Chapter 31

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Present\nOctober 1. When Zhou Luoyang woke up, he did not relive the same day another time.\n

He glanced next to him at Du Jing, who was still sound asleep, then picked up the Eye of Forseti from the bedside table and gazed thoughtfully at it.\n

If he turned the date ring counterclockwise right now, then at noon, they would return to noon of the previous day.\n

How very mystical. What was this watch hiding? Could it be a relic left behind by an ancient deity, or perhaps technology left on Earth by an alien civilization? These two speculations were enough to subvert all the materialist education and experiences accumulated throughout an ordinary person’s lifetime, enough to thoroughly shatter and reshape their worldview.\n

The world isn’t entirely what it looks like to me. Zhou Luoyang looked back up, staring thoughtfully into space in the light of the morning sun.\n

But research in quantum mechanics, too, had led to a complete subversion of the physics that precisely defined the material world. When compared to a scientific law such as “a photon can pass through two interference slits at the same time,” the reversal of time became less difficult to take in.\n

“You want to return to the previous day again?” Du Jing asked.\n

“No,” Zhou Luoyang answered. “I’ve had enough already. Please don’t mess around with it anymore.”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nDu Jing drove that day, taking the brothers out to enjoy the spring. The sun was out, and Zhou Luoyang was in a great mood. The move and the reopening of the store seemed to herald the start of a new life.\n

As they bathed in the sun on the lawn of the Summer Palace, Leyao gazed at the glinting watch on Du Jing’s wrist.\n

“I’ve seen this watch before,” he said. “Grandpa was wearing it the first time I met him.”\n

Du Jing was opening Leyao’s drink bottle for him, and he nodded silently.\n

“Don’t you think he’s a bit like Grandpa?” Zhou Luoyang suddenly asked.\n

Du Jing: “……”\n

Zhou Luoyang didn’t mean that Du Jing was like an old man, of course. In fact, his grandfather had been a tall, handsome, pale man in his youth, an unapproachable young master who’d amassed the wealth and might of multiple generations of businessmen in his family. As a young man, he was arrogant and looked down his nose at everyone else. Later, his family arranged for him to marry the young mistress of a textile factory—their grandmother.\n

Their grandfather only mellowed out later in life. Their father would often tell Leyao that Grandpa had not been stingy with physical discipline when he was a child. But it was the case that people were kinder to their grandchildren than their children, and Zhou Luoyang’s grandfather had doted on him and Leyao. \n

The few times Leyao had met his grandpa, his grandpa had opened a bottle for him, too. Back then, he was still hale and hearty. With the Eye of Forseti on his wrist and dressed in a suit, he came to visit his youngest grandson.\n

When he saw six-year-old Leyao grappling with the bottle cap, he sat him on his knee, twisted the cap off for him, and placed a straw in the bottle. With one hand, he held Leyao, and with the other, he held the bottle to Leyao’s mouth.\n

That scene left a very deep impression on Leyao.\n

Du Jing sometimes had this imperious, reserved air about him. He cared only about the people right beside him. Apart from them, nothing mattered—not even if the sky collapsed or the earth split open or a volcano erupted. He was disinclined to concern himself with others, and he did not care what others thought of him. He was disinclined, even, to engage with the rest of the world. In this respect, he and their grandfather were very alike. They invested their time in whomever they got along with and didn’t worry about those they did not.\n

Du Jing took off the watch and handed it to Leyao before getting up and walking away.\n

“Did Grandpa wear it too?” Zhou Luoyang asked curiously.\n

“Mhm,” Leyao confirmed. “Were you often with Grandpa?”\n

“He raised me from when I was eight to fourteen, but I practically never saw him wearing this watch.”\n

“I really liked him. It’s a shame I only saw him twice.”\n

Zhou Luoyang listened quietly. One of the times they saw each other was the aforementioned meeting. The other was after the accident, when his grandfather had rushed to attend the funeral. After that, his grandfather’s health had declined rapidly. The elderly man couldn’t handle the shock of his son passing before himself, and only half a year later, he too left the mortal world. \n

