Life Game In Other World
Chapter 211: Secret Passage and Knocking at the Door (Long - , Please Subscribe, Add to Favorites, Request Monthly Tickets)

Chapter 211: Chapter 211: Secret Passage and Knocking at the Door (Long Chapter, Please Subscribe, Add to Favorites, Request Monthly Tickets)

He Ao manipulated the Tomb Guardian’s body to take a turn, looking around and gradually getting used to the feeling of controlling the body.

It felt somewhat rigid because the internal organs had been completely crushed, and there was a large hole in the chest, which resulted in many movements that He Ao was unable to make the Tomb Guardian perform.

Moreover, he could distinctly feel the Tomb Guardian’s remaining vitality rapidly fading, preventing sustained control; likewise, the Tomb Guardian’s Transcendent powers were also unusable.

However, He Ao had not intended to keep controlling him for long. After getting used to it for a while and being able to manipulate the actions adeptly, He Ao shifted his gaze to a monitor beside the metal door leading into the Central Control Room.

The ’knocking’ from outside had stopped, but He Ao wasn’t sure if the Great Octopus had left. It was quite possible that the door was now covered in the tentacles of the Great Octopus, just waiting for He Ao to open the door and fall into its trap.

He walked over to the monitor, ready to see if there were any differences from the one outside, looking for any other way to leave this place.

The method for returning from the ruins to the main world was to anchor directly onto the Explorer and shuttle back, irrespective of location. However, if one was in an area unsuitable for shuttling, the individual might be torn apart by the rifts of space-time during the process.

The way to ensure one would not be torn apart was to reach a safety zone before attempting to shuttle.

These safety zones were scattered throughout the ruins, and in the last three hours, all explorers would sense a premonition, like an arrow appearing in the upper left corner of their vision when playing a video game, indicating the location of the nearest safety zone and guiding them there.

Under normal circumstances, the location of a safety zone would not be more than a three-hour journey from the position of the explorer at that time.

He Ao felt that the interior of the tower did not seem like an area suitable for a safe return shuttle, so he needed to prepare early.

The monitor inside the door indeed displayed more entries than the one outside, and now that He Ao had gained the highest level of authority, he could open many things.

He first turned off the human verification mode and switched to authorized verification mode, then clicked through every entry.

Most of the information was useless.

Until he opened the [Access Records].

Access Records were left by those who had opened this door, and most of them had turned into gibberish, with only a few maintaining detailed information. The last entry was He Ao’s, labeled as [Visitor] without a recorded time.

Before He Ao’s entry, the previous record was marked as [Federal Science Academy Scholar Anke], dated [Federation Calendar 375 December 23, 16:02].

The pronunciation of ’Anke’ was somewhat strange, not a common naming convention for people in the Second District, likely belonging to the First District.

Here, the Federation Calendar presumably followed the chronology of the Original Federation, but because of differing time flow speeds, He Ao was unsure if the time speeds in the ruins and the Copy World were consistently proportional, preventing a direct comparison between the two timelines.

However, this point in time could very well be the moment of the ruins’ destruction, as no one had opened this door after that point.

The next record was He Ao’s.

Wait a second.

If there were no opening records, then how did the person who took the central processor, the one before the Tomb Guardian, make their way in?

He Ao paused for a moment, turning his head to look at the spacious conference room.

Unless they didn’t enter through this door.

That explained it. The outermost door of the tower itself lacked any opening mechanism, and there were fully armed intelligent robots guarding it.

Furthermore, the information from the Research Institute mentioned that the rating of Explorers the ruins’ passages could withstand was gradually increasing, implying that the Explorers of a decade or so ago couldn’t have possessed the strength of today’s D-level, let alone the weakest F-level, and such combat power couldn’t have breached the tower’s outermost door, much less enter the Central Control Room.

This Central Control Room has another secret passage that leads directly outside the tower!

The person who took the central processor and the Tomb Guardian must have used that secret passage to enter the tower!

Since ’Liu Nan’ had chosen the clumsy method of forcibly breaking through the gate of the tower, it meant that she might not have discovered that secret passage.

The secrecy of that passage must be of a high degree!

He Ao took a deep breath and began to carefully survey the entire Central Control Room.

Then he quickly calmed down because, during his earlier search for the central processor, he had already combed through the whole Central Control Room. Since he hadn’t found it then, that secret passage had to be well-hidden.

Unless he used Super Memory to search for it, but that would be too costly.

Is there a quicker way?

Since the passage was so concealed, the Tomb Guardian would certainly have made some marks to find his way out.

And He Ao hadn’t noticed any obvious marks while searching just now.

This meant that the Tomb Guardian might have used a special mark that only he could recognize.

What kind of mark could be visible to him alone...

He Ao paused for a moment and looked at the Crystal Ball in his hand.

The remains.

Remains that could be controlled could only be seen by someone with the power to control them.

In that instant, He Ao’s consciousness plunged into the Crystal Ball. He fully activated the Crystal Ball, and a gray-white field of vision rapidly expanded, sweeping over the sprawling giant wolf, sweeping past each cold chair, and the cabinets.

