"So he must be a Jin spy infiltrated into the Northern Song!" Selene immediately worked out the logic. "And the faceless man on the bridge must be his contact!"
I was dumbfounded. "You two are just making this up!"
"No, think carefully—out of all those figures in the painting, why make this particular man the clue? It's not random at all—it's a detail hidden within the image." Selene looked at me. "So this faceless man, pretending to cross the bridge, would actually be looking downward—toward his contact on the boat!"
It sounded absurd, but they'd reasoned it out convincingly, and I had no rebuttal. With the countdown ticking toward zero, I had no choice but to steel myself and press the button on the door with the downward-looking face.
With a click, the door opened, and the button turned green.
Holy hell—they'd actually figured it out!
The four of us scrambled through the doorway. A chime sounded as the countdown hit zero. Through the closing door, I caught a glimpse of red laser beams flooding the previous room in a dense, web-like grid.
The "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" and the table left on the floor were instantly perforated with countless burn holes, as if pierced by ten thousand arrows.
Heart still pounding, I turned around. Before us was an identical square room—but this one was empty, save for a Rubik's cube on the floor.
The countdown screen began ticking: 7 minutes.
Same setup—three doors, a square room—but this room was strikingly minimalist. No patterns, no objects, nothing at all except that small Rubik's cube on the ground.
In other words, the cube was the only clue.
I picked it up and examined it. It was just a regular Rubik's cube, a cheap plastic one with the colors all scrambled, needing to be solved.
"So if we get the colors lined up properly, we'll find the right answer?" I mused.
"Should be." Old Jasper frowned. Though we had no idea how the cube would give us a clue, there seemed to be nothing else to do but try to solve it.
"Let me try first." I picked up the cube and started turning it. I'd played with these plenty as a kid—at the orphanage, I used to race the other kids on speed, always coming in first.
But this time, something was wrong. No matter how I twisted it, I couldn't get the colors to align properly. Maybe it was the nerves, but the more I turned, the more anxious I became.
Another minute had already slipped away.
Jasper saw I couldn't do it, took the cube from my hands, and started working it himself. His technique was smooth enough, but the result was the same—no matter what, the colors wouldn't line up.
The cube passed through all four of us—me, Old Jasper, Selene, and Brother Asher—but by the end, the colors were still a jumbled mess.
I suddenly realized that this seemingly simple clue was actually harder than the "Along the River During the Qingming Festival" puzzle. No wonder the countdown was 7 minutes this time.
And now, only 3 minutes remained.
This wasn't a Rubik's cube—it was a devil's cube. It had trapped us alive with what looked like the simplest of objects.
Refusing to give up, I grabbed the cube again and spun it frantically, trying to find some hidden pattern. But another minute passed, and I was still empty-handed.
Selene suddenly snatched the cube from my hands and twisted it a few times. "Stop wasting time. This cube is impossible to solve."
"Why?" I asked, dumbfounded.
"There's a mechanism inside it. Every time you rotate it to a certain position, an extra red square appears."
I counted. Sure enough, there was one more red square than the other colors. And when I twisted it again, the extra red square morphed into another color, restoring the balance.
My jaw dropped. I'd thought it was a cheap flea-market toy, but it was hiding this kind of trap. They were just messing with us!
"We're done for," Old Jasper said in despair. "It's a bug. You could play it for a lifetime and never solve it."
"Amitabha. Misfortune and fortune are intertwined," Brother Asher said with pressed palms. "This humble monk believes this bug is precisely the clue we're looking for."
That sparked something in Selene. She picked up the cube and studied it closely, then said, "Assuming each face's squares have a number, from 1 through 9. From now on, I'll rotate the cube, Jasper records where the extra red square appears, and Ryan, you write down the numbers."
I frowned. "Will that help?"
"I don't know, but it's all we've got."
Selene's fingers flew across the cube. I used my fingernail to scratch each position where the extra red square appeared onto the wall: 2, 6, 9, 5, 4, 7, 3, 6...
Selene stopped and looked up in amazement. "This is... Morse code?"
"You know it?" I asked urgently.
"A little. During my private investigator days, I encountered cases involving it." Selene's brow furrowed. "This set of Morse code seems to use the standard key—I'll have to decode it from memory..."
"How long will that take?"
"I don't know." Selene was entirely focused on the number sequence, muttering under her breath as she calculated.
I glanced at the countdown. We'd burned too much time on trying to solve the cube. Now only a few dozen seconds remained.
I paced in place, frantic with anxiety, but there was nothing else to do—only wait for Selene to decode it.
No wonder Morphine had said this trip required everyone's cooperation. There was no way one person could get through this alone.
"It's no good, Selene, we're out of time!" I interrupted her. "Ten seconds left!"
Selene's forehead was soaked. The intense mental exertion had nearly drained her. "Decoding failed. All I could read is the character for 'sparrow'..."
Sparrow? A sparrow? What was that supposed to mean—playing mahjong?
We were completely stumped. But time allowed no more deliberation. Just as I was about to panic and pick a door at random, Brother Asher suddenly shouted, "Amitabha! This humble monk has seen through it! 'Sparrow'—if it's related to direction, it must be the Vermilion Bird!"
And it clicked for me!
Azure Dragon on the left, White Tiger on the right, Vermilion Bird in front, Black Tortoise behind—the door right in front of us!
I slammed my hand on the button. It turned green, and as the chime signaled the countdown hitting zero, we barely squeaked through again. Behind us, countless laser beams sliced through the air.
This was more intense than any Death Trip before. I'd never felt the scythe of death so close to my skull—every step balanced on a knife's edge.
Under this dual assault on mind and body, we cleared six consecutive rooms, each one the correct path. Though we'd barely expended any physical energy, every one of us was drenched in sweat, adrenaline maxed out.
But when we entered the seventh room, we all froze.
In the center of this room sat a baby crib, and in it lay an infant, no more than two or three months old, waving its tiny arms and legs.
The countdown screen read: 10 minutes.
Jasper rummaged through the crib and found a note. After reading it, his face went dark.
"These bastards!" He slammed his fist against the wall.
"Old Jasper, what is it?" I asked.
"The note says this is the final room. Once we go through, we've cleared the entire maze."
"Holy shit, finally—"
But his next sentence extinguished my brief surge of joy: "The correct answer... is inside... the baby's belly."
I was stunned.
We were all stunned.
Right—of course. Now I remembered. This was Headquarters' playbook.
It was using this infant to remind us that this wasn't some puzzle-adventure game. This was a bloody, brutal Death Trip.
And at the highest level—a seven-million-yuan prize fight.
Did anyone really think they could clear it just by using their brain and keeping their hands clean? Nothing in this world comes that easy.
Now it had thrown down the final challenge, simple and brutal: extract the answer from inside this baby's belly, choose the correct door, walk out, and complete the trip.
Or stay here, lost in the maze, and when time ran out, be sliced into pieces by laser beams.