Jiang Ming irritably stuffed the collected dog fur into a black plastic bag, then hid it away inside a drawer in his bedroom. He even dragged a stool over to block the drawer; after all, the rules explicitly stated not to let the dog discover the dog fur.
Only after hiding it securely did he open the refrigerator to select his lunch.
Because the incident with those two White Abominations was still vividly seared into his mind, his lunch was merely a simple bowl of boiled noodles and luncheon meat.
First, he filled the pot with water and ignited the gas stove. Following that, Jiang Ming immediately retreated from the kitchen, vigilantly scanning his surroundings.
After confirming there were zero anomalies and estimating the water temperature was just about right, he darted back in to add the noodles and luncheon meat, before retreating from the kitchen once more.
He executed all of this out of sheer dread that those two monsters might block the door; after all, one of them had materialised right inside this very kitchen just this noon.
Although their performance had been somewhat underwhelming, sailing a ship with absolute caution guarantees a ten-thousand-year voyage.
Yet, from the moment Jiang Ming finished boiling his noodles to the moment he polished them off, those two monstrosities never manifested again. Jiang Ming was more than happy to enjoy the tranquillity.
Just as Jiang Ming gathered his rubbing alcohol and bandages, preparing to return to his room, the knocking at the door erupted once more.
Hearing this painfully familiar thumping, Jiang Ming felt as if calluses were about to form on his eardrums. He had simply heard this noise far too many times over the past two days, and his initial panic had already thoroughly decayed into utter apathy.
Jiang Ming had zero desire to entertain it. Just as he spun around to leave, the ear-piercing screech of fingernails raking across the door and a shrill wail drifted in:
“Little Ming, hurry! Hurry up and give me a human heart! I cannot take it anymore!!”
However, the absolute instant Jiang Ming turned to leave, a sudden, agonising jolt of heart-piercing pain violently assaulted his chest, causing him to instantly lose his balance and plummet to his knees.
The agony felt exactly like a serrated blade relentlessly carving into his heart, rendering him virtually incapable of drawing a single breath.
The excruciating pain surged in violent, relentless waves, compounding atop one another. Beads of sweat the size of soybeans rolled down his forehead, dripping onto the carpet to form tiny, damp stains.
He desperately attempted to cover his ears, but the voice seemed to effortlessly pierce straight through his palms, stabbing directly into his brain.
“What… what is going on…”
Jiang Ming viciously gritted his teeth. Struggling to prop himself up against the wall, he dragged his feet toward the bedroom step by agonising step. Every single movement felt as if it were draining the absolute last ounce of strength from his physical vessel.
A distance of a few mere metres ordinarily felt as brief as a fleeting breath, yet right now, it stretched on like hundreds of torturous metres.
But Jiang Ming refused to surrender. Jaw clenched tight, he inched forward, step by step.
Finally, he arrived at the bedroom doorway. Expending every last shred of his remaining strength, he pushed the door open.
Smack!
As the bedroom door slammed shut, the vast majority of the noise outside was instantly severed.
Jiang Ming viscerally felt the agonising pain in his heart recede by more than half.
“Haa, haa…”
Collapsing into his chair, Jiang Ming gasped greedily for air, his complexion deathly pale and his head drenched in copious sweat.
Only after several dozen minutes had passed and the Uncle Li outside the door finally departed did Jiang Ming completely relax his tautly wound nerves.
“Is this the devastating price of violating a promise?”
Jiang Ming murmured to himself as he slumped paralysed in his chair. If he had remained stranded in the corridor without the dual layers of protection from the front door and the bedroom door, he likely would have been tortured to death by sheer agony!
Another gruelling half hour slipped by. Jiang Ming took a sip of water, his mental state barely recovering enough for him to begin pondering the profound connection between the two Uncle Lis.
When that fake Uncle Li knocked on the door just now, he had caught a glimpse of the clock; it was exactly 12:30 PM. Furthermore, the times at which these two Uncle Lis manifested were always staggered. The source of this chapter is novelping(.)com.
The two of them absolutely never appeared at the exact same moment. This heavily implied that they were highly likely the exact same entity.
Then what governed their alternating appearances? Was it time?
The true Uncle Li appears in the morning, and the fake Uncle Li appears at noon?
This deduction flawlessly aligned with today's circumstances.
Yet, he had already encountered the fake Uncle Li once yesterday morning, and after returning home in the afternoon, the fake Uncle Li had manifested yet again. How could that be explained?
“No, that is completely wrong!”
Rule Set Four explicitly stated that he had two neighbours, which meant these two Uncle Lis absolutely should not be the same person!
Was his deduction fundamentally flawed, or was that rule completely false from the very beginning?
Jiang Ming faintly sensed that uncovering the esoteric relationship between these two Uncle Lis would be astronomically helpful in shattering this Rule-Based Anomaly. Yet, he was consistently missing a pivotal node, exactly like needing one final password to unlock the ultimate secrets of this house.
Thinking up to this point, Jiang Ming viciously massaged his temples before unleashing a miserable groan.
It was far too agonising. It felt exactly like staring at his own reflection through a heavily fogged mirror; he could never see the crystalline truth, forever lacking the critical means to wipe the fog away.
Casting a glance at the bandages on his left hand, Jiang Ming began unravelling them. He sprayed rubbing alcohol, applied a fresh layer of medicine, and wrapped it securely in a brand-new bandage.
