Into Trap of Fire Chapter 2

Thirty seconds had passed by the time Jason Bai finished reading the instructions.

There is an hourglass-shaped icon on the upper right corner of the phone, and a countdown is displayed below the icon.

Thirty minutes may seem like a lot of time, but no one knows exactly how many pieces of the puzzle there are that need to be completed.

Time was running out, so Jason Bai didn't talk to this group of randomly matched players. He stood up, walked to the desk behind him, opened a drawer and started checking.

Seeing someone leave, the others lost interest in talking. They left their seats and each found a place to look for the item.

The desk that Jason Bai searched had two drawers. He originally thought that the puzzle would be difficult to find, but unexpectedly, when he opened the second drawer, he found a shuffled puzzle lying quietly in the drawer.

"The game difficulty is displayed as 'easy', but is it really that easy?"

Jason Bai scanned the base of the puzzle and found that the one he found was a 7*9 puzzle with a total of 63 pieces.

Generally speaking, it takes an average person about 15 minutes to complete a 63-piece puzzle. As long as you are not mentally retarded, even the dumbest person can finish it within 20 minutes. The game gives a full 30 minutes, so in any case, it is more than enough time.

What's more, he found that the pattern in this puzzle was exactly a panoramic view of the room. With the real object as a reference, even kindergarten children could complete it smoothly.

This game deliberately brought a group of people together and intimidated them. If the purpose was just to make them play a jigsaw puzzle, it would be unreasonable.

Jason Bai remembered that the name of this game was "Supernatural Puzzle" and felt that the difficulty of the game probably lay not in the puzzle itself, but in the supernatural phenomena attached to the puzzle.

In that case, he was in no hurry to put the puzzle together.

With physical reference, his speed can be further improved, and he can complete the puzzle in about ten minutes.

But just in case, Jason Bai decided to spend fifteen minutes to complete the puzzle and the other fifteen minutes to collect clues.

Putting the puzzle on the table first, Jason Bai began to look around the desk carefully, trying to find something useful.

On the desk, in addition to the puzzle he had just put there, there were also some stationery piled up in a messy manner.

The desk surface was littered with discarded drawing paper, broken oil pastels, and food scraps.

Jason Bai picked up a piece of drawing paper with content on it and took a closer look. He saw that a large area of   the paper was painted black with a pencil, and in the center of the paper, four little red men with strange smiles were painted with crayons.

"There are two little people who are obviously taller than the other two. They are probably parents and two children, a family of four?"

The stick figures on the paper were crudely drawn and looked like a child's scribble.

Judging from the lines, Jason Bai guessed that the person who drew the picture should be a primary school student. He turned the drawing paper over and found two lines of words on the back of the paper - [Emma Xin, Class 2, Grade 1.]

"She is indeed a kid who has just entered elementary school, Emma Xin. Judging from her name, she should be a girl." He said to himself.

In order to make sure that no information was missed, Jason Bai flipped through other drawing papers and found that the contents on each piece of drawing paper were similar. So he put the drawing papers away and began to look through a schoolbag on the chair in front of the desk.

The backpack on the chair is bright pink with cute cartoon patterns printed on it.

There are several Chinese and math textbooks, as well as some exercise books in the schoolbag.

Jason Bai flipped through it roughly and found that the textbook was clean except for Emma Xin's name written on it, with no signs of having been used.

Finally, he found a diary in the interlayer of his schoolbag, with Emma Xin's name also written crookedly on the cover.

Judging from the bloodstains on her schoolbag, the little girl named Emma Xin was already in danger.

Since the person concerned is already dead, there is no such thing as privacy rights.

So, Jason Bai opened the diary and found a lot of things written on it intermittently---

"April 16, sunny. Xiaohua and Huanhuan didn't come to school today. It's so boring to go to school. I don't want to go to school."

"May 2, cloudy, my younger brother lost his home. It was very hard for mom and dad, and it was hard for me too."

"May 19, cloudy. I still haven't found my brother. Mom and Dad were afraid that I would be lost, so they asked me to stay home and not go to school. But I wanted to go to school and play with Xiaohua and Huanhuan."

"May 28, cloudy. Mom and Dad didn't go to work. They were frowning every day. I asked them why, and they were even more worried. Mom hugged me and cried non-stop. She must be thinking about my brother. I missed my brother, too."

"July 1, cloudy, my dad disappeared, my mom cried all day, I cried too, I couldn't find my dad."

"July 6, sunny, my mother went out to buy something and didn't come back, and she was also missing. I was very scared and didn't dare to go out. I closed the door and waited for my mother."

"July 7, cloudy, mom didn't come back."

"July 8, cloudy. Mom still hasn't come back."

"July 9, cloudy, I can't find my mom. I eat chocolate every day. I counted and I still have 12 left. I have to wait for my mom."

