After deciding on the heart room, Xiao Lou asked Guardian, " For the two heart rooms, 3 and 4, can I unlock the next stage by clearing either one, or do I need to clear both, but the order is up to me?"
Plum Blossom Youth said, " Clear one C-level secret chamber for each of the Hearts, Diamonds, Spade, and Plum Blossom levels to unlock the next B-level secret chamber." But then he added, "However, I suggest you challenge them all, because these C-level secret chambers are relatively simple and it's easier to achieve the 'perfect clear' condition, allowing you to draw more good cards in the limited card pool."
Xiao Lou already knew this.
He achieved perfect scores in Red Heart 2, Diamond 2, and Spade 2, drawing the cards " Tao Yuanming," " Compass, " and "Zombie Leader" respectively, each of which was very powerful. Judging from the weapon and equipment cards Yu Hanjiang drew, the card pool in this world is much richer than he had imagined.
The lower-level escape rooms are relatively simple, and a perfect completion allows you to draw from a limited-time card pool, with a very high probability of getting good cards. This is one of the perks Card World offers to newcomers. Later, in the team escape rooms, simply completing them is already a stroke of luck, and achieving a perfect completion is extremely difficult.
Yu Hanjiang shared the same idea, looking at Xiao Lou and suggesting, "If we can clear all the levels, let's not skip any. Let's take advantage of the current difficulty of the escape rooms and collect as many cards as possible."
Xiao Lou nodded in agreement and said, " Captain Yu, you decide whether to go to Heart 3 or Red Heart 4. "
Yu Hanjiang didn't refuse and simply reached out and drew the " heart 3 " card directly from the wall of cards.
Guardian: " Red Heart 3 escape room [ Bloody Maple Leaf ] is generating. Please get ready, countdown 10, 9, 8..."
The boy's voice gradually faded away. When he counted to "5", Xiao Lou's vision suddenly went dark, and after a few seconds, it suddenly lit up.
Xiao Lou squinted, quickly adjusting to the glaring light, and then rapidly looked around.
— What about Yu Hanjiang?
He was surprised to find that Captain Yu was not by his side.
According to the rules of the contract book, since the two of them have already signed the contract book, they will inevitably be forcibly pulled into the same world. Therefore, it is impossible for a bug to occur where he enters but Yu Hanjiang does not.
The only possibility is that they were teleported separately to different locations in the Secret Room World.
Xiao Lou quickly figured it out.
Different locations yielded different clues. Since it was a two-person escape room game, each person would first find some clues, and then the two would gather them together for a unified analysis.
This is somewhat similar to traditional "escape room games." He used to play real-life escape room games where everyone would split up to search for clues, and whoever found one would call their friends to check it out. However, those escape rooms were all indoor games with limited space, so you could see each other just by turning around, and everyone could hear you if you shouted.
But now, Heart 3's Secret Room World is excessively large.
Xiao Lou looked up and found herself standing at the gate of a school.
The school gate is very impressive, and the wall on the right is covered with a dense array of gold plaques, such as "Key Middle School of the City", "Model School for Psychological Education", "Advanced Youth League Organization", "Advanced Collective"...
At the very top of the gate, there is a line of elegant cursive script inscribed—
Fenglin High School.
Looking around, Xiao Lou saw that the entire campus was extremely quiet, and there was no one in sight.
However, you can see a large maple forest on the side of the school.
It was autumn in Secret Room World, and a light rain had just fallen, leaving the ground damp and smelling. A gust of wind blew, and countless red maple leaves drifted down, carpeting the ground with a thick layer of crimson. From afar, the leaves, washed by the rain, appeared an exceptionally vibrant red, floating in the air like they were stained with blood.
Fenglin High School's name is clearly related to the maple forest on campus.
Xiao Lou didn't know whether she should go in or stand at the door and watch.
Bloody Maple Leaf —judging from the name of the escape room, a bloodbath must have occurred on this campus? But he always received hints after entering escape rooms before, but this time there were none at all, not even the most common countdown timer.
With no way to turn back, Xiao Lou had no choice but to walk slowly into the school gate.
The moment he stepped into the school gate, the familiar floating window and text prompt finally appeared—
Welcome Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang to the Red Heart 3 escape room [ bloody maple leaf ].
1. This is a story-driven mystery room with no time limit. You can leave whenever you solve the puzzle. If you fail to solve the puzzle, you will be trapped in Secret Room World forever.
2. The C-level secret chamber no longer displays a "clue collection progress" indicator. The completion score is related to the puzzle-solving time; the faster you find the murderer, the higher your score will be.
