Chapter 48

Clank!

Zhu Ming’s shovel struck a hard object. Digging it out, she found it was a metal box roughly the size of two palms.

The box had a clasp, aged and brittle from erosion by wind and sand. The box itself had been polished incredibly smooth; whatever ornate patterns it once bore had long since vanished.

Zhu Ming pried it open and lifted the lid. Inside lay a boxful of pristine white chess pieces.

Wenren Tu picked up a chess piece shaped like a horse’s head, her expression turning solemn. “These are chess pieces. International chess pieces.”

Sixteen pieces in total, packed tightly in the box, exquisitely carved in fine detail.

“If this Dungeon involves chess, it could get a bit tricky.” Wenren Tu frowned. “I know how to play Go and Chinese Chess, but I’ve never played international chess. While some rules are similar to Chinese Chess, there are differences too.”

Zhu Ming stared at the unfamiliar pieces and chuckled dryly. “I can play Chinese Chess and Gomoku.” She hadn’t been exposed to international chess either.

In Huaxia, Go and Chinese Chess were much more widespread. Many old men in parks gathered in clusters to play chess. But international chess wasn’t as ubiquitous. She wondered if any of the fifteen remaining participants knew how to play.

“I do.”

As it turned out, someone did know international chess, and she was right beside them.

Zhu Ming eyed Yin Yu suspiciously. “How convenient. How good are you?”

Yin Yu replied modestly, “There was a time when I was quite interested in chess games, so I studied a majority of chess variants. As for my skill level, I didn’t delve very deeply. Just average.”

Zhu Ming thought it over and said, “Since we dug these pieces up together, I won’t take advantage of you. We’ll split them evenly.”

But just as she wanted to be fair and just, Yin Yu smiled and shook her head in refusal. “The chess pieces only reach their full potential when they are together. If only a portion marches onto the battlefield, it would be better to simply surrender.”

How troublesome. Zhu Ming took a step closer, trying to read Yin Yu’s eyes. “You want to cooperate?”

Yin Yu simply said, “Cooperation or not doesn’t matter. I only care about whether we can clear this.”

This was the second night of the Dungeon. Zhu Ming looked up at the blue moonbeam overhead, then at the pitch-black sky. She still felt like she had no solid clues.

What exactly did these chess pieces have to do with this Dungeon…

Zhu Ming tossed a chess piece into the air and caught it, then placed the set back into the box. Holding it up, she said, “How about this? You agree to one condition of mine, and this whole box of pieces is yours.”

Rather than leaving them in the hands of someone who couldn’t play, it was better to give them to someone who could. Even if there were other participants among the remaining fifteen who knew international chess, all things considered, Zhu Ming sadly realized she actually trusted Yin Yu and Bai Lianxue more.

Those two indeed had ambiguous stances and unclear motives. Yin Yu, especially, carried conspiracies that made it hard to trust her easily. But Zhu Ming believed in the judgment of intelligent people. Faced with a common enemy, smart people saw further and knew what to do and when.

“What’s the condition?” Yin Yu didn’t refuse outright.

“Meet me in reality.” Zhu Ming stated her demand. “Do you dare?”

“Very well, but I will decide the time.”

“Ha, if you set it a hundred years from now, who am I supposed to argue with?”

Yin Yu realized her image in Zhu Ming’s mind might truly be beyond repair. She spread her hands helplessly. “Then I promise to meet you within this year? Please understand, I also have many things to attend to.”

Within the year? It was already October now. That meant she would appear in another two or three months.

She’d already waited seven years. Zhu Ming didn’t mind waiting two more months at most, so she agreed.

She extended the box of chess pieces forward, but just as it was about to land in Yin Yu’s palm, she suddenly had second thoughts and pulled it back slightly. “I’m only choosing to maximize the benefits. This isn’t a cooperation. Don’t expect me to hold back where there’s competition.”

Yin Yu replied, “Don’t worry. Even if you wanted to hold back, I wouldn’t.”

Wenren Tu suddenly added, “What if the chess pieces are only symbolic and don’t actually require a real game?”

That was also a possibility. Following this line of thought, Zhu Ming added another condition: “If we have a need for them, you must immediately and unconditionally hand the chess pieces over.”

Yin Yu laughed. “Might as well not give them to me. You keep them.”

“It’s settled then.” Before Yin Yu could pull her hand back, Zhu Ming swiftly placed the chess pieces onto her palm, imposing her terms by force.

With both layers of the Moon’s guidance now unearthed, the three currently had no other clues, so they decided to head back and sleep.

