Chapter 50: Self-Defense

Li Cheng rinsed the key with the current, waded through seawater up to his chest, returned to the model ship, and inserted the key into the lock.

Click.

The key lodged firmly in the lock, and the door opened at once.

The interior was dimly lit; the captain’s corpse was likewise coated in epoxy resin, frozen in a rigid smile. Behind it stood a tall wooden cabinet, all its drawers sealed shut and impossible to open.

In the center sat a broken marine chronometer, its hands frozen, showing London time as 17:06.

On the wooden table before the captain lay a finely crafted metal instrument, and beneath it, written in blood, were words.

【Board the bow, grip the helm, noon has come—hoist the sails and set sail!】

The Killing Field’s script tasks automatically translated text, projecting meaning directly into the player’s mind to resolve communication barriers.

This was, in a sense, a balancing strategy—the Killing Field never issued impossible tasks; task difficulty always fell within the player’s capacity to solve.

Without this thoughtful translation patch, a scenario would arise: a low-IQ player, precisely because they understood nothing, faced a solo task of lower difficulty than one generated for a high-IQ player—an obvious unfairness.

The Killing Field needed a team of well-rounded enforcers—physically, intellectually, morally, aesthetically, and laboriously skilled (though perhaps lacking in morality and aesthetics)—not just muscle-bound brutes.

Li Cheng picked up the metal instrument: it consisted of a 144° arc, an index arm, a movable mirror, a fixed mirror, a telescope, and a micrometer wheel—known as a sextant, essentially a handheld angular measuring device, essential for determining latitude aboard ships during the Age of Sail.

The sextant’s index arm and micrometer wheel were both set to zero; the telescope was merely decorative, lacking any magnifying function.

Li Cheng suddenly realized something: a sextant without a telescope, the words “noon has come” on the table, the broken marine chronometer.

So that’s how it was.

He picked up the sextant and strode out of the cabin to the ship’s bow, where the helm stood.

As a member of the Astronomy Club, Li Cheng knew how to determine a photo’s location by identifying constellations and the shooting time, and he knew how to use a sextant.

He pulled the sextant’s index arm, adjusted the movable mirror and micrometer wheel, and pointed the telescope toward the spotlight mounted high on the ceiling.

Since no sunlight could be seen indoors, that spotlight was the so-called “sun.”

The latitude of the observation point equals the celestial body’s zenith distance (90 degrees minus its altitude above the horizon) plus its declination.

Calculated: 20 degrees north latitude.

As for longitude, it was provided by the marine chronometer.

The chronometer showed London time as 5 p.m. Since sextant measurements for latitude assume noon by default, and the captain’s table explicitly stated “noon has come,” the local time could be roughly estimated as 12:00.

The chronometer showed London time as 5 p.m., a five-hour difference; each hour corresponds to 15 degrees of longitude, so the current longitude was 75.9 degrees west.

The chronometer’s damage and frozen hands were clearly part of the puzzle—if it had been functional, players who delayed too long would have obtained inaccurate readings.

Thus, both latitude and longitude were determined: 20 degrees north, 75.9 degrees west.

Li Cheng jumped off the sailboat, swam through two and a half meters of seawater, reached the room’s exit, and turned the dial lock, inputting the numbers 20-759.

Click—

The lock opened immediately; the metal panel rose automatically, revealing a narrow, elongated passage just wide enough for one person to pass.

The passage sloped upward, so although the room was flooded, no turbulent whirlpools formed.

Li Cheng swam into the passage, climbed out as the metal panel behind him slowly descended, and entered the next room.

“Phew, finally out.”

Drenched in seawater, he shook his hair, still clutching the heavy sextant.

Theoretically, the principle of designing a puzzle room was “do not multiply entities beyond necessity”—too many clues or usable items would confuse players with excessive options.

It also prevented players with unconventional thinking from combining clues outside the intended design to force their way through.

For example, the star-shaped key Li Cheng used to open the captain’s cabin—once the door opened, if the key remained stuck in the lock and could not be removed, that meant it had fulfilled its purpose and need not be carried further.

Another example: a metal magnetic rod, intended to let players use its magnetic property to retrieve a key placed inside a long container, unreachable by hand.

Yet some players with overwhelming physical strength simply used the rod to knock out the guard at the room’s end, bypassing the puzzle entirely.

While such methods weren’t technically invalid, fairness required preventing them.

Speaking of which, Li Cheng kept the sextant simply because it was heavy and had sharp edges—useful for self-defense if danger arose.

Lately, he’d been browsing various martial arts online, absorbing techniques from all styles: kung fu, sanda, muay thai, jujitsu, swordsmanship, and even Master Chen Hegao’s unrestricted combat system.

In emergencies, he could use everyday objects like a steel ruler, scissors, or a metal flute for defense.

After all, he had already entered the transcendent realm; fighting with his bare body might accidentally kill an ordinary person.

“By the way, 20 degrees north, 75.9 degrees west—that should be Cuba. Does the location of the previous room’s measurement mean anything?”

Li Cheng muttered softly, observing the room before him.

The second room was even smaller than the last. Its interior was cozy: beige curtains, brown carpet, leather sofas, bookshelves filled with books, a fireplace burning wood, and a red telephone on the coffee table.

It looked no different from a typical middle-class living room.

The only anomaly was the window: the frame was sealed shut, yet through it, one could see flashing lights and a bustling urban scene outside.

Was this puzzle room installed inside a skyscraper?

(End of chapter)