3. The time flow in the Red Heart 3 escape room is different from that in Card World. Every day here is equivalent to 24 minutes in Card World. Your bodily functions operate normally, following the time flow of the Red Heart 3 escape room. You will experience physiological reactions such as hunger and fatigue. There is a convenience store at the school, and the coins earned in the Plum Blossom Secret Chamber can be used here, so you don't need to worry about "starving to death."
4. Today is the weekend, and there are no classes at school. You two are free to explore the campus on your own.
5. Please note that you are outsiders. If discovered by security guards, you will be expelled from the school.
Please be careful to avoid the security guards' patrols and do not run into them head-on. If you are caught by the security guards, you will fail the challenge and be eliminated immediately.
6. This is a cursed school. It is said that the maple leaves are so red because the maple trees have absorbed too much blood.
After the text prompt ends, a "ding" sound comes from the ear: "You have obtained the secret room exclusive card. Please check the card holder."
Xiao Lou immediately opened his card holder and found a new card inside.
Equipment Card: Invisibility Cloak
Rarity: A
Description: A Red Heart 3 Escape Room exclusive card. The card is automatically destroyed after leaving the Red Heart 3 Escape Room.
Effects: Wearing the Invisibility Cloak instantly grants invisibility for 30 minutes. During this time, you will become invisible; neither the people in the Secret Room World nor your companions can see you.
Limitations: Can only be used once a day. Please be mindful of the timing of use.
Xiao Lou put the card away and looked at the text in the floating window again, extracting the key information.
In the previous Red Heart 2 Secret Room, after entering the room, he collected clues and deduced the murderer at the crime scene—this was a static locked room, where all the evidence remained in place, and as long as you were careful enough, you could always find all the clues.
However, in Red Heart 3 Escape Room, it turned into a dynamic story-driven escape room.
He had to enter the school as an observer.
The puzzle that he needs to solve has not yet appeared.
The clue suggests that today is the weekend, and school is closed, giving him and Yu Hanjiang time to familiarize themselves with the school environment. During this time, they should at least memorize the school map and figure out the location of each classroom and office.
The incident should occur on Monday, when schools begin classes.
They needed to conduct a rapid investigation within the school without being detected by security guards and deduce the murderer. This was more than twice as difficult as a static, locked-room mystery where only one person could gather evidence.
However, the C-level secret chamber is not too difficult—it only has one obstacle: "security guards".
The rules state that being caught by security guards results in failure, but they don't mention expulsion from the school if discovered by teachers or students. Furthermore, the escape room provides a limited-edition " Invisibility Cloak " card; if all else fails, wearing the Invisibility Cloak can save your life.
Having figured this out, Xiao Lou immediately went into the school and quickly observed his surroundings.
He quickly found the school's introduction and an aerial map of the entire campus on a huge stone monument near the school gate.
***
Fenglin High School was founded 5 years ago.
The architectural theme here is clearly related to maple trees, with all the buildings painted in a red similar to maple leaves.
The school boasts excellent teaching facilities, a strong faculty, and first-class hardware, including a green football field, a rubber running track, eight outdoor basketball courts, an indoor gymnasium, and a library, making it almost comparable to a small university.
As a key high school in the area, Fenglin High School has over 3,000 students and over 300 teachers. Among them, 23 are "Senior Secondary School Teachers"—this information is revealed in the introduction on the stone tablet at the entrance.
Xiao Lou himself is an associate professor at a university and is very familiar with the education system. There are limits on the number of senior high school teachers (Level 1) that each district's education bureau has; each position is filled individually, and new teachers can only fill the vacancies when older teachers retire. Furthermore, there are work experience requirements for being promoted to Level 1; generally, only those with more than 10 years of teaching experience are eligible.
This school has 23 first-level teachers, befitting its status as a key municipal high school. But strangely, it's not a long-established prestigious school—it was founded only 5 years ago, making it a relatively new school, indicating that most of the teachers were transferred from elsewhere.
There are six buildings on campus.
The building directly in front of the school gate is seven stories high and has "Xingzhi Building" written on it; it is the administrative office building.
Behind the administration building are three long, rectangular buildings, each four stories high, connected by sky bridges on each floor, forming a rectangular structure. The three buildings are named "Zhiyuan Building," "Siqi Building," and "Chongwen Building," respectively, with meaningful names, and serve as teaching buildings for the first, second, and third years of high school.
Further on, there is a three-story building called "Shuxiang Building," which serves as the school's library and academic calendar archive.
The last building, shaped like a maple leaf, is clearly marked with the words "Gymnasium".
Behind these buildings is a wide playground.
