Rebirth 09: Starting from taking charge of Running Man on CCTV

The seven members of the Running Man cast stared at each other, looking at the two pieces of paper with clues on the table.

The first sheet of paper depicts a coiled dragon with some kind of pattern wrapped around its body and its tail pointing to the lower right corner.

The second image is a picture of a bamboo slip.

"I understand now."

Deng Chao spoke first, his tone resolute.

Everyone turned to look at him.

"The dragon's tail is pointing to the lower right, which means the token is hidden in the southeast direction of the Vermilion Bird Tower."

Li Chen frowned.

"How did you figure that out?"

"Look at the patterns on this dragon's body, don't they look like window lattice patterns? The windows of that building in the southeast corner have the same pattern."

Deng Chao spoke with great seriousness, gesturing with his finger on the paper.

Chen He leaned over and looked for a long time, then scratched his head.

"Why does this pattern look like the one on a roof tile?"

"Impossible, roof tiles are round, this one clearly has square patterns."

Deng shook his head.

Shen Teng stood on the outermost edge, squinting for two seconds.

"Brother Chao, are you sure you're not just talking nonsense?"

"When did I ever say something like that?"

Deng Chao looked very serious.

Shen Teng didn't reply, but that look drifted over again.

Deng felt a chill and quickly changed the subject.

"Stop dawdling, let's look in the southeast corner first. If we can't find it, we'll talk later! Let's go!"

He patted the table and walked out the door first.

Li Chen glanced at Shen Teng, who shrugged and followed.

The seven people filed out and ran in the direction Deng Chao pointed.

Deng walked at the front, a slight smile playing on his lips.

Southeast corner?

He glanced around when he came in; the room was completely empty, not even a cabinet.

Making them make a wasted trip gives the Sword and Fairy team a few more minutes to search.

The west side hall of the Zhuque Tower.

The seven members of the Legend of Sword and Fairy team sat around the four clues on the table, creating a much more serious atmosphere than the Running Man team.

The first item: a piece of paper with a character written on it. The left side has the water radical (氵), and the right side is the character "亭" (pavilion), but the character "亭" has a heart radical (心) embedded in the middle.

The second item: a picture with some kind of repeating pattern.

The third item: a picture showing three crossed spears.

The fourth item: a picture that looks like a lock on some kind of box.

Yang Mi picked up the paper and looked at it again and again, her brows furrowing.

"What is this character? Is it in the dictionary?"

Yuan Hong leaned closer.

"Three dots of water plus pavilion... Ning? No, that's not how you write Ning."

Liu Shishi said something in a low voice.

"There's a heart character in the middle, it doesn't look like a proper Chinese character."

Brother Hu stood by the table and reached out to gather the four clues together.

"I'll keep it safe; it'll be easier to check when I need it later."

Yang Mi immediately looked up.

"Don't."

Her tone was not harsh, but it was decisive.

"Take one each and search separately. If your name tag gets torn off, all the clues will be gone."

Brother Hu paused for a moment.

"That's true."

He smiled and let go.

Yang Mi divided the four items.

The letter is for himself, the pattern is for Liu Shishi, the spear design is for Huo Jianhua, and the box buckle is for Yuan Hong.

"These clues must correspond to a certain location or object in the Vermilion Bird Tower."

Yang Mi looked around and said, "I found an identical pattern. The token must be nearby."

Huang Zhiwei stood at the door with his arms crossed and said something in a low voice.

"Then stop talking nonsense and start looking."

The seven people scattered and ran in different directions.

Brother Hu pretended to be flustered as he searched, but in reality, he didn't walk fast and his eyes weren't particularly anxious.

Anyway, he's an undercover agent for the Running Man team, so the slower the Chinese Paladin team finds him, the better.

The second floor of the Zhuque Tower, the east wing room.

Wang Baoqiang, like a wild boar rooting in the ground, turned the room upside down, turning the cabinets, drawers, and vases upside down.

"Got it!"

He pulled a bronze token from the bottom of a mahogany box and jumped up excitedly.

"Brother Chen! Brother Chen! I found it!"

Li Chen ran over from the next room, took the token, and flipped it over.

The token has a bull's head pattern engraved on the front.

Li Chen's expression changed.

"Baoqiang, this is the ox head."

"what?"

"The rules state that the Ox Head is fake, used for distraction. What we need to find are the Azure Dragon, Black Tortoise, White Tiger, and Vermilion Bird."

Wang Baoqiang looked down at the token in his hand, then at Li Chen.

"...Then this doesn't count?"

"Not really."

Wang Baoqiang's shoulders slumped.

"What a waste of your time."