Last night, the third Six-Armed Goddess Statue had appeared inside the dormitories. This suggested the highest probability was that she roamed near the temple. The closer they got to the temple, the more cautious Zhu Ming and Wenren Tu became. Yin Yu, on the other hand, looked around with no sense of crisis whatsoever.

“There seems to be someone over there.” Yin Yu pointed near the temple entrance.

In the dead of night, a tall figure stood in a dimly lit corner. This screamingly obvious situation definitely spelled trouble.

Walking closer, Zhu Ming recognized who it was from his attire. It was one of the triplets from the Sword and Shield Group. As for whether he was the first, second, or third brother, Zhu Ming had no idea.

Zhu Ming walked up and casually clapped him on the shoulder. “What are you doing out here?”

The unexpected happened. Zhu Ming had done nothing at all, just tapped his shoulder, yet she heard a series of crackling, clattering sounds. The person who had been standing silently just moments before completely shattered into a pile of rubble!

Zhu Ming’s pupils contracted sharply, and she reflexively leaped backward.

“What happened?” Wenren Tu asked.

“He’s dead.”

Silence fell between them. Dying just like that? It was way too bizarre.

“If there’s nothing else, I’ll head back first.” Yin Yu had no interest in how this person died. She bid them goodnight and elegantly stepped into the temple.

Watching her retreating figure, Wenren Tu anxiously started to step forward, but Zhu Ming immediately pulled her back.

“It wasn’t her.”

Zhu Ming crouched down and used the Zhuque Bow to poke at the fragments. She discovered that what should have been flesh and blood had all turned to stone. That was why a full-grown living person could be shattered into a thousand pieces without a single drop of blood spilling.

Wenren Tu crouched down to look as well, her brow deeply furrowed. “This cause of death really doesn’t seem man-made. Could he have seen that goddess statue? But why would he come out here in the middle of the night for no reason? Someone must have lured him out. You really don’t think it was Yin Yu?”

“No.” Zhu Ming wasn’t sure how to explain it, because speaking the words herself always sounded a bit strange. “Although she targets me and constantly stirs up trouble, her attitude toward others is very indifferent… I don’t know how to describe it. In short, the Sword and Shield Group didn’t offend her. She wouldn’t go after them.”

Sometimes, Zhu Ming found that in Yin Yu’s eyes, most people weren’t that different from each other. Whether male or female, old or young, beautiful or ugly, fat or thin, they were all just moving passersby, existing on the same level as cats, dogs, flowers, and trees—nothing particularly worth paying special attention to.

Her intuition told Zhu Ming that even if someone obstructed Yin Yu, she wouldn’t get angry. At most, she’d react accordingly. Because she simply didn’t take these matters to heart.

In any case, Zhu Ming just felt it wasn’t Yin Yu.

Zhu Ming stood up and pulled Wenren Tu along. “We’ll investigate tomorrow. Whoever did it will eventually slip up.”

This Dungeon’s sinister nature lay precisely here—sowing discord among the players, turning them against each other, making them kill one another. The Dungeon’s Mastermind simply had to sit back and reap the benefits.

Back at the Moon Group’s dormitory, hearing the door push open, Yun Zouchuan, who had been waiting up, asked who it was.

Receiving confirmation from Zhu Ming and Wenren Tu, she slowly moved her hand away from her eyes to look. “Thank goodness. When you come back late in the future, be careful. That deity statue can move through the floor gates in the dormitories.”

Because these two hadn’t returned for so long, Yun Zouchuan and Deng Yan had nearly gotten into serious trouble when the Six-Armed Goddess Statue suddenly emerged from the center of the dormitory. Luckily, they hadn’t directly seen the goddess’s face and had closed their eyes in time.

“So that’s it.” Zhu Ming finally understood where the thing had disappeared to last night.

“There’s one more thing.” Yun Zouchuan sat up and said, “Before you came back, someone suddenly showed up, saying everyone had taken other groups’ stuff, making it impossible for anyone to complete their tasks, so we should be honest and go out to trade items.”

Huh?

Zhu Ming straightened up. “Know who it was?”

Yun Zouchuan said, “It was Xiao Lang from the Harp Group.”

Wenren Tu nudged Zhu Ming. Zhu Ming frowned. “When was this?”

Yun Zouchuan said, “About half an hour ago.”

That was around the time the two of them were still squatting out on the sand.

This matter was exceedingly strange. After thinking for a moment, Zhu Ming decided to sleep on it first. She noticed Deng Yan hadn’t said a word. “Her sleep quality is really amazing.”

