Puzzle Madness

Chapter 193 Levitation Technique (XI)

"Those first few shots seemed like cover fire, to conceal this one. Were they trying to silence us? Or did they use some other method to retreat?"

"I think it was transferred through this thing! It's for escaping, like teleportation or something."

He raised his hand and pointed in the direction from which the gun had been fired:
"There's no need to go through all this trouble just to silence them. The bullets came from outside. I checked, and it seems the fire was fired on the sidewalk."

Ai Xi tried her best to smooth her furrowed brows:
“I think so too. There are many more direct methods, such as replacing this finger with a live bullet; the first shot would kill.”

"There are no other bullets on the ground, and the walls haven't been checked yet—but I don't think they're that important, as they don't provide as much information as this [finger flick]; let's analyze this first."

She finally raised her head, her gaze following DouDou's fingers to the rows of iron bars.

“Our school has a standard 400-meter circular track and field; if you calculate it that way, it’s at least 150 meters from the outside of the school on the other side of the fence to here.”

"At this shooting distance, there are quite a few types of guns to choose from. The one I saw at your house last time—oh, it was mentioned in 'Mom's Arsenal'—has a lot of them; but it's not exactly close range, so it must have received proper military training."

DouDou picked up the spent cartridge fragment beside her finger and weighed it in her palm. The bullet wasn't a particularly complex design; it was simply encased within it.
"And they had to get through several obstacles? At least in terms of the plan, they had to get around the concrete pillars of the elevated floor, the iron gate, and the three of us; they must be very confident in their shooting skills."

"But why didn't I notice the bullet at first? Is there really such a thing as murderous intent? I don't understand."

"But the most crucial issue is still this—the problem of disappearing."

"It feels like a kind of madness, but not the fat guy's madness. He was just unconscious, and he could breathe out of his belly button. It's impossible for him to have multiple kinds of madness at the same time and be operating all at once."

The more he thought about it, the more itchy his head became, so he quickly scratched it with the tip of his fingernail:
"So what exactly are this gunman and the fat guy trying to do? It's all so inexplicable."

"This fat guy must be quite important, we need to [reclaim] him. You see, using these fingers as bullets won't get you many shots; so this kind of retreat also has its costs."

"I suspect the person with the transference obsession is a sinner, and this finger is some kind of ritual; you can use your own, or cut off someone else's, to perform this disappearance spell. Wait, if you can cut off someone else's, it's practically cost-free, right?"

"But this trick won't work on me next time. Don't even think about escaping. Consider it a cost of intelligence."

Ai Xi picked at the dead skin on her lips, lost in thought:
"As for this uncertainty, I agree more with your point about [limited ammunition] - if we could teleport remotely with near-unlimited speed, we could design and execute more complex plans; it wouldn't end so hastily now, and there would be no need to use other bullets for cover fire first."

"It's more likely that it will require some of your own body tissue for direct contact? And it needs to be of a certain size or weight, and there are also requirements for the location. Ah! Maybe it needs a human organ instead of human tissue, otherwise hair or clipped nails would also work."

DouDou raised her hand and placed her five fingers in the sunlight streaming in from outside the door:
“Hmm, that’s true. But! If we think about it this way, we can go a step further—look, it’s a knuckle, or even a thumb. It’s relatively fresh, not rotten or smelly; the blood smell is quite strong, it’s not the kind of stuff that’s been cut off and left out for a long time.”

“If you lose a piece of your thumb, it’s considered a very serious injury; it seems like the disability rating is higher than for other fingers. So why not use your little finger? I’ve seen movies where they chop off little fingers all the time, so it has less impact on life.” “Besides, it’s a finger! But the shooter’s shooting skills are pretty good—losing a few fingers would make it hard to shoot accurately! Without a thumb, it seems like you can’t even hold a pistol.”

"Then either they've already used up a lot of their body organs, like their toes and other fingers, and it's unlikely they can only use their thumbs as ammunition. The gunman was incredibly fast; I didn't even see him just now. His mobility is fine."

"Or maybe he has a psychopath who can make people disappear or move long distances by physical contact, and then he cuts this guy off piece by piece and launches him from a distance, using him as an ammunition box; so cutting off a finger doesn't affect him or make him feel bad. Hey! That makes sense."

Ai Xi stopped what she was doing, hesitated for a moment, and nodded to Dou Dou:

"I think there's nothing wrong with this speculation."

"Let's summarize what we already know: the smoke on the fat man's stomach confirms it's some kind of psychoactive substance? He's a psychoactive carrier, so we need to [recover] it; as for ordinary people, we don't need to go to such lengths. After all, even if we have some intelligence, we can't really use torture or truth serum to extract a confession."

"This was at least a combination of two psychedelic carriers, or a highly trained tactical executor with several psychedelics as tools or expendable resources. In other words, it was a premeditated attack that failed."
-
DouDou glanced at the screen, then started taking notes again, even switching to a different pen—a goldfish-like gaze.

"I think it's an experiment! Maybe it's just a test, preparing for a bigger conspiracy, like—what would happen if I had pressed it? Would there really have been a huge explosion?"

Ai Xi did not answer this time.

She simply grabbed a pair of repair pliers from the metal rack beside her, took a deep breath, and then abruptly pinched the finger:

"Nothing seems amiss. Is it because I haven't had direct contact with him? Or does it only work on that fat guy?"

Before Ai Xi picked up the fire tongs, Dou Dou had already moved close to her; ready to touch that knuckle at any moment if something unusual happened.

Then he widened his eyes, as if trying to see through the skin and into the secrets hidden beneath the fingers:

"Well, anyway—this is certainly only the initial stage of the operation. Whatever the purpose may be."

"It feels like they're testing what would happen if that fat guy—well, I should say the smoke coming out of his belly button—made direct contact with me?"

“I think the words ‘[pipeline]’ and ‘Please press’ written on his stomach were meant for me. If he wanted an ordinary person to press his stomach, he could just find someone on the street; if he wanted to test a psychopath to press his stomach, the gunman could do it himself or another psychopath around him; after all, there’s this finger that can be transferred.”

"Even if there is danger, it's not as dangerous as causing trouble for me; so this whole thing is just to test methods against me."

(End of this chapter)