The five people remained unaware of the new presence behind them as they became immersed in their current situation. The uneasy feeling Xiao Muyu had earlier was pushed to the back of her mind.
The carousel was still octagonal, and as soon as they all stepped inside, it began to spin. When it stopped, the eight walls had transformed into eight doors.
The doors were painted a dark red, a color that was visually unsettling and gave a creepy impression, resembling congealed blood. Each door had a number in gold, ranging from 1 to 8, with no 9 or 0.
“What does this mean? Do we have to go through one of these doors?” Chen Kaijie felt his scalp tingling. He hated these arbitrary decisions. What were the consequences of choosing the wrong door, and what was the correct answer?
With a ding, the familiar system prompt sounded.
“Congratulations to the five players for reaching the final stage of the sixth round, the Ultimate Carousel of Life. Numbers have their cycles and ends, just as human lives do.
Behind these doors lies your personal carousel of life. Choose wisely; numbers may cycle, but life does not have a second chance. If you hesitate out of fear, only death awaits you.”
The system’s voice was unusually lively, and Xiao Muyu recognized it as the voice of Judge 002.
“This voice sounds familiar,” Zuo Tiantian said nervously, squeezing her fingers.
“It’s Judge 002. What does it mean that the system is using her voice?” Chen Kaijie asked, puzzled by the cryptic message.
“It means this is likely the final stage. The appearance of 002 signals that we are nearing the end; she wouldn’t show up otherwise,” Shen Qingqiu, now experienced with her third instance, explained.
“The way to pass this level is still to find a way out. These many doors likely mean that we won’t succeed by just choosing one. 002 mentioned the carousel of life; do we need to see our own carousel of life?” Chen Kaijie speculated, reflecting on 002’s words.
Shen Qingqiu glanced at him and scoffed, “Are you sure you want to see your carousel of life?”
Chen Kaijie was taken aback, and Xiao Muyu added, “A carousel of life means seeing the events of your entire life flash before your eyes, like a spinning carousel. When do you think that happens?”
Su Jin, listening carefully, answered seriously, “When you are about to die.”
Chen Kaijie and Zuo Tiantian felt a chill down their spines, their hair standing on end. Chen Kaijie shivered and said, “Forget it, I don’t want to see that!”
He muttered in frustration, “This system is brutal.”
“It did give a clear warning: numbers cycle, but life does not have a second chance. If we choose wrong, do we immediately see our carousel of life?” Shen Qingqiu remarked casually, even with a hint of mockery, causing Zuo Tiantian and the others to focus intently on her.
Xiao Muyu also glanced at her. She had known Shen Qingqiu was indifferent to life and death, and she herself didn’t care much either, but Shen Qingqiu’s nonchalant attitude still made her uncomfortable.
“This is the final stage of the sixth round, but so far, we haven’t found any place that requires a password. However, we discovered seven clues, which technically amount to eight letters. Could they be related to this?” Su Jin connected the previous clues to their current situation.
“Right, where do we need a password to get out?” Chen Kaijie realized something was amiss.
“The carousel implies a cycle, and we’ve seen the cycle of numbers before,” Xiao Muyu said slowly, her brow furrowing. Suddenly, she seemed to understand, and her expression lightened, her speech quickening.
“In the later rounds, we opened doors using passwords. We seem to have forgotten that in the first round, we didn’t use a password to open the doors; we chose the correct door!”
As soon as she finished speaking, the others’ eyes lit up. Chen Kaijie slapped his thigh in realization, “Yes, in the first round, we used a sequence to open the six doors, essentially solving a password.”
“So, if we decode the password, can we use it to find the way out?” Zuo Tiantian became excited.
Shen Qingqiu looked at Xiao Muyu, who nodded and said, “In theory, yes. But how do H, N, F, K, C, CA, and I relate to numbers?”
Everyone fell silent, pondering the problem that had been bothering them. The earlier clues had been numbers, but now they had letters, which didn’t match up even if they considered their positions in the alphabet.
“We’ve been thinking about the English alphabet. What about pinyin?” Zuo Tiantian suggested suddenly.
They immediately switched perspectives. If they used pinyin, they would need to consider both initials and finals.
