The room is dark and dingy, and only the computer glows with a fluorescent light. Tang Mo leans down to stare at the screen, subconsciously pressing his hand on the mouse to drag it, but when he presses the 'OK' button, the mouse disappears from the screen, leaving only Fu Wenduo's face to occupy the entire screen.
Tang Mo said, "Stand back a bit."
Fu Wenduo takes three steps back, revealing his surroundings behind him.
Tang Mo took a closer look at his surroundings. There was a light on over by Fu Wenduo, and he was in a small, enclosed room. The room is cluttered with cardboard boxes and foam, and appears to be a small warehouse of some kind. He is looking up at the moment.
Tang Mo thought, "What are you looking at now?"
Without further questioning, Fu Wenduo immediately replied, "A small monitor, about the size of the palm of your hand, hanging from the corner of the ceiling of the room." Without Tang Mo asking further questions, he said straight away, "After I parted from you, I was taken to a very small room by the iron shoemaker. I was in the same factory as you, in the grocery room at the back of the factory. After putting me in, the iron cobbler left. I just tried, but I can't open the doors and windows. The black tower tells me that the doors and windows are not openable. Also, Tang Mo ..."
The man's voice stopped.
Tang Mo lowers his head and looks at Fu Wenduo's calm and composed face in the picture.
Fu Wenduo said, "Can you use your powers, now."
Tang Mo's heart is in awe.
Tang Mo has many powers, but the most suitable one for use in front of Fu Wenduo and Xing Feng is the "I am one Spirit Field short of the main character" power. This is a one-time ability, which Tang Mo used two months ago to seal a giant match into his body. Before entering the office, Tang Mo heard Xing Feng's voice and used the match as a weapon to prevent accidents.
Just now, out of the blue, Tang Mo placed a large match directly next to his computer.
At this moment he slowly turns his head towards the giant match he has just placed on the table. Tang Mo's gaze lingers on the empty table for a long time, before he looks down at his left wrist. A bright red match tattoo comes into view. He presses on the tattoo and uses his powers.
Half a minute later, Tang Mo looked up at Fu Wenduo: "I can't use my psychic powers anymore. When I entered this room, my supernatural powers were in use, but just now, in a moment when I wasn't paying attention, I couldn't use them anymore."
Fu Wenduo: "I did the same. After entering this room, I wanted to try to break open the door, window or wall, but I couldn't use my powers. At the same time, Tang Mo, the props are also unusable."
Tang Mo took Mario's ruby out of his pocket and snapped it straight to the top of his head.
"Click-"
After a crisp crash, the ruby landed on Tang Mo's head, rolled down his hair and landed in Tang Mo's palm, which was already ready to catch it.
"I'm not allowed to use props anymore either."
The two men looked at each other on the screen and did not speak for a long time.
The next moment, Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo asked in unison, "What is your mission?"
The two men froze together.
Tang Mo had just heard The black tower's side quest alert sound in the room, but he had not heard it from Fu Wenduo. The black tower prompt could not be transmitted by video. The two of them were suddenly forced to talk on video and had to determine each other's purpose first. If it was the same mission, then it was natural to work together. If the mission is different, or even opposite, then the next game will be against both Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo, and their greatest enemies will be each other.
Tang Mo pondered for a moment and said, "The black tower wanted me to find one of the iron cobbler's tools."
Fu Wenduo smiled, "It's a coincidence, so am I."
"That stuff usually appears in a liquid form, but there are pastes as well."
Fu Wenduo: "A lot of times they are packaged in tin tubes, and also in bottles."
Looking at his defensive counterpart on the other side of the screen, Tang Mo suddenly found it interesting that the sense of testing each other was more interesting than the urgency of the game. He said, "Let's write that down together, Fu Wenduo. I have an office here, and I have pen and paper. You have a lot of paper boxes behind you, and you write on them. We'll light up the answers at the same time."
"Good."
