two of them clung to Zhou Zhou like a lifeline, screaming.
The elevator lights flickered on and off, illuminating two terrified faces, and in the middle, a face that seemed too calm to fit in.
“Don’t be afraid, I’m here.”
In such a perilous moment, Zhou Zhou was like a human coat rack, with the two people screaming while hanging onto him, yet he still had the heart to reassure them.
At that moment, the elevator finally stopped.
The display screen above the buttons showed they were now on the first floor.
“Zhou Zhou, thank, thank you.”
The two, still shaken, let go of Zhou Zhou and hurried towards the elevator door, only to find that no matter which floor they pressed from 1 to 9, the buttons had no effect, and the door wouldn’t open.
“I knew it, they’re pulling these tricks again.”
“Are they trying to trap us to death in here?”
“Open the door!”
Zhou Zhou watched the two of them frantically studying the elevator door and buttons, then looked at the metal door in front of them.
On the stainless steel door, four figures were dimly reflected.
Zhou Zhou saw that behind his own reflection, there was another person.
A person who was completely white.
The white figure reflected unclearly on the metal door twisted and turned, even swaying from side to side with the movements of the two people banging on the door…
Xue Li and Ke Li were still trying to figure out how to open the out-of-control elevator, and even though the shadow on the metal door seemed a bit off, they didn’t think too much of it.
The elevator began ascending again, and their hearts rose with it.
When it reached the second floor, the elevator started descending again, then ascending once more.
It was like bungee jumping, and the two of them felt like their hearts were going to jump out of their chests.
“Zhou Zhou, you come and take a look too, see if there’s any other way. This broken elevator can’t be old and malfunctioning, can it?”
After fiddling with it for a while, the constant ascending and descending of the elevator, along with the resulting feeling of weightlessness, the fear and suffocation brought on by the confined space, all gradually amplified with the passage of time.
Unconsciously, she sought a sense of safety from the other person in the elevator.
Turning her head, Zhou Zhou was standing not far away, looking at her with a very calm expression. He returned her gaze with a faint smile, and she didn’t feel so panicked anymore.
Then she looked at her brother.
“You think we’re going to suffocate to death? Or what if the elevator suddenly drops and we hit the ground, won’t we turn into meat paste! Hel～p～!”
Ke Li was pressing himself against the door in an odd posture, trying to pry it open.
Xue Li: …Is it too late to get a new brother?
“Ding!”
At that moment, the elevator door surprisingly opened, and Ke Li, who was leaning against it, tumbled out.
“Quick, quick! Let’s get out of here, I’m never taking the elevator again.” Ke Li sat on the ground, still shaken.
Xue Li hurriedly pulled the slow-moving Zhou Zhou out of the elevator. Zhou Zhou looked back, but the elevator was empty.
The white figure was gone.
The elevator had finally stopped on the 8th floor – Ancient Literature.
After sitting on the ground for a while, they finally recovered.
“What did we come here to do again?” Ke Li asked as he stood up, his legs still trembling.
“To find a book,” Zhou Zhou replied in a timely manner.
“Oh right, I remember now, we need to find a book here.” It was only then that Ke Li had the mind to check their surroundings, his gaze met with nothing but bookshelves filled with rows upon rows of paper books.
“Don’t tell me we have to find the book here?” Looking at the endless bookshelves, his head started to hurt.
It was no surprise that this was an official game production. They had just reviewed history, and now the players were being made to read books and find books. Was this an attempt to firmly grasp education within the game?
“It shouldn’t be. We only have three days, there’s no way we can check book by book. There must be some clue we haven’t discovered,” said Xue Li, also getting up from the ground.
Zhou Zhou looked back at the elevator, his large eyes full of confusion. Didn’t it just give a hint?
“Huh? Could it be a book about romance, since the previous clue was related to that.”
“It couldn’t be that simple, right? And what kind of book is a romance book? It should at least have a name.”
“Aren’t you wondering about it?”
“Oh, and one more condition, ancient literature category, from thousands of years ago.”
“Then it’s even more unlikely we’d know,” Ke Li sighed like a poor student.
Seeing the two siblings still racking their brains over what book they had to find, Zhou Zhou blinked his eyes. “I know.”
“Zhou Zhou, you know?”
“Know what?”
The two immediately gathered around him. Zhou Zhou pointed at the elevator, “It gave a hint just now.”
The two stared blankly at the closed elevator doors.
After a while, Ke Li suddenly had an epiphany, “I know too!”
Xue Li immediately asked, “What?”
Ke Li smiled slightly, a hint of smugness showing in his smile, and stated confidently, “It’s about falling in love in the elevator.”
