Chapter 132: My Name is Lin Xiuyuan, and I'm About to Start Deducing...

The twenty people slowly regained consciousness.

They immediately checked their watches to record the current time. Then, sixteen of them gathered around their respective captains. Soon, the twenty people divided into four teams, each occupying a corner of the room.

Four full-strength teams.

Seeing this, everyone unconsciously breathed a sigh of relief. Their greatest fear was encountering a two- or three-person team secretly harboring a Three-Star Player.

Lin Xiuyuan sized up the other three teams. One was Li Zhitong's team; the two of them had crossed paths a few times in the Deceiver Alliance before.

'Li Zhitong is a Two-Star Player, and hers used to be a two-person team. But now there are five of them, which means she registered with the Deceiver Alliance and is being led by a Three-Star Trickster-Speaker.'

'I was matched in normally.'

'In the Hundred Ghost Feast, you only get Point rewards for killing Liar-Slayers. If she tracks me, she won't get any rewards, so she isn't the one tracking me.'

'In that case, the ones tracking me should be in the other two teams, and they must be...'

'Thinking deeper, since Li Zhitong isn't tracking me, I refuse to believe my luck is bad enough to just coincidentally match into the same instance as her.'

'Which means Li Zhitong's tracking target is in one of the other two teams.'

'This target knew his team would be tracked, so he tracked my team. This way, he could guarantee that neither his team nor mine had a Three-Star Player holding down the fort. Then the remaining two teams would have two Three-Star Players, achieving a balance in combat power.'

'Damn, if that's really the case, this guy is pretty clever.'

'So...'

'I just got dragged into this mess for absolutely no reason?!'

At this realization, he looked at the other two teams. Suddenly, he noticed one of the teams was...

moving.

'I remember when I scanned the three teams earlier, this team was standing in front of the shelves. How did those five suddenly teleport to the middle of the shelves in the blink of an eye?'

'Could it be some kind of skill?'

He turned his head to look at the other team. The captain was a burly Tibetan man with a face full of stubble.

However, it was very strange. The four team members stood far away from the Tibetan man, and they all kept their distance from one another, seemingly wary of each other.

'This is a temporary team. This kind of situation only happens with assigned registrations. That means the burly Tibetan man is a Three-Star Player.'

'In other words...'

Lin Xiuyuan viciously turned his head, glaring at the team standing in the middle of the shelves.

However...

There was no one there.

'What the hell? Weren't those five just here? Did they teleport away?'

He stepped forward to investigate, only to see the five of them hiding behind a shelf, though he had no idea when they had moved.

They looked at each other with awkward, resentful expressions, as if to say:

"I quietly retreated behind everyone, why did you guys retreat too?"

'A bunch of cowards!'

Lin Xiuyuan cursed inwardly. Being tracked by a team of this caliber, he didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

Seeing that they could no longer hide, the five walked to the center of the secret room. However, Lin Xiuyuan noticed that two men and one woman deliberately slowed their pace.

When they reached the middle, the energetic young guy and a middle-aged woman in the team were left standing at the very front, bearing the brunt of everyone's appraising stares.

'This team looks quite harmonious on the surface, but they are secretly scheming against each other. There's a high probability this is also a temporary team, or maybe they haven't been formed for long—a newbie team?'

After sizing each other up, the four teams finally began to inspect their surroundings.

The burly Tibetan man, Dorje, scanned the environment of the secret room. It was a supermarket, but the shelves were completely devoid of any goods.

There were words written on the wall behind the checkout counter:

"To navigate the world, one must keep a blade upon the heart."

"To cultivate oneself, always remember the inch beside the root."

Dorje turned his head to look at the glass windows. Through the glass, he could see the outside world shrouded in purple smoke.

At the supermarket entrance, hazmat suits were neatly arranged. Dorje counted them; there were exactly twenty, no more, no less.

'Purple smoke?'

'That means the outside is filled with toxic gas. The twenty hazmat suits at the door indicate that just wearing a gas mask won't be enough against this poison; we have to wear these special hazmat suits.'

Walking up to the door, he discovered that the supermarket entrance was chained shut. At the two ends of the iron chains hung a very ordinary U-shaped padlock.

Logically, this method of locking a door by chaining the handles together should allow someone to turn the handles and push the door open just enough to create a gap.

But it wouldn't budge.

This meant the supermarket door had an additional built-in lock. He tried to pull the iron chains aside to examine the door's built-in lock, hoping to see what model the keyhole was or if it was an electronic lock.

Unfortunately, the iron chains were tied too tightly. He fiddled with them for a while but couldn't catch a glimpse of the door's built-in lock.

So, he decided to give up.

Passing through rows of empty shelves, he arrived at the back half of the supermarket.

There weren't many shelves here.

Instead, a chart covered in writing hung suspended in mid-air.

The text on this chart was multi-colored. The words acting as the border were all red.

There were four rows of text in total.

Each row was further divided into four main columns. The first and fourth columns were in black font, while the second and third were in blue font.

Upon seeing this chart of words, Dorje pretty much knew what the second lock was in his heart.

Not only did he know what the lock was, but he also knew what the password was.

He didn't make a sound, continuing to look at the shelf resting against the wall not far from the chart. On the shelf sat one single item: a children's book.

He flipped open the book to take a look, his brows knitting tightly together, his thoughts unreadable.

The others leaned in to check it out, and their expressions immediately turned peculiar as well. The children's book contained the story of pirates dividing gold coins.

'This is a fucking children's book?!'

However, they all coincidentally cast their gazes over the numerous shelves. Counting them one by one, they found there were exactly one hundred shelves.

'The story of the pirates dividing gold coins is something everyone is familiar with. Isn't it just five pirates—A, B, C, D, and E—who obtain a hundred gold coins? They state their distribution proposals in sequential order. If the proposed plan gets agreed upon by more than half of the people, the plan is executed. If more than half oppose it, the one who proposed it gets thrown into the sea to feed the fish. How should Pirate A propose a plan to maximize his profits?'

'The answer: A gets 97 coins, B gets nothing, C gets 1 coin, and D or E gets 2 coins.'

The pirate coin division problem had been very common back when they were alive, especially in videos from certain clickbait marketing channels. It posed no difficulty for the twenty people present.

But the pirate problem only involved five pirates. Here, it had been changed to one hundred shelves and twenty players.

Nevertheless, they understood that the two keys for the supermarket door's two locks were hidden within the word chart and the shelves.

To figure out which shelf it was, they had to analyze: when 20 pirates divide 100 gold coins, what is Pirate A's maximum profit?

...

The atmosphere in the secret room grew somewhat tense and stagnant.

Lin Xiuyuan looked at the other three teams.

Dorje, along with the Three-Star Player in Li Zhitong's team, were both resting with their eyes closed.

The final team—the one that had hidden behind the shelves earlier—now had all their heads lowered, playing ostrich.

'None of them are reliable. I'll have to be the one to handle this, but my acting skills are terrible!'

He cleared his throat. "Ahem, everyone, my name is Lin Xiuyuan, and I'm about to..."

"start deducing!"