Chapter 3: The Reasoning Begins

“Damn, you nearly scared me to death!”

The live stream chat exploded at that sudden shout.

“What did he just yell? Does he actually know how to get out?”

“Attention seeker! This guy must be out of his mind—one moment he’s playing dead, next he’s screaming. I’m unfollowing, this is boring!”

“Exactly! If he can really get out of that locked room, I’ll eat crap while doing a handstand—live!”

Thanks to Chen Yu’s abrupt cry, the chat surged with activity, reaching a new peak.

Inside the production truck, the director stared fixedly at the backend data, his heart racing with the wild fluctuations of the online viewership graph—more thrilling than any roller coaster.

From a few million at first, numbers had skyrocketed to a staggering ten million when the kid “came back to life.” Then, after he went quiet for a while, viewers dropped to just over five million. But now, with that single sentence—“I know how to get out!”—the numbers miraculously rebounded, shooting up toward seven million!

Yes, in less than a minute, most of the lost audience had returned.

The director’s blood pressure was now completely in sync with the viewership graph, rising and falling in wild swings.

“This kid… he actually gets entertainment value, doesn’t he?”

Host Lin Bing glanced at the screen and couldn’t help but whisper to the director, trying to lighten the tense mood.

“Hmph. Let’s see what trick he’s going to pull.” The director’s brows remained furrowed, though a flicker of anticipation rose inside him.

At that moment, Chen Yu’s body stilled once more—at least, that’s how it looked to outsiders. But his mind was running at lightning speed, working furiously.

Just before he’d shouted, he’d used the system’s “Recall” function, exploring nearly every spot in the room that might have triggered a key memory. The flashes of memory that surfaced were tangled and chaotic, leaving him dizzy.

The room was littered with traces of the original inhabitant’s despair—marks left behind in this sealed space. Yet those traces were all painfully similar: sometimes, the previous occupant was curled on the floor, hollow-eyed, staring blankly at a photograph on the wall; other times, he was desperately gnawing at patches of moss in the corners and between the tiles.

Piecing together these disturbing images with the investigative logic honed in four years at police academy, Chen Yu quickly deduced several key points:

First, the original occupant had an obsessive fixation on the woman in the photograph.

Second, he’d been trapped here for a very long time—so long that hunger had nearly destroyed his sanity. Normally, after four to six hours without food, hunger sets in, but it’s still manageable. To reach the point of eating moss out of desperation, how many days must he have been trapped?

But here was an illogical anomaly: Chen Yu himself felt no hunger at all! On the contrary, he felt better than ever—full of energy, ready to run or jump.

And, most crucially, if the original had survived for days on moss, his hands—indeed, his whole body—should be filthy, or at least show obvious signs of grime.

Chen Yu looked down at his hands—they were spotless. Not a trace of moss or dirt beneath his nails.

His mind was a chaotic tangle, stray thoughts flooding in. Just moments ago, he’d been drinking and feasting with friends; now, he’d apparently transmigrated and awakened some system. How could he possibly focus on deduction? Never mind being locked in this hellhole—he’d be distracted even if he were surrounded by beautiful women. Like Yua Mikami… Minami Aizawa… Shion Yumi… Yua Mikami…

“Damn it, what am I even thinking?”

The priority now was to get out of this damned room!

He slapped himself, forcibly dragging his mind back to the task at hand.

He moved to the door, examining the only apparent exit once more—a heavy, unremarkable iron door with a metal bar across it. He’d already checked the bar: from the inside, there was no way to shift it and open the door. Clearly, it was locked from the outside.

One odd detail: the iron door was set in a wooden frame.

“Iron door… wooden frame…” Chen Yu muttered, reaching out to touch the rough wood.

Buzz.

A familiar wave of dizziness washed over him, vision going black.

The “Recall” sequence began again.

This time, the scene made Chen Yu’s heart lurch and his throat tighten.

The vision was of the original inhabitant, furiously kicking and pounding the wooden frame with all his might. But the frame was unexpectedly sturdy—it didn’t budge, no matter how hard he struck.

Just as Chen Yu thought the vision was ending, a sudden change occurred: sound emerged, hoarse and weak but full of resentment. From his own perspective, he realized the words were coming from his own throat.

“Damn wind! Are you… are you really trying to kill me?!”

The vision abruptly ended.

“Wind?”

“There’s no wind outside…” he muttered, pressing his ear to the door—nothing.

“Wait!”

Chen Yu’s pupils contracted. An audacious, almost absurd idea formed in his mind.

This was an abandoned room; the outer locking bar had been exposed for years and must be loose. If, after the original entered, a sudden gust of wind slammed the heavy iron door shut… could the impact have jarred the loose bar into place from the outside?

A chill ran down his spine as the implication set in. How unlucky must the original have been, to get trapped by such a freak accident?

So—how could he possibly lift the bar from inside?

“Damn it! Not a single usable tool on this guy!” Chen Yu quickly checked his own pockets again. Apart from his somewhat old-fashioned dress pants and white shirt, he was empty-handed.

“Didn’t this guy ever use the internet? Didn’t he watch short videos? Where’s his phone?!”

“Why complicate things when a simple emergency call would do?”

Looking at his attire, he realized it was definitely dated, but surely no more than twenty years old. Even if he’d really traveled back more than a decade, cell phones were already ubiquitous then!

Was the original some kind of hermit?

“Looks like I’ll have to figure this out myself.”

Chen Yu abandoned his complaints and steeled himself for reality.

His gaze naturally settled on the room’s only actual “object”—the wooden picture frame.

Meanwhile, the number of viewers online was climbing again—showing signs of breaking the ten million mark once more.

In the production truck, the director finally let out a long, relieved breath, his nerves relaxing a little.

He’d been right to bet on this! The allure of high-level mystery and deduction would always triumph over cheap supernatural gimmicks. That shout just now was masterful—it had pulled the audience’s anticipation to a fever pitch.

At this moment, everyone wanted to see what outlandish method this “revived” actor would use to escape a room that had once claimed a life.

As the director—and millions of viewers—watched the screen, holding their breath, Chen Yu finally moved.