Chapter 51: Graffiti |
"A puzzle, huh..." Bai Mu sat down, flipping back and forth through the diary.
Since the notification from Paradise had chimed, it meant he was on the right track. The key to the mission lay somewhere within Lucy's diary.
He held up his flashlight and skimmed through the journal once more. No matter how he looked at it, the sentences composed of simple, everyday words did not seem to hide any secret messages.
This was merely the diary of a nine-year-old girl, not a federal agent's codebook. It was highly unlikely to contain any advanced or complex cryptography—unless Lucy happened to be a famous Detective trapped in a shrunken body. Judging from the information he had gathered so far, the chances of that were absolutely zero.
If the puzzle was not hidden within her daily entries about food and mundane activities, then it had to be concealed within Lucy's doodles.
Under normal circumstances, a nine-year-old girl would only be in the third grade and wouldn't have mastered a wide vocabulary yet. For a child her age, expressing complex thoughts and emotions was far easier to do through drawings than through words.
Many children shared this habit, using scribbles that only they could decipher as secret codes. They would occasionally fantasize about someone approaching them with those exact same doodles, claiming, "I am your future self. The future world has been destroyed by demons, so I traveled back in time to help you find a way to save it."
Bai Mu committed Lucy's drawings to memory, carefully comparing the relationships between the lines and patterns.
The doodles Lucy made when she was happy were extremely straightforward. He could generally tell what they represented at a single glance. For instance, on the day her mother brought home a cake, she had used a pink crayon to sketch a messy birthday cake.
However, the scribbles she made when she was in a bad mood were much more abstract.
One page was violently pierced with tiny pencil holes, while others featured chaotic tangles of overlapping circles. Sometimes, Lucy had just drawn a cluster of long rectangles and square grids.
"Could the clue be on those two torn pages?" Bai Mu flipped to the very end of the notebook.
Although the pages had been ripped out, he could accurately guess what had been written on them.
Lucy would occasionally write in her journal, quietly expressing how much she missed her father. Her mother forbade her from mentioning him at home. Given her young age, Lucy simply could not comprehend why her parents had separated. She only knew that whenever she brought up her dad or asked why he would not come home, her mother would burst into tears.
Children were surprisingly adept survivors. Lacking the ability to acquire resources on their own, they instinctively learned to read the moods and expressions of the adults around them.
Lucy stopped mentioning her father in front of her mother, but she continued to pour her longing into her diary.
It was highly likely that her mother had discovered the journal and found out that her daughter had been secretly longing for the man who had hurt her so deeply. Blinded by anger, she must have ripped those two pages straight out.
Following this logic, there was no actual need to find those missing pages. Their contents were easy to deduce—just Lucy's daily ramblings. Her mother had probably crumpled them up and tossed them into some unknown trash bin.
Bai Mu shifted his attention to the doodles at the very end of the diary. It was the final sketch Lucy had made after crying, which tragically also served as the very last drawing of her entire life.
This nine-year-old girl had been infected by the virus at a children's amusement park roughly twelve miles away, mutating into a horrifying Witch.
Bai Mu could vividly envision the scene. Lucy and her mother had a massive argument, resulting in the two diary pages being torn out.
Lucy had likely bawled her eyes out. Witnessing this, her mother might have felt a twinge of guilt, but her pride wouldn't let her back down. She had probably thrown the notebook to the floor before storming out of the bedroom.
Afterward, Lucy sat there, tears streaming down her face as she drew these final scribbles.
What was she thinking at that moment? Was she feeling wronged and heartbroken? Or was she simply terrified by her mother's screaming?
Bai Mu mentally organized the square grids and lines from the doodles. He glanced down at his feet, and a sudden realization washed over him.
He crouched down and began counting the wooden floorboards. The beam of his flashlight cast a stark white halo against the ceiling. Bai Mu tilted his head back, examining the desk, the wardrobe, and everything else in the room.
Those crooked, chaotic lines suddenly clicked into a clear map inside his mind. Clutching the diary, he stepped out of the guest bedroom and made his way down the stairs to the ground floor.
A warm fire was crackling in the living room on the ground floor. To prevent the light from bleeding outside, all the heavy curtains had been drawn shut. There was no need to open a window for ventilation; the old house was equipped with its own chimney, thanks to a long-abandoned fireplace built right into the main hall.
Great Northern Wilderness was currently busy frying noodles in a cast-iron skillet. He unscrewed a bottle of mineral water, squeezed in the tomato sauce that came with the pasta, and popped open a can of pork and peas. The skillet was absolutely brimming with noodles, and the resulting aroma was incredibly appetizing.
Beneath the skillet sat a makeshift stove constructed from garden bricks and an oven tray. The remains of the dining table had suffered a tragic fate, splintered into pieces to serve as firewood. Nancheng Port had dragged over a child's high chair and was sitting directly in front of the hearth. He used a metal water pipe as a makeshift poker, prodding the burning wood to improve airflow. This technique ensured the fire burned brighter and hotter while minimizing the thick black smoke.
While the brothers were busy cooking the noodles, Misty Rain Traveler tore open the packaging of a frozen pizza. She held it up and gave it a cautious sniff.
"Bacon and sausage, is it?" She swiped her finger against the cheese topping and gave it a quick taste test.
Judging by her reaction, it didn't taste too bad—at the very least, it hadn't spoiled. Nodding in satisfaction, she used a metal spatula to slide the frozen pizza onto the baking tray positioned beneath their makeshift stove.
Seeing Bai Mu walk down the stairs, she nodded in his direction and asked, "How did it go? Did you find anything useful?"
Bai Mu held up the diary. "The puzzle is hidden in here. Sorry, I'm going to have to borrow the flashlight for a little while longer."
"Don't worry about it," Misty Rain Traveler replied. "I found a stash of batteries in the living room that fit perfectly, so you can use it for as long as you need. But this puzzle in the diary... do you mind if I take a look?"
She was genuinely curious. Besides, it was currently their designated rest period, and there wasn't much else to do to pass the time.
Bai Mu handed the notebook over. "The crucial clue lies in the scribbles on the very last page."
Misty Rain Traveler flipped straight to the designated page. "How do you know these doodles hold the answer? Have you already solved the puzzle and completed the mission?"
"Not yet, but I'm getting close."
Using the flickering firelight, Bai Mu analyzed the layout of the ground floor. He swept his flashlight across the room, eventually coming to a halt on the floorboards directly in front of the television. He reached out, running his fingers over the brickwork on the adjacent wall.
It didn't take long for him to find a loose brick hidden just behind the television set. With a firm tug, he slid it out to reveal a hidden cavity. The bathroom was located right on the other side of this wall, and an empty space had been hollowed out between the two partitions. Reaching his hand into the dark gap, Bai Mu pulled out a black plastic bag.
[Side Quest "Useless Waiting" has been updated.]
[Mission objective updated: Inspect the items hidden by Lucy.]