Chapter 447: Human Nature (2)

After Lin Xuan finished speaking.

The Secret Room fell into a dead silence.

He also realized something was wrong.

Jiang Zhe sneered: "It seems you should have discovered it too. Actually, the answer or whatever isn't important. After all..."

Before he could finish his sentence, an Elder suddenly snatched the fourth cup of wine.

He pointed his gun at the ceiling and said sinisterly:

"Ghost Whisperer·Fickle Mind!"

The Secret Room turned dark. Upon seeing that the Elder's Liar-Slayer was Ego Tier, the Three-Star players in the Secret Room immediately suppressed their Mental States, making themselves immune to the effects of the skill. At the same time...

In the darkness, the Elder quickly swapped the wine glasses on the table based on memory.

The Elder drank the fourth cup of wine, and under everyone's 【watchful eyes】, cleared the stage.

Jiang Zhe looked at Lin Xuan: "See, your deduction is meaningless now."

The game of this Instance was very simple; it wasn't hard to deduce which cup was the poisoned wine.

The difficult part was how players could ensure they wouldn't drink that cup.

The reason was simple.

When using a skill, players could use the darkness to swap the positions of the wine glasses.

Only the person who swapped them would know where they swapped the cups to.

Once that player cleared the stage, for the remaining players, they could only rely on luck.

Of course... there were also skills!

Jiang Zhe continued: "Moreover, I feel there might be a logical error in your deduction just now. First, if 【Riddle surface】 is taken literally, it means the riddle is on the surface. But the hint said 'guess a character riddle'. Common character riddles are pure text riddles, including ideograms, character dissection, pictograms, homophones, etc. Here it's obviously an ideogram. If the riddle is on the surface, the corresponding meaning should be..."

"The answer is in the inner heart!"

"You might as well crouch down and take a look; you might discover something unexpected."

Hearing this, everyone crouched down and looked under the table. Surprisingly, there was a hidden compartment on the underside of the table board, and the position corresponding to this hidden compartment was exactly on the tabletop...

The 11th cup of wine!

'The 11th cup of wine is poisoned?'

"The 21 wine glasses are arranged in a straight line, so the inner heart should be the 11th cup."

Jiang Zhe continued:

"Mid-to-late 21st century (21世纪中下期). In terms of Common Sense, the correct expression should be..."

"Mid 21st century, or mid-to-late (中后期) 21st century. But judging from the intended meaning, it should be the mid-to-late 21st century here."

"'Late' (后) was swapped for 'Down/Next' (下)."

"Therefore, the true answer is: it will only be poisoned after the 11th cup of wine is swapped down. Put simply, if the 12th cup of wine is swapped to the position of the 11th cup, it will become highly toxic."

Everyone was startled.

'In other words, when a player swaps the 12th cup of wine to the position of the 11th cup, it triggers the hidden compartment mechanism, and the 12th cup of wine located at the 11th position will be swapped with...'

'The poisoned wine inside the hidden compartment!'

'Simply put, there are a total of 22 cups of wine in this Secret Room. The initial 21 cups on the long table were all not poisoned. No matter what the players chose...'

'They wouldn't die!!!'

"The light screen only said 【One cup contains highly toxic poison】; it didn't say 【One of the 21 cups of wine on the desktop contains highly toxic poison】. Some people's deductions took things too much for granted," Jiang Zhe took a drag of his cigarette and said unhurriedly.

Lin Xuan: "..."

He felt called out.

Jiang Zhe ignored him, looked around at the crowd, and said: "Everyone should know the theme of this Secret Room by now. It's probably to let the smart people kill the not-so-smart people."

Indeed, this Secret Room required smart players to deduce the answer and secretly swap a non-poisoned wine for the poisoned wine.

"But there is a problem here. If someone drank the poisoned wine, and then someone swapped the 12th cup of wine to the 11th position, would the 12th cup of wine still be highly toxic? My guess is... it would still be highly toxic!"

"After all, a Secret Room going through so much trouble just to kill one person... is a bit of a loss."

Jiang Zhe took a deep drag of his cigarette, surveyed everyone, and revealed a devilish smile: "Then here comes the problem. That Elder just now, did he swap the 11th and 12th cups? If so, where did he swap that poisoned cup to?"

"That's not all. If he didn't stop after swapping out the poisoned wine, but continued to swap the 11th and 12th cups, swapping out the poisoned wine again, then..."

"In other words, there might be at least two cups of poisoned wine on the table right now."

Hearing this, everyone's expressions turned ugly. Some people even crawled under the table, wanting to destroy the hidden compartment on the underside of the board, but...

It couldn't be destroyed!

This meant that later on, if someone used a skill and the Secret Room turned dark, someone would definitely continue to swap out poisoned wine.

In other words.

The later a player drank, the more poisoned wine there would be on the table, and the probability of being poisoned would rise in a straight line.

This was a game of: humans killing humans!

Right at this moment.

Lin Xuan acted quickly and snatched the four wine glasses that were previously furthest away from the Elder. One was held in his hand, and the other three were protected in front of him like a mother hen protecting her chicks.

At that time, when the Elder used his skill, he couldn't reach the wine glasses furthest away from him. Moreover, he was surrounded by the crowd, so there was even less possibility of him running over to swap the furthest wine glasses.

Therefore, Lin Xuan's four cups weren't poisoned.

He was the first to finish drinking.

A door appeared on the opposite wall.

Qiu Yinong was the second to drink.

Jiang Zhe was the third to drink.

The three of them had no issues. Chen Ran reached out for the last cup. Just as he was about to touch the wine glass, a cigarette suddenly appeared in his hand.

Chen Ran withdrew his hand and lit the cigarette.

'The magic tricks I learned back then to chase after Mei Mei, after so many years, I can still perform them so well.'

However, thinking about it, it made sense. As long as Chen Ran protected that non-poisoned cup of wine, he could quietly watch the other players slaughter each other or get poisoned to death. It wouldn't be too late for him to slowly pick up the points afterward.

The three left.

Thirteen people remained in the Secret Room, twelve of whom stared greedily at the wine glass in front of Chen Ran.

But strangely, not a single person used points to exchange for it. Perhaps in their view, it was impossible for Chen Ran to exchange it.

Then...

They could only snatch it by force!

As expected, a Youth among the thirteen immediately pulled out his gun, pointing it at the ceiling with one hand, holding a piece of bread in the other.

"Ghost Whisperer·Cosmic Shift!"

In the darkness, quite a few people were bounced away by the Liar-Slayer's protection mechanism. Some were trying to swap the 12th and 11th wine glasses at the same time, resulting in them touching each other and being bounced away. Some were trying to snatch the wine glass protected by Chen Ran and were bounced away.

When the light returned.

The wine glass in front of Chen Ran had turned into a piece of bread.

The bread in the Youth's hand had turned into...

A wine glass!

"Hahaha, my skill allows me to exchange the item in my left hand with any non-player item in the Secret Room!" The Youth laughed wildly and downed the wine in one gulp.

The Youth cleared the stage.

At the same time, some players in the Secret Room turned purple in the face, falling to the ground dead.

Analyzing the operations just now.

The Youth used his skill, and he obtained the wine glass protected by Chen Ran. But someone had touched other wine glasses in the dark, violating the rules, thus dying from triggering a mechanism.

Chen Ran smoked gloomily.

'Huge loss. The wine glass wasn't kept, didn't snatch any Point Cards, and I have to choose a wine glass again.'

'Isn't this just a joke?'