Leyao stared at the watch and spoke up again. “Mom didn’t like him, and he didn’t like Mom, either, so we rarely saw each other.”\n

The marriage between Zhou Luoyang’s parents had been arranged by his grandfather. His father’s opposition to it and the fact that he filed a divorce so that he could be with Leyao’s mother instead was naturally a fierce act of disobedience, and it became a major cause of discord between father and son. \n

“He loved you a lot,” Zhou Luoyang said.\n

“I could tell, even though he never said. Was it because I look like Grandma?”\n

Zhou Luoyang thought for a moment. “Not…completely? I don’t remember Grandma very well, but Grandpa said you were a little like our great uncle…Grandma’s youngest brother, whom Grandpa also raised.”\n

Blood was indeed a very mystical concept. Many pasts long forgotten in the passage of time were miraculously connected together again, generations later.\n

“Don’t turn the date ring,” Zhou Luoyang warned. “The date ring on this watch has a little issue, so I’ve reinforced it.”\n

He’d added a metal washer onto Du Jing’s watch in order to jam the date ring in place. The inner and outer rings had to be completely aligned in order for the washer to loosen. This was to prevent it from turning by accident. Zhou Luoyang planned on reinforcing it again in the near future so that it could only be turned with a pin. That way it would be safer.\n

“I won’t touch it,” Leyao assured him. “I’m just looking.”\n

Zhou Luoyang spotted Du Jing talking to a vendor, and he got up to join him.\n

“What are you buying?” Zhou Luoyang asked. “I have money.” \n

Du Jing hadn’t carried any cash on him. “A kite for Leyao.”\n

Zhou Luoyang grinned. “You’re even more attentive to Leyao than I am.”\n

“That’s because he’s your brother,” Du Jing replied. With Zhou Luoyang, he always said whatever he was thinking. “When lodging under someone else’s roof, it’s vital to make nice with the family and win over the important people.”\n

Zhou Luoyang: “……”\n

Zhou Luoyang ended up accompanying his brother as Du Jing ran around holding the kite. Today, he was wearing sports clothes, which made look just like a basketball player on an autumn outing.\n

“He’s so good to me,” Leyao said with a smile.\n

Sometimes, Zhou Luoyang had no idea how to reply to the things Leyao said. Sometimes, he couldn’t even tell if his words had a deeper meaning behind them and had no choice but to chalk it up to the cultural barrier that existed between them as a result of their different upbringings.\n

“Leyao, I might not be home next weekend,” he said, “but I’ll try my best to be back.”\n

“That’s fine, I can take care of myself,” Leyao quickly reassured.\n

Zhou Luoyang was quiet for a moment. Initially, he had wanted to have Leyao stay with a relative, but the problem was that he wasn’t close with any relatives. He didn’t know if the aunts and uncles on their father’s side were well-meaning, and he was worried that they might bring up their father and make Leyao sad.\n

“I’m taking part in Sotheby’s autumn auction,” Zhou Luoyang explained.\n

Leyao readily replied, “Go ahead. Business takes priority. Is Du Jing going?”\n

Sotheby’s had only given them two invites. Du Jing had to go—Zhou Luoyang hadn’t originally planned on bringing him, but attending the autumn auction might help him with his case.\n

“Yes,” Zhou Luoyang said. He thought for a moment. “He’ll probably be going, too.”\n

“To look into missing antiques?” Leyao asked. “To be honest, I find his work very mysterious, even now. But I haven’t mentioned it to anyone.”\n

Zhou Luoyang laughed. “What are you thinking in that head of yours?”\n

“I wanna go to Little Hei’s house.”\n

“Who’s that? A classmate?”\n

Leyao had made many friends in his class; everyone seemed to like him a lot. One classmate, who had neurosis, had invited Leyao over because he wanted to chat with him.\n

