A moment of silence!
It was as if time had frozen for a second!
"I don't give a damn what you're dealing with, you now have only 30 seconds to sort out your problem, or I'll blow your head into shit!!!!!" Mr. Zou roared, his voice seething with a spiritually contaminated anger.
"Then I'll have to use my hands... and afterward wipe it on the wall." Chen Xiao muttered under his breath like a child who had done something wrong.
"Move!!!" Mr. Zou bellowed, truly enraged, yet at the same time, the sound in the headset had become even fuzzier than before!
Chen Xiao glanced at the window, the night sky gradually thickening.
"Does the signal cut off after dark?" he wondered, as small "click click" sounds came through the earpiece.
After that... the puffed-up breathing from Mr. Zou disappeared.
"Damn it! Although I don't know why, it seems to be true!" Chen Xiao was slightly startled, and then... he started yelling, "It's out, it's out! Ah, it's warm in my pants!!!"
There was no sound in the headset.
"Huh, seems the signal really is gone!" he thought, then looked at the camera on his collar, noticing the power light had gone out.
At that moment, outside the building, Mr. Zou angrily pulled off his microphone, exclaiming, "What the hell! It should have lasted at least another half-hour!"
"I... I'm sorry, but the signal has indeed been cut off. Something inside is acting up!" a staff member nervously reported.
Mr. Zou faced the foreboding orphanage and murmured, "To isolate your nest so early, could it be... are you scared?"
Inside the building.
Bai Xiong spoke up, "Now the signal inside this building is completely cut off from the outside." As if to prove his point, he took off the camera on his collar, gently squeezed it, and it crumbled into a small pile of scrap metal.
"But don't remove the earpieces, in case the explosive device is pressure sensitive!" he continued.
Chen Xiao smiled happily and asked, "What they said?"
Bai Xiong nodded.
"I didn't expect they would choose me..." he said calmly, "You probably went overboard, and they noticed!"
Chen Xiao sheepishly scratched his head, "Ah, seems like that's really the case!"
The two exchanged a few strange phrases, while Jia Renliang just stared at the camera in his hand, deep in thought, clearly understanding the meaning behind their conversation. Liu Yi, however, looked completely befuddled and started to blurt out, "What the hell are you two talking about?"
Chen Xiao chuckled, eyeing him. Keep pretending, just keep pretending!
...
So, what did those few sentences mean?
Chen Xiao knew the moment he saw that staff member bringing the earpiece that these people couldn't possibly be thinking of letting the four of them enter the orphanage just wearing earpieces!
Just as there are always those who snitch under the teacher's command, there was definitely one among the four who was chosen as the "good student" to monitor the other three.
The third reason for dragging it out: aiming to become the "good student"!
What benefits would this "good student" receive? Perhaps a guarantee of release, or maybe money or other temptations, but in any case, these were benefits that could only be realized after getting out of the orphanage.
Haha, just kidding. Those people never planned on letting the four out.
So why was Chen Xiao so eager to become the "good student", even to the point of offending the small-minded Jia Renliang just to quickly show off his utility?
Because of information!
The crafty old fox Mr. Zou would definitely engage in some private one-sided conversation with the "good student" through the earpiece. Thus, there was a high chance of getting some useful things that others didn't know about.
Even though it's unclear why they chose Bai Xiong, (nonsense, who would choose you, a hee-hee snickering self-mutilating lunatic!)
Anyway, "the signal will be blocked after nightfall" is very useful information!
So, now that the four of us are free from the threat of the remote-controlled bombs, what's next?
Go out and get captured by those people, wait for another wave tomorrow at dawn? Smash a window and slip away?
No one spoke, it seemed that everyone was pondering this question...
Chen Xiao crouched and walked over to Liu Yi with his hands in his pockets, "Hey! Buddy, the headsets lost signal and they can't hear anything, there's no need to keep pretending, right?"
Liu Yi looked at Chen Xiao blankly, "What do you mean?"
Chen Xiao didn't say much else, just stretched out a hand like a kid asking for money from a parent, "Hand it over!"
Liu Yi still looked bewildered, "What do you want?"
Chen Xiao didn't respond this time, just gave him a dead fish stare and continued to hold out his hand in a "gimme money" gesture.
"Ah!" Liu Yi sighed helplessly and then took out a black military headset from his pocket, which had a long projection for linking up with riot helmets.
Jia Renliang and Bai Xiong frowned when they saw the object. Not because Liu Yi was hiding things, but because they both knew what that military headset signified.
What about Chen Xiao? At this moment, he still maintained the "gimme money" stance without moving.
"I gave it to you already, what more do you want?" Liu Yi spoke, showing some irritation.
...
"Fine!" He saw the dead fish stare from Chen Xiao, realizing that hiding was futile, so he pulled out a small slipper from inside his jacket!
The other two frowned again, partly because the presence of the slipper in the classroom was strange, but more because they wondered how this kid managed to hide so much stuff!
But!
Chen Xiao's posture still didn't move!
Even Jia Renliang, who had been sneakily watching Chen Xiao, couldn't help but interject, "Hey, there's more?"
Liu Yi's face was one of resignation as he murmured something inaudible, "...you...call it greed!"
Then, to everyone's amazement, he pulled out a diary from who knows where!
"Damn, are you a junk collector or what? Where did you find all these things? And where have you been hiding them, inside your body?" everyone thought to themselves.
Luckily, after Liu Yi took out the diary, Chen Xiao gathered all the items and placed them on the lectern. The rest of them breathed a sigh of relief, as if afraid Liu Yi would pull out something else.
Firstly, a headset, which is obviously standard issue for the guards who had been there. But what had happened to the microphone that it was flattened?
"Did it directly penetrate a riot helmet?" Chen Xiao thought, "But there were no signs of a fight along the way! Strange!"
Next... a slipper! Well, it's simply a pair of slippers appearing in the classroom... that's easy to explain.
The kids' dorms were on the first floor... no, the third floor! Because there wasn't even a small railing on the first-floor windows. Something must have happened that made the kid run down in a panic without changing his shoes.
Lastly! A diary!
Chen Xiao gave Liu Yi the dead fish eye again and asked, "Hey, where did you find this?"
"The first room, inside the desk." he replied, with a lifeless expression, but still came forward.
Bai Xiong and Jia Renliang leaned in as well, after all, it was a diary. If it were in a game, it would definitely be a key item.
Chen Xiao flipped the diary open directly. There wasn't much dust between the pages.
...