Chapter 18 Sophia’s Castle (16)

Chapter 18 Sophia's Castle (Part Sixteen)

Shi Wu gently knocked on the door panel; the sound was dull and solid, not hollow.

"This is a mechanism door. The activation mechanism is likely 'character decoding' paired with 'trajectory assembly'."

"There are nine slots here, corresponding to nine characters." Bao Yan pressed his knuckle against the edge of the blueprint. "The characters are for the 'Confinement Room' on the map. We just need to rearrange them according to the original meaning of the individual characters."

"You recognize these symbols?" Qi Lan looked at him suspiciously.

"No, but he does." Bao Yan tilted his head, gesturing towards Shi Wu who was sitting on the floor.

"Tsk, good at passing the buck." Shi Wu muttered a complaint, but his fingertips were already moving back and forth over the blueprint for comparison.

Then, he noticed something was off. "There are only eight characters on the map," he murmured, his tone calm but carrying a barely perceptible hint of hesitation.

Zhou Xun frowned and leaned over to look. "But there are clearly nine slots here."

"Right." Shi Wu nodded, his finger tracing each of the arranged indentations in turn.

"These letters are Old Vite, an ancient European mystical script. Many ritualistic buildings use it to construct array logic."

"Like this one," he pointed to the third symbol. "It represents 'Entrance'. This one is 'Guardian', and this one is 'Threshold'."

"Judging from the semantics, the sequence should be: Threshold, Guardian, Entrance, Sacrifice, Judgment, Retrospection, Rule, Order, Endpoint."

As he recited them, he had An Ze search the nearby cabinet for the scattered small iron plates and puzzle-like fragments. Sure enough, each piece had a character on the back.

Then he stopped, his brow furrowing tightly.

"But this one—" he pointed to the rightmost, final slot, "isn't on the map."

That slot was an irregular, roughly square shape. Unlike the others with clear strokes and structure, it looked more like the worn-out imprint of a seal.

"This one probably wasn't part of the original design." Shi Wu's voice dropped half a tone lower than before. "And in Old Vite, there are many characters with square patterns."

Shi Wu looked at the remaining four square-shaped characters. Their meanings were: "Death", "Re-entry", "Choice", "New Life". Any of these seemed to fit the slot on the door.

But which one goes after "Endpoint"?

His first thought was "Death".

"If it's after 'Endpoint'..." Shi Wu said quietly, "then the most logical one should be 'Death'."

"The symbolism fits too," Zhou Xun nodded. "The final segment of a closed loop, the endpoint is the termination."

"Then that's it."

Shi Wu picked up the square character symbolizing "Death" and inserted it into the final slot, completing the sequence assembly.

Everyone fell silent, as if the very air had frozen for a second.

"Seems... nothing happened?"

Just as Qi Lan was about to sigh in relief, a "click" sound was heard.

It wasn't the sound of the door opening, but rather the sound of metal shifting.

"Watch above!!!"

Bao Yan practically lunged to the side in a split second, pulling Shi Wu with him.

The next moment, a dozen thin cracks suddenly split open in the ceiling, like dark abysses yawning open. Black-painted sharp arrows, whistling through the air, poured down from hidden grooves like a torrential rainstorm!

"Holy shit!!!"

The arrow rain was dense and precise, aimed directly at the people in front of the door. An Ze was yanked by Qi Lan and pressed into a corner. Zhou Xun grabbed Lili Su and rolled on the spot. Ino picked up a discarded chair, shielding Lysa behind him.

Shi Wu was pinned to the ground by Bao Yan. Arrowheads narrowly grazed past his temple, taking a few strands of hair and drawing blood.

The arrow rain ceased. The arrows stood neatly embedded in the stone floor, like rows of indifferent tombstones.

Shi Wu's breathing was slightly ragged. Propping himself up on his elbows to sit up, he looked up to see Bao Yan still half-pinning him, arms braced on the ground like a human shield.

He was stunned for a moment, his voice hoarse. "I didn't expect that to trigger..."

Bao Yan didn't speak, just stared at him for two seconds before slowly getting up, his tone as indifferent as ever. "Hmm, be more careful next time."

"Tsk, it's not that bad." Qi Lan tore off his torn coat sleeve, checking a shallow scratch on his arm. "Anyway, I think in a place like this, not trying two or three times would be an insult to the designer's perversion."

"I thought too simply." Shi Wu sighed softly. "Sorry, everyone."

Zhou Xun got up from the floor and looked around. "As long as everyone's okay."

An Ze climbed up from the ground, covered in dust. "Actually, Brother Bo is already amazing! What if none of us knew what these words meant?"

"Then we just keep trying." Zhou Xun patted Shi Wu's shoulder. "Your earlier analysis was spot on. Getting one or two wrong is normal. No dungeon is cleared in one go, let alone reality."

"And next time, this door probably won't have poison gas, electric shocks, floor spikes..." Qi Lan's words trailed off as a circle of pale white light suddenly lit up around the door frame.

...He immediately fell silent, turning away to pretend to organize supplies.

Shi Wu stood still for a moment, silent. He looked at the circle of symbols, then glanced down at the "Death" character iron piece that had fallen to the floor. His fingertips gently rubbed its pattern, as if re-evaluating.

