Chapter 16: Four Seasons Protection Guide (Part 3)
The old radio rustled: "The interview time is limited. We only have 30 seconds to wait."
"30 seconds! We have to hurry!"
When they heard Zhang You say that he wanted to ask his roommate for help, Guo Guo and Zheng Wanqing threw back their quilts and rushed to the radio, and then they immediately realized: they had no idea how to contact this radio station!
They didn't even give out their phone number, which was clearly a deliberate trap. Whether they could answer the question or not was another matter, but if they couldn't successfully make the call, then they wouldn't even have the possibility of buying time for Zhang You.
Among the three people, Tang Xinjue remained silent, his eyes fixed on the radio.
"There are only 20 seconds left. We haven't received any calls~" Lily's sweet voice was accompanied by a giggle, and she did not hide the malice in her tone at all.
On the radio, Zhang You anxiously fought for a chance for himself, but only got a cold answer.
[——We don’t need to be reminded. All the students in the school know how to contact us. This is the most normal thing, isn’t it?]
These words lingered in his ears, and Tang Xinjue's eyes moved.
The next moment, she picked up her phone and dialed a number. Her roommate asked in surprise, "How do you know the radio station number?"
"Everyone in the school knows about the student union, so it's normal for its contact number to be posted in the corridor of a dormitory building."
The game really wouldn't give any dead ends that were completely unsolvable. Recalling the various posters hanging on the walls of the corridor when he walked back to the dormitory just now, Tang Xinjue dialed the number: "One in three chance."
Instantaneous memory can only remember part of it. Tang Xinjue can remember a total of 3 strings of numbers, but can't remember which clubs and activities they belong to. Before the countdown ends, they only have two trial and error opportunities.
Fortunately, the connection sound came through on the first try.
The person who answered the phone was Lily. Perhaps due to the unstable electromagnetic waves, her voice was slightly gnashing: "Hello, this is the Student Union."
"I'm Zhang You's roommate." Tang Xinjue's voice was as gentle as ever. "I just listened to the radio. You will solve the heating problem for us, right?"
Faced with the sudden reversal of power, the person on the other end of the phone choked, and Lily's prepared words were blocked. She smiled twice: "Of course... After all, the school will not sit idly by and watch all the students freeze to death. However, whether we can find a solution depends on whether the answers given by the students are correct."
Just by asking students to answer a few questions, can we change the heating system? From a practical point of view, this is obviously not logical.
So there is only one possibility - this is one of the level tasks of the exam.
Tang Xinjue agreed without hesitation: "Okay."
[Ding Dong, mission reminder: Please cooperate with the student union's broadcast to find the real reason for the heating failure and help all students in the school survive the night of the big drop in temperature.]
[If the mission is completed, winter will end early]
Trigger new mission!
Several people in the dormitory exchanged brightened glances, and then heard the question from the other end of the phone:
"So, my dear classmate, what is your name?"
"Tang Xin Jue."
"Very good, we will remember this lovely name. Then, I believe you can help your roommate answer this question - do you know why the heating failed this time?"
Faced with the question, Tang Xin Jue hesitated for two seconds: "I can provide a few ideas."
"Firstly, heating is mainly provided by electrical facilities, and judging from the failure of all electrical energy sources in the dormitory, the failure of heating may be due to problems with the circuit network on campus."
"Very good." Lily interrupted impatiently: "Is this your answer?"
Before Lily could continue speaking, Tang Xin Jue continued in a clear and uninterrupted voice: "Of course, as a university that considers its students well, it will definitely not simply rely on electricity to maintain such a complex project of winter heating."
Lily: “…”
"So I am more inclined to believe that there is also a problem with the pipes on campus. Because in the morning, my roommate had to unclog the frozen pipes. So it is very likely that the pipes are blocked, resulting in the inability to provide heating measures such as hot water and heating."
"Oh - then this is Mr. Tang's answer -"
"And, after combining the above two points, I came up with a new possibility, which is from the biological and artificial perspectives. Because the temperature drop came too suddenly, many people were frozen outdoors without taking proper warming measures, so it is also possible that the staff responsible for heating accidentally suffered frostbite and other accidental injuries, which in turn affected the school's heating."
Tang Xinjue didn't pause for even a second. He spoke fluently as if he was reading a script, and finished the three points in one breath.
"…So, what is your answer?"
Lily's voice was filled with suppressed anger: "Mr. Tang, our radio time is limited. Please give a clear answer."
"Calm down, Lily-san."
Tang Xin Jue smiled instead. "My final answer is that due to a combination of physical, biological, coincidental and other factors, today's heating has suffered an irresistible delay. But I believe that the Student Union will definitely find a way to solve it as soon as possible. That's it."
“…”
"Well, well, well, we have received your answer. In that case, let's wait and see if it is correct."
The call was rudely hung up. It was obvious that the other party was too lazy to even be sarcastic and didn't want to listen to Tang Xinjue anymore.
The dormitory was quiet for a moment, until the radio began to rustle again, and the roommates came back to their senses from their daze and asked: "Where did you find this information?"
In comparison, they seemed to have spent four hours in a fake way. Apart from "lying down and freezing to death", they did not notice anything.
Tang Xin Jue exhaled lightly: "I made it up on the spot."
After three years of liberal arts and three years of Chinese language major, she relied on her skill of quickly answering all the questions on the test paper even if she didn't know any knowledge points. The three points she summed up on the spot almost covered all possibilities and could touch upon some aspects, which was called Tai Chi.
roommate:"……"
It’s beyond words, just awesome.
