A rush of footsteps passed through the corridor of the Twilight Hall, mixed with the sound of heavy breathing.
"Huh...huh... Qingshan, are we almost here?" Qianjian, who was rather bloated, was dragged by Yuan Huaiyu for a long distance. He, who usually lacked exercise, felt that his throat was about to catch fire.
Smith was in a similar condition. He was out of breath and Yuan Huaiyu grabbed his arm and ran away.
"It's almost there. Just hold on a little longer." On the other hand, Yuanhuaiyu seemed to be fine during the fierce running. Except for a layer of fine sweat beads oozing out on his forehead, there was nothing unusual about him.
As they were running, another gunshot sounded outside the Twilight Hall, which meant that four scholars had been ruthlessly killed by the Karasuma family tonight.
Therefore, even though their physical strength has been squeezed to the limit, Qianjian and Smith did not dare to stop at all.
Half a minute later, Yuanhuaiyu finally slowed down and stopped in front of a door.
"How can this Twilight Hall be so big! Damn the Karasuma family! Don't let me escape alive, or I will let the whole world know what they did!"
While Smith was still cursing and saying harsh words, Yuan Huaiyu and Qianjian had already opened the door and walked in.
They all knew in their hearts that from the moment the Karasuma family started tonight's massacre, there was only one ultimate goal, and that was to keep all of them scholars here without exception.
In the eyes of Qianjian and Smith, only by finding that treasure can there be a glimmer of hope.
Yuan Huaiyu turned on the light switch and the room became silent.
Smith closed the door and looked at this special room with his two friends.
The room is not big, and the overall decoration is gorgeous and warm. Facing the door, in the center of the room is a rectangular dining table with a total of eight chairs symmetrically placed on the left and right. It seems that this room is a restaurant.
Looking across the dining table to the opposite wall, there is a table for storing things against the wall. Behind the table is a fireplace that has long been extinguished. Two candlesticks are also symmetrically separated at both ends of the table.
Just above the table, on the axis of symmetry of the entire room, a wall clock hangs quietly on the wall, with the hands still rotating.
Its appearance is like the sun, with a round clock face in the middle and a circle of irregular decorative edges like flames on the outside.
"This is the only clock in the Dusk Pavilion." Yuan Huaiyu said firmly.
The three of them approached the clock, but before they could take a closer look, there were two more sharp gunshots.
There are only nine scholars left alive.
Qianjian and Smith had no time to think about anything else. They stretched out their hands from left to right, trying to take off the clock.
To their surprise, the clock seemed to be mounted on the wall. No matter how hard they tried, they could not remove it from the wall.
"Damn it, why can't I take this thing off?" Smith wiped the sweat from his head and was a little helpless.
Qianjian took a few deep breaths, tried to calm down, and forced himself to calm down and think.
He carefully touched and examined the clock. When he touched the exposed hour and minute hands, his heart moved and he said, "Is it possible that this mechanism is related to its two hands?"
"This possibility cannot be ruled out. In other words, judging from the current situation, if there is a problem with this wall clock, it should only be possible to manipulate these two hands." Yuan Huaiyu confirmed his idea.
After finding the idea, Qianjian and Smith immediately began to take action, playing with the only minute hand that could rotate freely.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Gunshots rang out again. This time, the gunshots no longer sounded in the distance, but right inside the Twilight Hall.
This means that the people who came to clean them have come from far and near, and will soon find the three people in this room!
The two of them were sweating more and more, and their hearts were becoming more and more anxious.
Fiddled with, fiddled with, they didn't know how to trigger the hands of this clock. Without any prompts, they could only keep trying and making mistakes.
"Huh?"
Smith was suddenly stunned, turned around and asked eagerly: "Did you hear anything just now?"
Qianjian looked at him blankly. Smith shouted in a low voice enthusiastically: "Just when the time was set to zero! Listen carefully!"
Qianjian hurriedly leaned forward and put his ear against the wall next to the clock.
Smith held his breath and gently set the time on the wall clock to zero. The minute hand coincided with the hour hand, pointing straight to the number "12".
At this moment, Qianjian heard a subtle "click" sound.
It was as if some mechanism had been triggered.
"Really! As expected of you, Shi..."
"Bang! Bang!" Two more shots were fired, and the sound came from the direction they just came from!
Their hearts trembled, and their bodies shook unconsciously.
Qianjian swallowed the unfinished words in his stomach, and he and Smith stayed silent against the wall and continued to move the pointer.
Only their slightly trembling legs revealed their inner panic.
After a while, they made new progress.
"The minute hand rotates thirteen counterclockwise!" They heard the soft sound of the machine again, just like the most moving sound of nature.
But before they could continue trying, there was a lot of movement in the corridor outside.
The rapid footsteps with a chaotic rhythm, and the panicked gasping for air - that is the sound of a person running!
The man running wildly passed through the room and was about to escape into the distance!
At this time, gunfire rang out.
"Bang!"
The sound of running stopped suddenly, and with a muffled "dong" sound, the man fell heavily to the ground.
"Da, da, da..."
The sound of unhurried footsteps appeared again in the corridor, and the butler's words filled with chilling meaning:
"Kill this one and only the last three are left."
Qianjian and Smith had dry mouths and blood rushing to their foreheads, and they quickly moved the clocks.
But what made them despair was that the footsteps were getting closer and closer, making it completely difficult for them to distinguish the extremely subtle sound of the mechanism coming from the wall clock.
Finally, the footsteps stopped at the door of the room.
"squeak--"
The door opened and the housekeeper stepped into the room and saw Qianjian and Smith leaning against the wall, as well as "Qingshan" standing beside them.
"Oh? Are you the last three people left?"
The butler held the gun in his left hand, folded his hands behind his back, and walked a few steps leisurely as if walking. Behind him, four men in black stepped into the room. They guarded behind the butler, one on the left and the other on the right. They raised their guns and aimed at the three of them.
"Don't shoot yet." The butler ordered behind him and stepped forward.
He looked at the three of them and shook his head regretfully: "I remember you. Speaking of which, you may be the most likely among these scholars to help us find the treasure."
"It's just that the master of the family can't wait any longer, so I have no choice but to ask you to die here."
He sighed, raised his right hand, and ordered the three people in front of him to be shot.
After killing them, he, the butler, can go back and pay to Karasuma Renya...
"Wait a minute, we found the treasure!"
At the critical moment, Yuan Huaiyu put his five fingers together, stretched his right hand forward, blocked it in front of him like a traffic policeman signaling to stop, and said loudly.
"?!"
The butler, who looked like a middle-aged gentleman, immediately widened his eyes.