But it's so strange, I've been gone for so long, and I can't feel a little bit of it. There shouldn't be anything wrong with walking like this just now......?

I looked back at the three road crossings behind me, thinking carefully about where I had come in, but to no avail. I even went to each of the three road intersections and walked a short distance to see if there was any familiar road design that I could recall when I was on the road, but because the road conditions in the secret passage were specially designed to be very similar, it was supposed to increase the confusion, so I still couldn't recognize the road I came in.

Eventually, discouraged, I returned to the dead end, looking down and stumbling upon something.

The wall facing the dead end is a little different from the others. There are some messy scratches underneath it, and because it's shallow, it's really hard to notice if you don't just keep your head down. The surface of other walls is smooth and flat, and it is difficult for ordinary things to leave any scratches on them according to the hardness of the wall.

So why are there only these scratches under this wall? And the scratches look a little old.

Although this probably has nothing to do with Mom and Dad's whereabouts. But the subconscious mind told me that I should solve the puzzle.

I looked at my watch and decided to give myself ten minutes. If I can't figure it out in 10 minutes, I'll give up and go to Mom and Dad.

I crouched down and began to take a closer look at the scratches. Most of the traces are concentrated in the center, and they are dense and disorganized, and it seems that many sharp objects have been scribbled here.

The first thing that came to my mind was the hedgehog - but in such a secret passage, the mechanism is so difficult to open, how can there be a hedgehog? Anyway, no one dares to raise hedgehogs in the city government, right? ……

So how do you explain these traces? I don't think it's just an accident that these are here, but I think the existence of these traces seems to be trying to express something to me.

At this time, I suddenly noticed that the thickness and size of these marks seemed to be different...... Seems to be caused by different objects. But the depth is about the same, and it can basically be judged that the same person did it.

And most importantly...... I found that these marks seem to look more and more like - knife marks?!

At this time, I suddenly remembered Xiaomo - she has always liked to collect all kinds of knives, whether it is a short knife or a katana, and she is often seen at school with some knives to wipe carefully, which should be her only hobby besides radio and radio, right?

Speaking of which, Shatter once told me that there was an entire room in her house dedicated to her collection of knives, which I thought was an exaggeration at the time, but now that I think about it, I suddenly think that maybe it was true......

So could it be the traces left here by Xiaomo in the past with those collections of hers? But even if it were, why did she leave such traces here? And why is this the only one...... Is there something here?

I suddenly remembered what she had said earlier, "confidential", that she could use this method to find out the whereabouts of my mom and dad.

Could it be that the secret is in this?! So this place is really connected to the secret passage above?! I saw that USB flash drive before, and to be honest, I was still skeptical......

If this is true, then as long as I also discover the secret of opening this door, I will be able to immediately find out where my parents are, and at the same time, I will not have to be detained by Xiaomo, which is like killing two birds with one stone.

But why didn't Xiaomo let me go outside just now? …… Could it be that she discovered something terrible out there through that so-called "classified" thing? But I didn't find anything out there just now......

Forget it, anyway, if it's really that "secret", I'll be able to know everything...... I began to look more intently at the door.

Now, according to my reasoning, it should be that Xiaomo in the past discovered some secret behind this door, so he wanted to open the door with violence at first, but found that it didn't work, so he probably used another method to open the door.

The reason why the scratches are concentrated below should be because Xiaomo was only so high at that time...... The reason why I know that violence can't open the door is because the knife marks on it are so old, and it seems that there have been no new knife marks for a long time, and it is obvious that at a glance, Xiaomo has tried many different knives in the past, but still can't open the evidence of this door.

Evidence that the door was ever opened is the friction between the sides of the door and the wall next to it. Although it is very shallow, it is still invisible under the bright flashlight light.

I watched carefully from top to bottom, not missing an inch of suspiciousness. Based on the friction between the sides of the door and the wall, the door should have been pushed upwards instead of the usual rotation opening method so far.

I tried pushing it up, but sure enough, the wall didn't move. I started to look around to see if I could find something like a switch.

Originally, it was just a symbolic touch, but I hadn't touched anything before, so I didn't have much hope this time. But when my finger ran between a certain wall block, I felt something rough between my fingers - it actually made me feel something.

I hurriedly returned to the vicinity of the place and touched it carefully, making sure that the feeling was not my delusion. I guessed that there seemed to be something like sackcloth stuffed there, so I couldn't help but carefully pull it out.

It was not a linen, but a small piece of sturdy hemp rope, carefully hidden by filling the gaps in the wall with clay or the like. If it hadn't been for the fact that a small piece of clay had accidentally fallen over time, exposing the rough surface of the hemp rope inside, and I had just touched it, I would not have noticed that there was such a rope there.

Its head and tail are still buried in the wall. I subconsciously pulled lightly, and with the sound of the "rustling" clay cracking and scattering, the rope was stretched longer and longer, and finally the end of the rope reached the ceiling, and disappeared through a clever little hole; The tail end was pulled out smoothly, not far below where I had pulled the rope in the first place.

I seemed to understand something, and almost held my breath and pulled the rope again. The rope was heavy, and my muscles immediately collapsed. I insisted that I didn't give up immediately, but continued to exert my strength.

After a short stalemate, I suddenly faintly heard the "clucking" sound of something turning, and quickly took another deep breath, exerted force again, and finally pulled the rope slightly.

At this point, something seemed to be happening on my right hand side, and there was some strange sound as I pulled, like a sharp grinding sound. I subconsciously skimmed the corners of my eyes over there, and couldn't help but hook the corners of my mouth. Sure enough, the bottom of the scratched wall began to hang slightly.