Next, on the radio, the student union began to interview the next person. Lily asked with a fake smile: "It's still the same question. The student union hopes you can give an answer within thirty seconds."
After learning from Tang Xin Jue’s lesson, they increased the time limit this time.
"I, I..." The second boy almost stuttered as he repeated half of Tang Xinjue's words.
After he finished speaking, Lily laughed happily: "Ah, what a pity, your answers to the interview were more than 30% the same as those of the previous student, so your answers are invalid~"
"No, I can say it again, no, ugh!"
After struggling for two times, the boy fell silent. In the distance, the sound of a girl's frightened sobbing could be heard. It was the next person to be interviewed.
Outside the radio, Guo Guo whispered, "Are these people being interviewed later real students?"
If they were real people, it meant that there were more than just their dormitory taking the exam. There were other "candidates", and some of them might have even been eliminated in the initial stage.
Tang Xinjue frowned, "There is a 70% chance that they are the same kind as us."
As for the so-called student union, they are 100% not human.
I interviewed four more people later. They were all college students. Their voices were filled with panic and their struggles when they were eliminated were hoarse. But the calmest one among them was Zhang You.
In the end, only Zhang You and a boy successfully survived with the answer that "natural disasters caused monsters to be born and destroyed the heating."
Everyone in the dormitory breathed a sigh of relief. Judging from the way Zhang You spoke, he should have taken some measures to keep warm and was not in danger of frostbite for the time being.
Lily picked up the microphone with a sweet voice: "Then next, it's time for our field trip~"
"Both students gave very reliable answers. From them, the Student Union has identified four possible locations for investigation. They are——"
"One, the power generation room; two, the water supply room; three, the heating staff lounge; four, the school swamp."
"However, unfortunately, we can only choose one location to investigate each time. Where to go first? Where to go later? Where can we find the truth, or... nowhere? The choice is left to the students in front of the radio! Your votes will determine the final location!"
"Friendly reminder: The voting time is only three minutes, and each student can only cast one vote~"
The radio suddenly went silent, as if waiting for something.
Tang Xin Jue was the first to react, "We need to select an option immediately and then send the text message."
Guo Guo took a deep breath through his red nose, opened his eyes wide and asked, "What if we can't choose?"
“If you can’t choose, [other students] will decide the options.”
When Tang Xinjue's face was gloomy, she naturally gave off an aura of keeping strangers away. Guo and Zheng knew that this was her reaction when she was thinking quickly.
Tang Xinjue was indeed thinking.
Countless possibilities intertwined and whistled in her mind, shaping and stripping away, evolving into corresponding answers one by one.
The student union’s language trap, too little information, four options correspond to the four possibilities she and another boy proposed. To some extent, her answer broadened the choice space, but the premise is that there must be a correct option among them.
Assuming there is a correct option, in order to choose it, you still need to go through the voting process. Who is the voting subject? Is it the "candidates" who were pulled into the survival game like them? Or is it the same existence as the "student union"?
If it is the former, then the accuracy rate will undoubtedly increase because their goal is the same - to end this winter before they freeze to death.
And if it is the latter...their purpose is obviously exactly the opposite of theirs.
The former is towards life, the latter is towards death. As this logic took shape in his mind, Tang Xinjue felt relieved and immediately had a plan.
She asked her roommate to take out his phone and said, "For the first three positions in my answer, let's vote for one."
"Ah?" Guo Guo was confused. "Wouldn't it be impossible to choose one?"
"We don't need to choose." Tang Xinjue pressed the send button, his eyes clear: "Someone will help us choose."
——“Ding Dong, three minutes are up!”
Lily's voice was somewhat excited, and she seemed to swallow before reading out the results: "Let's take a look. A full 75% of the audience chose [School Swamp], 15% chose [Power Generation Room], 8% chose [Water Supply Room], and only 2% chose [Heating Staff Lounge]."
"It seems that the result is obvious."
She giggled, “Our first field trip will be to the [school swamp]!”
"Then let's meet in an hour~"
"Fuck, why do we have to wait another hour?"
If Zheng Wanqing hadn't been worried that this old radio couldn't hold up, she would have wanted to reach out and slap it away.
They were now almost numb from the cold, in pain and hungry, and felt suffocated at the thought of having to wait another hour.
"Speaking of which, is it possible to find out the truth about the heating in this school swamp?" Guo Guo was full of worry.
Tang Xin Jue said firmly: "Impossible."
“…”
This time Guo Guo was about to cry, "Really? Is this bad news?"
If she was not mistaken, Tang Xinjue seemed to be relieved?
Guo Guo didn't understand, and Zheng Wanqing was even less confused. The two roommates huddled in their down jackets and quilts, staring at Tang Xinjue with confused black eyes.
"Among the four options, the swamp is the least likely to be correct." Tang Xinjue explained.
If Tang Xinjue's answer was at least a set phrase based on the three people's tasks and dormitory situation in the morning, then the boy's answer was obviously fabricated, and he was only judged to have passed because of his pretended calm tone.
If students taking the exam were to vote, even if they were casting a blind vote, they would not vote for this item.
"But now, the most outrageous option has won overwhelmingly with more than 70% of the votes. What does this mean?"
The roommate thought about it and his face gradually turned pale:
"That means... they don't want the correct answer to be chosen?"
Did voters deliberately cast the wrong vote?