“It’s still not right; a few of these numbers exceed ten. These eight doors shouldn’t have a password longer than eight digits at most,” Su Jin, familiar with such puzzles, immediately countered.
“Su Jin raised a good point. Is the password still six digits?” Chen Kaijie posed a question that plunged them back into confusion.
If they couldn’t even determine the length of the password, finding the correct one would be impossible.
“I think it should be eight. Weren’t there six doors with six passwords before? Plus, there are eight letters,” Su Jin reasoned logically.
However, Xiao Muyu felt something was off. After a moment of contemplation, she continued, “What’s special and coincidental is often crucial. Eight letters, yes, but CA was found on one person, doesn’t that seem strange?”
“It is indeed odd. Only seven portraits were moved, suggesting there might be seven passwords,” Shen Qingqiu added, seeing their frustration.
When Xiao Muyu looked up at her, she added, “If English letters and Chinese pinyin don’t fit, could they represent something else?”
Just as Xiao Muyu felt she was close to a clue, the carousel they were on suddenly sank. The five of them lost their balance, terrified.
“What’s happening?” Su Jin clung to Zuo Tiantian, her face pale. The ground remained unstable, trembling as if it were about to collapse.
Xiao Muyu’s expression changed, and moments later, her face turned serious. “If you hesitate out of fear, only death awaits.”
“What?” Zuo Tiantian grew more anxious.
“The system warned us!” Chen Kaijie recalled the system’s final message, his expression grim.
“It’s forcing us to choose. Time is running out; if we don’t open a door, we’ll die too!” He shouted angrily. This so-called limitless time was a deadly trap.
With no time to waste, Xiao Muyu looked at the eight doors. No number 9!
The core of the six rounds was the carousel numbers: 142758. Nine is the resting number, so what about 3 and 6?
“Let’s go with 6!” Xiao Muyu decisively chose, glancing at Shen Qingqiu.
Shen Qingqiu immediately understood, drawing her dagger.
“Be ready; we don’t know what’s inside. Prepare yourselves.” She quickly moved towards door 6 as the others struggled to stand.
“Is it because 6 is the resting number? Maybe 3 works too?” Su Jin, thinking quickly, suggested.
“In the first round, you exited through 4316; we exited through 4313. It should be!” Chen Kaijie agreed, pulling Zuo Tiantian along.
When they pushed the door open, they found themselves on a narrow path surrounded by more carousels.
Due to the shaking of the carousel, the path trembled. They hurried forward, reentering another carousel room, similar to the previous one but mirrored.
Mirrors and carousels, the essence of this challenge.
“The number 6 changed color.” Zuo Tiantian pointed in surprise. The originally golden 6 was now blood red like the door.
“Did we choose correctly?”
Though no immediate danger presented itself, Chen Kaijie grew more anxious, gripping his frying pan tightly and swallowing nervously.
This constant tension, the hope mixed with fear of despair, was agonizing.
“No.” Xiao Muyu approached the door marked 6, reaching out but was stopped by Shen Qingqiu.
“Don’t risk it yet. I think the password still involves those letters.” With calm restored, they had time to think.
Xiao Muyu glanced at the door, then turned to Shen Qingqiu. “You mentioned something before we opened the door.”
Shen Qingqiu paused, recalling, “I said they might represent something other than letters.”
“Something else?” Xiao Muyu repeated, lost in thought. She closed her eyes, discarding other possibilities, and focused on the letter H. “If H isn’t a letter, what could it be?”
Chen Kaijie was about to speak, but Shen Qingqiu quickly signaled him to stay quiet. Whenever Xiao Muyu delved into her thoughts, she was close to unraveling the mystery.
Shen Qingqiu watched her closely, listening to every word. Xiao Muyu’s murmured words reached her ears.
If H isn’t a letter, what could it be? In a numeric puzzle, why would letters appear? If H isn’t a letter, it must be…
Suddenly, realization dawned on her. She looked at Xiao Muyu, who seemed to awaken at the same moment. They both exclaimed, “Hydrogen!”
Chen Kaijie, Su Jin, and Zuo Tiantian were stunned. “Hydrogen?”
Su Jin, confused, repeated the word, then her face lit up. “You mean… I get it now! That’s why Tiantian’s portrait had two letters, CA—it’s Calcium!”
