"It's a plot similar to an escape room..."
Caleb felt it was necessary to first conduct a detailed inspection of his surroundings. He stood up from the iron chair he was sitting on, first shaking it with his hand, and found that all four legs of the chair were screwed down, unmoving. He then walked over to the half-glass mirror and the television to check them, but found nothing. The surrounding cement walls were poured in one piece, so it was unlikely that anything was hidden within them. The spotlight above his head was also suspended at a height of four or five meters; even standing on the chair, he couldn't reach it.
"It seems I can only get out of here first."
He walked to the iron door, reached for the doorknob, and pushed it open. The iron door creaked, a sound of hinges long un-oiled, and opened.
Outside was a dimly lit corridor that looked like it was made of shipping containers pieced together. Caleb switched to Active Stance. After the prompt, his body gradually began to heat up, and his limbs were infused with more strength.
According to the puppet's description and the mission objective, he would interact with three people who had 'similar experiences' in this game. Therefore, before encountering those three people, there should be no danger in the irrelevant surrounding environment. And the mission time limit was only 10 minutes, with unknown situations ahead. To save time, it would be better to run forward.
Caleb ran along the corridor, and after two turns, another iron door appeared. Pushing the door open, he entered a spacious area that looked like a corner of an abandoned factory, with a simple internal structure. The windows on all sides were welded shut with iron bars, making it airtight, and the indoor temperature was slightly high. Overhead were dazzling fluorescent lights, and a monitor hung in the upper right corner.
In the center of the space, a large, uniquely shaped device was set up.
At first glance, the device resembled an overturned T-shaped iron pillar, with a transparent plastic barrel suspended upside down at the top of the pillar, filled with colorless liquid, labeled 'FUEL' on its side, and its opening sealed by a wooden stopper. A wire was connected to the wooden stopper, leading to a gear-structured timer, which displayed a 5-minute countdown. The implication was that once 5 minutes passed, the gears above would mesh, and the wire would pull the wooden stopper from the 'fuel' barrel, causing the liquid fuel inside to pour out.
And on the iron pillar directly below the fuel barrel, a young man in a shirt and trousers was currently tied. His hands were raised above his head, bound to the iron rings on the pillar, and his bare feet stood on an iron platform. Seeing Caleb enter, he immediately shouted, "HELP!"
The iron platform was about one meter off the ground, with the area below it hollowed out into a bowl shape, filled with glowing red charcoal. By now, the platform was scorching hot from the charcoal, and the young man struggled to curl his feet, enduring the pain.
Near the strange device, a square low table was set up, with a stack of printed papers on it, and a small silver voice recorder pressing them down. Caleb first switched to Concentration Stance. After finding no other clues, he picked up the voice recorder and pressed play.
"Shasha... Shasha... Hello, John, I want to play a game with you." A deep, heavy voice emerged from the recorder.
Caleb looked back at the man on the pillar. John was clearly his name.
"In recent years, adding fuel to the fire and fanning the flames online has become your daily work. So-called internet trolls, 'keyboard warriors', and slanderers refer to people like you. You never delve into the truth behind events, nor do you consider how your actions will contribute to their development. You only do this for money. Because of your existence, the cost of spreading rumors and slandering has become extremely low..."
The deep voice paused for a moment, then continued:
"The device you are standing on has a name that perfectly matches your style of action—Adding Fuel to the Fire. It consists of burning charcoal and fuel installed at the top. When the lid on the fuel barrel opens, the flames, aided by the fuel, will instantly burn you to ashes."
"Oh no, no, no... Oh my god..." John, tied to the iron pillar, shook his head in despair upon hearing this.
"On the 100 pieces of paper on this table, some of your 'classic quotes' are recorded. The password to shut down this device is hidden among these 'quotes'. All you can do is pray that your fellow sufferer can find the password for you before the device activates. How does it feel? Having your life in someone else's hands is very unpleasant, isn't it? Yet, how often have your malicious rumors and slanders not been toying with the lives of others... This is your only hope. Let's begin the game!"
The deep voice from the recorder ended here. The 5-minute countdown on the 'Adding Fuel to the Fire' device also started immediately.
Caleb lowered his head and looked at the thick stack of papers under the voice recorder. The papers were printed with text, all appearing to be negative comments about various things:
'This book is really terrible. Just seeing the title makes me not want to read it. The author should just stop writing early.'
'The food at this restaurant is so bad; the chef's skills are worse than my eighty-year-old grandmother's.'
"..."
This John really was a typical internet troll.
"Hey, kid, what are you still gawking at? There's no time left, save me!" John began to shout anxiously: "Damn it, my feet are almost cooked."
Caleb frowned slightly. Was this the attitude one should have when asking for help from others?
'There are only 10 minutes to save people in total, and about 3 minutes have already passed.' It would be almost impossible to save all three people in this amount of time, wouldn't it? 'Unless... there's a time bonus for successful rescues?'
Caleb had the jaw ripper on his head, so he couldn't communicate with John. So he could only give the other party a 'calm down' gesture, and then, ignoring John's trash talk, he quickly went through the 100 papers containing the 'troll quotes'.
"Each paper only has one 'quote'. I wonder how many papers contain the hidden password?" Caleb quickly flipped through the papers, his gaze scanning each 'quote'. "Just reading through all 100 papers sentence by sentence would take more than 5 minutes! I have to speed up... Could there be some other hint on the paper with the password... Hmm?!"
He suddenly stopped his movements and pulled out a piece of paper from the stack that was distinctly different in both size and texture.
On this paper, only one unique sentence was handwritten in pen:
'No one can survive. Follow the direction of the heart to search. X is the hope of life!'