Tang Mo took paper and a pen out of his desk drawer and Fu Wenduo moved a cardboard box and tore one side of it off. Tang Mo gently writes two words on the paper, and Fu Wenduo also uses a sharp knife to carve into the cardboard box. Ten seconds later, both men stop moving at the same time and
look at the screen.
Tang Mo: "I'll count backwards and reveal the words together."
Fu Wenduo: "Good."
Tang Mo's fingers squeeze the edge of the paper as he counts backwards, "Three, two, one ..."
"Brush-"
At both ends of the screen, Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo simultaneously present the two words they have just written to each other -
"Shoe Polish"
Tang Mo was secretly relieved, but outwardly calm: "It looks like we're going to work together this time."
Fu Wenduo put the cardboard box down, "How are things going on your end."
Tang Mo starts to introduce his side of the building: "The place I entered is much bigger than you and is the main working area of the factory. As soon as you enter is the food processing area. A lot of workers should have been there before the Earth went online to get into the food packaging checks, and there were quite a few bags of food packaging stacked up there, along with some scattered, uncovered food. I brought over a box of bread to use as food in case the game went on too long." He paused and continued, "Where I am now is in the office behind the food processing area ..."
After Tang Mo had given a general account of what he had seen, Fu Wenduo said, "Good. Our mission is the same this time, but the iron shoemaker
hasn't appeared yet, and the shoe polish can't be found exactly where it is. But you said earlier that you had a player there who had already been involved in the game?"
Fu Wenduo was alone in his room, while Xing Feng was in Tang Mo's office.
He nodded and looked to Xing Feng: "Mr Xing, you've been in this game for a while, can you tell me the exact rules of the game?"
Xing Feng cowered in the corner, looking at Tang Mo in horror. When he realised that Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo were having a good conversation (or so it seemed to him), he looked at Tang Mo in a very frightened way. When he heard Tang Mo ask him a question, he swallowed nervously: "... is to find, find shoe polish. The iron cobbler said the shoe polish is on our side or theirs, it must be in these two places. Only if we find the shoe polish will the Iron Shoemaker leave us alone, and if he can't, he'll ... just ... ah! You'll soon know. You'll know soon enough ..."
Tang Mo's eyes narrowed slightly as he watched Xing Feng's fearful expression. His suspicious gaze hovered over Xing Feng's body, but he didn't speak to him again, instead pretending he hadn't noticed anything and continued to ask Fu Wenduo: "How exactly is it there for you, is it dangerous?"
At these words, Fu Wenduo's eyes glanced slightly down the screen, then he looked up again, "Nothing special, just three bodies."
Tang Mo frowned: "You have three corpses there, and I technically had three players here at one time. It's just that two of the players are dead. So the number of people on both sides of this game is the same." At this point, Tang Mo noticed Fu Wenduo glancing down at the bottom of the video again and he said alertly, "What's wrong?"
Fu Wenduo said lightly, "Those three bodies had a unique look."
Tang Mo: "How so?"
Fu Wenduo was silent for a moment and looked up, "Drained of blood and turned into a dry corpse." He painted the scene before him in the simplest of terms. Tang Mo didn't think too much of it and nodded gently. Little did he know that Fu Wenduo was standing in the corner of the grocery room, looking up at the small screen.
Because the screen was so small, he had to stand very close to Tang Mo to see what was on his side.
A cold, piercing white light illuminates the room as Fu Wenduo stands unchanged against the wall, a horrified, dried corpse facing his face just ten centimetres in front of his eyes. A dry, blackened face, with huge eyes bulging out of fear and terror as it dies. Until these two eyeballs bulged out many people could not imagine that human eyeballs were so round and so large. The black eyeballs occupy only a small part of the middle, more of the ghastly white whites of the eyes.
Three dried bodies have been nailed to the wall in the crucifixion position.
It was so close that Fu Wenduo could smell the stench of decay on the three bodies, but he continued to say to Tang Mo without expression, "There are no more clues, so we'll just have to wait for the iron cobbler to show up."
Tang Mo nods, "OK, so ..."
Bang!
