"Let's try the sequence written on it first." Xu Yuhan said to Qin Feng. "It worked for me before, so they should work for this one too."
Qin Feng rubbed his chin in contemplation. On the first floor, he let Xu Yuhan lead, and he just followed. He didn't really like missing information because someone else kept telling him the answer they were sure was right. The answer to the other maybe correct, but it's incomplete.
This was one of the reasons why a lot of people refrained from making friends with him. People assume he's someone who goes with the flow, but when pushed, he becomes disagreeable. He hated feeling incompetent, hated being seen as stupid, and hated being told what to do. This was the reason why he never liked Xu Yuhan.
The other guy has a preconceived notion about him, and he didn't like that.
It was the appearance of Amos that made him realize just how incompatible he was with Xu Yuhan. Qin Feng and Amos think the same way. They have similar beliefs and interests, and he felt like the other person was a long-lost twin.
Amos is careful and quick to notice changes. Xu Yuhan was brash and acted as if he knew everything. Qin Feng felt like Xu Yuhan was acting as if he were his protector or guide rather than an equal. Maybe it comes from already "solving" the challenges in these rooms, but it was enough for Qin Feng to feel distant.
He also realized that if he were to isekai to Xu Yuhan's world, he would feel the same dislike. Culture and knowledge honed from his 6 years in academia would be useless, and to the locals of his world, he would be considered innocent and an idiot.
And he hates that.
No, he abhors it.
Having Amos in the group makes him realize that he didn't want to continue following Xu Yuhan's script.
"Let's try to solve this properly first." Qin Feng waved the journal towards Xu Yuhan. "I think those creatures have a deeper mind than what we think."
Xu Yuhan was taken aback. He felt a little angry that Qin Feng trusts Amos more than him, even though he had known him longer. But he didn't want Qin Feng to think badly of him, so he agreed.
"You can try. But I've solved this room already, I doubt there's another answer."
Amon was massaging Punla's little feet as he watched the two speak. He noticed the changes happening to Qin Feng, from the initial indifference to the fluctuation of anger. He suddenly felt bad for Xu Yuhan, who was pinning for him. He looked at the sleeping face of Punla, and a mischievous thought arose. He tickled the baby's feet and waited for a reaction.
But what came was the child's awakening and the burst of tears.
The wailing was loud, and it made one's heart break. The face of the crying baby was cute. it was puffy and red with tears and snot dripping out of his orifice.
As the mother of the child, Qin Feng's attention was captured. He ran towards the child and held him up to his chest and sang the lullaby Punla had sung to him before.
Not long after, Punla was fast asleep and mumbling.
Qin Feng looked at Amos and raised his brow.
"I thought he would just kick me again." Amos looked innocently towards Qin Feng. A look of disbelief mixed with embarrassment was plastered on his face.
"Are you a masochist?" Qin Feng asked.
"No, but I love kids. Especially teasing them."
"Have you ever been banned from setting foot in an orphanage or stopped from teaching elementary school students?"
"I'm not that evil." Amos let out an exasperated laugh.
"Just checking."
Xu Yuhan was unaware of what they meant. "What does being banned from orphanages and teaching in elementary mean?" To him they just sound like those people might hate him and don't want to let them near children. Maybe Amos had killed a child before, but he said it himself; he liked kids.
Amos turned to look at Xu Yuhan. "Oh, you poor innocent child." He shook his head and added. "If you don't know, there is no need to know. Just be steadfast in your cultivation, don't meddle with the affairs of us mortals."
Qin Feng hit Amos in the head with his balled-up fists. "Stop arguing with him." He set Punla back down on the sofa and went back to the journal.
"If we follow the code encircled here, we'll get 43927." He turned to the drawer. "But if we don't put that in…"
"If we put that code in the drawer, it would give a key that opens another drawer with symbols that help the code for the door." Xu Yuhan interjected.
Qin Feng runs his fingers over the notes written in the journal. At first glance, it was just notes telling them about the history of the god who gave them everything. It sounded like the person who wrote this hated the people who trapped the kind god. But as Qin Feng was touching the letters, he noticed discrepancies in the grooves of the words. He doesn't know what these discrepancies mean.
"Does rearranging the dates give a different number?" Amos asked.
Qin Feng shook his head. "It would, however, give a different tone to the puzzle."
Amos nodded. "I'll punch in the code."
After putting in the code, Amos pulled the drawer and saw a bronze key with a piece of paper underneath. He took the key and handed it to Qin Feng, and read the words written on the paper. "The truth was in their records. Their God was not cruel, only imprisoned. I will finish what they started."
Qin Feng hummed in understanding. This was what the journal had said. No new information came to light, but he still couldn't help but feel unsatisfied. Something was wrong.
"Do you understand now that this puzzle isn't that hard?" Xu Yuhan scoffed. "There's nothing more than a guy who got obsessed with history and wishes to set free whatever god it was. In the end, he was still unable to do it." He was starting to get pissed off with Qin Feng's distrust. He felt like they were treating him like an idiot when it was obvious he was right.
Qin Feng heard the subtle change in his attitude. "I don't think so." he took the paper from Amos, inspected it, and noticed a bigger discrepancy. He held it up to the journal and found something new. "The new information given to us isn't about what the guy behind all this found." He showed the two other people the paper and the journal. "It's how the information was written."