The air after the rain was exceptionally fresh. In the quiet campus, the red rubber track, the green grass, the azure sky, and the white clouds—the whole scene was like a beautiful landscape painting.
Being there will inevitably bring back memories of your student days.
Behind the playground, there is a sizable maple forest, with many wooden benches scattered around it. In their spare time, students can rest here and enjoy the beautiful scenery of falling maple leaves.
Besides maple trees, there are flower beds under each school building, making the environment quite nice.
This school is likely a day school and does not have dormitories.
Xiao Lou took a walk around the school and quickly figured out the layout of the entire school.
He stood at the edge of the playground and looked around, but still couldn't find any trace of Yu Hanjiang.
Where did Captain Yu go?
To ensure they could meet up as quickly as possible, Xiao Lou simply sat down on a wooden bench next to the maple grove—the campus was so large, wandering around would only cause them to miss each other. Captain Yu would definitely come to check on the maple trees.
Lin, why don't we wait for him here?
While waiting for others, Xiao Lou mentally organized the school's layout, memorizing the school's floor plan.
A moment later, a steady sound of footsteps came from behind.
Xiao Lou turned around and, sure enough, met a pair of deep, dark eyes. He smiled at the other person, moved aside to gesture for Yu Hanjiang to sit down, and asked, " Captain Yu, where have you been?"
Yu Hanjiang sat down next to him and said, "I checked the school's internal surveillance footage."
Xiao Lou: "..."
Police officers are indeed professional!
"The school has surveillance cameras on every floor of its three teaching buildings, and there are also surveillance cameras in every classroom. The school's monitoring center is in the security room of Xingzhi Building. I took a look, and many of the cameras were broken."
Yu Hanjiang took out a blank notebook and a ballpoint pen, and started drawing on it. As he drew, he explained to Xiao Lou: "The cameras on the west side of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors of Chongwen Building, the camera on the east side of Siqi Building, the camera on the south side of Zhiyuan Building, and the cameras in Class 3 and 6 of Senior 3, Class 2 of Senior 2, Class 1 and 7 of Senior 1—the images of these cameras in the monitoring center are all black. I checked inside the teaching building, and the cameras are indeed broken."
Xiao Lou: "..."
The police are really something else. In such a short time, they managed to figure out the distribution of surveillance cameras in the three school buildings and even found all the broken cameras and blind spots!
Xiao Lou's eyes lit up, and he pointed to the distribution map, saying, "The security room can see all the school's surveillance cameras, so after school starts on Monday, our actions need to avoid these cameras, right?"
Yu Hanjiang nodded: "That's right. By operating in blind spots of surveillance cameras, we can minimize the chances of being discovered by security guards."
Xiao Lou was filled with admiration—if it weren't for Captain Yu, he wouldn't have immediately thought to check the school building's security footage, and might have been discovered by security during the operation. Of course, the security guards couldn't teleport to catch him, and even if he were discovered, he could find a way to escape by the time the guards arrived. But that was a last resort; after all, being chased by security guards was never a good thing, and the cloak also had limitations.
Yu Hanjiang's counter-surveillance skills are top-notch. With this criminal investigation expert by his side, Xiao Lou's confidence immediately increased.
Yu Hanjiang asked, "What did you discover?"
Xiao Lou said, "I walked around the school and have a general idea of its layout. I'll draw a map for you."
He took Yu Hanjiang's notebook and pen and quickly sketched all the buildings on the blank paper.
Xiao Lou has an exceptional memory and is very sensitive to graphics, so even if the floor plans he draws are not professional architectural designs, he can still roughly mark the shape, size, and distance of each building.
Yu Hanjiang looked at him approvingly: "When I entered this world, I was on the first floor of Xingzhi Building. I found that there was a problem with the surveillance. I went to check the surveillance first. I didn't have time to walk around the whole school."
The two worked together, one checking the interior of the school buildings and the other the overall layout of the school. They quickly got a general idea of what Fenglin High School was like. They each made copies of the surveillance map and campus map they had drawn in their notebooks and put them in their pockets for future reference, so they wouldn't get lost if they had to separate later.
Xiao Lou pointed to the tall building directly opposite the school gate and asked, "Have you gone up to Xingzhi Building?"
Yu Hanjiang shook his head: "I found the security guard's office on the first floor. There was a security guard on duty, but he was asleep. I wanted to come and find you first. I haven't checked the upper floors yet."
Xiao Lou thought for a moment and said, "The floating window reminded us that it's the weekend and school is closed, so we're to explore on our own. The setting of the sleeping security guard is definitely to help us figure out the school layout as quickly as possible. Why don't we go take a look together?"
Yu Hanjiang stood up decisively: "Let's go."
****