“It’s like this.” Yun Zouchuan’s voice carried not a trace of guilt. “Because while we were in the maze, someone stole the items from a treasure chest we opened. The person who came said they had the metal block our group needed, and Deng Yan wanted to go out and trade. I thought it was too sketchy, so I knocked her out.”

Zhu Ming: “…Well done.”

If Deng Yan hadn’t been stopped, that pile of rubble from earlier would have just grown by one more heap.

As for the matter of Xiao Lang coming to lure people out, Zhu Ming felt it wasn’t that simple. She planned to look into it first thing in the morning. The most important thing now was sleep.

…

As soon as day broke, the Moon Group was woken by a noisy commotion.

Zhu Ming sat cross-legged on her bed, her bleary eyes staring blankly at the man at the doorway, his face full of grief and indignation. Her sleep-addled brain hadn’t yet processed what was happening.

“Zhu Ming, get out here and explain yourself! Where the hell did you take my Big Brother?!”

Zhu Ming: “?” What was he on about? She couldn’t understand a thing.

Wenren Tu irritably stepped forward and kicked the door frame. “Who are you yelling at, you bastard?! Who gave you permission to barge into the girls’ dormitory? If you’ve got the guts, make trouble down in the Underground Labyrinth!”

If not for the fact that everyone slept fully clothed in this dangerous environment, what if they’d been taken advantage of?

Third Brother Zhao grabbed Second Brother Zhao, saying angrily, “Your group knows exactly what dirty tricks you pulled! Don’t think just because you’re all women that we won’t dare to act!”

Zhu Ming yawned repeatedly, slipped on her shoes, and went to the washroom to freshen up.

As she splashed cold water on her face to wake herself up and listened to the argument outside, she finally managed to piece together what had happened.

It turned out that last night, someone from the Sword and Shield Group had seen “Zhu Ming” come to their dormitory proposing a secret item exchange. Boss Zhao had ventured out to take the risk, but he never came back. Seeing he hadn’t returned, the others knew he must have run into danger. Not daring to go out searching themselves, they’d waited all night.

When daybreak came and Boss Zhao was still missing, they came to Zhu Ming demanding an explanation.

Upon hearing this, Wenren Tu sneered. “Last night, Zhu Ming and I were outside digging things up! At the time you supposedly saw ‘Zhu Ming,’ she wasn’t even in the temple!”

Second Brother Zhao persisted relentlessly. “If it wasn’t her, then who? We all saw it with our own eyes! You’re in the same group; you’ve clearly conspired together!”

Zhu Ming finished washing her face and walked out impatiently. She flicked the water from her hands, a string of droplets flying toward Second Brother Zhao, making him instinctively shut up and step back.

“Look, friend, could you please not assume I’m that stupid? If I wanted to kill someone, would I do it by showing my face in person?” Zhu Ming leaned against the wall and jutted her chin toward the rear. “Yin Yu from the Harp Group can vouch for me. She was also outside last night.”

With the Sword and Shield Group causing such a ruckus, there was no hope of sleeping in for the remaining dormitories. Everyone had gotten up to watch the spectacle.

Yin Yu smiled and nodded. “Indeed. During the timeframe you described, Zhu Ming was still busy digging holes.”

Third Brother Zhao’s beady little rat-like eyes darted back and forth between Yin Yu and Zhu Ming. He suddenly seemed to have a revelation. “Bullshit! Your testimony is completely unreliable. You’re in cahoots too! You think I haven’t noticed? The clothes Zhu Ming is wearing are all yours!”

Now under suspicion, Yin Yu spread her hands and looked at Zhu Ming innocently. “There’s nothing I can do about it, Mingming. They don’t believe us.”

Hearing this, Zhu Ming’s temper flared instantly. “You’re the one full of shit! I stole these clothes from her! They’re my spoils of war! Idiot! Last night, Xiao Lang also came to our group to lure people out! If our group was really behind this, how could something like that happen? Use your goddamn pig brain and think! Not everyone is as stupid as you, committing foul deeds and then announcing their identity.”

But even with her being this blunt, Second Brother Zhao still refused to believe it. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Mingming? Hahaha, I get it now. Stop covering things up, you female deviants. It’s clearly your two groups collaborating to harm us! Otherwise, how could it be such a coincidence that it was precisely Xiao Lang who went to your group?!”

Zhu Ming stared at him. The longer she stared, the darker her expression grew.

Wenren Tu stepped in front of her. “Calm down, calm down. It’s all a conspiracy.”

