Chapter 057 Snowstorm
Chen Meiyu shouted: "Brother Li, help catch my dad!"
Chen Jian knelt on the ground like a fool, grabbing the soup on the ground with both hands and putting it into his mouth. Li Daming was so tired that he was panting. At this time, he barely got up, leaped over, hugged Chen Jian, and threw him to the ground.
Li Daming cursed: "I tell you, can't you just be quiet?"
Chen Jian tried to get up, his eyes were red, looking at the pool of soup, just like an old sow that had been hungry for many days, grunting and making strange noises. Li Daming was tired and irritated, and he was also angry. He picked up the soup pot that fell beside him and hit Chen Jian on the back of his head. Chen Jian didn't even grunt, and fainted directly.
Chen Meiyu came over and pulled him away, "What are you doing?!"
"What can I do?" Li Daming was exhausted. "He is so strong that I am really exhausted."
None of us said a word in the room. Chen Meiyu silently cleaned up the soup pot and the soup that spilled on the ground. Li Daming sat cross-legged on the ground, and I was next to him.
After hearing a few gurgling sounds, Li Daming rubbed his stomach and said, "Damn, I didn't expect to feel hungry in this damn place."
"Just bear with it," I said.
Li Daming licked his lips and said, "No wonder Chen Jian wants to eat those things. It's so uncomfortable to be hungry. And this tastes so delicious. It reminds me of the feeling of eating hot pot in Chongqing."
As he said this, he kept swallowing and his stomach rumbled even louder.
Chen Meiyu came back, sat next to him and said softly: "Brother Li, you can't eat any of the food here, no matter how delicious it is, if you eat too much, you can never go back."
"I know." Li Daming said, "The food in the underworld can only be eaten by the souls in the underworld, not for humans."
The room fell silent. Chen Jian fainted on the ground. Chen Meiyu and Li Daming did not speak. I sat quietly on the side. The only lighting tool was the oil lamp, and the flame flickered.
Li Daming suddenly asked, "Should we take a break or start solving the puzzle now?"
"Take a rest." Chen Meiyu said, "You've just walked out of the heavy snow, you must be tired, there's still time."
Although I couldn't feel the temperature here, the atmosphere was drowsy.
I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes to rest. I didn't know when I fell asleep. When I was half asleep, I suddenly heard someone screaming, "Where's my dad?"
I quickly opened my eyes and saw that Li Daming had just woken up, and we looked at Chen Meiyu together. The girl was very panicked, and she quickly went to the table to get the oil lamp, and walked around the room. Her huge shadow was projected on the wall, flickering with the flames, like a ghost.
Only then did I realize what had happened. Chen Jian had disappeared at some point!
There were only three of us in the room, and Chen Jian was gone. Li Daming struggled to stand up from the ground: "Could he be gone?" He came to the door, and as soon as the door was pulled, a strong wind blew in from outside, blowing in countless snowflakes. The strong wind blew wildly outside the house, and the sound was like the roar of an animal. Not to mention going out, standing at the door for a while was like being blown by a huge blower. The wind was so strong that even a formless being like me could feel the instability of the strong wind.
Li Daming quickly closed the door. The wind and snow kept hitting the door, and it felt like our little wooden house was an isolated island in the storm.
Li Daming walked back and shook his head, saying, "He definitely won't be outside. If your father went out in this weather, we would have noticed."
"Where can we go?" Chen Meiyu wondered.
After saying this, the three of us all looked at the stairs of the wooden house. The wooden house was a two-story structure, and we were only on the first floor, and we had not been to the second floor.
Chen Meiyu asked Li Daming softly if he had a good rest.
Li Daming and I both knew that we had rested enough and it was time to get back to work. We had to solve the mechanisms and puzzles within a limited time to get out of here.
Li Daming walked in front holding an oil lamp, and Chen Meiyu and I followed behind.
Li Daming raised the oil lamp, and in the light he saw a simple wooden staircase leading directly to the second floor. Above the staircase was pitch black, with no light.
Li Daming was very careful. He squatted down and carefully examined the stair treads. The treads were covered with thick dust, but some footprints could be seen in the dust. It was obvious that someone was walking around, but he couldn't be sure if it was Chen Jian.
"I'll go up first." Li Daming said. He lifted his foot and stepped on the pedal, which made a "creaking" sound. Just as he was about to go up again, Chen Meiyu said from behind that they all wanted to go together.