"It's… different." Xu Yuhan finally noticed the change. Had he not looked closer and compared the writing, he would have missed it. "Someone else wrote this."
"Yes." Qin Feng smiled.
Xu Yuhan looked at the smile and felt a sudden fluctuation in his heart. Like a tidal wave hitting the beach and shaking the ground. He noticed the fine lines forming between Qin Feng's brow and the slight sagging of his jaw muscle. He saw the blueish bags under Qin Feng's eyes and the early signs of crow's feet. The contours of his face weren't very defined, unlike the men and women of Jianghu who are forever in their youth, but it was still very attractive.
For a while, Xu Yuhan couldn't speak.
Qin Feng noticed his inattentiveness. He flicked his fingers in his face to wake him out of his stupor.
Xu Yuhan came back. His smile returned and the slight bubbling of his emotion gradually subsided. "Sorry, I was thinking about something."
"That's alright." Qin Feng shook his head. He turned the pages and suddenly noticed a line he had failed to see before. Maybe he is getting older? Although he was barely 30, he felt like he had the body of a 60-year-old. "There's something here."
"They sealed it not to worship, but to survive." Xu Yuhan spoke. "How could mortals trap a god?"
Qin Feng shook his head. "Unless it isn't."
Amos took the key and opened a drawer on the other side of the room. The drawer clicked open, showing an additional stack of weird symbols similar to the ones on the ground. "Found something." He pulled the papers out and raised them for the others to see. "More symbols."
"Match them up." Xu Yuhan took the stack and matched the corners of the pages. It didn't take long for an image to appear.
"That.." Amos raised a brow and laughed. "Zeus. The God of Thunder." He poked Qin Feng's arm and said. "I can see why they want to trap him."
Qin Feng couldn't agree more. He found Zeus quite attractive when he was depicted in that one musical, but reading about him… made him want to commit murder.
"Zeus?" Xu Yuhan didn't know the big man of Olympus; all he saw was a drawing of a man with lightning in the background, and he assumed it was referring to an electricity source. "I looked, and there is indeed a code for the door in the lamp.
"That's interesting." Amos rubbed his chin. "They thought of everything." He turned to Qin Feng again. "What else could they think of? They're very knowledgeable. Had Xu not met us, you would have been stuck with the wrong answer forever."
"What does that mean?" Xu Yuhan unsheathed his sword and pressed the blade onto Amos's neck.
Amos pushed the sword away and said. "I meant you wouldn't know who Zeus was." He pointed at the journal and added. "You could solve and see the changes in the journal. You can easily arrange the dates and whatnot, but this." He pointed at Zeus. "You wouldn't get the reference." He looked at Xu Yuhan's eyes with furrowed brows. "The company would kill you if you worked alone. That's why you needed us to help you understand. And in turn, we would be needing you for future puzzles." He laughed and shook his head. "They are smart, they even understand the idea of coordination and working together as a team. Something those shitty companies do to give you a false sense of belongingness."
Qin Feng and Xu Yuhan heard the anger brewing from Amos's last sentence. He laughed out of exasperation from finding out the possible truth and just how much those things understood. They assumed they knew a lot, that is true, but they didn't realize that they KNEW a lot—even the worst things about a white-collar job.
Qin Feng hated a desk job, so he became a marine biologist. He didn't want to be an accountant like his predecessors, and he didn't want to work under someone who thinks highly of themselves. He had never experienced that false sense of family that these companies kept telling their people, but looking at Amos, he knew he had.
Amos sighed and rolled his eyes. "Either way, I'm leaving this place. I'm not gonna be the hero who beats the system or a big bad guy." He shrugged his shoulders and said. "Let the other people they kidnapped do the hard labor of 'finding out the truth'."
Qin Feng felt the same sentiment.
Xu Yuhan did not.
"What do they mean by Zeus?" Xu Yuhan stirred the conversation back to the puzzle.
"Looking at it, his forehead is hollow." Qin Feng stated. "This could be related to Athena as well."
"Athena… God of War and Wisdom…"
Xu Yuhan heard the last sentence and turned to the bookshelves. He found a book about the Hundred Years' War and took a look at it. He pulled the book and felt some resistance. "There's something here."
Amos looked at Xu Yuhan and clapped his hand. "Great job!"
"Don't patronize me." Xu Yuhan frowned.
"I dare not." Amos shook his head and raised both hands in surrender.
On the other side of the book was a compartment with a number puzzle.
"Wait. Something's wrong." The feeling was bubbling up within Qin Feng. Hearing another puzzle made him realize something. "It feels like unlocking something that shouldn't be unlocked."
Both Xu Yuhan and Amos looked at Qin Feng.
"If the code from the socket opens the door, the story will be incomplete." Qin Feng explained. "But if we continue solving the puzzles, we are setting something free. Based on the notes, it should be that god."
"Yes. Isn't that what we wanted?" Amos asked. "To free the god?"
Qin Feng shook his head. "It's not only the numbers that changed in the journal." He ripped the pages from the journal and lined them up in sequence. "See, even the story is no longer the same." He pointed at the last sentence. "They sealed it, not to worship, but to survive."
From the new sequence, a new story came to light.