“You’re right. Whew—a conspiracy. All of it is a conspiracy to provoke me into attacking.”

Zhu Ming sank her qi to her dantian, spun around, and sat back down on the bed. She crossed her legs, closed her eyes, and formed an orchid mudra with her fingers. “Don’t be angry, don’t be angry. Life is like a play; we meet because of fate. Getting mad over idiots only hurts yourself in hindsight…”¹

“Ahem.” Yin Yu couldn’t help but let out a laugh, lifting a hand to cover her mouth. “Actually, our group also experienced something similar last night.”

“Exactly!” Xiao Lang, who had suddenly been accused of going to another group’s door, was full of questions marks. “It was clearly Wang Ziwei from the Ruler Group who came to our dormitory demanding a trade. How did it turn into me going out?”

The Ruler Group, who had been watching the commotion all along, finally spoke up. Sun Ningning shrugged. “To be honest, Wei Yuan came to our group last night too.”

Adding it all up, someone from each group had gone to another group’s quarters to lure them out for a trade. The suspect pool instantly dispersed.

Second Brother Zhao was still highly suspicious of them. “Then why is my Big Brother the only one who didn’t come back?!”

Sun Ningning looked at him with pity. “Because obviously, only someone from your group actually went outside.”

Second Brother Zhao was speechless. He slammed his fist against the wall in hatred.

Third Brother Zhao sighed repeatedly, pulling Second Brother Zhao back a step. “Shit, we were outsmarted. This has to be the Dungeon’s doing—creating such realistic illusions, even opening doors!”

Who could have anticipated that? Normally, illusions couldn’t truly affect reality unless the environment one saw was also false.

“Now that you’re done making a scene, move aside. Our group doesn’t owe you anything.” Wenren Tu said, a hint of goodwill in her tone. “If you really want to find your Big Brother, why not check near the stone lion at the temple entrance? When we came back from digging last night, we saw his corpse there.”

“Really?!”

Second Brother Zhao and Third Brother Zhao couldn’t care about anything else. They immediately dashed outside to conduct a thorough search. They’d shouted around outside this morning too but found nothing.

Now, with it specifically pointed out, they finally noticed a scattered pile of rubble at the foot of the stone lion…

“Big Brother!” Third Brother Zhao frantically fished out a piece from the rubble. A tiny pattern was imprinted on the stone fragment—exactly matching the pattern on Boss Zhao’s clothing.

This pile of rubble… was their Big Brother.

For a time, the two wept and wailed over the pile of debris. Big Brother, oh Big Brother! You died so horribly! Without you, what are we brothers supposed to do?!

Inside, Zhu Ming, who had been earnestly reciting the “Don’t Be Angry” mantra, slowly retracted her energy and opened her eyes. In this moment, she felt she had, yet again, achieved a new level of enlightenment.

She turned her head toward the doorway. She saw that although the Sword and Shield Group members had left to mourn, the Ruler Group members were still here.

“Is there something you need?” She looked at Bai Lianxue.

“Indeed, there is.” Bai Lianxue nudged Wang Ziwei forward. “I only found out last night that he was rude to you before. Zhu Ming, our group was in the wrong on this matter. I’m having him apologize to you.”

Wang Ziwei bowed with an awkward, ingratiating laugh. “I’m sorry, Zhu Ming. I was blind and arrogant before, thinking you girls would be easy to bully. My apologies, my apologies. Considering I didn’t actually do anything real, please forgive me.”

Unprovoked courtesy usually meant hidden intentions. Zhu Ming stroked her chin and smiled. “No need for that. It’s just a small matter. Rather than a superficial apology, just be a bit more helpful in the future.”

She couldn’t be bothered to play the “everyone’s best friends now” game with them. How hypocritical.

“Just say what you came to say.”

Bai Lianxue said, “Our group would like to know where your water came from.”

This morning, the Ruler Group’s vanilla had also sprouted, but it was wilted and droopy, clearly malnourished at first glance. The soil was all from unboxing in the underground maze, just like the Moon Group’s. Therefore, the only variable had to be the water.

So that was it. Zhu Ming said, “See that mural over there? There’s an egret in the painting.”

Bai Lianxue had a sudden realization. “Thank you.”

“No need for thanks.” Zhu Ming looked at Bai Lianxue and said, “I just hope you practice what you preach and don’t play any shady tricks behind the scenes.”

Stung by her sarcasm, Sun Ningning’s expression shifted and she looked ready to lose her temper. Bai Lianxue held her back. “Let’s hope everyone does the same.”