"July 10, cloudy. Mom came back and brought Dad and my brother back with her. I was very happy, but I was also scared. Mom's face was so pale. I pulled her hand worriedly. Mom's body was covered with sweat and it was scary. She said she was so cold."

"July 11, cloudy. Dad was very hungry and Lao Qiang ate my food. I was very angry and my brother was disobedient, but Mom and Dad were doing their own things and ignored him. Mom nailed the door shut. She said that our family would not go out from now on. This way we would be safe."

"July 12,?, It hurts so much, it hurts so much, I can't move, it hurts so much, I can't move, mommy holds me and helps me write my diary, but it hurts so much. Mommy, can you take me to see a doctor, I really feel so bad."

"July 13,?, I felt so bad, I watched my dad eat, watched my brother play, but I couldn't move, I felt so bad. But my mom said that our family will be together forever, we are very happy..."

The diary ended on July 13. Jason Bai flipped through a few pages, but there was no other writing until the end. It seemed that Emma Xin's diary ended there.

After quickly flipping through the diary, Jason Bai closed it and organized his thoughts.

Judging from the contents of the diary, this little girl named Emma Xin was still in school, but one day her younger brother disappeared, then her father also disappeared, and finally her mother.

After her mother disappeared, the little girl waited at home, too scared to go out. Three days later, her mother came back with her missing brother and father.

If you read up to this point, it is still a relatively normal story. However, from Emma Xin's description, her parents behaved very abnormally after returning. One of them was terribly cold, and the other kept eating as if he had bulimia, even snatching his daughter's food. Obviously, something terrible happened to these two people.

Considering the theme of "ghost puzzle", Jason Bai felt that he probably knew what would happen next. Combined with the contents of the diary, could the ghosts of this family of four come out to mess up when they were putting the puzzle together?

Of course, the diary only described the weirdness of the parents and the little girl, and did not describe the younger brother in detail.

In Emma Xin's diary, it was only mentioned that his younger brother was disobedient, but Jason Bai didn't think that the child would be alive and well. His whole family was abnormal, and the door was nailed shut. The four of them were trapped in the room with no extra food. Could a child under six years old be able to "live" safely in human form?

Maybe Emma Xin's brother, like her parents, had died before she returned. Emma Xin had completely let three ghosts, who were no longer her relatives, into her previously safe home!

While thinking, Jason Bai heard a noise coming from the right.

As he thought about it, he listened to the pushing and arguing over there.

Next to the closet, the new man and the junior high school student started arguing, because after communicating, they found that both of their puzzles had scary "ghosts" printed on them, but the area of   the "ghost" on the junior high school student's puzzle was much smaller than that of the man's, so the man threatened the junior high school student, wanting him to hand over the puzzle, and gave his own puzzle with a large piece of "ghost" to the junior high school student.

But the middle school student was not stupid, so no matter how the man threatened, he held on to the puzzle tightly. The naive middle school student might think that he could protect his puzzle in this way, but based on Jason Bai's many years of experience in fanning the flames, if he didn't let go, the middle-aged man would be unable to resist and attack.

But, they say there are ghosts on puzzles, so why isn’t there one on his?

Jason Bai reflexively looked at the woman who was standing in front of the food cabinet, looking at the puzzle with her face sideways. The woman also found the puzzle, but Jason Bai's eyesight was too poor, and the woman's face was blurry in his eyes. He couldn't see her expression at all, so he had no way of guessing whether there was a ghost on her puzzle.

...Forget it, let's just assume that there is a ghost in her puzzle as well.

Jason Bai still wanted to intervene in the conflict between the junior high school student and the boy, but he was afraid of alerting them, so he did not rashly ask the girl questions.

Anyway, there are two possibilities: there is a ghost in the woman's puzzle, or there is no ghost in the woman's puzzle.

If it is the former, then there is obviously something wrong with his puzzle, which means there must be a key clue hidden in the puzzle. If it is the second, then this game has two modes, and the two people without ghosts on the puzzle are another way to play, which may be more difficult or easier.

But whichever hypothesis is true, it is necessary to check the puzzle again.

So, Jason Bai decided to look at the puzzle again.

His eyesight was poor, so he bent down and got closer to the puzzle on the desk, separating the overlapping pieces so that he could see each one clearly.

After looking at it for a full minute, he finally realized the weirdness of the puzzle.

On a piece of the puzzle, there was a distorted face on the fragment corresponding to the chair---

Looking closely, the face was stuck to the back of the chair, and the limbs were twisted into a mess, entangled around the four chair legs.

Jason Bai looked carefully and found that this person was actually on all fours. Her neck was twisted painfully so that her entire deformed face was pressed against the chair.

The moment he saw the fragment, Jason Bai had an epiphany. He finally understood why the little girl in the diary felt so painful in the end.