“That’s fine,” Zhou Luoyang agreed. “When I get back I’ll pick you up from his house.”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nOn the third, Leyao and his classmates officially set off on their autumn trip. They’d all pooled together money to rent a minibus to travel to Inner Mongolia. Zhou Luoyang had to sigh ruefully. It was a good thing he’d paid the costly tuition for this international school. Leyao’s student days were much more colorful than his own.\n

“Alright,” Zhou Luoyang sighed. “He’ll probably have lots of fun.”\n

Du Jing emerged holding a blazer. He looked at Zhou Luoyang. “Would you like to enter our own little world, handsome?”\n

Zhou Luoyang: “……”\n

“I thought you would sleep the day away.” Zhou Luoyang climbed into the car and buckled his seatbelt. “What’s wrong with sleeping? Sleep can be our own little world too.”\n

“I’ve gotten more sleep in the last two weeks,” Du Jing said as he drove, “than in the past three years combined. I’ve slept enough.”\n

“A day of hard work will earn one a night of good sleep,” Zhou Luoyang said with feeling.\n

“A life of hard work will earn one eternal rest. Time to work.”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\n“Doing what?” Zhou Luoyang asked after grabbing tickets. Du Jing led him inside a recreation center on the top floor of a shopping plaza. “Work involves escape rooms?”\n

“All the missing persons participated in this activity before leaving for Ho Chi Minh City,” Du Jing replied.\n

“Clearly, there isn’t a concrete connection between these two things. You suspect they were knocked out and kidnapped after entering the escape room?”\n

“Little Wu supposedly met the friend who took him to Ho Chi Minh City while having fun.”\n

“Then shouldn’t you look for this ‘friend’? What kind of strange idea is it to attempt the escape room again?”\n

“It’s clear there’s someone in charge of organizing this event. There are different participants in every game, of course, but this time, two of the people who signed up also participated in the game that Little Wu was in four months ago.”\n

Zhou Luoyang turned to look at the line of people on the other side. He and Du Jing had VIP tickets, which meant they could enjoy a cup of tea in the teahouse before the game and receive photos to keep as souvenirs after—though who knew how the pictures taken in the dark escape room would turn out.\n

Even the escape room experience was separated by price range these days.\n

“You think they kidnap people through these events?!” Zhou Luoyang exclaimed. “It can’t be.”\n

“Of course it can’t, but I suspect they’re meeting each other and getting close this way. People with emotional voids in their lives need a way to meet other people. Online, you’re likely to leave behind chat records, so offline is the best opportunity—you leave no trail.”\n

“You think you’d bond with a stranger who just so happens to be in the same escape room as you?”\n

“The players need to rely on and cooperate with each other during the escape process, which makes it an important juncture.”\n

“But if that human trafficker used this method to bond with Little Wu, then took him to Vietnam to sell off, I don’t think they would come back and try it again.”\n

“Why not?” Du Jing asked patiently. “As long as they aren’t discovered, this is very clearly an inexhaustible renewable resource.”\n

Zhou Luoyang began to feel a chill.\n

“But not everyone’s guaranteed to…fall for it,” Zhou Luoyang said.\n

“That might not be the case if they add some other factors into the mix. This is essentially an offline gay meetup.” \n

“A gay meetup?” he parroted.\n

“Haven’t you noticed everyone in the line is male?” Du Jing nodded in their direction, then dipped his head slightly and looked into Zhou Luoyang’s eyes.\n

Puzzled, Zhou Luoyang asked, “Why did they pick this place?”\n

“Because the admin of the group chat invested in this escape room.”\n

There were layers upon layers to this deduction. Zhou Luoyang was left utterly speechless.\n

“In a moment, you’ll be the bottom, and I’ll be a boot-licking top. I wanted to hook up with you, so I joined the gay group chat, signed up with the admin, and brought you here so we could play.”\n

Zhou Luoyang looked him up and down. “You should’ve asked Little Li to help you with this sort of thing.”\n

“But then you might get jealous,” Du Jing politely explained. “And I don’t want to. Also, it wouldn’t be a very convincing act with someone I don’t feel anything for, and they might see through us. Wouldn’t you agree?”\n