Tang Mo's heart skipped a beat as an ear-splitting sound suddenly exploded in his ears. He saw the computer in front of him suddenly go dark and Fu Wenduo's silhouette disappeared.
Meanwhile, Xing Feng by the wall clutched his head in death and dived straight into the corner in fear. In a hoarse, fearful voice, he cried, "It's coming, it's coming, close the door quickly ... I can't kill it, I can't possibly kill it ..."
Tang Mo took a deep breath and turned his head to Xing Feng, who said quickly, "Who is he? The iron cobbler?"
Xing Feng shook his head straight, his voice breaking, "No ... it was it, not the iron cobbler. The wolf! It's coming." Suddenly, as if remembering something, he excitedly lifted his head to look at Tang Mo: "You're an official player, you said you can't use your powers, you must be an official player. You must be very good. Kill it, you have to kill it! If we don't kill it, we'll all die tonight, for sure!"
At that moment, a clear child's voice rang out in Tang Mo's ears -
"Ding Dong! Attention all players, attention all players, in three minutes the Iron Shoemaker's most hated shoe polish wolf will soon appear. Kill the Shoe Polish Wolf and receive one drop of shoe polish. Please participate in large numbers and kill the Shoe Polish Wolf."
"The ninth of the ten unsolved mysteries of the kingdom of the Underlanders, why is the hard-working and lovable iron shoemaker always poor? The iron cobbler couldn't figure it out. Until one day he discovered those dreadful shoe-polish wolves who always love to steal shoe polish! It's everyone's responsibility to kill the cobblers!"
The black tower beeps to a halt. In the darkness of the factory, Tang Mo's fingers tighten.
Suddenly, he heard a dull sound coming from outside the door. It was as if something was banging open the door to the office next door. It banged as hard as it could, slamming that door with a loud thud. It banged persistently over and over again, about ten times, only to hear a violent shattering sound as something crashed hard against the door and smashed against the wall of the corridor.
A ferocious hissing sounded outside the door, as if the roar of a wild beast.
Tang Mo's face slowly sinks as he walks unchanged to the corner of the office and picks up a celadon vase that sits on a shelf.
In the grocery room on the other side of the factory.
Fu Wenduo's face changed as he saw the screen suddenly go dark, and he scanned the rest of the room warily.
A second later, the screen hanging in the corner of the room suddenly lit up again. Fu Wenduo looked up warily. On the palm-sized screen was the distinctive snowflake of an old-fashioned television set. The snowflake pattern flickered for a full three minutes before a cheerful, familiar music sounded, and in time with it, the snowflakes on the screen turned into a colourful halo of light.
In this brilliant halo of penny special effects, a tiny black dot appears from the middle of the screen. This black dot grows larger and larger and becomes clearer and clearer. Finally on the screen, a small black miniature tower is framed in the middle, with a halo of special effects flashing around it.
The music fades to a halt and a little cartoon figure jumps out from one end of the screen. She is dressed in a blue dress and wearing a crystal crown. She hides behind The black tower and looks around quietly. Seeming to realise that there were no bad guys around, she gave a clear laugh and popped out from behind The black tower, microphone in hand, and said loudly -
"What are the top ten unsolved mysteries of the Kingdom of the Underlanders?"
"Who really abducted Granny Wolf's daughter?"
"Do you have in mind Pinocchio or the Iron Shoemaker as the king of dead songs on the ground floor of The black tower?"
"Bam, bam, bam, it's all here on Happy Quiz! Hello everyone, I'm your favourite Kingdom TV Gold host, Wang Xiaotian. Today, it's time for another fun quiz. What is your dream? What do you want to get out of it? Come on down to Happy Quiz and you can have it all. Next up -"
"Please listen to the question!"
--------------------
The author has something to say.
Tangtang: Let me fight, Mr. Fu answer the questions. Are you despising my intelligence or Mr. Fu's force value?
Mr. Fu: ... I just want to know why my daughter-in-law is allowed to be alone with a strange man in the same room!