Books and trinkets atop the shelves lining the room's walls shook and trembled. Some fell and struck the table, causing milk to spill and drip onto the sofa where Punla had been sleeping. The cup rolled and fell off the table with a crisp, high-pitched clink, but it did not break—a good-quality cup.
The little glass hanging from the chandelier shook at the same time, making a similar clinking sound to the cup, only much louder.
The rumbling continued as dust and small debris were pushed out from beneath the shelf, carried on air forced out from within. The shelf shuddered as it was raised, and several books fell, thudding loudly onto the wooden floor.
Qin Feng took a step back as it all unfolded, then turned to look at the person beside him.
Xu Yuhan acknowledged him with a smile. "The egg would be inside. There's another mechanism that has the egg locked up."
Qin Feng nodded and waited for the shelf to stop moving.
Punla woke to the rumbling and found the sofa soaked with milk. He pressed his right index finger into the wet patch, let it pick up some liquid, then raised it to his nose to smell before licking it off.
When the shelf finally stopped, Punla was gone.
Qin Feng had brought his newly acquired son into the room and meant to wake Punla, but when he turned back, the sofa was empty.
"Punla?" Qin Feng called, but there was no reply. "Where did he go?"
He barely knew Punla. They were as close as strangers could be, yet when Punla acknowledged him as an elder, or more specifically, as his mother, something small and responsible inside Qin Feng stirred. He found responsibility annoying, but when it was placed on him, he carried it through.
It was the same with his overseer job. He liked video games and enjoyed watching them, and when a friend asked him to take the role as a stand-in, with handsome pay, he performed well until the end.
As if God or some powerful entity heard his pleas, he heard a faint shout on the sofa. Looking closer, he saw a miniature-sized Punla calling him.
Qin Feng knelt and cupped his hands, telling Punla to step onto them. He looked at the spilled milk and where it had dripped, and something clicked in his head. He subconsciously began to form a question, but realised what he was doing and stopped.
He huffed in annoyance.
Xu Yuhan saw his scrunched-up face and laughed. "Initially, I had the same feeling. As an immortal cultivator, 3 days is nothing. I typically go months or even years to meditate and pass my bottleneck. When I was forced to rest, I initially wanted to fight against it, but it didn't work."
Thinking about the headaches he got after forming a single question, Qin Feng agreed that he would follow along rather than try to find a way to fight it.
He turned to look at Punla on his palm. This guy could help relieve his pain, but how much he could still help needed some experimentation. For now, he just needed to get this first-floor challenge over with. Still, that book page worried him. If he could not decipher it in time, it might be too late.
The three of them entered the hidden room and found a purple egg on a red cushion inside a glass box. A faint, warm light shone on the egg. The room vibrated far more powerfully than outside, and the louder roars made one's skin crawl.
From the room's layout, the first thing you see is the purple egg. Everything around it is shrouded in darkness, making it difficult to recognise what is there. The arrangement cast an ethereal glow over the egg, making it look like a prize to be won.
The egg itself looked harmless.
"There are intangible red lines covering the area around the egg. If you touch the right one, the glass will disappear, and we can take the egg and reach the next room." Xu Yuhan took a white powder from his bosom and handed it to Qin Feng. "Blow this onto the lines, and they will appear."
Given the differences in culture and the worlds they came from, Qin Feng understood that Xu Yuhan did not know what lasers were. But Qin Feng, as a 21st-century man who had watched far too many films, was very familiar with them.
Qin Feng poured the white powder on his hand and blew on it. It revealed a beautiful array of red lasers, making a wall of intricate lines.
"The right line is here." Xu Yuhan touched one of the lines in the middle. Afterwards, the room shook again, and the glass box was lifted.
All the other red lines disappeared, and the room's light finally turned on. Qin Feng felt it was too easy to solve, but then again, it was only the first one. Still, he thought they had missed something important.
There were too many references in the room for picking the right book and the right laser line to be enough. The books on the shelves, the line from The Little Prince, even Punla turning small. All of it came from popular stories in his world.
He trusted that Xu Yuhan knew what he was doing, since he had already reached the third floor, but what if all these floors were connected? What if they had done something wrong, and it had permanently prevented them from ever escaping?
Qin Feng felt close to the truth, but the rising pain in his head stopped him from following the thought any further.
Maybe if he had pushed through the headache, he could have noticed other things in the room that needed attention. And maybe Xu Yuhan, no matter how intelligent he seemed, could still fail to see or understand these references.
