Chapter 76: Rapid Clearance!

After he finished vomiting.

The two returned to the long table. According to the rules, Chen Ran took Geng Hao's blue badge.

At the long table, the Young Heiress collected the chips from the surface.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Not only did you clear a highly difficult secret room, but the score was also 98 to 2. It seems the power gap between the two sides is simply too vast." At this point, the Young Inheritor looked at Chen Ran. "If you keep participating in these secret rooms, doesn't that mean I'll lose everything within ten rounds?"

Chen Ran remained silent.

'The Successors bet with chips.'

'While the players...'

'Bet with their chest plates!'

'What happens if the chips are lost first?'

'These two outcomes seem like they would lead in entirely different directions.'

'Just to be safe.'

'It is better to watch and wait for a while.'

Seeing that Chen Ran was not going to answer, the Young Inheritor retracted his gaze and calmly announced, "Red camp and blue camp, please present your chosen candidates."

Red camp: Qiu Yinong.

Blue camp: Liu Xing.

The two walked up to the door and noticed that the text on it had somehow changed to:

"Normal."

This indicated that the difficulty of this secret room was quite average and wouldn't require too much brainpower.

The two Successors pondered for a moment before each placing a bet of a single chip.

It was strange; both the players and the Successors seemed to be feeling each other out.

The players: Chen Ran and Geng Hao, having already participated once, would not join a second round in the short term. They both intended to watch and wait.

The Successors: Until they understood the true strength of each player, they did not dare place heavy bets.

...

Stepping into the secret room.

Qiu Yinong and Liu Xing discovered that this room was incredibly simple. The surroundings were purely white, and there were only two chairs situated in the center.

Thinking back to the second chamber, they immediately realized they needed to sit on the chairs to be transported to the actual secret room.

The two sat down, instantly overcome by a wave of dizziness. When they awoke, they found themselves in a brand new secret room.

This secret room was rectangular, visibly about fifty meters long and twenty meters wide. The two stood at one end of the expansive space.

The floor of the room was paved with tiles in four different colors: red, blue, yellow, and green.

The tiles were square, each roughly one square meter in size. There were twenty tiles in a row, making up forty-nine rows in total.

This was because the very first row, where the two were standing, was devoid of any tiles.

The colors of the twenty tiles in each row seemed randomly arranged, lacking any discernible pattern.

'It is a bit dazzling.'

Qiu Yinong furrowed her brows. She glanced at the left and right walls of the secret room and found a set of characters on each side.

On the left:

"One official resigns to return."

"Two dynasties share brotherly ties."

"Three lights are sun, moon, and stars."

"Four poetry forms are folk, court, and hymns."

"Five body parts are head, hands, and feet."

"Six pulses gauge the diagnostic points."

"Seven colors feature red, green, and blue."

"Eight trigrams divine average, fortune, and doom."

"Nine cauldrons symbolize fame, wealth, and power."

On the right:

"One gust brings wind, thunder, and rain."

"Two eyes possess pupils, brows, and lashes."

"Three lights are sun, moon, and stars."

"Four virtues are origin, success, and benefit."

"Five mourning garbs include the unhemmed, the hemp, and the coarse."

"Six realms hold humans, gods, and ghosts."

"Seven strings strum sovereign and subject grace."

"Eight directions face golden spears and halberds."

"Nine chapters detail base, altitude, and hypotenuse."

Liu Xing looked at the texts on both sides and stroked his chin. "These look like couplets," he asked curiously, "and they both include the line 'Three lights are sun, moon, and stars.' That should be the first line of the couplet. I remember, in the first secret room..."

"That was the exact one you drew," Qiu Yinong interrupted.

"It is just that I feel some of the second lines here seem flawed. First off, 'One official resigns to return'—although it implies leaving, it does not fully encompass everything. Do you know how to explain it?"

Qiu Yinong shot him a glance. After a brief thought, she answered, "'One official resigns to return' originates from the poetic essay 'To Return'."

