Cloud Thinking

The fourth floor is the restaurant. Once you enter, you can see a round table with four chairs. What puzzles Helia the most is that in such a large room, there is only a table and four chairs, nothing else. This is even more strange than her empty room with only a blanket on it.

If Avril was the only person living in this place before, then why were four chairs needed?

There were also curtains behind the table and chairs. Helia went forward and pulled them open. It was still a stone wall, but there was an extremely creepy painting on the wall. It was a very rough stick figure painting. There were many people in the small painting. Helia counted them and found a total of six people. She made a rough judgment based on her common sense:

The six people are divided into two rows of two and four. On the far left of the upper row stands a tall man, with a petite woman standing beside him, as if leaning on the man's arms. The lower row is arranged from left to right in the order of women, men, and men. The man and woman on the left are both very tall, and the painter also drew a smiling face on the woman on the far left. The one on the far right is obviously a little boy, and he also has a smiling face on his face.

Helia probably guessed what the painting was about. It should be Antonio's family with Avril. It seemed that Avril wanted to join this family and become an indispensable part of it.

She loved this family very much, at least, more than Helia did.

Avril cares about this hard-earned family relationship, but for Helia, if someone stands in her way, even if it is a close relative, she will not show mercy. She is a cruel person, but not a heartless person. As long as the interests are consistent, she will protect them. Emotion is a plus, not a necessity.

Because it was a stick figure, and because it had no facial features, and because Helia looked closely at the drawing and sniffed the wall, even though a lot of time had passed, Helia was still able to barely discern what Avril had used to draw the painting—blood.

Helia didn't know what kind of mood the other party was in when he painted this picture, but she was sure that Avril was probably not mentally normal at that time.

There was a large bathtub and toilet on the fifth floor. The bathtub was completely dry and covered with a thick layer of dust. The toilet was blocked, apparently knowing that Helia did not need to defecate and to prevent her from escaping from this place.

Maybe when it was sealed, he hesitated whether it was necessary to do so. After all, this was a special passage for excrement. With the temperament of the princess, she would not want to leave from this place. But it must be said that the person who ordered to block the shit pit understood Helia very well. The other party knew very well that as long as Helia was given a chance to leave, no matter whether it was to crawl through a dog hole or a shit pit, she would do anything to get out.

There were no clues here, or rather, if there were clues, they were very hidden. She did not have enough time to check them carefully for the time being. The most urgent thing was to confirm whether there was any obvious place where she could find a loophole to escape.

The sixth floor is the study, which is decorated very similarly to Madeline's, with bookshelves filled with books arranged in a circle and a long table in the middle, but there are no floor-to-ceiling windows here, only a cold and hard wall behind the curtains.

Helia: So why the hell do we need curtains? What's wrong with that...

The desk and drawers were empty, except for the books on the bookshelf, everything else had been cleared to the utility room downstairs. She took a quick look and left after making sure she hadn't missed any obvious clues, but a place like the study must be searched carefully, so she would search it carefully another day.

On the seventh floor, which was the floor below her room, was the room Avril had lived in. The door was locked, and it was one of the only two locked rooms in the building. She didn't know why it was locked, but this broken lock obviously couldn't stop her.

There was only defensive protection magic engraved on the door, and no offensive spells. This also showed why the door was locked - for preservation purposes.

After breaking the door lock with some force, Helia took a quick glance at the interior of the room. It was similar to her own room, but there were obviously many more pieces of furniture. Although they were all covered in dust, they were tidily arranged, and even the quilt was folded and placed on the bed.

Everything in this room was left in its original place and not cleaned up to the utility room, which meant that she could get a lot of clues left by Avril from here.

There was a bed, a set of tables and chairs, a large wardrobe and a dressing table in the room. There was also a small suitcase at the end of the bed, which contained some miscellaneous daily necessities and two wrinkled clothes.

There was a curtain in front of the table. Helia pulled it open and unexpectedly saw a window. However, behind the window was not a stone wall as she had imagined, but a dark place. The thick black seemed to swallow everything and was daunting.

The window was not locked, and she tried to push it open, but there was a huge force outside that was fighting against her, and she couldn't push the window open with her strength alone. She used her body to hit it several times, but still couldn't open it.

The window was a stained glass window, and she couldn't even break the glass. The darkness outside the window resisted any force applied to the window. Helia had never seen anything like it, so she had to knock on her head and call out Adalesi.

"This is a forbidden area of ​​space. It is a space that prevents any existence from entering. Don't waste your energy on it. You can't get in." Adalasi replied.

"Forbidden space? What is this thing and how is it formed? Why is it here?" Helia still didn't want to give up. This was the only exit that seemed to be able to escape, even though it looked very dangerous.

"The forbidden space is naturally generated. No one knows where it comes from, where it is formed, and how long it will exist." Adalaxi replied. It was rare that there were things that He didn't understand, which made Helia inexplicably happy.

"No one can enter the forbidden space. It resists all foreign existences. Even gods cannot set foot there." He continued, "I don't know why it appears here. Anyway, don't waste your time on it. You can't solve it."

"Tsk!" Helia groaned in annoyance. Based on the principle of "out of sight, out of mind", she closed the curtains and walked around the room in annoyance, but she didn't do much, for fear of disrupting the layout of the room.

"Have you thought of a way out now?" Adalasi asked.

"I can't think of any better way except to break through violently." Helia replied.

"I don't think it's possible." Adalesi rejected her idea. "Not only the huge magic circle on the first floor, but also the giant magic circles nested outside the tower. You can't break it with your current strength."

"What about you?" Helia found the oil lamp on the table, lit the cotton thread inside, pulled out a chair and sat down, resting her hands on the back of the chair and looking around.

"With your strength, can you break the magic circle outside?"

"If I can recover to the state before my death, not only this tower, but also the land within dozens of miles around it can be flattened." Adalaxi boasted. When he said this, he couldn't help but start "recalling the glorious past". Helia was too lazy to listen and just thought he was just the croaking of a frog.

She went back to the utility room on the second floor and picked out some useful things, such as paper, pen, ink bottle, oil lamp, candle, etc. She carried a basket of them up to the seventh floor. Except for going to the eighth floor to get food at mealtime, she did not plan to continue living on the eighth floor.

At the rate at which the wish bubbles multiplied, the room would be filled with bubbles in a few days. And the floor was really hard, even with a thick blanket, it still hurt to sleep on it. There was no reason for her to leave her good bed and continue sleeping on the floor. She was not cheap, nor was she the kind of person who was addicted to hardship.

Although it was a bit dusty, she didn't mind it. She shook it and continued to use it. There were also clothes in the closet that could be changed. She wanted to take a good bath after cleaning up, but the problem was... where would she get water? She could make a fire, but water really couldn't come out of thin air, so where did Avril get water when she lived here before?

She went down to the bathtub on the fifth floor and searched around. Finally, she accidentally found a magic circle under a brick in the middle of the bathtub. It seemed to have been abandoned for a long time. When Helia injected magic power into it, the gray lines that were originally covered by dust suddenly brightened, and cool water gurgled out of it, washing away the dust around it.

Because she was barefoot and the temperature in the north was not very warm, only the rooms on the eighth floor seemed to have a constant temperature design. The rest of the tower was filled with a long-accumulated chill. Fortunately, she was a fire magician and was more cold-resistant than ordinary people. She was still freezing just walking around barefoot on the slate tiles.

The water was cold, and it was bone-chilling when it reached her feet. Helia tiptoed to the side, stepped on the slightly higher edge of the bathtub, and waited for the water to cover the bathtub so that she could wash herself thoroughly.

The bathhouse is so big that if you don’t know, you might think there are eighty people living here, but in fact, it is most likely that only Avril and her have lived here.

Helia scrubbed and grunted for a long time before she managed to get it clean. Then she waited for a pool of water to be filled and heated with magic power, and then she took her first hot bath in a month with great satisfaction.

The clothes of twelve-year-old Avril were a little small for Helia, as she was tall and Avril was petite, but fortunately they were only tight and short and didn't burst.

She spent several days searching Avril's room, but found nothing useful. Helia went to the utility room and searched everything, but still found nothing useful.

In addition to finding things, Helia also practices how to accurately control magic every day. Although Adalaisi is very reluctant, he still teaches her tirelessly. Of course, he is a worse teacher than Britney.

Another month passed, and Helia had gotten used to her current life. She would practice magic control every morning after getting up, and then search every room on the floor after eating, making sure that not a single speck of dust would be left unchecked. Because the search was very detailed, it took her nearly half a month to search the utility room on the second floor alone.

Although life is boring, it is stable.

"I think there must be clues hidden in those books. If you win the bet, you can have roast chicken tonight," said Adalasi.

"Tsk! I bet there's a clue on the bookshelf. If I win, I'll get to eat bread and jam tonight."

Because it was so boring, the two of them even bet every day on where to find new clues, and the winner decided tonight's meal. Because Adalasi was living in Helia's body, he would taste whatever Helia ate, and their tastes were not the same. Adalasi always yelled that he didn't like to eat this or that, but he had no choice but to endure it because he didn't have control over his body.

But occasionally Helia was willing to give in. For example, if Adalassi told her some stories or useful information that she didn't know, she would let him decide the food for the day, even if there were not many choices for them. Sometimes, even if the food was decided, it might not appear in the tribute of the day.

