The room was pitch-black. Strangely, merfolk possessed night vision, yet that ability had stopped working the moment they entered.
In the center of the darkness, a torch flared with deep blue fire. Its faint light revealed two statues facing each other on either side. Both still had merfolk fins beside their faces, but where their tails should have been were human legs.
Blue flames swept between the doors. Small words appeared on the wall.
[Each player must enter their own door, or the trial will fail.]
[One statue tells the truth. The other tells lies.]
[You each have one question.]
[GonnaGetRich] thought almost instantly of what to ask. Since they had two questions altogether, he could first establish whether a statue told the truth. Then the other player could ask the identified honest statue which door was his. Wouldn't that tell both of them where to go?
Without another thought, he asked the statue on the right, “Is one plus one equals two correct?”
The statue's base flashed for two seconds, then went dark. Nothing else happened.
He was bewildered. “What's that supposed to mean?”
Yu Xinglan swam toward the glowing words. He'd already thought he could make out something beneath them.
Sure enough, a faint purple glow lay below the three sentences. Moving aside the obscuring seaweed, he revealed another hint.
[You may only ask questions about the doors. The statues will point to the answer.]
On closer inspection, each statue held a longsword, pointing toward one of the two doors before them.
Presumably, after a question about the doors, a statue would point its sword at the door that answered it. The previous question clearly hadn't met the requirement, so it had been accepted without receiving an answer.
They had wasted one question. Knowing he'd made a mistake, [GonnaGetRich] stole a glance at Yu Xinglan and didn't dare move.
Yu Xinglan said nothing. He was thinking. If every trial involved two people, how could they ensure both questions always got to the point?
Unless the two were friends. But as things stood... He looked at the blue-haired merman, who had been trembling ever since.
They were friends, but they had probably only entered the same trial by chance.
Which meant a single question had to be enough to find the correct answer.
After a moment, he asked the statue on the left, “If I asked the statue opposite you which door was mine, which one would it point to?”
The left statue's base flashed for two seconds. At the same time, its arm moved, the longsword slowly pointing toward the door on the right.
Yu Xinglan opened the left door. Just as he was about to enter, the player behind him called out.
“Bro, do I take the other door? You...”
“You want to know how I worked out the right one?”
[GonnaGetRich] nodded.
“If the statue I asked was honest, then because the liar would lie and point to your door, the honest one would point to your door too.”
“If I asked the liar, then because the honest statue would truthfully point to my door, the liar would lie and also point to yours.”
“So I just take the other one.”
Having explained, he didn't wait to see [GonnaGetRich]'s reaction. He turned and entered the room on the left.
It too was utterly black. Yu Xinglan clenched his fists and sagged against the door, all strength leaving him. His heart pounded in his ears. He gasped for air, his body shaking beyond his control.
Ever since his mother died, he had been unable to endure complete darkness.
In the previous room, he'd felt palpitations, but the torchlight had eased them. He hadn't expected the next stage to have no light at all.
[Excessive heart rate detected. Log out?]
The system warning pulled him back to reality. He took deep breaths, trying to regulate them, and moved his finger toward the logout button.
Suddenly, [GonnaGetRich]'s voice sounded nearby.
“Bro! Can you hear me?”
“I'm next door! What's happening on your side?”
Yu Xinglan gritted his teeth and tapped the cross, closing the red warning screen. Drawing a deep breath, he tried to keep his voice steady.
“I can't see right now. Do you have any light?”
Following Yu Xinglan's instructions, [GonnaGetRich] had entered the right-hand room. It contained only a lamp and a pane of glass through which he could see the other room. He had watched Yu Xinglan enter and noticed his strange expression, as though something were wrong. Even when he knocked on the glass, Yu Xinglan remained motionless at the door.
After he had shouted for a while, Yu Xinglan finally responded.
“Yes! There's a lamp here! Nothing else, but I can see the things in your room!”
“You can see my side?” Yu Xinglan forced himself to concentrate. “I understand.”
“The mechanism is probably over here. I need your help to activate it. Can you describe what's in my room?”
“There's a table ahead and to your left, with something on top. I can't tell what. To your right is a wooden chest. It's closed. On the wall straight ahead are three animal-head sculptures, all with open mouths.”
Yu Xinglan's limbs were still weak. Repeating words silently to empty his mind, he closed his eyes and felt his way to the table without trying to see. First he grasped the object on its surface: a stone the size of a coin.
It didn't feel naturally formed. He traced its edges. There were six or seven corners, suggesting a particular shape. Keeping it in his palm, he followed the wall slowly to the right of the door.
He reached toward the chest. Fortunately, there was no padlock on the clasp, sparing him the need to unlock it.
He opened the lid and reached inside. His hand touched something slick and sticky. His heart seemed to stop for an instant, and he snatched his hand back as though shocked.
His fingertips tingled. An urgent voice came from next door. “Bro, what's wrong?”
“Nothing.”
Yu Xinglan shook his head to drive away thoughts he shouldn't be having, then reached inside again. Enduring the unpleasant texture, he searched the chest and finally found another stone.
This one's outline was clear, shaped like some kind of fish. Something occurred to him. “Is one of the animals on the wall a fish?”
“Yes! A fish, a lion, and a snake!”
The animal heads were the room's locks, and the stones were the keys to the mechanism. The fish-shaped stone belonged with the fish sculpture. The first stone was a lion's head, its many corners forming the mane.
“Is there anything else in the room?”
[GonnaGetRich] carefully inspected it again, but truly saw nothing else.
Hearing his answer, Yu Xinglan held his chin and considered it.
According to the stage's hints, now that he'd found the lion and fish stones, there ought to be a snake-shaped stone to match the snake's head.
But [GonnaGetRich] said he saw nothing else. Where could the last stone be? Was there somewhere in the room the other player couldn't see?