"After the endpoint is not death," he said quietly. "Then what is it?"

The iron door remained silently standing. Nine characters, eight clear, one still vacant.

"Which one do we try next?"

The air seemed to tighten again.

And this time—

Shi Wu looked at the iron piece engraved with "Choice", his fingertip lightly tapping it.

"I think it's this one," he said softly.

"Reason?" Bao Yan asked.

"'Death' is termination. 'New Life' is too definitive. 'Re-entry' easily creates a loop. But 'Choice'... it feels more like an attitude, regarding what comes after the endpoint."

"This is a 'sealed door', not a 'sealed-shut door'. If it wanted a sacrifice, it would have killed us already; it didn't." Shi Wu said quietly. "It's waiting for us to make a choice."

"You're certain." Bao Yan looked at him.

Shi Wu nodded. "I'm certain."

The "Choice" character was gently inserted into the final square slot.

All characters instantly glowed with a faint blue light, like ripples on a lake, spreading outward in concentric circles.

*Click.*

A crisp mechanical sound rang out.

The door opened.

The iron door recessed slightly inward, a wave of damp, cold air rushing out as the panel slowly slid aside, revealing a dark, deep staircase.

"Done." Shi Wu let out a breath, stood up, and looked back at the others. "Who's first?"

Everyone exchanged glances, no one speaking first.

Bao Yan stepped forward, taking the lead toward the passageway.

"Me."

Shi Wu paused for a moment, then a slight smile curved his lips. "Then I'll be second."

He reached out and patted Bao Yan on the back, his tone light:

"Don't worry, I'm right behind you. If anything really happens, I can at least recover your body in time."

"Won't be able to." Bao Yan shot Shi Wu a sidelong glance. "If I die, you won't survive either."

"You'd be forced to protect me."

"Just watch me try."

The two walked into the darkness one after the other, their figures quickly swallowed up, leaving only the faint, flickering light from the overhead lamps dancing by the doorway.

The deep staircase stretched downward, like a bloody maw welcoming them. The lights ahead were sparse, most flickering unsteadily. Damp moisture condensed into a thin mist that clung to their skin, chilling to the bone.

"Why does this place smell like a hospital?" Qi Lan, following behind Shi Wu, sniffed the air. "That old, musty disinfectant smell."

"A hospital? A hospital in a castle basement?" Zhou Xun frowned. "This dungeon doesn't make sense. Everyone, stay alert."

Shi Wu, walking ahead, glanced back. "Why do you say that, Uncle Zhou?"

Zhou Xun spoke cautiously. "Hard to explain. It just feels completely different from any other dungeon I've been in."

"And so far, there have been pitifully few clues."

The atmosphere fell silent. No one spoke further, each person simply staying vigilant of their surroundings as they carefully moved forward.

Their feet trod on old brick floors, and where water had pooled, a dull *gloop* sound echoed. Bao Yan led the way, with Shi Wu close behind. The group slowly made their way through a long corridor, finally pushing open a mottled metal door at the end.

"Holy crap." Qi Lan jumped in fright.

It was an entire room—a small medical room seemingly forgotten by time.

A stark white operating table, a shattered white porcelain sink, discarded rubber gloves and broken syringes on the floor. The instrument table held a few rusted craniotomy forceps, bone saws, and a whole row of oddly shaped probes. The air held no scent of blood; instead, it was filled with the cold, sharp smell of disinfectant mixed with the decay of rubber, as if someone had repeatedly scrubbed a corpse.

The next second, a system prompt abruptly sounded:

[Important Location: "Sophia's"...]

After a brief burst of static, the cold voice crackled back to life: [Important Location: "#?$@"'s Day of Suffering, has been found]

Whose day of suffering?

Qi Lan was still in a joking mood. "Who's '#?$@'? Another new character?"

"Stop joking." Zhou Xun's face was pale, his voice unusually tense. "That system prompt just now was tampered with."

"Tampered with?" Shi Wu narrowed his eyes.

"Normal prompts don't stutter, and they certainly don't contain garbled code," Zhou Xun walked over to the operating table. "I encountered this once before in a three-star dungeon. When a dungeon character experiences severe logical errors, or even deviates from the dungeon's setting, the system gets affected."

"You mean," Shi Wu said quietly, "this dungeon has a bug?"

"Or rather," Bao Yan's tone was icy cold, "a character within the dungeon is trying to hide something."

The air seemed to freeze, so quiet you could hear a pin drop.

Suddenly, a faint, fragmented sound came from the deepest part of the room.

Like something slowly scraping across the floor—the sound of an iron bed leg dragging against the ground, pulling rusty metal, emitting an uneven *creak... squeak... creak...*

Shi Wu halted. Everyone immediately turned to look.

"What's that?" Qi Lan's voice trembled. "A bed... there's another hospital bed behind it?"

That hospital bed was slowly, automatically sliding out from behind a dark partition curtain.

No one was pushing it. It seemed pulled by some invisible force, moving slowly, stubbornly, its wheels inching forward, bit by bit sliding into their field of view.

Author's Note: