Clearing his throat, Jing Minghe began his deduction. "Here's what I think. The restaurant wants us to identify the poisoned food, and the patterns on these squares all relate to eating. So, perhaps the poisoned item each day corresponds to a pattern here, and that's the password to open this door. I believe this door is the exit. You have no objections to that, right?"
Chi Hao nodded in agreement.
Jing Minghe pinched his chin, a troubled expression on his face. "But I haven't figured out how to match them. The poisoned item is different each day. The first day it was red wine, yesterday it was eggs, and today it's cake. But there are no matching patterns for these on here. Could it be..."
"Related."
The two spoke the word in unison.
Jing Minghe couldn't help but laugh, reaching out to pat Chi Hao's shoulder. "We're quite in sync, aren't we?"
Feeling a chill, Jing Minghe quickly retracted his hand, offered an awkward smile, and continued his analysis. "Exactly, it must be something closely related. Look here."
As he spoke, Jing Minghe tapped the squares on the puzzle with his fingertip. "Red wine is made from grapes, so there's a grape pattern. Eggs, well, hens lay them, so there's a hen pattern. As for cake... cake..."
Jing Minghe meticulously searched all nine squares and muttered to himself, "Strange, what is cake made of? Eggs? Cream? Milk? Flour? None of those are here. I don't remember it being a fruitcake, right? It didn't seem to have fruit."
"Crab roe."
"What?" Jing Minghe turned his head, looking at Chi Hao in confusion. "What did you say? Crab roe? Ah! Crab roe cake!"
Seeing that Chi Hao didn't deny it, Jing Minghe leaned in closer to search. "There's a crab pattern here. If it's crab roe cake, this should correspond to it."
A hint of excitement in his voice, Jing Minghe exclaimed, "Phew, we're finally getting somewhere. So, what about the order? It's chronological, isn't it?"
Chi Hao didn't reply, and Jing Minghe took that as a tacit agreement. He counted on his fingers. "First day grapes, second day hen, third day crab, fourth day... no way? Do we really have to wait until the seventh day? If we press them in this order, will the door open?"
After speaking, Jing Minghe couldn't help but sigh. His biggest worry now wasn't whether his conclusion was correct, but whether they could survive until the seventh day.
With four days left, even without other dangers, at least four people would die.
Jing Minghe glanced at Chi Hao, silently counting the remaining people. Besides himself, there were You Mi, Chi Hao, Lian Xin, Wei Zichen, Zhang Wu, and Tian Yong, a total of seven people.
Even if his guess was correct, in the best-case scenario, only three people would leave alive. Su Dan Novel Network.
"Lian Xin!"
A scream from You Mi downstairs suddenly echoed, and Jing Minghe rushed downstairs upon hearing it.
"Sister You Mi, what happened?"
Jing Minghe ran into the living room to see You Mi slumped on the floor, staring at Lian Xin, who lay in front of her, with disbelief.
A wooden stick was plunged into Lian Xin's neck, and blood continuously gushed from her severed carotid artery, her entire head submerged in a pool of blood. Her eyes were open, filled with utter despair.
"It was suicide."
Chi Hao said faintly, a look of disgust on his face, and turned to walk upstairs.
The pungent smell of blood gradually filled the living room.
Jing Minghe glanced at Chi Hao, who was going upstairs, then rubbed his nose with his index finger and walked over to help You Mi up, asking in a low voice, "What happened?"
You Mi shook her head. "I, I don't know. I was sleeping and vaguely smelled blood. When I opened my eyes, I saw Lian Xin dead."
Wei Zichen, trembling, said to Jing Minghe, "Brother Minghe, Sister Lian Xin... she committed suicide. My leg hurts, and I wasn't sleeping soundly. I heard some movement and followed the sound. That's when I saw Sister Lian Xin stab herself in the neck with the stick. I, I was scared, too late to stop her. Just as I was about to call out, Sister You Mi woke up."
Tian Yong and Zhang Wu were woken up by You Mi's scream. Upon hearing that Lian Xin had committed suicide, they spat on the ground and cursed, "Damn it, if you want to die, why not test the poison for everyone! Dying like this, who are you disgusting?"
"You!" You Mi trembled with anger at Tian Yong's words, wanting to curse back, but feeling it was pointless.
Jing Minghe gently patted You Mi. "Let's go, rest upstairs."
Even if others hadn't yet realized the connection between the restaurant's poisoned food game and the puzzle on the second floor, the rule of one death per day made everyone acutely aware that with each person lost, their own chances of survival decreased.
Before complete despair sets in, the will to survive still trumps all else.
Lian Xin's death had also cast a pall over the previously optimistic You Mi, who huddled in a corner, silent and withdrawn. You Mi, a classic embodiment of a healer's compassion, while accustomed to life and death, could not bear to see someone die before her eyes.
Wei Zichen sat not far from You Mi, muttering self-reproaches, always feeling that he had discovered it too late and hadn't been able to prevent Lian Xin's suicide.
Jing Minghe comforted them both for a while before returning to the exit room to continue studying the puzzle, hoping to deduce the correct password from the known clues.
