Puzzle Madness

Chapter 35 Shock
The mathematician stood there for a long time, almost breaking the rotten cardboard box under his arms:
"Oh. So? Going out? Going out now? Where to? In the middle of the night—"

Doudou scanned the room but couldn't find any clothes hangers; the mathematician's clothes were still in the box. He walked over to the tape recorder and flipped the tuner left and right, searching for the station he often listened to:
"Hey, stop talking nonsense, Doctor! Get dressed now, we're going out. There's a radio station in Mong Cai that specializes in oddities and legends. It has a huge audience. It's amazing! I used to listen to the host on that radio station talk about things like 'Dr. Iron Ruler', 'Iron Ruler Killer', and 'Iron Ruler Butcher'."

Naturally, Doudou is also a loyal listener of this radio station.

He suddenly turned his head and stared at the mathematician:
"Oh, you only have this one set of clothes; so economical. Come on! Let's go, take the bus to the radio host's place and ask the radio station to announce your location directly so that the people chasing you can come find you."

The mathematician, who was about to pick up the cardboard box, froze, his disbelief almost piercing through his glasses.

"Huh? You mean to lure the pursuers away from the mountain? Lure the pursuers somewhere, and then we can escape? Then we can actually stay here. No one has noticed us yet."

Doudou's eyes were filled with doubt, as if he was beginning to doubt that a mathematician could have the intelligence of a doctoral student.

"No, I told you: let the people chasing you come directly to you! If you reveal your location, they will definitely come to capture you or kill you."

He shook his raincoat; on the edge of the coat, there were some unfaded red marks:
"Running around like that is such a hassle. I can't stand waiting in this shabby apartment of yours for a week! Don't look at me in a raincoat, I'm a sunny person at heart and need to be out and about more. It's summer vacation!"

"They want to kidnap you and frame you. They're bad people, criminals. I'm here to kill them all; it's over once and for all. Otherwise, you'll be hiding every day, living in constant fear. You made a mistake with my homework, so I'm the one who suffers."

The mathematician had not expected to receive such an answer, just as he had never imagined that he would step into such a sticky and biting quagmire.
His gaze followed Doudou's hand, sweeping over the red, black, and orange stains; but he didn't dare to guess where the filth came from.
"But, but--"

Snap, crash.

The mathematician did not have time to sort out and finish his chaotic words; everything was interrupted by a sudden noise.

With a crisp sound, the curtains suddenly bulged, as if they had suddenly risen from a hill: the glass was shattered by some foreign object -
Along with the broken glass, a cylindrical, black object also fell; it rolled into the center of the living room and stopped between the two of them.

Doudou suddenly screamed with excitement:

"Oh! It's a stun grenade!"

laugh--
What arrived wasn't a bright flash or a loud explosion: wisps of smoke erupted from the cylinder, then erupted. A thick, intoxicating white mist burst forth, instantly filling the entire living room and enveloping Doudou and the mathematician.

A soft, awkward voice came from the smoke:
"Oops, I said that wrong."

boom!
The door was smashed open, and the dull thud of the sofa falling onto the wooden floor; the crisp sound of the door frame cracking and wood chips scattering; the "thump thump" of solid thick-soled leather shoes hitting the ground, and the collision of metal on metal mixed together -
Someone broke in, shouting muffled by the mask:
"Corporate law enforcement, get down! Get down! Corporate law enforcement—"

The shouting stopped abruptly. But a new sound replaced the roar and roar:

Bang, bang, bang—
From time to time, flickering lights flashed through the thick smoke: whoever had carried out the raid had spared no effort in using the bullets in their magazines. Like fireworks on a New Year's Eve, soaring into the sky and exploding in the clouds, they suddenly lit up behind the grayish-white sky.

"Aaahhhhh!!"

Between the flickering and the fading, the mathematician's vision was already blurry. He curled up on the ground, covering his head, and cried loudly because of the burning and burning pain in his eyes, face, and entire upper respiratory tract; his eyes behind the lenses were blurred with tears and he could not see anything clearly.

Bang, boom!

In the intervals between bouts of pain, the mathematician could occasionally feel the air rushing across his scalp and the stinging sensation of plasterboard fragments flying and hitting him: he was lucky, neither bullets nor stray bullets hit the mathematician huddled in the corner. But luck could not alleviate the torment; he was undergoing a test both physically and mentally, and the itching and pain in his chest grew stronger.

After an unknown amount of time—in this torment, the mathematician felt as if the passage of time had slowed down—the noise in the small room gradually changed. The explosion of the ignited primer no longer occurred, replaced by a dull sound, like the sound of a blunt object knocking.

Tap, tap, tap.

Suddenly, the mathematician thought of his university cafeteria: when the cafeteria chef was in the kitchen, chopping pork legs and splitting bones with a kitchen knife, it seemed to sound similar; but the sound was more moist -
Is it because the pork purchased from the cafeteria has been bled?

Such inferences turned over in the mathematician's mind, abrupt and detached.
-
Time seemed to pass for an eternity, yet it seemed only a moment; but eventually, the living room fell silent. The smoke was no longer as thick as before, like a mirror wiped clean of steam.

The mathematician raised his head, and saw a blurry picture in his red and swollen eyes:

In each of his left and right hands, Doudou held a crooked human body - they were wearing black helmets and gas masks, Kevlar bulletproof vests, and bullet belts with magazines inserted - and he waved them like a fan to drive away the tear gas that filled the entire room.

A gaping hole had appeared in the drywall, its edges weaving like spiderwebs up to the ceiling. A soldier or agent knelt in the middle, his head buried in the hole. Beside him lay another motionless figure—only the upper half. The lower half dangled from the ceiling fan, its intestines dangling like ribbons.

The old ceiling fan squeaked, reluctantly shifting with the sudden weight. Blood dripped down the exposed internal organs, hitting the wooden floor and seeping into the cracks: more like an air conditioner leaking.

The human body in Doudou's left hand looks like a turtle that wants to retreat into its shell but is stuck, with its bearded chin pressed against its chest and its ears touching its shoulders; the entire head seems to have lost its neck and is sunken deep into the torso.

In the right hand, the limbs were twisted into strange angles; if you ignore the torso and head, it looks like a swastika.

It was a funny scene.

Doudou continued to wave the human bodies in his left and right hands like palm-leaf fans; their legs bent 90 degrees, occasionally banging against the wall. Compared to these fully armed, muscular figures, Doudou was so tiny that onlookers thought he was holding some crude inflatable doll.

After a while, the smoke in the apartment finally mostly vanished through the kicked-open door and shattered windows, carried away by the night breeze. Along with it, the smell of blood and gunpowder faded. Doudou didn't know how much of a contribution his two "fans" had made to this round of clean air.

A "beep, beep" sound came from the distance: it sounded like a police car, but also like an ambulance.

Doudou glanced at the mathematician still huddled in the corner, then nudged the tear gas bomb with his toes, setting it rolling after the smoke cleared.
"Hey—it's really not a stun grenade; why is it tear gas? Are these idiots deliberately trying to embarrass me?"

Doudou squatted on the ground and gently put down the two corpses in his hands. His expression was a little embarrassed - this expression instantly turned into anger and dissatisfaction, as if it had never existed:

"Hey! Everything else is fine. But why do they even step into other people's houses with shoes on?"

Only now did the mathematician notice Doudou's bare feet soaked in blood and human tissue: he had never worn shoes.

"Wow!"

The mathematician vomited for the second time that night - no longer undigested food, but gastric juice and bile.

But this time he was careful not to vomit on his clothes.

(End of this chapter)