There!

He Ao’s figure shifted, and he quickly walked towards a corner on the left.

In this corner, there were several chairs haphazardly collapsed on the ground. At first, He Ao had not paid attention to these chairs, as the entire area was littered with chairs toppled in disarray, surrounded by many skeletons that seemed to reflect people’s struggles before death.

But now, he only felt that the person who had arranged these chairs was very clever.

In his perception, right above the scattered chairs, about three meters up the wall, there was a small animal carcass, appearing to be a little squirrel.

This carcass meant that there was a space behind the wall; this was the ’mark’ left by the Tomb Guardian.

Once, someone had piled up these chairs into a makeshift ladder here, climbed into the thick space inside the wall, but to prevent others from discovering this hidden space, they knocked over the chairs around it, feigning disorder, and then pushed down the ladder after entering that space.

More than a hundred years had passed, and the chaotic appearance here had concealed all his traces, just like everywhere else.

He Ao, of course, didn’t need a ladder. He activated his Super Memory and scrutinized every corner carefully.

Then, at the edge of the whole wall, at a position about two meters high, he found a subtle seam, next to which was an extremely shallow impression, as if pressed by a hand—this mark was so slight that it would have been undetectable if not for He Ao’s Super Memory.

He reached out to the seam, placed his hand on that handprint, and pressed down hard, but there was no response.

He thought for a moment, and channeled ’Qi’ into the palm of his hand.

Click—

With a soft sound, a display monitor popped out from the wall, similar to the one at the main entrance but with far fewer functions.

He Ao attempted to authenticate as an administrator, and he succeeded, it seemed that this monitor was connected to the same local network as the one at the main entrance.

However, this monitor did not have the authority to modify the administrator authentication method; it seemed that only the monitor at the main entrance had this right.

This monitor’s door-opening mechanism was also set to human verification. He Ao switched the mode and then verified his identity.

As He Ao’s identity was confirmed, above his head, a circular metal door with a diameter of about one meter and twenty-three centimeters opened, revealing a narrow passage with a staircase rising step by step, leading to an unknown destination.

The entire passage was devoid of light, exceptionally dark and deep.

At the entrance to the passage, the carcass of a small squirrel marked with entwined wounds leaned against it.

He Ao felt this squirrel looked familiar. He thought carefully and suddenly realized this was the same squirrel that had been entangled to death by a fruit tree when he first hunted the Giant Lizard.

This squirrel was placed here by the Tomb Guardian as a marker, which meant that the Tomb Guardian had once passed by the place where He Ao hunted the Giant Lizard, likely even saw the barbecue rack He Ao had left, and perhaps, via some controlled puppets, had even glimpsed He Ao from afar.

Therefore, when He Ao teased him by saying to guess why he was here, he was quick to have that flurry of thoughts.

Because he might have inadvertently followed He Ao for a while, knowing that He Ao’s initial target seemed to also be the tower.

However, He Ao was not sure if everyone could see the tower from eight hundred kilometers away.

After all, the diameter of this planet is only one thousand kilometers, and if you draw a circle with a radius of eight hundred kilometers, the surface area of this circle is almost two million square kilometers, nearly two-thirds of the relics. If everyone could see the tower from such a distance, the Research Institute would have certainly recorded it.

This was actually one of the reasons why He Ao had initially doubted ’Liu Nan,’ because when He Ao originally said he could see the tower, ’Liu Nan’ did not question it at all.

Perhaps for her, seeing the tower was taken for granted.

And if only special individuals like He Ao could see that far-off tower, while others, such as Tomb Guardians, could not.

It could even be possible that the Tomb Guardian himself could not find the tower at all, and just might have, for some unknown reason, followed the trail left by He Ao from a distance, thus finding the tower.

But regardless of what He Ao considered, the only reason he could think of for being tracked by the Tomb Guardian was probably because the Speech Master had argued with the Tomb Guardian before entering the relic, and He Ao just happened to look over, causing him to vent his anger on He Ao, and quietly follow after discovering He Ao’s trace in the relic.

After all, he held a C-level Transcendent item, and if He Ao were truly a common D-level, it would be easy to kill He Ao and turn him into a puppet.

In the main world, he would be constrained by rules, but in the relic, it was different.

If that’s the case,

He Ao looked at the Tomb Guardian Puppet now controlled beside him.

It wasn’t that the Tomb Guardian was lucky to find the tower and then unlucky to encounter He Ao, but because he encountered He Ao, he found the tower, then was caught by He Ao inside the tower, ultimately handing He Ao a big gift.

Causality is interlocked indeed.

He Ao leapt into the passage, followed by the Tomb Guardian Puppet, who closed the metal door behind them.

The display monitor that protruded out from the wall slowly retracted, and the Central Control Room returned to silence.

A while later, a soft sound came from the darkness, from behind the metal door with the disc that He Ao had not opened.

It seemed that something was gently knocking on the door.

Thump thump thump—

The crisp sound echoed in the silent, pitch-black Central Control Room.