Puzzle Madness

Chapter 6 The Tick-Tock—
At around eleven o'clock in the evening, almost midnight, Doudou went out.

Doudou walked out of the residential complex, and saw the security guard dozing off with headphones on (he seemed to sleep twenty hours a day); he walked quickly past the two rows of stalls at the main gate selling late-night snacks, the heat of which blocked out the street lights - as he passed by, he felt a thin layer of grease on his coat.

Doudou was tucked into his shiny ginger-yellow raincoat—it was called a raincoat, but he thought it looked more like a windbreaker. It was both windproof and rainproof: even when he was at school, Doudou would wear it over his uniform.

I have been wearing it for several years, and the raincoat has become a little gray, making Doudou look like a giant phantom lemon in the hazy night; it was too loose before, but now it fits just right.

In the inner pocket of his raincoat, Doudou stuffed this year's mid-year supplement of "Parapsychological Exploration" and clipped a bookmark on one of the pages - this was his project tonight, to go and stake out a strange creature called the "Pleiades Mantis" near his home.
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The light signs flickered, replacing the moonlight on the cloudy night.

Mong Cai Electronics City—this is Mong Cai's largest and only electronics trading center. Despite its name, it's little more than a small six-story department store, low in front and high in the back, resembling a deformed locomotive.

Doudou originally liked this place very much - except for the audio-visual area of ​​Xinhua Book City and the pirated disk store on the next street.

Unlike the old man at the gate of Doudou Community, the security guards here are more diligent; but not by much: they fastened a large lock wrapped with an iron chain on the glass door, and then lay on the plastic chairs and played [Run Fast] with poker; at their feet were two buckets of "briefcase" liquor and bags of peanuts from the store, and a flashlight was hung on a corner of the eaves with a rope, becoming a swaying lamp, illuminating the curling cigarette smoke.

Like Doudou, the security team of the electronics city seemed to be planning to have a great night today. Doudou glanced at the card game where a few dimes were being bet and the sounds of clattering and shouting were mixed in from a distance, then he dug his fingers into the concrete wall as usual, climbed up the wall, and flipped in through the air vent.

Even late at night, when most of the shopkeepers had gone home, the electronics mall was still drenched in the smell of cigarette smoke: Doudou felt that most of the appliances here had been marinated in the smell of cigarettes. He pulled up the collar of his raincoat and stuck it over his nose, using it as a filter mask—Doudou didn't like the smell.

"It stinks. It stinks, it stinks."

He called out softly, tiptoed, and half ran and half jumped through the walkway in the electronics city; the iron doors of most of the stores on both sides had been pulled down, and the cigarette boxes and tape packaging that were originally piled in the corner were scattered in the aisle: at this point, they should have all been taken away by the cleaning staff.

Hardman, Hard Mango, Peony, and Pegasus, which just changed its name to Liqun
Snapped!
Doudou kicked away empty cigarette packets one after another—they were scattered like road signs, blocking the road. The electronics mall was silent, and the flying cardboard cigarette packets banged against the iron gate.

[Wow! Not bad, not bad, I've made progress again.]

The iron doors of another row of shops were covered with huge dents: it looked like someone had smashed them with a sledgehammer from a construction site.

Those were the marks left by Doudou from the past few days—he sometimes couldn't control his strength very well; but today he was in much better shape. He hopped along on tiptoe and enthusiastically patted the RoboCop poster on the wall.

If we were to say which is the most popular and highest-grossing sci-fi action blockbuster this year, the title would still go to the sequel to the "RoboCop" series.

This month coincided with the release of "RoboCop 5"; not only had the price of previous movie tapes doubled, but even in the [listening bar] there were listeners listening to the radio drama version of RoboCop in the cubicles - and the Mong Cai Electronics City was naturally covered with posters and promotional posters; RoboCop stared dryly with his single red eye, his lips pursed in annoyance.

Doudou understood RoboCop's expression of despair:

[I would definitely be unhappy if I had no arms or legs.]

However, DouDou wasn't particularly fond of the RoboCop series—instead, the Terminator movie from over a decade ago, which never had a sequel, stirred something more within him; of course, it might also be because [liking niche things makes one seem more sophisticated]. But he still wanted to play games: he quietly added RoboCop: Back to Chicago, which was released simultaneously with the movie and on the Sega Dreamcast, to his future shopping list.
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"Pleiades Mantis, Pleiades Mantis—"

He opened the mid-year supplement of "Parapsychological Exploration" and compared it with the description above again: Although the lights were turned off, it did not affect Doudou's reading.

These strangely shaped alien creatures, originating from the Pleiades star cluster in Taurus, prefer to inhabit information media, feeding on the knowledge stored by humans—including, of course, the human brain. If your videotapes and disks suddenly become demagnetized, remember to lock your doors and windows before sleeping: monsters may have just finished building a nest in your neighborhood and are about to begin their foraging for food.
The insert was a blurry black-and-white photo, vaguely outlining a group of strange creatures with eyes far apart: it was said to be a mantis, but in fact it looked more like a fish that had been dead for too long in the vegetable market; its body was also a pitch-black mass, which made people realize that the photographer was perfunctory.

[Common locations: around large computers, residential areas and other human settlements, and electrical storage areas. Hours of activity: from midnight to before dawn.]
I have been to Mong Cai Electronics City for countless times.
During the summer vacation, Doudou would sneak into the electronics city almost every night and take a few laps around: apart from the provincial library and the municipal library, Mong Cai Electronics City had the only large public computer; there were also so many tapes burned with movies, TV series, commercial software, games and MVs.

If Doudou were a Pleiades mantis, he would definitely have a big meal here--
I thought so, but after Doudou walked around the first floor for a full circle, not only did he not find any strange traces, even the cleaning lady who usually pushed the cart to clean was nowhere to be seen.

He paced and stepped into the commercial atrium of Electronic City; the large empty space in the center of the shopping mall was now occupied by a life-to-life RoboCop stand: a promotional event for the movie's release was held there during the day, and even the escalators on both sides were hung with posters.

The RoboCop standee's single eye was a lightbulb embedded in cardboard, flashing a sinister red light; a motor was humming somewhere.

"Wow."

Doudou tilted his head back, opened his mouth, and yawned: "This is so boring." He'd been running here for a week straight, and he was already tired of looking at the posters outside the store.
Tick.

Suddenly, there was a faint sound of water:
RoboCop's shining red eye suddenly stretched downwards, leaving a red mark - as if at the moment Doudou yawned, the signboard was also crying because of his boredom.

"Wha—eh?"

Doudou was interrupted by this sudden strange scene before he could finish yawning.

Tick.

Something wet fell into Doudou's wide-open mouth. Doudou closed his mouth in confusion and tasted it carefully: it was a little warm, a little salty, and had a smell of iron.

pat!

Another sound—he saw a line of water drawn from above, falling directly on Doudou's bright yellow raincoat and then sliding down. This time he saw clearly:
It was a sparkling red, scattered into tiny water droplets. But the light from RoboCop's single eye reflected a hint of orange.

Doudou raised his head again:
A hand covered in blood stretched out from the gap in the rusty railing on the third floor of the electronics city.

when!
As if aware of Doudou's gaze: the hand suddenly retracted, as if it was suddenly pulled away - the knuckles collided with the railing, making a loud sound.
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(End of this chapter)