Having completed all this, Jiang Ming stared at the soiled bandages. Acting with supreme caution, he dumped all the discarded dressings into the toilet and flushed them away.
Returning to his bedroom with peace of mind, he reverently picked up those three ‘holy tomes'. He firmly believed he had definitely overlooked some monumentally critical detail.
Thus, he began to calculate. “If I were the original owner setting the password, exactly how would I conceal it within these pages?”
Jiang Ming began meticulously profiling the original owner. This individual despised studying. The drawer housed a quilt and gravure idols, wads of tissue littered the space beneath the bed, and these three books were flipped to the point of absolute ruin, proving he cherished reading them dearly.
So, if an individual hopelessly addicted to vulgar, degenerate pleasures wanted to hide a password within these three books, exactly what would he do?
Would he hide it within the page numbers of the dog-eared corners?
It was a possibility, but he had already exhausted every conceivable numerical combination derived from them. So what other bizarre anomaly existed?
Was it the explicit sex scenes printed on every single dog-eared page?
This was highly probable, but how exactly would one hide it there?
Aside from every page containing a sex scene, was there any other profound commonality?
Jiang Ming flipped through the books while plunging into bitter contemplation.
Finally, at a certain infinitesimal moment, his gaze locked onto a character's name printed upon the page. A brilliant flash of understanding struck his mind, and he began frantically flipping through the books:
“Bai Jie, Bai Jiemei, Ye Lian, Mei Yue, Tang Yuefu, Gu Hongmian…”
As one character name after another surfaced, Jiang Ming finally understood!
“Hahahaha, I am an absolute, unparalleled genius!! I finally know exactly how that degenerate former owner set his password!!”
Rapidly flipping through every single dog-eared page across all three books, Jiang Ming silently tallied the count, before scribbling a string of numbers onto a piece of paper.
Staring at this numerical sequence, Jiang Ming was brimming with absolute confidence. This time, he was guaranteed to succeed!
He strode confidently to the metal cabinet, inputted the password, and twisted the dial. Accompanied by a crisp click, the cabinet… remained completely shut. Find the original chapter at g.com.
The air suddenly plunged into dead silence.
Jiang Ming's body stiffened fractionally.
What was going on?
This shouldn't be happening?
It made absolutely no sense!
Jiang Ming unleashed a barrage of bewildered questions. Refusing to succumb to this heresy, he scrambled the numerical sequence and tried again, yet he still failed completely.
But very quickly, recalling the intricate details within the books, he formulated an astronomically abstract conjecture. He could not help but suck in a sharp breath of cold air, muttering:
“It couldn't possibly be this grotesquely abstract, could it?! But considering the absolute degenerate who previously owned this room, it isn't entirely impossible!”
After flipping through the books and tallying the count once more, Jiang Ming derived a brand-new string of digits. Slowly inputting the password, he twisted the dial. With a crisp click, the iron cabinet was finally opened.
Staring at the solitary notebook lying quietly within, Jiang Ming was moved to the point of absolute tears. All the monumental effort he had poured into this endeavour had not been in vain; he had finally succeeded.
Jiang Ming sighed with profound emotion. Forcing himself to adopt the mindset of that vulgar, degenerate former owner had indeed proven flawlessly effective.
Since the dog-eared page numbers were not the key, the actual contents had to be the crux.
Yet, the contents were nothing more than insipid, uninspired descriptions of reproductive activities. Neither he nor his fellow literature enthusiasts enjoyed reading them; they provided zero nutritional value.
So why did the original owner deliberately dog-ear them?
Was it purely because they contained sex scenes?
But aside from these specific pages, there were numerous other locations within the books containing equally explicit scenes.
However, very quickly, bolstered by the masterful experience Jiang ‘Sherlock Holmes' Ming had accumulated from thoroughly scrutinising these books multiple times, he discovered a singular, profound commonality among all these dog-eared pages.
That was, the female characters featured on these dog-eared pages were all making their first appearances!
The very first instance they engaged in sexual intercourse within the narrative was meticulously marked, whereas any subsequent sexual encounters were entirely ignored by the original owner!
This was a monumental discovery!
Therefore, Jiang Ming attained enlightenment. He counted every single female character who debuted within the dog-eared folds of the three books. Each book yielded a single digit, and combining all three generated a flawless password string.
Yet, just as Jiang Ming brimming with confidence inputted the password, reality delivered a ruthless, resounding slap across his face. The password was wrong, and no matter how he scrambled the sequence, it remained entirely useless.
Jiang Ming began to profoundly doubt himself.
But then he recalled the unfathomable depths of the former owner's degeneracy, formulating a daring, heaven-shaking conjecture:
Was it remotely possible that those dog-eared pages did not exclusively feature female characters?!
Thus, Jiang Ming resumed his frantic search. Sure enough, he discovered several other entities lurking within those dog-eared pages, such as:
HRT femboys, natty femboys, monkey girls…
When these specific characters were tallied and added to the sequence, the resulting numbers perfectly aligned to form the correct password!
While lamenting his own arduous struggles, Jiang Ming simultaneously gained an entirely new, transcendent understanding of the former owner's abstract, twisted perversion.
After exhaling his grievances, Jiang Ming extracted the black notebook resting inside. He began to meticulously peruse it; the contents within should be fully capable of threading his fragmented clues together.
However, abruptly recalling the former owner's grotesque level of degeneracy, Jiang Ming could only pray fervently in his heart that this notebook did not contain yet another pornographic novel!