Liu Xing froze for a moment.

'The essay is titled 'To Return'. Stripping away the excess words leaves 'resign to return', maintaining the exact meaning of departing. 'One official resigns to return' makes perfect sense.'

"Then, what about 'Five body parts are head, hands, and feet'?" Liu Xing continued to ask.

"Prostrating with all five limbs to the ground."

Hearing this, Liu Xing imagined himself prostrating. Indeed, it involved both hands, both feet, and the head touching the ground.

'So 'Five body parts are head, hands, and feet' is fine too.'

He continued reading down the list.

'Six pulses gauge the diagnostic points.' He knew this was a common concept in traditional Chinese pulse diagnosis.

'Eight trigrams divine average, fortune, and doom.' He understood this one as well. Fortune telling resulted in either a doom hexagram, a fortune hexagram, or an average hexagram.

As for 'Nine cauldrons symbolize fame, wealth, and power,' that was even easier to explain. In ancient times, the nine cauldrons were the ultimate symbol of imperial authority, naturally granting fame, wealth, and power.

'Damn it!'

'When I used to read historical novels, they always claimed that "Three lights are sun, moon, and stars" was an unmatched couplet throughout the ages.'

'All sorts of officials and brilliant scholars would fail to match it, only for the protagonist to effortlessly show off by throwing out "Four poetry forms are folk, court, and hymns."'

'I thought this first line was incredibly impressive, but looking at it now, it is nothing special. There are eighteen matching second lines right here, and they flawlessly match everything from one to nine.'

'Those damn hack authors deceived me into thinking I lacked culture in my youth.'

'However, the level and oblique tones of these first lines seem a bit off. Is this some kind of hint?'

Suddenly, he saw Qiu Yinong pull an apple out of her bag. She bent down and rolled it across the tiled floor.

The moment the apple touched a yellow tile, it was as if a mechanism had been triggered. The fruit was instantly and neatly sliced into dozens of pieces.

'Holy shit! Laser cutting tripwires?'

'These tiles must be connected to some sort of trap. You have to step on them in the correct sequence. One wrong move, and the mechanism activates.'

'You will get sliced to pieces by lasers!'

Just as this thought crossed his mind, he was astonished to see that Qiu Yinong had already leaped onto the tiles.

Starting on the first row, she initially jumped onto a red tile, then advanced to a second red tile, immediately followed by a third...

Also red!

But on her fourth jump, she suddenly leaped onto a green tile.

Throughout the entire process, Qiu Yinong didn't trigger a single trap. She was perfectly safe.

Qiu Yinong paid him no mind. Once she had confirmed her hypothesis, her jumps grew faster and faster.

Very quickly, she had already reached the eighth row of tiles. Perhaps because she was closer now, she noticed a door on the far wall.

'That must be the exit.'

'The difficulty of this secret room is indeed quite average. If we are to determine a victor, it will likely come down to whoever clears it in the shortest amount of time.'

Watching Qiu Yinong get further and further away.

Liu Xing stood in place, deep in thought.

'First, before entering, the difficulty level on the door read "Normal".'

'Which means...'

'This secret room is incredibly simple.'

'Second, there are ten sets of couplets on both the left and right walls. In terms of meaning, these couplets are completely flawless.'

'However, the problem lies in the level and oblique tones.'

'At the same time.'

'There is a problem with the colors of the tiles. That much is obvious at a glance.'

'In other words, the tonal patterns of the couplets are very likely linked to the colors of the floor tiles.'

'Red, blue, green, yellow?'

'What do they symbolize?'

'I feel like I have an impression of this, I just can't remember where I saw or learned it before...'

Just as he was racking his brains.

Qiu Yinong had already leaped to the other end of the room, pushed open the grand door, and successfully escaped the secret room.

From the moment she arrived to the moment she escaped, she had taken...

Less than ten minutes!