Chapter 64: Cruelty

The Middle-aged Woman closed her eyes in despair.

She casually tossed the slip of paper marked with an [X] onto the floor.

"Actually, we all know it. If Chen Ran wanted to screw us over, he would definitely leave behind a wrong answer. This so-called drawing lots is just because our deductions hit a bottleneck, so we're sending out cannon fodder to test the wrong answers and figure out the correct logical flow," she declared.

No one refuted her words. From the perspective of human nature, if they were Chen Ran, they would have also left behind a false clue.

The Middle-aged Woman took a deep breath and stepped toward the mirror. "I hope you guys give me a quick death later," she murmured as she walked.

Arriving before the mirror, she discarded her number 4 Glass Bead and walked straight into the glass.

The moment her body touched the surface, she was sent flying backward, landing perfectly in the third chair from the left.

Her Liar-Slayer slipped from her waist and fell to the ground.

Before she could react, four Handcuffs snapped out from the chair, locking her firmly in place. At the same time, the backrest tilted backward at a forty-five-degree angle, forcing her into a half-reclined position.

Her body trembled with fear, but the desperate desire to live drove her to scream, "Hurry up! Deduce the correct answer!"

The Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain ignored her. He stared at the mirror, deep in thought.

'Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong abandoned their numbers and escaped through the mirror.'

'The Middle-aged Woman also abandoned her number, yet she couldn't escape.'

'This means there is a missing step in between, or perhaps some action that triggers a mechanism.'

'What's missing?'

'The Middle-aged Woman is locked to the third chair, while the numbers Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong abandoned were 1 and 2.'

'Is it related to order?'

'What kind of order?'

'It seems I need to recall everything that happened in the first two Secret Rooms.'

Suddenly, he looked up and turned to the other two, who were also deep in thought. "Do either of you remember the order in which Chen Ran read out the Second-round Simplified Characters?" he asked.

The Middle-aged Uncle, who had a relatively good memory, pondered for a moment before answering, "Of, Wealth, Buried, I, At, Wife, Grave, Beside, Property, Child."

'Of, Wealth, Buried, I, At, Wife, Grave, Beside, Property, Child?'

'I, Of, Wealth, Property, Buried, At, Wife, Child, Grave, Beside.'

'Exactly ten words!'

'In the first Secret Room, there were exactly ten people who obtained Glass Beads.'

'The game to acquire the Glass Beads began and ended based on the implementation and abolition of the Second-round Simplified Characters.'

'In the second Secret Room, recovering our memories was also linked to the numbers on the Glass Beads.'

'Damn it, so that's how it is!'

'The will exists in two forms!'

'First: the Second-round Simplified Characters.'

'Second: memories!'

'Because the Second-round Simplified Characters were encrypted, the evil Successor couldn't understand them. Therefore, he or she abandoned the idea of finding the answer through the characters.'

'Instead, they targeted the Old Man's memory, with the Glass Beads serving as the Old Man's Memory Anchors.'

'In the end, the evil Successor obtained the information they wanted, which was the Old Man's Memory Anchors.'

'Regardless of what form the will takes, one thing is certain: the content is identical. Therefore...'

'The Glass Beads are equivalent to the Second-round Simplified Characters!'

'At the same time, the sequence of the Second-round Simplified Characters is identical to the order in which the Glass Beads were obtained!'

'In other words, the ten numbers we acquired, in ascending order, correspond to:'

'Of, Wealth, Buried, I, At, Wife, Grave, Beside, Property, Child.'

'Chen Ran is number 1, so his corresponding Second-round Simplified Character is: [Of].'

'The correct sequence is: I Of Wealth Property Buried At Wife Child Grave Beside.'

'And in the correct sequence, [Of] is in the second position.'

Coming to this realization, the Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain turned his head to look at the Middle-aged Woman. At this moment, she was locked in the third chair, her eyes fixed intently on the three men deep in thought.

Seeing the Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain look over, she immediately asked in a panic, "How is it? Have you figured out the answer?"

The Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain ignored her.

'The Middle-aged Woman is locked to the third chair, and her number is 4.'

'But judging from the order in which the Glass Bead numbers were acquired, she was the third person to get one.'

'That means she corresponds to the word [Buried] in the jumbled Second-round Simplified Characters sequence.'

'And the word [Buried] in the correct sequence: I Of Wealth Property [Buried] At Wife...'

'Is the fifth word!'

'In the previous Secret Room loop, the chairs had the function of Exchanging each other's memories. The final result was that our jumbled memories and bodies were restored to normal through the chairs.'

'In that case...'

'The ten chairs here can also convert the wrong order back into the correct one.'

'The Middle-aged Woman's Glass Bead number corresponds to the word [Buried] in the wrong order, and [Buried] is the fifth word in the correct sequence.'

'Therefore, she should have sat in the fifth chair to correct the jumbled sequence of the Glass Bead and the Second-round Simplified Character before passing through the mirror.'

'However, she tried to pass through the mirror and leave the Secret Room without correcting the sequence, which triggered the trap.'

'No wonder Chen Ran and Qiu Yinong threw away their Glass Beads. They had already corrected their sequences, so the Glass Beads naturally became useless to them.'

Thinking up to this point.

The Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain hesitated no longer. He glanced at his own number: 12.

Among the ten numbers: 1, 2, 4, 8, 12...

'In the first Secret Room, I was the fifth person to obtain a number!'

'Of, Wealth, Buried, I, At, Wife, Grave, Beside, Property, Child.'

'In the incorrect sequence, my corresponding word is [At].'

'I, Of, Wealth, Property, Buried, At, Wife, Child, Grave, Beside.'

'In the correct sequence, [At] is the sixth word, so...'

'The words are read from left to right, and the order of the chairs should also be from left to right.'

'There's no flaw in this logic!'

With that in mind, he sat down on the sixth chair without hesitation. After waiting for a long time without triggering any traps, a wave of ecstasy washed over him.

'It worked!'

Immediately after, he approached the mirror and carefully reached his hand into it.

'Water?'

The moment he made contact with the surface, it felt as though his hand was touching a body of water.

Simultaneously, he discovered that his hand could easily phase straight through the glass.

'Just as I thought!'

'The mirror is the exit to the Secret Room!'

The Gold-Rimmed Glasses Captain was in no rush to escape. Instead, he pulled his hand back.

'There are four corpses on the ground. Moving them to the correct chairs is easy enough. The problem is, the Middle-aged Woman is still alive!'

'Moreover, she's locked into the third chair. She's occupying someone else's spot, and I have to move her.'

'But how do I unlock the Handcuffs?'

'During the Secret Room loop, after we were shocked by electricity, the four Handcuffs on the chairs automatically unlocked...'

'If this Secret Room is divided into two phases, then phase one was the Old Man being electrocuted, and phase two was the Old Man suffering Rain Watering Plum Blossoms.'

'In the first phase, the Handcuffs unlocked automatically after we were electrocuted.'

'Then, in the second phase... phase... phase...'

'Fuck!'

'Does it really have to be this cruel?!'