Deceitful Game

Chapter 24 I am a person favored by God

Mingpo stood up, swaying unsteadily.

"So you already have your answer? Or... have you simply succumbed to the alcohol?"

The hoarse, deep voice remained noncommittal, only carrying a hint of sarcasm and incitement, as it continued to ask, "I think... it's probably not enough."

"Actually, that's easy to handle—just drink four more glasses of wine, and I'll give you new information, tell you which is the shortest path, and eliminate another wrong answer for you!"

"No need."

Mingpo casually said as she walked towards the fourth door, "I'll choose this one."

He opened the door and then slowly walked inside.

He finally realized the designer's other malicious intent—the passageway inside the door wasn't straight at all.

Run forward about seven or eight meters, and then there's a right-angle turn. Not far after that, there's another right-angle turn.

The strategy of trying to "see the finish line beforehand and then turn back" halfway through the race is simply impossible to succeed.

By the time he rounded the third right-angle turn, Mingpo had already figured out the structure of this challenge—

It should be a maze.

It's simply that there are four lines that don't intersect, extending from the beginning to the end, with three of them being dead ends. The different lengths of the different paths are most likely due to their varying degrees of curvature. Therefore, it's impossible to determine whether a path leads to a destination based solely on the degree of curvature at the beginning.

Despite this, Mingpo was in no hurry at all.

He looked around as if on a spring outing.

This passageway is not an empty metal tunnel.

Instead, there were two rows of densely packed bookshelves—

"Inferiority and Superiority," "The Interpretation of Dreams," "The Crowd," "The Evolution of Cooperation," "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," "Beyond Good and Evil"...

Whenever Mingbo gets close to them, a section of these bookshelves suddenly bulges outwards, as if someone has given them a push from behind.

If Mingpo runs wildly without looking back or watching where she's going... even if she's not startled by them, she might still be knocked over by a bookshelf that suddenly pops out.

As a result, in front of Mingpo, who was taking a leisurely stroll, they seemed to be respectfully offering him books to read.

"Wow."

Mingpo glanced at the list of book titles and chuckled softly.

Instead of moving forward, he stopped and took out a copy of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

He glanced through it briefly and found that the content was correct and the printing and layout were fine. He could even see the notes the owner had made while reading it carefully, as well as the confused thoughts written on them.

"Hehehe..."

Upon seeing this, Mingpo chuckled again.

His laughter was ambiguous, yet it inexplicably angered the man.

"—Three minutes have passed."

The sound echoed through the passageway.

The pronouncement sounded as majestic as a god, attempting to continue putting pressure on Mingpo: "It's not too late to turn back now."

"But the price is that once you leave here, you will never be able to enter this door again."

"Are you planning to keep going, or... run away?"

The voice seemed to carry a hint of incitement and seduction.

But Mingpo just sneered: "No need to say anything more—do you know how many mistakes you've made?"

"Do you know why, when you ruled out the third option, I went straight this way?"

After he finished speaking, the other person immediately fell silent.

Neither admitting nor denying.

He was clearly determined not to reveal any more information to Mingper that would help him assess the current situation.

But it was too late.

The other party's reaction had already told Mingpo that he had made the right choice.

Mingpo's deep voice sneered, "If you really want to kill me, you might as well say nothing and do nothing. That way, there's at least a three-quarters chance I'll die in this passage."

"Oh, I see... You don't want to kill me outright, do you? Or rather, you don't want to kill me that easily."

The first hint requires you to drink a glass of wine, and then you get nothing in return.

The second clue requires drinking two glasses of wine, at which point we can eliminate one wrong answer—the third path must be the longest, so it cannot be the correct option.

The third clue is to drink four glasses of wine. At this point, you can eliminate one more wrong answer, making it a choice of two out of four.

Following this pattern, if you still dare not move forward... then to find out the real answer, you must drink eight more cups of wine, which would make a total of fifteen cups of strong liquor.

One cup is about one ounce, so that's one and a half pounds.

Even for a healthy person, this is an amount that could definitely make someone drunk.

Not to mention, under normal circumstances, this swimming coach would only have half a life left when he reached this stage.

"The next level, if I'm not mistaken... will be a game that requires precision, right?"

Mingpo said leisurely, "In the first challenge, you tried to destroy my right hand or exhaust my strength. That's why you locked my right hand instead of my left. But you don't want to kill me directly... because you have more 'games' prepared for you later."

"I think you'll find other ways to save my life before I really lose my temperature."

"In the second round, you tried to force me into a painful choice—whether to risk completely destroying my right hand or destroying my left hand as well. Clearly, you have malicious intent towards my 'hands.' But if you were just trying to torture me, you should have destroyed my 'legs' first... You didn't do that because you wanted me to move on to the next game."

"And in this third level, you started getting me drunk. The maze was just a smokescreen, a deterrent. Your real purpose was to force me to exchange information by 'drinking,' so that I would be drunk when I entered the fourth level."

"Exhausted, hands ruined, completely drunk... Clearly, the fourth level will test my hand precision. And at this point, I'll 'regret'—why did I make that choice? In other words, your real trap, your truly soul-searching challenge, lies in the next level."

"You want me to regret this, don't you? But too bad, kid."

Mingpo said slowly, "I've already seen through you."

"I only drank three cups, and I'm still in pretty good shape—at least much better than if I'd drunk seven. In other words, to pass this level normally, I can only get a maximum of two hints."

"Under these circumstances, and with an injured body, I have to seriously consider the difficult questions you posed... It's a bit too much for an ordinary swimming coach like me."

The words had barely left his mouth when the sound of a heavy object hitting the ground rang out.

Five minutes have now elapsed.

The gate was locked, and Mingpo had no chance to turn back.

Now, that voice has finally realized that Mingpo was not bluffing.

"...Why?"

The voice sounded resentful: "Did you gamble? The odds of choosing one out of three?"

"Just take it that way. You can also interpret it as me being someone favored by God."

As Mingpo spoke, he had already reached the end of the road.

There was an open door there.

—Clearly, this is not a dead end; Mingpo made the right choice.

But he wasn't particularly surprised.

Because the person's reaction the moment he stepped through that door had already given him the answer.

"Bring on whatever other tricks you have."

Mingpo said softly, "Otherwise, there will be no chance."

"I'm getting closer and closer to you now, aren't I?"