RNP Chapter 4660 Desperate Escape (32)
Chapter 4660 Desperate Escape (32)
Chapter 4660 A desperate escape (Thirty-two)
Eric took a deep breath on the surface, then submerged again and forcefully pushed the cage in one direction. With a click, the door opened. Charles swam out slowly, his movements powerful and steady. The two of them reached the surface together.
"Your swimming skills are truly exceptional," Eric couldn't help but exclaim. "Anyone else would probably be in a rush during this challenge, but I can take frequent breaths."
Charles waved his hand and said, "Luckily, this level wasn't custom-made, otherwise he would have designed 28 directions, otherwise there would have been no way to suffocate me."
Eric and Charles's team was the standard solution, without any fancy tricks. However, Charles's abnormally high breath-holding ability made their subsequent underwater struggles a complete joke. He could hold his breath for more than ten minutes. Even if Eric surfaced for air after each push, three pushes would only last four or five minutes at most. Although both of them were being electrocuted, one was a master of breath-holding, and the other could breathe frequently, so neither of them felt uncomfortable.
After swimming to the surface, they saw the cage slowly rise and soon reach their position. Charles stepped onto it first, followed by Eric. While waiting for the cage to rise, they discussed the plot again.
“I bet the next level will be another group challenge, and those who arrive late might be in trouble,” Charles said. “We’re following the standard procedure for solving puzzles, so we probably can’t compete with those who use shortcuts. I wonder what else we’ll be doing.”
“I don’t see any possibility of opportunism,” Eric shook his head. Despite having spent most of his life as a terrorist, he was actually someone who preferred to do things by the book, and was more meticulous than Charles.
"There are many possibilities. Putting aside other things, if it were Little Rascal, she would probably choose to hang him under the cage. If it were a wild animal, he would probably use the exhaustive method."
“We should have used the exhaustive method,” Eric said. “After going up there, we realized we only needed three directions, and the order didn’t matter. If we had pushed before the water rose, it would have been over long ago.”
"It's not that simple. Without water to cushion the impact, if you push me so hard, I'll fall onto the cage. After getting an electric shock, I'll definitely have an instinctive reaction, hitting the cage and swaying wildly from side to side, unable to find my bearings at all. I don't know how many times I'll have to try."
“Then I’ll go into the cage,” Eric said. “I can swing by myself.”
“Stop pushing yourself,” Charles said. “You’re still injured, and we haven’t rested much between checkpoints. What if there’s another physical challenge later? Are you going to rely on me?”
Eric fell silent. After years of living together, he had become completely accustomed to Charles's inability to move. Even though his leg had recovered in the instance, he still avoided letting Charles engage in physical labor.
The two jumped down from the cage. This time, the passageway was unusually short, or rather, there was no passageway at all. There was a door in front of the elevator lobby, and the door was larger than usual, with some decorations beside it. As soon as they stepped inside, the door opened automatically, revealing a brightly lit interior.
The two exchanged a glance. The light brought no warmth, only intensifying their ominous premonition. After a brief pause, they slowly walked inside.
“Forget it, Professor, I’ll just swing by myself,” Bruce said. “I’m afraid you’ll slam me and the cage against the wall.”
"Then why do you think I pushed you?" Schiller sneered.
"Hey, you can't take revenge now!" Bruce began to wail.
"I think you were the one who should be angry this round, right?"
Bruce paused for a moment, then realized: indeed, he should be the one who was angry. But because he was so guilty—for reasons including, but not limited to, his previous poor academic performance and the huge mess he had recently made—he didn't think about being angry for the moment.
“Cough cough, stand back a bit, Professor, don’t bump into me,” Bruce said. He adjusted his foot position and slowly relaxed his arms, straightening both the chains and his arms to make it easier for him to generate power from his lower body.
Then he kicked hard with his foot, and the cage swayed forward and then backward. Bruce kicked back and forth like he was on a swing, and the cage swung around like that.
Since neither of these directions was working, Bruce could only wait for the cage to come to a slow stop. Because his contact area with the cage was small, and to avoid being electrocuted, he had to move very carefully, making it difficult to apply the brakes.
"Professor, Professor, please help!" Bruce said, turning around. "Just stand there and block my way..."
Are you trying to slam me against the wall?
“How could that be!” Bruce said. “He was just helping me block it. Otherwise, at that stopping speed, the water would have risen by now, and we wouldn’t have even finished listing everything.”
Schiller stood behind Bruce and reached out to steady him as he swung over. Bruce nearly crashed into the cage bars due to the momentum, but Schiller quickly pulled him away. Bruce breathed a sigh of relief.
"Thank you, Professor. Please stand in that spot again, yes, in front of that wall. Now I'm going to swing to the side..."
Despite Bruce's slow pace and talkative nature, he was quite efficient when it came to getting things done. He controlled the force again, making the cage swing left and right, back and forth, but the mechanism still didn't stop.