This was already Helia's third month in the tower. During this time, she had searched every place except the library on the sixth floor and the bedroom on the seventh floor, almost lifting up the floor to look for it, but still found nothing.

Now she and Adalassi agreed that the clues were most likely hidden in the study, but the problem was that there were so many books in the study that Helia felt it was a bit difficult to start. Not to mention whether the books on the bookshelf were good, even if they were not good, Helia had to take them down one by one and scan them page by page to avoid missing or omitting any important clues.

She estimated with her eyes that there were two large bookshelves in the study, each with six layers. Assuming there were twenty books on each layer, there would be a total of two hundred and forty books. It would take forever to finish this!

Although she complained, the days of being locked up here were really too boring. Books were the only new things she could come into contact with every day. Even though she found reading boring at first, she slowly found the fun in it as time went by.

Most of the books on the bookshelf were specialties of this world, including history, literature, novels, picture books, newspaper compilations, and other miscellaneous types. There was even a magic collection as thick as a fist, which recorded many magic spells. Although the authenticity needed to be verified, Helia was still excited about it.

I don’t know if it’s because Avril likes literary books, but there are many poetry collections, essays, travelogues, novels, etc. on the bookshelf. And judging from the degree of wear and tear of the books, it can be found that she seems to prefer these types of books, which means that the clues are likely hidden in these books.

"Wait a minute, have you noticed that some of the words in this book seem to be deliberately bolded?" Adalaisi had nothing to do, and since he shared senses with Helia, he followed her in reading.

You know what, some of the novels are quite interesting, and He was a little addicted to them. This also gradually changed Adalesi's view of human beings. At least they have fertile land in the spiritual field.

"Is there? Where?" Helia held the page and looked at it carefully over and over again, but she didn't know if it was because the light was not bright enough, she didn't notice which words the other party mentioned were thickened.

"Tsk! Your eyesight isn't good enough, you still have to rely on me! Turn back to the previous page and don't move! I'll show you!" Adalassi muttered. Helia turned back and read carefully from beginning to end. Then she heard him say, "'The Echo of Fear' in the middle paragraph of the previous page, and 'The Music of Loneliness' in the second to last paragraph."

"Really? You're just bored and want to play a trick on me." Helia dragged the oil lamp closer, slid her fingers across the paper, and soon found the two places that Adalasi mentioned, then squinted her eyes and stared at them intently.

"I'm not as cheap as you." Adalaxi "replied", "I don't know who wanted to disgust me by eating food that looked like insect eggs..."

"Shut up, you're disturbing me." Helia shouted. She looked carefully for a moment and indeed found that there were traces of double images in the two places that Adalaxi mentioned. She rubbed it with her hand and looked at the light gray fingertips, and then she was sure that this was indeed one of the clues.

"You really found it..." Helia was not unconvinced. Instead, she was delighted after realizing it belatedly. This was the first clue suspected to be left by Avril that she had found since she left the room on the eighth floor. Although it did not provide any useful information, at least she had found the way, wasn't it!

"Hahaha! It's me as expected! Let's have roast chicken tonight!" Adalasi laughed arrogantly. It was unknown whether it was due to the influence of Helia or something else, but he was becoming less and less like a god.

"It depends on whether there is any in today's tribute. I remember eating it three days ago, so there is a high probability that there is no food today..." Helia took a piece of paper and pen from the side and wrote down the two bold words on the page. "Don't think about eating it. Keep reading for me."

This book is a literary travelogue that tells about the natural scenery and cultural customs of the Xiali Empire. Helia spent three days reading it carefully. Avril didn't leave many clues in it, but she wrote down a page of scattered notes. In summary, it feels like she just recorded her daily mood.

"Damn, this guy is always doing useless things. My eyes are almost broken by seeing them, and he tells me that it's useless?" Adalesi looked at the paper full of negative emotional adjectives and wanted to curse his parents. He didn't know how to curse before, but since he got together with Helia, he has learned all kinds of catchphrases. He doesn't know whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.

"Maybe she didn't intend to leave any clues at the beginning. After all, she didn't know she would be able to get out, and she didn't know if there would be others imprisoned in the future."

"She probably took notes on the book because she found the content in the book very consistent with her mood at the time. It's understandable."

Helia was not as angry as He was. These three months had cultivated her patience very well. Whenever she felt depressed and irritable, she would just think about how Avril had been locked up for three years and she would immediately feel much more balanced.

Her mood now is like failing an exam. She was very sad, but her good friend did worse than her. When she thought about someone doing worse than her, she felt less depressed and even wanted to laugh. She felt so cheap.