Li Cheng pressed his knuckles, resetting his thumb, then picked up the handcuffs, attempting to stash them in the Backpack.
A system prompt popped up in front of him, informing him that he did not own this item.
"Fair enough," Li Cheng tossed the handcuffs onto the bed, then glanced down at the shackles. They worked much like handcuffs, but due to the smaller gap, he couldn’t slip out by dislocating his bones. Unless he used a knife to carve off his anklebone and then smeared the wound with Healing Gel.
"The cell door and the handcuffs are made of the same alloy material, indestructible. The lock cylinder is an 8-tumbler C-grade core; it would take at least two to three hours to pick.
Given that the system has set the objective of escaping from the solitary cell, it means that everything I need for an Escape should be available here in the cell, even if the inmate next door is unwilling to help."
Li Cheng rubbed his palms and began to search the room inch by inch.
The cell was small with only a few furnishings. He picked up the pillow first; it felt brand new, with no hair, dandruff found on the surface, nor any scent of body oil. The same was true for the sheets and mattress.
Quite... clean, actually.
Keep in mind, in the real world in countries like France, the USA, and the UK, bedbugs have become a serious public health problem. They infest theaters, hospitals, subways, apartments, and so on, with nursing homes and prisons being the worst affected. News stories abound of older folks incapacitated in nursing homes or inmates in prisons bitten to death by bedbugs in the mattresses.
"Considering that the inmate next door mentioned there are no guards here, and there was an inmate before me in this solitary cell, the question arises as to how the pillow and blankets are kept so clean."
Li Cheng began tearing open the pillow to examine the cotton while musing, "Hypothesis one, the prisoners have regular activity time to go outside, and during that time, the prison staff would come to change the Life items.
Hypothesis two, the prisoners need to do their own Life chores, like washing blankets and clothes. This is actually quite common in some prisons."
Muttering to himself, Li Cheng suddenly noticed something, "Hmm? Why is this mattress positioned so far forward?"
The mattress was ten centimeters shorter than the bed itself, squeezed into the corner at the head of the bed, which meant for someone of standard height like Li Cheng, his heels would rest outside the mattress, making it uncomfortable to lie on.
He squinted his eyes, shifted the pillow, squeezed toward the corner of the bed and, indeed, discovered something unusual.
Directly under the headboard railing, at the head position, there was a multitude of fine, dense etchings.
Li Cheng extended his finger to carefully trace the etchings, noting they were orderly, resembling some sort of unknown characters repeated many times.
[I am Isaac Lord][I am Isaac Lord][I am Isaac Lord]
The system’s translation feature came online, interpreting the unknown characters for Li Cheng.
Li Cheng blinked, the depth and curve of each etching varied subtly, clearly carved periodically over an extended period.
"It’s possible that it was a prisoner in this solitary cell, perhaps the previous one. Due to prolonged imprisonment, he must have developed a psychological shadow, and had to remind himself of his identity in this way to prevent mental breakdown."
Of course, it could also just be sheer boredom.
Just like someone would, upon impending graduation, carve "ABC I love you!" or "Juniors, keep it up, your senior girl is waiting for you at the university" or "Young A’bin’s high-school grades were not ideal" into the dormitory bed.
"According to the Mohs scale of hardness, human nails have a hardness of about 2-3, slightly higher than talc and gypsum, but lower than steel at 4.5 and glass at 6. Unless this Isaac Lord is actually some kind of alien with super-hard nails, he inevitably had to use some sort of tool to engrave the text."
Tool, what could it be...
Li Cheng immersed himself into the situation of that fellow prisoner, feeling around the surroundings with his hands, "Found it!"
He flipped over, and from the outer side of the metal bed leg, he removed a fine needle.
Li Cheng rolled his eyes; the location of the needle was just right in the corner of the room, using magnetic attraction to stick on the metal bed leg. If he was not careful enough, and attempted to dismantle the bed using brute force, the fine needle would likely fall and be lost in a corner never reached by the light.
He took out the fine needle and examined it closely. Its tip was almost worn flat, and at the end hung a brown thin thread that seemed to have the function of sewing.
Li Cheng looked around the room; his prison uniform was blue and white, the sheets were black and white, the only brown thing was... the bedsheet mattress.
He took the mattress off the bed, searched through it, and sure enough, found second stitching inside.
He tore open the stitches, revealing the coconut fiber inside the mattress. And beside the coconut fiber, there lay a hefty hardcover book.
Li Cheng whistled, took the book out, brushed away the coconut fiber debris sticking to it, and examined it under the light.
Then he couldn’t help but tighten up.
The book was hardcover bound, its surface decorated with an intricate and ornate black and gold-patterned design, and in the center was a portrait of a saintly figure with an indistinct face. She was robed, her hands spread out, her head slightly bowed, and her eyes looked down lovingly at all life.
The title of the book was "Firewood Scripture." It appeared to be a serious religious text, but the blurb on the bottom of the book was quite frivolous.
[Ten years revised, billion trillion sold, one of the best-selling religious books in the universe, granting readers shocking wisdom!]
[A treasured guide for governing a nation, family management, self-cultivation, and learning. Understand the wisdom of sages through popular interpretations, and apply the sage’s words in daily life]
[This book is dedicated to all carbon-based lifeforms/silicon-based lifeforms/sulfur-based lifeforms/boron-based lifeforms/atmospheric beings/planetary consciousness/spiritual bodies/conceptual entities/constructed lifeforms who are in a state of confusion. May your hearts have fire and your eyes be lit.]
In the background of the blurb were countless portraits of readers who looked bizarre and obviously alien, each holding a book, their smiles twisted and sick, their eyes emitting a light as piercing as Spursheim rays.
Literally light in their eyes.
"What’s going on? Is this book some sort of Brainwashing Bible from the Cosmic Era, and I have a feeling something bad will happen if I open it..." Discover more novels at NoveI[F]ire.net
Li Cheng’s brow twitched wildly; the side of the book was equipped with a three-digit number lock, and the back was coated with a tar-like black viscous substance.
The substance was very hard to remove, and underneath it was a faint trace of some kind of writing. Likely the code for the number lock.
Li Cheng tried to spin the number lock, entering 000, he failed as expected, and there was a not so subtle click from inside the lock core, giving off an ominous feeling that if the correct code wasn’t entered within a certain number of attempts, it would self-destruct.