Click.

Li Ang pressed the light switch on the conference room wall, but the lights in the room didn’t go out; the bulbs continued emitting light.

This outcome didn’t surprise Li Ang. While exploring outside, he found that the village’s electrical system had also been "frozen,"

with the utility poles and wires completely unmoving. Even if he threw a small stone at the wires, they wouldn’t sway or move.

"The lights don’t change with the switch..."

Li Ang murmured, becoming more convinced of a certain suspicion he had.

Noticing the expression on his face, Wang Congshan couldn’t help but ask, "What’s up? Found a clue?"

"Just a hunch, that’s all."

Li Ang shook his head, left the conference room, and walked into the hallway, stopping in front of the washroom.

Instinctively, Wang Congshan glanced at the entrance, where the shoe cabinet hiding the monster’s arm sat silently.

The flower pot in front of the shoe cabinet remained quietly tilted, not toppled over.

Li Ang didn’t pay much attention to the shoe cabinet,

having observed the house’s structure through the windows from the yard before entering,

The washroom and the powder room were separated by a wall,

with the powder room connecting to the bathroom via a curtain barrier.

Inside, they found the washroom door open, revealing a long-dry toilet,

while the powder room door remained shut.

He tried to turn the doorknob but found it frozen solid, immovable.

"Not allowed in?"

Li Ang raised an eyebrow. The powder room’s outward-facing window was sealed shut, meaning the only way in was through its main door,

making it impossible to enter from the yard by opening a window into the powder room or bathroom.

While the conference room and washroom doors were open, why was the powder room belligerently closed off?

Could it be...

Wang Congshan squinted her eyes and said seriously, "All the village’s windows use frosted glass, casting obscure reflections.

There are no ponds or lakes in the village.

The frames we saw aren’t framed with the usual transparent glass either.

The only place with a mirror, the powder room, is sealed off from us.

Does the system not want us to see our own faces?

Is seeing our faces that important?

Or is there another reason?"

"It’s hard to say for sure right now."

Releasing the powder room’s doorknob, Li Ang casually remarked, "There are too few clues.

Maybe this quest script is sponsored by the old classic sour pickled beef noodles, with a theme of ’Someone’s mimicking my face, someone’s mimicking my noodles’.

If you see a character’s face in this script mission, it probably means death."

With a lack of clues, the possibilities were too many, and random guessing was useless,

so Li Ang and Wang Congshan entered the living room, which had tatami mats on the floor, with a significant feature being a hefty television set.

This TV, a product of the late ’70s, looked ancient to Li Ang, lacking the ability to play tapes or similar media,

and after pressing the buttons for ages, he finally managed to switch it on, only to see the screen filled with static noise, producing a faint hissing sound.

"No signal?"

Li Ang wasn’t particularly surprised. The creepy, peculiar surroundings suggested that a normal display would’ve been unusual.

Just as he was about to get up and leave, Wang Congshan’s expression changed slightly, "Wait a minute."

She knelt down, putting her ear to the speaker holes on either side of the television, listening intently. Her face gradually turned somber as she increased the volume slightly, whispering to Li Ang, "Listen closely."

"..."

Narrowing his eyes, Li Ang heard, underneath the growing TV static, the faint, cluttered, and agitated sound of 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

screaming.

The cries, screams, lamentations, and wails of thousands mixed, sounding as if subjected to some tremendous torment, cried continuously.

In the deathly stillness, it was incredibly chilling.

The cries persisted without fluctuation for five minutes until Wang Congshan lowered the volume again, restoring silence to the room.

Where were those eerie cries coming from?

Li Ang noted the event down mentally. Lacking related tools to trace the cries’ source, they continued searching.

The next destination was the master bedroom, where the house owner resided.

This master bedroom was the largest room, patterned in a Japanese style, bedding laid on the ground, and in a corner stood storage cabinets.

The adjoining closet stored clothes and bedding.

The frame atop the cabinet also had a face that was indistinct,

the clothes in the closet belonged to adult men and women, presumably the Fujimura couple in the blurry photo.

The only suspicious item in the room was an insurance safe.

Positioned at the bottom of a paper-sliding door partition, the safe was a perfect cube, green-painted, made in Germany, employing a mechanical compass lock with a six-digit code, non-electric, shock and temperature resistant,

Even modern engineering machinery would need a while to forcibly open it, let alone the ill-equipped Li Ang and Wang Congshan.

"How strange,"

Li Ang frowned, "Judging by the room’s setup, the Fujimura couple should be ordinary residents. Considering the societal trends in the late ’70s Japan Islands,

the husband is a company man, the wife a homemaker raising kids.

There’s no real need for such a complicated and expensive safe without a specific reason."

Li Ang mentally dismissed theories like "The Fujimura couple are actually foreign spies," "The Fujimura couple are actually Skies Hitmen," "The Fujimura couple are actually retired human hosts of Ultraman,"

as they seemed way off base,

and after studying the safe a bit, he tried various combinations like 000000, 111111, 888888, 123456,

and when none worked, switched to numbers that appeared in the current script mission.

For instance, Tadahira Ogasawara and Ogashira Ayaka’s birth dates, the disappearance of Ogashira Masashi, the landslide in Gumma County, etc.

All attempts fruitless.

Li Ang and Wang Congshan approached the shoe cabinet at the entrance, questioning it to no avail.

They returned to the master bedroom, staring at the safe.

"Hmm... since a safe appeared in this script mission, there’s undoubtedly a related code hidden somewhere."

Li Ang thought for a moment and asked Wang Congshan, "By the way, can your Axis Cube assimilate this safe?"

"Huh?"

Wang Congshan was briefly stunned then quickly caught on,

the Axis Cube could assimilate objects it touched, transforming them into intricate mechanisms similar to the cube itself,

If it consumed and assimilated the safe, as its owner, she’d naturally be able to open it effortlessly.