The three of us walked up the dark staircase. It was dark upstairs and felt very depressing. The higher we went, the darker it became, with only a faint flame flickering.
We were so caught up in the darkness that we could barely see each other.
Finally they reached the top and saw a corridor in front of them. Li Daming shone the oil lamp forward and backward and found that there was only one room in the corridor, at the very end.
We walked along the corridor, and the floor made a strange "crunching" sound when we stepped on it. Every step was a great torture to the nerves. When we arrived at the door of the house, Li Daming looked at Chen Meiyu, and the girl nodded. Li Daming stepped forward and kicked the door open.
The door opened, revealing a house inside. It was empty and there was no one in sight.
Li Daming looked at Chen Meiyu in confusion, and the two looked at each other. I felt bad. Since I came here, I have become a transparent person. Apart from talking, there is no other way to communicate with them. Sometimes they also treat me as if I don't exist. This feeling is really bad.
Walking into the room, Li Daming put the oil lamp on the table and looked around. There were wooden tables, wooden chairs, wooden beds and wooden cabinets. The whole room was probably less than 50 square meters. Compared with the corridor outside, it was not too dark here. With the help of the light, he could almost scan the room at a glance. There was indeed no sign of Chen Jian.
This is really weird.
The wooden house had only two floors and the structure was not very complicated. I saw everything I should see, and yet such a living person was gone.
I wanted to show my presence, so I spoke first: "Meiyu, could it be that your father has come back to life on his own?"
Chen Meiyu shook her head: "This is his difficulty. If he leaves, nothing in this world will exist, and we won't be trapped here. And look." She pointed upwards.
Li Daming and I looked at it at the same time. There was a clock hanging on the wall of the room. The pointer on the clock was very strange. It was not rotating clockwise, but counterclockwise.
My heart skipped a beat. This bell was exactly the same as the one I saw in the bardo. It was counting down.
The time to overcome the difficulties is only 24 hours during the bardo period.
Chen Meiyu said: "The clock above is counting down the time. Eight hours have passed now. We still have sixteen hours to get out of here."
I added, "This countdown was triggered by your father, which means he has been missing for eight hours."
Li Daming frowned: "Since Uncle Chen didn't leave the cabin, where would he be now?"
"There must be some mechanism here that we can't imagine. Let's put our heads together and come up with some ideas." Chen Meiyu said.
"Something's wrong, something's wrong." I said several things in a row.
They both asked what happened.
"I have also experienced the test of the bardo realm. This should be Uncle Chen's difficulty. It is a test for him. Why does the situation now seem to be a test for us?" I said.
The two of them looked at each other.
Li Daming said, "I understand what you mean. Ah, I understand! Uncle Chen has already cracked the first mechanism? Now we have come to the second mechanism. If we want to find him, we must find where the first mechanism is. This is a chain of events."
"But I don't find any clues or hints to the problem here," I said.
Li Daming and Chen Meiyu were frowning and thinking.
I walked around the house and came to the window. The glass was covered with frost and there was thick snow outside the windowsill. Through the window, I could see the strong wind and the snow outside.
I was scared. If it weren't for the signpost I found in the woods, I'm afraid we would have been buried in the snow by now.
I suddenly remembered something and turned to Chen Meiyu and said, "This is your father's problem. This wooden house must be related to your father! Think about it, has he ever lived in a wooden house in the snow before?"
Chen Meiyu sat at the table, frowning and thinking hard. Li Daming and I didn't interrupt. The situation is now clear. Li Daming's guess should be correct. Chen Jian has cracked the first mechanism and reached the second level. But what is this first mechanism and where is it? The three of us have no idea.
The fundamental reason is that this place does not belong to us, we know nothing about it, it is a test for Chen Jian. There must be some details that he is very familiar with, but we are very unfamiliar with them.
Chen Meiyu thought for a moment and said slowly: "I remember it."
She told us that before she was ten years old, it seemed that her father Chen Jian and a few friends went to Heilongjiang and had a party in a remote scenic spot similar to the Snow Town. It was winter, the temperature in Heilongjiang was dozens of degrees below zero, and the mountains were covered with snow , but the resort was a world of its own, full of joy. Chen Meiyu was too young to go, but later she heard from her father that there were ice sculpture exhibitions, skiing, ice fishing in the center of the lake, and various performances such as Errenzhuan in the evening. In short, it was endless fun.
This was the only time she could recall her father having any connection with the wind and snow.