Entering the room, he saw Chi Hao sitting in a corner, eyes closed in meditation. Jing Minghe opened his mouth, wanting to discuss his thoughts with Chi Hao, but the aura of "do not disturb while resting" emanating from him made him abandon the idea.
Jing Minghe sighed silently. The more he observed Chi Hao, the stranger he found him. This person was too nonchalant, seemingly unfazed by death and lacking any great desire to live, as if life and death were all the same to him.
Could he truly be an NPC planted among the human players by the system?
Shaking his head, Jing Minghe turned and sat before the puzzle wall, looking at the patterns on the squares while sketching on the floor.
After studying the puzzle until nearly dawn, Jing Minghe, who hadn't slept properly for two days and two nights, finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell asleep.
Not long after Jing Minghe fell asleep, he was awakened by a commotion downstairs.
"What are you doing! Let him go!"
It was You Mi's voice.
Jing Minghe sat up abruptly, his hand almost touching a square on the puzzle as he lost his balance. Fortunately, Chi Hao quickly grabbed his wrist, preventing him from pressing it down.
"Are you trying to die?"
"Ah," Jing Minghe blinked. "Thanks. Downstairs..."
Before Jing Minghe could finish speaking, Chi Hao had already let go and walked out. Jing Minghe hurried to follow.
They followed the sound to the dining room, where Zhang Wu and Tian Yong were holding You Mi and Wei Zichen down in chairs, forcing something into their mouths.
Chi Hao kicked Zhang Wu away, rescuing You Mi.
"Bastards!" Jing Minghe cursed and rushed forward, landing a punch on Tian Yong's face. Tian Yong spat out a mouthful of teeth, but he didn't look at Jing Minghe. Instead, he looked past Jing Minghe at Wei Zichen, who was being forced to eat, and then burst into mad laughter.
"Hahaha, I don't have to die, I don't have to die! Hahaha..."
Jing Minghe quickly turned to look at Wei Zichen and saw him melting like ice scorched by the sun, rapidly dissolving from top to bottom.
In less than a minute, he had completely turned into a pool of blood.
"Ah!"
You Mi screamed and fainted.
Enraged, Jing Minghe was about to deliver two more kicks to Tian Yong in a fit of anger but was stopped by Chi Hao.
Seeing this, Tian Yong tried to get up and run, but a swift kick to his chest sent him rolling back to the ground. The kick was so fast he couldn't even see it.
He thought it was Jing Minghe and started to curse as he got up, but met Chi Hao's gaze, which instantly terrified him into silence. He felt as though Chi Hao's eyes could tear someone apart.
Chi Hao ignored Tian Yong and whispered something in Jing Minghe's ear. Jing Minghe shot Tian Yong a cold glance and turned to walk out of the dining room.
Zhang Wu, who had been kicked away by Chi Hao earlier, cowered in a corner of the dining room, trembling, looking like he wanted to run but dared not. But he knew they were safe for now. Wei Zichen had eaten something poisoned, so those monsters wouldn't appear. No matter how angry Jing Minghe and the others were, they wouldn't dare kill them.
Tian Yong wanted to run. He didn't want to be around Chi Hao and Jing Minghe at all, but Chi Hao stood before him. Although he didn't look at him again, his body refused to move.
Before Tian Yong could successfully escape the dining room, he saw Jing Minghe return, a bundle of ropes in his hand, and walk directly towards him.
"What do you want! Let go of me!"
Tian Yong stumbled backward in fear. Jing Minghe advanced step by step, cornering Tian Yong until he had nowhere else to retreat.
Jing Minghe kicked Tian Yong in the stomach and said coldly, "When you unhesitatingly sacrifice others, you must be prepared to be sacrificed yourself."
"What are you doing! Let me go!" Tian Yong struggled. "You dare touch me! Damn it, you're no different from me! You're not exactly a good person yourself. If you're so capable, find a way out before I forced that kid! I used that kid to identify the poisoned items, wasn't that beneficial to you too? Stop pretending! Damn it, let me go!"
Jing Minghe ignored Tian Yong's curses, quickly tied him up, and threw him aside. Then he turned to Zhang Wu in the other corner.
Zhang Wu fell to his knees with a thud. "It wasn't me, he forced me. Tian Yong forced me! And, and that woman is fine, I, I didn't really feed her!"
Jing Minghe pulled over a chair, sat down, and said to Zhang Wu, "Stay put. If you dare do anything else, you'll suffer the same fate."
"I won't dare, I really won't."
Jing Minghe snorted and turned to look at the dining table. The item Tian Yong had forced Wei Zichen to eat was bread. Looking at the small bite taken out of the bread, Jing Minghe felt a pang of unease.
"This is fucked up." Jing Minghe glanced at Chi Hao, recalling what Chi Hao had said to him earlier: "Edible upon ingestion."
Wei Zichen couldn't have swallowed the bread under duress. Chi Hao's statement held true.
There would always be someone to satisfy the system's twisted desires, and this feeling of being toyed with by the system made Jing Minghe extremely unhappy.