Chapter 8: Summoning the Eight Missing Players

Chen Ran could not care less.

Seeing that the two Newbies had no intention of continuing the fight, Baili Qiangsheng and his five companions gathered around the table, deciding to crack the Secret Room first.

Zhang Yuan stared at the torn photo. "If the Daughter was an only child, she should be sitting between her parents. But in this half of the photo, the Daughter is sitting on her father's lap. Therefore, in the missing half, there must be a Child sitting on the mother's lap. In other words, the complete picture is a family portrait of four."

"The photo being torn in half, according to general Common Sense, symbolizes that the couple has divorced."

Saying this, Zhang Yuan crouched down, pinched a small amount of sand from the floor, tasted it, and then spat it out.

"The sand is very salty, which means it has been soaked in seawater. Taking all this into account, we can draw a conclusion: a divorced couple brought their two children to play at the beach."

"The missing half of the photo features the Wife and the Child living with her. Hence, the final deduction is that this divorced couple brought their two children to the beach for an outing, but for some reason, the Wife and the Child with her left early, ending the gathering."

Baili Qiangsheng gave him a thumbs-up.

Even though they were Veteran Players, they had made thorough preparations before entering the instance. Everyone had a different role: some excelled at puzzle-solving, some at Infighting, some at scamming Newbies, and some were just fools acting as bait...

Zhang Yuan was a police officer in life, highly skilled at analytical reasoning and solving cases. With him around, cracking the Secret Room would be much easier.

Baili Qiangsheng pointed at the shovel on the table. "Going to the beach obviously implies playing in the sand. But why is there only one small plastic shovel here?"

Zhang Yuan had imagined many possibilities regarding this question, but none of them had direct evidence.

At that moment, a sudden, cold voice chimed in. "Is it possible that there is a flaw in the logic of your earlier deduction?"

The six men looked toward the sound and saw Chen Ran leaning against the wall, smoking a cigarette with an amused expression.

"What do you mean?" Zhang Yuan asked, his face darkening.

"The photo was torn in two, with one half missing. Out of two children's beach shovels, one is missing. The answer is already obvious. The correct explanation is that the Wife and the Child living with her were absent from this beach outing altogether."

"Evidence?" Zhang Yuan would not rashly overturn his own judgment just because of a few words from Chen Ran.

"This Secret Room was supposed to have eighteen players, yet there are only ten of us. Eight people are temporarily absent. Such a glaring clue is right in front of you. Could you not think of it, or were you trying to use this puzzle to trick the rest of them?"

"You..." He swallowed the curse that almost escaped his lips, instead just glaring fiercely at Chen Ran.

"What do you mean by 'temporarily'?" Baili Qiangsheng caught the keyword in Chen Ran's sentence.

"Answer a question of mine first."

"Ask," he replied.

"Are there any conditions or limitations to casting the Liar-Slayer skill?" Chen Ran had no intention of helping for free.

"Yes... You have to sacrifice one guaranteed successful Judgment opportunity by firing a shot into the air. Before firing, the Liar-Slayer will block out all light sources in the Secret Room."

'So that is how it is. No wonder the Secret Room suddenly went dark earlier, and no wonder four shots rang out in the darkness, yet the Yellow-Haired Youth only had three bullet holes in him.'

Having figured this out, Chen Ran held nothing back. "The fact that the initial ten people in this Secret Room are all men is also a clue. Out of the family of four, three genders are confirmed: the Husband, the Wife, and the Daughter. The only one whose gender cannot be determined is the Child living with the Wife."

"However, it does not matter if we cannot confirm it. In my earlier deduction, the Wife and her Child skipped this gathering, leaving only the Daughter and the Husband to play at the beach. But there is a problem here. Since the Wife and the other Child missed the gathering, why did the father and daughter still come to this beach?"

His words sent the group into deep thought.

It was true. Since two people were absent, why did the father and daughter still come to the beach meant for their gathering?

Unless...

Something clicked in Zhang Yuan's mind. "It means the two absent individuals will show up eventually."

"No, it is the Wife who will come. The family portrait missing a half symbolizes a broken marriage, while the disappearance of one shovel symbolizes... something happened to the Child with the Wife. They are either dead or lost."

Hearing this, everyone looked down at the table.

Half a photo symbolized a broken marriage; that was indisputable. From the photo, it could be deduced that this former couple had two children.

But the clue provided on the table was only a single plastic shovel meant for a child to play in the sand.

The missing one symbolized that something had happened to the Child accompanying the Wife, just as Chen Ran said...

Either dead or lost.

Therefore, the Wife did not want to attend this gathering, but the father and daughter's arrival proved that the Wife would eventually show up.

"Wait," Ma Wenjie interjected, his brain cells struggling to keep up. He stopped them to ask, "You analyzed all this, but you still did not explain why the eight players are temporarily absent."

Dealing with this kind of person gave Chen Ran a headache. They just had to interrupt perfectly good reasoning and break everyone's train of thought.

"In the family of four, the only confirmed male is the Husband. Since the ten of us are all men, wouldn't you say we are playing the role of the Husband? The eight missing players should all be women, acting as the Wife. Since the Wife is bound to show up, what we need to do now is summon those eight missing women."

These words brought absolute clarity. Exactly; the Wife did not want to come but was forced to by the Husband.

By the same logic, the eight missing players could be summoned over through some specific method.

"How do we call the Wife over?" Lin Feng, who had approached the table at some point, asked curiously.

"Since the marriage has collapsed, it cannot be out of love. That only leaves the familial bond between the Wife and the Daughter."

The group suddenly turned around, their gazes collectively falling on the Child's Small Shovel resting on the table.

The beach, playing in the sand, family bonds... The answer was that the Daughter built a sand sculpture in the shape of her mother, and the Husband used this to call the Wife over.

However, the Daughter was only two years old and knew nothing. Therefore, the real answer was: the Husband sculpted the sand into the shape of his Wife, claimed that their Daughter made it, and used that to summon her.

"But we do not know what the Wife looks like. How are we supposed to sculpt the sand?" someone asked.

Lin Feng, Baili Qiangsheng, and Zhang Yuan glanced at the speaker as if looking at an idiot. Wouldn't randomly sculpting an adult figure with female characteristics suffice?

Ma Wenjie felt embarrassed under their stares, but quickly recovered. He picked up the Children's Sand Shovel and began piling up the sand on the floor. Gradually, a female sand sculpture with blurred facial features, long hair, and breasts appeared before them.

"Is this good enough?"

The moment he spoke, the female sand sculpture seemed to come to life. It blinked its eyes and, amidst the dumbfounded stares of the group, slowly transformed into a woman of flesh and blood!

The woman opened her eyes and looked at the men in confusion, murmuring, "How strange. After the Novice Tutorial Room ended, I felt like I slept for a very long time..."