“Yes, I understand now. Those aren’t letters; they’re chemical elements!” Chen Kaijie and Zuo Tiantian realized, growing more excited.
Chen Kaijie, trembling with excitement, asked, “Does anyone know the periodic table? Which elements are these?”
“Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium…” Zuo Tiantian, having recently studied, began to recite.
“1, 7, 9, 19, 6, 20, 53,” Xiao Muyu recited, but her excitement faded.
“Right, but those are just numbers. How do we use them?” Shen Qingqiu pondered.
Su Jin and the others were astonished by her quick reaction, but their joy was quickly extinguished.
Although chemistry seemed to have a closer relationship with these numbers than English or Chinese, the appearance of 19, 20, and 53 was too strange, and without 0, this line of thought was basically dismissed.
“So, this idea is wrong too?” Zuo Tiantian was completely deflated, and Chen Kaijie was even more dejected.
The psychological pressure on him was immense. He had finally come up with a reliable hypothesis, only for it to be wrong again. It was worse than knowing nothing at all.
“But this ‘Ca’ really does seem significant. Is there something we missed?”
Su Jin was also feeling uncomfortable, but she forced herself to endure it. Losing hope here would truly mean waiting for death. She couldn’t give up until the last moment.
“Wrong.” Xiao Muyu suddenly said. Immediately, Shen Qingqiu and the others looked at her in unison.
Xiao Muyu could sense their current feelings. Normally, she wouldn’t say much, but having gone through so much together, there was a certain bond between the five of them.
She hadn’t sensed any malice from them. Although she didn’t like being relied upon, it wasn’t a feeling she detested.
“I mean, we shouldn’t have chosen 6 just now.”
“Why?” Chen Kaijie was a bit puzzled.
“6 is indeed a safe number, but it doesn’t provide us with any clues. We wasted a safe space.”
After saying this, she reached out and pushed the 6. Shen Qingqiu’s eyes narrowed, and his right hand almost reached out, but nothing happened.
“See, just as I guessed, 6 can’t be opened now.”
“I understand.” Su Jin calmed down. “We can rule out 3 among the 8 numbers, and 6 is a safe number. That leaves 6 numbers. If we guess wrong, 6 can be our buffer. Now we only have 3.”
Xiao Muyu looked at Su Jin with a bit of surprise. She reacted quickly and nodded to acknowledge her understanding.
“It wasn’t a waste. Although we don’t know if this idea is right, it was worth trying. It also made us more certain that 3 and 6 are safe numbers.”
Shen Qingqiu glanced at her, and her words seemed to comfort Xiao Muyu.
“So, have you decided which door to open next?”
Shen Qingqiu glanced at the remaining seven doors. A strange feeling occupied her mind, but she couldn’t quite grasp it. She felt like she was missing something.
“We’ve been overlooking one issue.” Xiao Muyu looked at the doors, her expression tired.
“What issue?”
“The design of this instance involves six rounds of games with a random setup. The previous round’s pattern doesn’t predict the next. If there’s any commonality, it’s two things: the presence of mirrors and carousel numbers, right?”
Shen Qingqiu’s gaze locked on Xiao Muyu’s face, and she finally realized what she had overlooked. Moreover, she knew Xiao Muyu was about to surprise her again.
She inexplicably felt she understood Xiao Muyu well. Despite her tiredness, Xiao Muyu’s calm and relaxed demeanor, and the subtle light in her eyes indicated she had figured out something crucial.
Sure enough, after the other three nodded, Xiao Muyu continued, “We’ve seen mirrors many times. The carousel number is reflected in the password. In the previous four rounds, regardless of the form, this has been verified.
No matter how absurd a game instance is, it shouldn’t drastically change the password logic in the final stage. So it should still be the carousel number. But does the carousel number have seven digits?”
Chen Kaijie and the others didn’t understand carousel numbers and shook their heads, thinking they had guessed wrong since the password was six digits.
But then they couldn’t figure out why there were seven clues for a six-digit carousel. If it had six digits, why were there six carousel numbers? Would they have to try six times? That would likely be fatal.
“No, carousel numbers can have seven digits,” Shen Qingqiu added, unable to suppress her smile, especially when looking at Xiao Muyu.