Bruce sighed deeply: "Professor, you're just unlucky, and I'm not so lucky either. If we combine our luck, exhaustive search will take forever."
"Let's try again. It can't be one of the last three directions."
Schiller's words proved prophetic. They really did exhaustively search the last three directions before barely getting through, and when the cage door opened, Bruce was thrown out. He yelled and rolled on the ground before getting up.
Schiller was somewhat puzzled. He said, "How could you have fallen like this from such a height? Besides, there was water on the ground to cushion the fall..."
“No, I got electrocuted,” Bruce said. “There was electricity for a split second when the door opened! My muscles stiffened for a moment, and I couldn’t adjust my posture.”
“I’ll take that as you’re not making excuses,” Schiller said. “What could be causing the delay in the device that determines whether the checkpoint has been cleared and the power cut off from the cage?”
Bruce knew this was a blind spot for Schiller, because it involved electricity. This field has high barriers to entry, and theoretical knowledge alone isn't enough; without hands-on experience, one can't truly understand it. Fortunately, Bruce was a professional electrician, second only to his tractor repair skills.
He looked at the cage slowly rising and said with some understanding, "That's because the electric pulley system that drives the cage to rise also needs electricity. The designer of this level was too lazy to make another series circuit, so he used the simplest circuit form to transfer the power."
"That doesn't sound very safe."
“It’s actually very dangerous. But he’s already electrocuted fish in the water, so you can’t expect him to have any safety awareness,” Bruce shrugged. “It also shows that the puzzle mechanism and the pulley system must be very close.”
"Isn't it on the ceiling of the floor above?"
“Theoretically, yes, but if it’s for wiring, putting it down here isn’t out of the question,” Bruce said after thinking for a moment. “I’m going to go up and try it out to see if I can stop the pulley system. Professor, you stay down here and listen for any sounds. If the pulley system malfunctions, there will definitely be a sound from inside the wall. We might be able to find their mechanism.”
“However, there is a certain risk involved,” Bruce said frankly. “If the pulley system doesn’t get stuck, you might not be able to get up there.”
"What do you plan to use to block it?" Schiller asked first, inquiring about the feasibility.
"Do you see that disc up there?" Bruce pointed upwards, speaking rapidly as the cage slowly rose. "I initially thought the cage was hanging on the disc, but since it's acting as an elevator, the chain must be fixed at a higher point. The chain passes through the disc, so there must be a hole. Besides the hole, there also needs to be a passageway for the chain to avoid when the disc moves. We just need to figure out a way to bend the disc back, letting the chain pass through the passage back into the hole, and then the cage won't be able to go up. The pulley system will get stuck, and it will definitely make some noise."
How do you know the disc can be bent back?
"That's a question for you, Professor. Did you just hear a clicking sound from the mechanism, like the sound of a lock?"
"I was too busy watching you fall to the ground," Schiller said, somewhat exasperated. "With you yelling like that, what else could I possibly hear?"
Schiller thought about it carefully for a moment, then said, "I didn't hear any mechanism sound, otherwise it would have caught my attention. But are you sure the latch would make a sound?"
"Not necessarily. But judging from the structure of the mechanisms designed by the level designer, he is a very experienced mechanical engineer. This means that he would be more inclined to make simple mechanisms fit perfectly, because that is the essence of mechanical engineering. Those who make a bunch of complex mechanisms that can't fit together are laymen. To determine whether a mechanism is locked in place, there should naturally be some kind of cueing sound. This is not an industry standard, but a personal style, and I am inclined to believe that he would do it this way. If you didn't hear it, then he probably didn't implement reverse safety measures."
"But if he's a master of mechanical engineering, why wouldn't he take reverse safety measures?"
"First of all, strong mechanical engineering skills don't necessarily mean broad thinking. He might not have thought that someone would try to break that disc, since it seems pointless. Also, the perspective of the level designers is different. They would probably imagine that after the two survived, they would quickly take the elevator away, rather than thinking that someone would have the energy to cause trouble here."
“It seems he’s not good at psychology,” Schiller said. “But then again, no one can be good at everything.”
"It seems you've learned to make peace with yourself, Professor. That's a tremendous improvement."
"That's because the students Brainiac found for me were all quite talented. Since they didn't cause me any trouble, I naturally wouldn't want to cause trouble for others."
"What? Are you going to pin all the blame for the trouble you caused others in the past on me?"
“I have to say, Bruce, my teaching career with you has given me a very intimidating image. This has saved me a lot of trouble in my daily life since then. Sometimes I think that this might be a window that God opened for me.”
“My God!” Bruce exclaimed in astonishment. He spread his hands, took a few steps forward, then turned to Schiller and said, “How many psychoanalytic geniuses have you encountered to make you utter such profound and enlightening words?”
"Not many." Schiller gave a light hum and nodded reservedly, "but there are two or three, though."
Bruce's eyes seemed to say, "Is that all you ask for?", while Schiller responded with an expression that seemed to say, "Then who is it that I have such low expectations for?"