Xu Yuhan took the egg and threw it to Qin Feng who was still thinking. The egg hit his head and fell on the floor. It made a loud thump and rolled a bit on the ground.
Qin Feng stared at it before looking at Xu Yuhan with a raised brow who laughed and picked up the egg.
"You were zoning out. I couldn't help it." Xu Yuhan properly handed the egg to Qin Feng. He looked at it and saw the scale like ridges on the outside of the egg. It looked like dragon scales and is much thicker than normal eggs.
The biologist inside Qin Feng stirred. He wondered what animal could break the egg's thick layer and considered the existence of an animal with a drill for a beak. He tapped the side of the egg and assumed it may just be for decoration.
The whole room stopped vibrating, and the intermittent roars ceased. The egg, which was still warm, glowed for a while in Qin Feng's hand. Punla touched it and sang the song he sang to relieve Qin Feng's headache. The glowing stopped and calmed down.
"Baby." Punla hugged the egg and kissed it.
"There's something inside," Qin Feng said after hearing Punla.
"Maybe a dragon?" Xu Yuhan asked, but no one in the room answered.
After a while, a door on the other side of the room opened, revealing a staircase leading down. As they left, the words "Floor Completed" hung in the air. Qin Feng hid the egg on his pocket, and proceed to forget about in the next few hours.
Qin Feng tried to touch the words, but his hand passed through them.
The three went down the stairs, expecting to be met by another door marked "Floor 79". But something else caught their attention before they reached the next floor.
"God!" Qin Feng frowned. He covered his mouth with his right hand.
In front of them was a man, about 25 to 30 years old, lying motionless by the side of the landing. His head rested against the wall to his right. His arms lay limply at his sides, and the left side was broken. His eyes were closed, and his face was battered and bruised. His blue shirt was torn, and cuts were bleeding beneath it. His right leg was twisted abnormally and if not for the faint rise and fall of his chest, Qin Feng would have thought he was dead.
Qin Feng walked towards the man, sat beside him, and shook him gently. The man frowned, and his breath hitched, but he did not wake. Qin Feng turned to Xu Yuhan and motioned for him to come over. "Help me get him down the stairs. Let him lie down first, and I'll see if I can find a stretcher, or make a makeshift one."
He handed the mini Punla to Xu Yuhan, who took it with a smile. Punla squirmed and cursed Xu Yuhan, wanting to get back on Qin Feng's hand.
Qin Feng went back to the first room. The doors had already closed, but when he climbed back up, they opened and let him in.
There did not seem to be any stretchers in the room, but there were curtains and curtain rods. Qin Feng, with his first aid training certificate, was confident in his ability to make a makeshift stretcher. The problem was the height.
Qin Feng was not short for his age, but the curtain rod was more than 2.5 metres above the ground. He searched the room for a hanger rod or any long stick, but besides books, sofas, and a round table, there was nothing. The round table looked too small to stand on properly, and the sofa was too heavy. He could not be bothered to move anything.
And he did not really respect the E.N.D.
So Qin Feng went with the most obvious answer.
On the stairs, applying some cream to another man's wounds, Xu Yuhan heard multiple objects falling in succession, followed by a loud "Shit!". He raised a brow and shook his head, a slight smile on his lips, then went back to tending to John Doe's wounds.
Qin Feng rubbed his nose.
He separated the curtain rods from the curtain and set them aside. He stood, thinking of a way to cut the curtain to the right size to carry a person. He tried to tear it like in the films, but even if the E.N.D. might be violating some convention, they did have high-quality products.
He really wanted to give up.
He walked back to Xu Yuhan with a pained expression. "I need your sword again." Xu Yuhan was using his handkerchief to tie off some of the man's wounds. He handed Qin Feng his sword with a smile, then went back to tending to the injured.
Qin Feng took the sword and immediately cut the curtain to size. He tied it to the curtain rods with wire from the chandelier. When he had finished, he held the stretcher up and strutted down the stairs, but by the time he reached the other two, his confidence was gone.
"I don't know if this makeshift stretcher will work." He set it down and spread it out. "Move him to the ground floor, and I'll try to relocate his arm and leg."
Xu Yuhan nodded. Together, they manoeuvred the man onto the stretcher and carried him to the next floor.
Qin Feng knelt by the man's arm, took a deep breath, and gripped it.
In quick succession, he relocated the arm. The man grunted, and his breath hitched.
"I'm sorry."
Qin Feng then did the same to his leg.