Xue Li had a black line on her head, “…Is that a book?”
Zhou Zhou looked confused, “Huh?”
“Zhou Zhou, just tell us directly what the hint was,” said Xue Li, no longer wanting to talk to her brother, as it was too detrimental to her intelligence.
Zhou Zhou nodded, then walked over to the neatly arranged machines on the side of the library, which could search for electronic versions of all the physical books in the library.
Zhou Zhou tapped on one of them, and the screen lit up.
The two people behind him craned their necks to look at the screen, watching as Zhou Zhou entered four letters into the search box, and then several book titles appeared.
“It’s among these.” Zhou Zhou pointed to the book titles on the screen, indicating that the book they were looking for should be one of them.
The two pondered for a while but still didn’t understand what those four letters meant.
“The numbers on the elevator buttons lit up by themselves just now,” Zhou Zhou explained.
They waited for a moment, but he didn’t continue, so they asked, “And?”
“The numbers correspond to different letters.”
Xue Li recalled, “But the numbers that lit up on the buttons weren’t just four, were they?” Although she hadn’t paid attention to which specific numbers lit up, there were definitely more than four.
“The elevator paused for different lengths of time,” Zhou Zhou finally added another sentence.
The floors that had lit up were 2, 4, 1, 2, 1, 9, 8.
Based on the varying pause lengths, they formed the four numbers 24, 12, 19, 8, which corresponded to the letters x, l, s, h according to the alphabetical order.
This time they understood. The different pause lengths meant that some numbers weren’t single digits but double digits. So that’s how it was.
What a ghost! Who would have the heart to observe such things while trapped in an elevator? Was this really a beginner’s game? It was too difficult! Not only did it scare them for their lives, but it also tested their observation skills and intelligence?
If it weren’t for Zhou Zhou, they could have stayed in that elevator forever and never figured it out.
Ke Li looked relieved and patted Zhou Zhou’s shoulder, “It’s a good thing you’re here.”
Xue Li also looked touched, “It’s great to have you.”
Zhou Zhou politely replied, “You two are great too.”
After a bit of vague praise, the three of them quickly searched for the books.
The entire floor of the library was vast, and they initially searched together but found it to be too inefficient, so they had to split up, though they didn’t go too far from each other.
They looked for the general category using the labels on the bookshelves, then checked each book’s title one by one. Although slow, knowing the book titles made the search much easier.
Muttering the book titles while scanning the shelves, Xue Li felt someone approaching from behind. Thinking it was Zhou Zhou searching in the neighboring area, she was about to ask if he had found anything when she turned around, but there was no one there.
An illusion? But she had clearly felt someone behind her, a very strong sensation of someone being extremely close, almost right behind her.
Xue Li turned back suspiciously, her gaze towards the bookshelves. The next moment, she whipped her head back, but there was still no one behind her.
It was indeed an illusion.
Xue Li then resumed her search for the book.
“Thud.”
The sound of a book falling came from behind her.
Xue Li turned around at the sound to see an open book lying on the ground.
What happened? Wasn’t there no one there?
How did the book fall?
“Ke Li? Zhou Zhou?”
It was only then that Xue Li noticed the unusual silence around her. On this floor, there were only the three of them, and since they weren’t far apart, she should have been able to hear the others flipping through books or muttering. But now, there was no sound at all.
“Are you there? Say something.”
Xue Li was now standing in the middle of the bookshelves, with tall shelves on both sides. Not daring to move randomly, she could only call out loudly to the other two.
“Whoo~” A sound like the wind blowing came from the other side.
Xue Li was a bit startled and immediately turned her head, catching a glimpse of something white, like a piece of clothing, flashing past from the side of the bookshelves.
“Who’s there?”
No one responded.
“Who is it?”
After waiting for a while, there was still no sound or movement.
Xue Li took a deep breath. Now that she was alone, she could only rely on herself.
She pulled out one of the thickest books from the shelf, its weight comparable to a brick.
Gripping the book tightly with both hands, Xue Li took one step at a time towards the direction where she had seen the suspicious object.
“Come out, or I’m coming over.”
“I’m really coming over.”
It took Xue Li a full minute to cover the two or three steps, attempting to scare the other party out while loudly encouraging herself. It would have been better if Ke Li and Zhou Zhou could hear her.
She slowly approached the corner of the bookshelf, not daring to look around it, afraid of what monster might be there.
No, she couldn’t be afraid!
Xue Li’s heart was pounding with anxiety as she raised the book high and swung it fiercely towards the corner of the bookshelf.
