Chapter 045
Jongharng Chioujen
Chioujen walked around the small rectangular building. At the rear, there was no door, but there was an iron staircase embedded in the building's wall. The iron ladder led to the roof of the small building.
"What is this?" Chioujen pointed at the iron ladder.
"Something we use to go up, Sir!" Hannrong answered innocently.
Of course it’s a ladder to get up there! However, that’s not the answer I wanted to hear!
"What's on the roof of this building?"
"I don't know, Sir! I've never been up there." Hannrong shook his head with a confused face.
Doubt clouded Chioujen's mind as he stared at the iron ladder. He still vividly remembered what had happened years ago. Chioujen's memories drifted far back. At that time, Chioujen had just moved to another city as his father's workplace moved. Chioujen's new house was located a bit on the outskirts of town, so there were still many vacant lands. The distance between one house and another was so wide.
The school where Chioujen studied was not far from home, so his father told Chioujen to walk on foot to school and return home. The journey from home to school only took about fifteen or twenty minutes. Chioujen, who by then had imitated Shannchyuan's walking speed, could cover the distance in ten or twelve minutes. That's why some of Chioujen's new friends find him strange.
Because there were some friends whose houses were in the same direction as Chioujen's house, Chioujen often walked home with them after class. However, Chioujen's unnatural walking speed made him always sprint away from his friends. This made some of Chioujen's friends dislike him. They thought Chioujen was too arrogant to hang out and joke with them.
There was a very large grass field in the middle of the journey between the school and Chioujen's house. Chioujen didn't know what the actual function of the field was. The people around there have never held any events or activities there. Chioujen and some of his friends always passed by that field. In fact, they could have taken another route, but because that route was the closest, they chose to walk that route.
At the end of the field, protruding deep into, was a small building of a rather odd shape. Chioujen had never crossed the field to take a close look at the building, so he didn't know what it was.
One day, when Chioujen arrived in front of the field. Some of Chioujen's friends were shouting loudly. Chioujen turned around. He saw his friends, who were far behind, signaling for Chioujen to stop walking. He then stopped to wait for his friends to arrive.
As soon as Chioujen's friends arrived, one of them, who was so big, took the school bag that Chioujen was carrying. The kid, carrying the bag, ran across the grass field, which was so wide. The rest of the friends, about eight or nine people, Chioujen forgot the exact number, trying to stop Chioujen when he was about to chase the kid who ran away with his school bag.
With great difficulty, Chioujen finally managed to catch up to the boy. But it was too late. The boy had arrived in front of the strange building at the end of the field. He threw Chioujen's bag onto the roof of the building. The boy's strength was so great that the bag landed right on the roof. The brat laughed and immediately ran away, leaving Chioujen, who could only stare in annoyance. Chioujen's friends, without wasting any more time, immediately left Chioujen alone there.
On the building wall, there was an iron ladder embedded in it. After hesitating for about ten minutes, Chioujen finally got up the courage to climb onto the roof up the ladder. He stomped his feet cautiously. When he almost reached the roof, one of the iron steps suddenly fell off. Maybe because it's fragile. Chioujen, who lost his balance, fell to the ground right away. He was unconscious.
When he opened his eyes, Chioujen found himself in the hospital. Chioujen's father and mother were at the bedside. The two of them looked at Chioujen with worried eyes. Chioujen's father said that when Chioujen didn't come home until the sun went down, he immediately followed the path Chioujen used to take to and from school. Fortunately, Chioujen's injury wasn't too serious, so after three days in the hospital, Chioujen was able to go home.
The physical injury that Chioujen suffered was not insignificant. But mentally, he was very hurt. Chioujen refused to go to school. He didn't want to meet his friends. When his friends came to Chioujen's house to apologize in person, Chioujen was also unwilling to accept them. Chioujen was only ready to go to school again when his father finally transferred Chioujen to another school that was located opposite the previous school.
It took about two years for Chioujen to be able to forgive his friends. He had no longer blamed his friends, but the damage had already been done. Chioujen got scared every time he had to climb the iron ladder like that.
Chioujen took a deep breath as he stared intently at the iron bars. The iron ladder seemed quite sturdy. Dafeisy Tower was relatively new, so Chioujen felt that all parts of the building were still very usable. Everything was still good. There was nothing for him to worry about. After thinking for a while, he ventured up the courage to climb onto the roof of the small building that houses the service lift.
Arriving at the top, he called out to Hannrong. "Come on! You come up here too!"
From above, Chioujen could see Hannrong looking up. He looked at Chioujen with wide eyes. His face was full of doubt.
"It's all right! Come on! There's something you need to see here!"
Chioujen's persuasion worked brilliantly. Hannrong was willing to follow Chioujen. He climbed up through the iron ladder embedded in the building's wall. In an instant, Hannrong was at the top. At that time, Chioujen was in one corner of the back of the building on the roof of the Dafeisy Tower.
"You see this!" Chioujen stood up while pointing at the floor he was standing on. He stepped on an iron plate that seemed to be the lid of a hole. The plate was locked.
Hannrong then crouched down on the iron plate. He tapped it with his knuckle.
"Come on, now let's open this plate!" Chioujen launched those words excitedly.
"I don't have the key to this padlock, Sir!"
"That's in your hands. There are many keys!" Chioujen pointed at the object in Hannrong's hand.
"True Sir! But not the key to this padlock?"
"Do you memorize all those keys in your hand?"
"No, Sir!"
"Then how can you be sure that there isn't a single key in there that can open this lock?"
Hannrong was silent. He seemed at a loss for words to answer.
