Wang Yan stood with his back to the group.
He approached the bookshelf. If anyone had looked closely, they would have noticed that the serial numbers on this row all began with...
1986!
However, Wang Yan's earlier words had shocked many of them, and they were still reeling from the emotional impact.
'It has to be you!'
A look of pure madness surfaced in his eyes.
He reached out.
He moved swiftly to grab the book numbered 19866, but the very mont his fingers brushed against the spine...
"You lied."
"You lied."
The ones who uttered the Judgnt Command were Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong, both dripping with cold sweat.
Yet, just as the two of them were about to fire, all light vanished from the Secret Room.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
Four gunshots rang out.
In the pitch darkness, they sounded like the roar of so unknown beast, putting everyone's nerves on a razor's edge.
'I should have known!'
'There are no good people in Hell. How could anyone ever willingly act as Cannon Fodder!'
'If it were ...'
'I would drag everyone down to the grave with too.'
'Damn it! A miscalculation!'
The Middle-aged Uncle's face was livid, yet a seed of doubt remained in his heart.
'If Wang Yan wanted to drag us down with him, the best approach would be to end the ga first, then pull a random book to trigger the trap. That would cause everyone to lose their mories again. That way, we would lose even more mories, maybe even forgetting that this is a Hell Dungeon.'
'Chen Ran ntioned earlier that the Second-round Simplified Characters were abolished in 1986, but that guy is incredibly sly; he never specified the month.'
'To end the ga, Wang Yan could only try his luck and pull a random book numbered between 19861 and 198612.'
'He did not have much ti. His previous impassioned speech made us empathize with him, but it could not hold our attention for long.'
'According to our previous agreent, the designated person must pull whatever book the captain orders.'
'Once we snapped out of it and realized he was not pulling a book related to papermaking, we would absolutely sentence him to death through Judgnt.'
'Therefore, Wang Yan had no ti to think things through. He simply went with a number in the middle and reached out to pull book number 19866 from the shelf.'
'All of this makes sense.'
'However, the mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. Chen Ran and his teammate were not completely enthralled by Wang Yan's earlier speech. This might be because they are Newbies and simply could not empathize with his plight.'
'The deduction up to this point is perfectly understandable too.'
'But during that entire sequence just now, the biggest anomaly appeared. How did Chen Ran and his teammate know for a fact that the book Wang Yan intended to pull had nothing to do with papermaking?'
'Unless...'
'Book 19866 corresponds to the exact ti the Second-round Simplified Characters were abolished!'
'That is the only reason why, the instant Wang Yan touched that specific book, those two uttered the command simultaneously to sentence him to death via Judgnt.'
...
A short while later.
The lights in the Secret Room flickered back on. Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong stared at Wang Yan's corpse.
They saw that his hands were empty and that book 19866 remained undisturbed on the shelf.
Only then did the two have a mont to wipe the cold sweat from their brows. After all, the Second-round Simplified Characters were indeed abolished in June of 1986.
It was just that coincidental!
'As expected, how could players in Hell ever surrender without a fight!'
The two examined Wang Yan's corpse. He had been shot twice...
Chen Ran frowned.
'Four gunshots rang out just now, but only Qiu Yinong and I issued the Slayer Command.'
'That ans...'
'Of those four shots, two were for Judgnt, and two were from a Liar Hunter Skill.'
He glanced at Qiu Yinong.
He did not notice anything amiss with her, but when he looked at the others, his pupils constricted violently.
There were so many... Qiu Yinongs!
Everyone present was wearing Qiu Yinong's face.
Not just that, their height, their build, and even their clothes were completely identical.
'Is this another Ego Tier illusion Skill?'
Qiu Yinong also looked back at Chen Ran. At first, she thought nothing of it, but when she turned to look at the others, she discovered...
There were so many Chen Rans!
Everyone was wearing Chen Ran's face, as if they had simply been copied and pasted.
The others experienced the sa phenonon. In their respective visions, everyone shared a single face, yet the specific face each person saw was completely different.
The group remained dead silent, terrified of misidentifying soone and inadvertently telling a lie. They turned their attention to the desk.
Inside the Hourglass, the number 3 Glass Bead in the upper section was completely gone, and a blank, unnumbered Glass Bead had appeared in the lower section.
The group breathed a collective sigh of relief.
Only then did they look at the Xuan paper, only to see that there was absolutely no text on the fourth sheet.
There were no illustrations either.
For the others, this was only slightly surprising, but the Tall Captain and his teammates turned deathly pale.
Because it was their turn to solve the puzzle.
The Tall Captain sank into deep thought.
'First, I need to figure out if the puzzle is supposed to look like this naturally, or if...'
'It was caused by a Liar Hunter Skill!'
'There is only one suspicious point here: Wang Yan only touched the book just now; he did not pull it out.'
'How should the system judge this action?'
'Is it considered pulling the wrong book, or is it judged as not having started the action of pulling a book yet?'
'If it is the forr, that ans Wang Yan has already provided an answer to the puzzle and got it wrong, bringing the third Xuan paper to an end.'
'If it is the latter, that ans Wang Yan had not started solving the puzzle. And since the third Xuan paper puzzle hasn't concluded, how could the contents of the fourth sheet possibly appear?'
The Tall Captain lit a cigarette.
'I've got it!'
'Since Chen Ran and his teammate sentenced Wang Yan to death via Judgnt, it ans Wang Yan had already committed the action of pulling the book. That was why he was judged for violating the previous agreent, which constituted a Future Lie.'
'In that case, Wang Yan reaching for the book counts as submitting an answer. The third Xuan paper has already ended!'
The Tall Captain took a deep drag.
Deducing the chanism wasn't enough.
The fourth Xuan paper was blank. He still had to figure out the answer for his teammate, even if this teammate was re Cannon Fodder...
'Blank?'
'White paper?'
'Wait, the homophone... Dahurian Angelica Root!'
'Dahurian Angelica Root is a traditional Chinese dicinal herb. It has the effect of dispelling wind, relieving pain, reducing swelling, and draining pus.'
'Right now, the fourth Xuan paper is literally just white paper but devoid of the Dahurian Angelica Root. This indicates that the dicinal herb has already been used.'
'A physical beating!'
'The Old Man suffered a severe beating while he was alive. The corresponding book must be related to physical assault. However, most of the books on the shelves are literary works...'
'Books related to criminal offenses!'
Upon realizing this.
The Tall Captain looked at his teammates, only to find that everyone was wearing Li Chenglong's face.
After a mont of thought, he stared straight ahead, pointed at the Xuan paper on the desk, and said without turning his head, "Li Chenglong, you go solve the puzzle this ti. The answer is..."
Before he could even finish his sentence.
To his absolute horror, he realized that a Glass Bead had just fallen from the upper section of the Hourglass.
Clink!
The Glass Bead bearing the number 4 landed in the lower section of the Hourglass, producing a crisp, clear chi.
And more importantly, it had not lost its number!
Which ant that number 4 was perfectly fine.
A sudden realization struck the Tall Captain, and he abruptly jerked his head up to look at the three rows of bookshelves.
There he saw Li Chenglong standing in front of the shelves, holding a copy of the "Judicial Examiner" in his hand and waving it at him like a trophy.
Having successfully pulled the book, Li Chenglong drew his Liar-Slayer from his waist and aid the muzzle at the group.
"Liar-Slayer: Danger Lurks Everywhere."
"Dispel!"
In the very next mont, everyone's vision returned to normal, and the 'Li Chenglong' who had just pulled the book from the shelf was revealed to be...
The Middle-aged Woman!
Reviews
All reviews (0)