Zhou Luoyang: “……………………”\n

“Is this your first time here?” A female employee walked up to the teahouse with an info leaflet in hand and smiled. “Do you need me to explain a little bit for you?”\n

The VIP service included an explanation. But Du Jing didn’t give her the opportunity to provide it, and instead took the leaflet.\n

“I’ll explain things to him,” he said. “Thank you.”\n

Zhou Luoyang cast a glance at the players lined up not far away, then at Du Jing.\n

“Where’s the explanation?” He looked down at the leaflet. This was an Angkor Wat temple mystery consisting of five parts. There were sixteen puzzles to be solved before they could escape.\n

The leaflet specifically reminded them not to damage any part of the room. They would have a time limit of three hours and twenty minutes. After that time elapsed, the game would be pronounced over and the employees would open the door. The leaflet offered no practically useful information, only precautions and compensation provisions, as well as a reminder to treat other players with respect. \n

“You can just stick behind me,” Du Jing said, relaxing his hold. “This is all child’s play.”\n

Zhou Luoyang wanted to smack him. What kind of explanation was that? It was obvious he just wanted to look cool in front of Zhou Luoyang! \n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\n“Please come in,” the employee said.\n

The two of them, as well as another four people gathered together. The employee opened the door, letting them inside. It took a moment for Zhou Luoyang’s eyes to adjust to the abrupt shift from the brightly lit shopping center to the dark room.\n

It was quiet all around. Zhou Luoyang turned, and Du Jing gripped his hand.\n

None of the six players spoke—they were still trying to adjust to the darkness.\n

“So we’ve started?” Zhou Luoyang asked. “They didn’t even give us any preparation.”\n

Zhou Luoyang broke the silence in the room, eliciting a ripple of laughter. By the time the chuckling had died down, the nervous tension had eased some.\n

“This must be a temple,” a young man quietly said in the darkness.\n

“Yes, it was mentioned in the leaflet,” another person confirmed.\n

“There’s no signal, so no need to check your phones,” yet another person said.\n

They had been given the option to store their phones outside, but most of them brought their phones with them.\n

The group chatted for a bit. No one asked for anyone else’s names. Zhou Luoyang was stunned to discover that an escape room really was a great place to get to know and connect with strangers. Even as the odd air of unfamiliarity spread throughout the room, it also offered them a sufficient sense of security. Everyone was focused on the same task: to figure out a way to escape.\n

They didn’t need to make small talk. Their topic of conversation flowed naturally and directly to the exit.\n

Du Jing walked around the room, inspecting the installations around them. They were inside a temple prison built out of stone bricks. A steel fence blocked off the path in front of them, and the area beyond the fence was brighter. Torch-shaped lights flickered along the walls. It was evident that there was still a lot of space in this room.\n

They could hear the sound of dripping water, but they were unsure where it came from—perhaps the ceiling?\n

There were two beds and one wooden basin in the prison, and that was it.\n

A large metal lock hung on the fence, but it was otherwise bare.\n

Zhou Luoyang glanced at the other four people. One was tall, about as tall as Du Jing, but more sturdily built, like a mountain. One was dressed like a college student, whom Zhou Luoyang had previously spotted storing his bag outside and who seemed to have been invited here by someone else. The youngest was a high schooler who’d come alone.\n

There was also a tall, slim young man in a shirt and trousers, with very good skin. His expression was somewhat gloomy, and he was currently sizing the rest of them up.\n

Zhou Luoyang thought of what Du Jing had told him. Within this group was the suspect from the earlier game. It wasn’t likely to be either of the two students, so they could be ruled out. Then the only people who were left were the tall, burly man and the office worker.\n

Who could it be?\n

“I think the first puzzle is to figure out how to open this lock.” Du Jing took the lead in bringing up the main concern. “Let’s look for the key?”\n

<hr class="wp-block-separator">\nTranslated by beansprout. Edited by opal.\n

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