I don't know if this kid really doesn't know, or he's just pretending!
"Here! Let me try." Chioujen took the string of keys from Hannrong's hand. Then he tried the keys one by one. After more than twenty attempts, there was finally a key that could open the lock.
"Ha ha ha!" Chioujen exclaimed. "Now, let's open this iron plate!"
They were both still young, so without exerting all their strength, they could easily open the lid of the hole. The inside was a booth. Although the top of the building was about four meters from the roof of the building, the cubicle under the hole was not deep. The bottom of the booth was less than two meters from the hole they had just opened. Chioujen immediately jumped inside.
"Be careful, Sir!" Hannrong exclaimed.
"Don't worry Hannrong. I'm used to jumping around like this. You see, I'm okay, right?" Chioujen answered as soon as he landed in the booth.
The light coming in from the hole was enough to make Chioujen observe the booth. It turned out that the length and width of the cubicle were different from the length and width of the building above the service elevators. The size of this cubicle was only about four and a half meters by two and a half meters. So indeed, this booth was a space at the back of the service elevators.
In front of Chioujen was a staircase going down. This was very similar to the emergency stairs in the building. Only the stairs in this cubicle were much smaller. The cubicle part, which was the staircase, covered half of the cubicle. So the back of one service elevator was in the form of stairs, while the back of the other service elevator was an empty place that Chioujen didn't know its function. But what was clear was that the place could function as a place to rest.
"Hannrong! There are stairs going down here. I'll try to go down this ladder."
Hannrong stuck his head in the hole. "Isn't it dangerous, Sir?"
"It's all right! Dafeisy Tower is a new building. It was only built a few years ago, right? Now, can you please find some rope? So that later I can more easily climb out of this hole above!"
"Okay, Sir! I'll be down for a while looking for ropes."
"A little time is okay, too. Maybe it will take me quite a bit of time to explore each floor below," Chioujen said.
"Okay, Sir!"
"You don't have to close the hole. So, let there be light in here."
"Yes, Sir!"
Soon after that, Hannrong disappeared from Chioujen's sight. Chioujen realized he couldn't trust Hannrong one hundred percent. But no one else was there. If not Hannrong, who else should Chioujen turn to for help? After all, the problem of the secret room in this building was not something that should be covered up.
Chioujen took out his flashlight. He pressed the button to turn on the flashlight. Right now, he was feeling very excited. He moved down the stairs carefully. It turned out that it differed from the height of each floor in this building, which reached four meters. The height of each floor in the cubicle behind the service elevator was only two meters. So each floor in the building was equivalent to two floors in the booth.
Chioujen patiently descended the stairs. On every floor, the situation was exactly the same. There were only stairs and an empty booth next to it. Nothing else. The lower he went, the darker the place. The light from the hole above didn't even reach the floor where Chioujen was currently at. Good thing the flashlight was new. The battery was also new. So Chioujen wasn't worried at all. At least, for the time being.
About fifteen or twenty minutes later, Chioujen felt he was already on the ground floor. Of course, it was very possible that Chioujen had miscalculated. But it wasn't a big problem because Chioujen wanted to see where the stairs ended. Excitedly, he continued down the stairs. After descending a few floors, according to Chioujen's calculations, he should be on the B3 floor by now. But, there were still stairs going down in front of him. Meaning that it was confirmed that there was still a floor under the B3 floor. And that floor could be reached by stairs in front of him. Before continuing down to the next floor, Chioujen checked the booth beside the stairs.
Chioujen discovered something new. Unlike the rooms on the previous floors, which were completely empty, there was a couch in the cubicle next to the stairs. In front of the couch, there was a table. He put off his plan to go down to the next floor. Chioujen then sat down on the couch. With his hand, Chioujen touched the surface of the table. Both the couch and the table were relatively clean. Chioujen then tried to lie there. He fiddled with his flashlight to highlight the entire interior of the small room.
Chioujen tried to remember what he witnessed when he was on the B3 floor. The stairs end on the B3 floor. Based on the design drawn in the floor plan, there should still be stairs leading down. However, it could be that the stairs down had been dismantled. Many rooms on the B3 floor were locked. Some rooms were quite large. It was very possible that the staircase leading to the lower floor had been moved into one of the locked rooms. If that's the case, Chioujen needed to open all the rooms to find the position of the stairs.
This was impossible because it turned out that Hannrong didn't have all the keys to the rooms on the basement floors. However, at that time, Chioujen didn't have to bother looking for the keys to these rooms anymore. In front of his eyes, there was another way to descend to the B4 floor. The small staircase in the small room was probably a secret passage to reach the B4 floor, apart from the official staircase in one of the locked rooms on the B3 floor.
Chioujen suddenly remembered that Hannrong was most likely waiting for him on the roof of the building. He quickly got up and walked down the stairs.
This must be the floor between floor B4 and floor B3! I'll call this the B3B floor.
Just like the cubicle on the B3 floor, there was a couch and table in the booth next to the stairs. Now, Chioujen didn't stop what he did to trying to sit on the couch. He went straight down again to the next floor. Chioujen was excited to go to the floor, which was called the B4 floor in the building plan.
There was no couch in the cubicle next to the stairs on the B4 floor. There was only a door. For a moment, Chioujen hesitated about what to do. On the one hand, he wanted to open the door right away and face whatever he came across behind it. On the other, he realized he couldn't keep Hannrong waiting too long. After pondering, Chioujen decided to go upstairs first. He didn't know what he would find behind that door. Later, he will return with much more mature preparations.
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