He threw the bull-head token on the table and turned to rummage through the next cabinet.

Li Chen patted him on the shoulder.

"It's alright, keep looking."

For the next ten minutes, the sound of rummaging through drawers and cabinets filled the Suzaku Tower.

Chen He found a bull-head token on the third floor.

Zheng Kai pulled out a bull-head token from under a flowerpot in the corridor.

Shen Teng discovered a bull-head token behind a screen in the lobby on the first floor.

Baby found a bull-head token in the mezzanine of the bookshelf on the second floor.

It's all fake.

"That's way too much!"

Chen He squatted on the ground, clutching the second bull-head token in his hand, looking utterly devastated.

"There are cows everywhere! Cows everywhere! I think this building should be renamed the Cowshed!"

Shen Teng poked his head out from the stairwell, smiling broadly.

"Hehe, you have a special connection with cows."

"roll!"

The situation isn't much better for the Legend of Sword and Fairy team.

Yuan Hong searched the entire floor and found three bull-head tokens. He was so angry that he threw the last one out the window.

Liu Shishi felt under the coffee table in the side room and picked it up. It was another ox head. She sighed helplessly.

Tang Yan fared even worse. She found two stacked tokens in a hidden compartment, thinking she had won the grand prize, but it turned out that both were bull heads.

"Is this director crazy?!"

Tang Yan rarely uses profanity.

The second floor of the Zhuque Tower, the west corridor.

Li Chen came out of one of the side rooms and was about to walk to the next one.

Footsteps came from the other end of the corridor.

He looked up.

Huang Zhiwei.

A burly man, 1.88 meters tall, stood at the end of the corridor, his hands hanging naturally at his sides, looking at him expressionlessly.

The two people stared at each other for a full three seconds, ten meters apart.

The red lanterns in the corridor swayed in the wind, casting flickering light and shadow on the two people's faces.

Li Chen didn't move.

Huang Zhiwei didn't move either.

The air was so quiet that you could hear Chen He cursing in the distance.

Li Chen's gaze fell on the name tag on Huang Zhiwei's back.

Huang Zhiwei's gaze also swept over Li Chen's back.

With two power ceilings in place, neither side has a guaranteed victory in this narrow corridor, no matter who strikes first.

Li Chen spoke up.

"Brother Zhiwei, what did you find?"

Huang Zhiwei shook his head.

"They're all fake."

"Me too."

There was another two seconds of silence.

Huang Zhiwei stepped aside, clearing half of the corridor.

Li Chen nodded and walked past him.

As the two brushed past each other, neither of them reached out.

It's not that I don't want to.

The timing was wrong.

Since we don't have any real tokens now, tearing them up is pointless.

We'll talk about it when we get the key token.

On the third floor of the Vermilion Bird Tower, Yang Mi squatted alone in a small attic, clutching a piece of paper with strange characters written on it.

She's searched six rooms already, but hasn't found a single real token.

"Three dots of water... pavilion... heart..."

She muttered to herself, turning the piece of paper over and over to examine it.

Suddenly, she stopped moving.

"etc."

She stared at the word, and her eyes slowly brightened.

The character is composed of the radical for water (氵).

Pavilion, pavilion.

Heart, center.

"Water...center...pavilion..."

Yang Mi suddenly stood up.

"The Pavilion in the Middle of the Lake!"

She blurted it out, her voice echoing in the empty attic.

"This isn't just a word! It's a place name! The clue is outside! At the pavilion in the middle of the lake!"

She stuffed the piece of paper into her pocket, turned around, and ran downstairs.

Footsteps echoed rapidly and excitedly on the wooden stairs.

Third floor.

The second floor.

First floor.

She rushed out of the side gate of the Vermilion Bird Tower and ran wildly towards the direction of the pavilion in the middle of the lake in her memory.

Huo Jianhua was coming out of a side room on the second floor.

He held the picture of the three spears in his hand and searched the entire building for almost twenty minutes, but found nothing.

Just as I was about to go downstairs, I caught a glimpse of a figure rushing through the lobby on the first floor and out the side door.

Yang Mi.

Huo Jianhua frowned.

She ran out alone?

The tokens are all inside the building, why is she running outside?

He stood by the second-floor railing, watching Yang Mi's figure disappear into the night outside the side door.

I hesitated for two seconds.

Huo Jianhua stuffed the spear diagram into his pocket, quickly went downstairs, and followed him out through the same side door.

He didn't call for help.

If Yang Mi really discovered something, he needs to confirm it first.

If she's an undercover agent...

Huo Jianhua quickened his pace, but deliberately kept his voice down, maintaining a distance of about twenty meters.