Chapter 23: Expert
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
Countdown 41:09
Passengers on board 0100
Although the advertising screens were blocked by layers of people and the patterns couldn’t be seen, from their back postures, both the puzzle solvers and the onlookers had evidently found the right rhythm, and everything was proceeding in an orderly manner.
“Zhuzi,” Tang Lin lightly tapped on Zheng Luozhu’s shoulder, “go check the progress.”
“Roger!” Zheng Luozhu, who had been feeling anxious from idleness, immediately got energized and headed briskly toward the advertising screens.
“I’ll go too,” Nan Ge volunteered and quickly caught up with Zheng Luozhu.
With five advertising screens to check, they had to push through the crowd one by one to see the situation, and having an extra person would increase their speed.
At the same time, Chai Ye of the Nightwalker, and Tao Wenyu also headed towards the advertising screens. It was clear that everyone had the same idea.
Tang Lin once again opened the [Password Grid]. The 10×10 grid of animals displayed before him had indeed changed. While the animals remained the same, their positions in the grid shuffled randomly each time it was opened.
After some thought, he suddenly asked Fan Peiyang, “What’s in the first row, first column of your password grid now?”
Fan Peiyang tapped his arm and then looked up at the interface in mid-air to confirm, “It’s a lion.”
Tang Lin said, “Mine is a unicorn.”
Fan Peiyang had anticipated this, saying, “To prevent location-based memorization.”
Tang Lin nodded: “Right.”
Though challengers couldn’t see each other’s password grid interfaces, they could still deduce the five positions selected based on their actions. Each person’s pattern order was different, and there was random variation each time it was opened. These two factors fundamentally prevented the possibility of “once someone correctly enters the password, others immediately locating and mimicking.”
However, knowing all this was of no use because they had no clues for the five animals. They couldn’t proceed to the subsequent steps of “preventing peeping” or “boarding the subway.”
Inadvertently, Tang Lin turned his head and looked at Strawberry Sweet Doughnuts again.
Since the countdown began, they no longer guarded the subway doors but instead found an empty spot two to three meters away. They either stood or sat, forming a group.
They were the most unusual performers among all the teams.
They had rejected He Lu’s proposal and didn’t approach to check the progress of the jigsaw puzzle. From start to finish, they meditated in place.
To be precise, one person sat in the middle meditating, while the remaining five were leisurely and relaxed. Guan Lan was already playing games on his phone.
It’s unclear how the other teams are dividing their tasks, but in the case of the Strawberry Sweet Doughnuts, their roles are quite clear and well-defined.
The meditator was a trendy young man, with casually tousled short hair that looked like it had been chewed on by a dog. He managed to pull off that look, and with the right lighting, he could easily model for a carefree photoshoot.
But right now, the young man was obviously not in the mood. His eyebrows were tightly knitted, his lips were constantly moving, and his hand, supporting his head, occasionally scratched at the dog-chewed hair. This was the state all students were in when they encountered a question they couldn’t solve during an exam – doubting the teacher, doubting themselves, doubting life.
“Have you figured it out?” the nearby Bald man urged. “Can you do it?”
The young man shot back coldly: “If you can do it, then step up!”
Bald man quickly backed down, saying, “No, no, I don’t have a brain like yours.”
Words were spat out from the young man’s mouth as if from between his teeth, “Then shut up.”
Intellectuals are not to be trifled with, especially when they are stuck in a dilemma.
Bald man conceded, quietly moving closer to Guan Lan’s side and pretending to play the same game on his phone, as if he were in communication with his team leader.
The remaining three members of their group consisted of Melancholic center-parted hair, a young man with a wheat skin color, and a slender man.
Wheat-skinned young man lay beside his meditating partner, propping his head up with one hand, occasionally letting out a yawn.
Melancholic center-parted hair blew smoke rings and then offered one to the slender man.
The slender man accepted the cigarette and lit it with the offered flame. As he took a drag, he lifted his head, and his gaze collided with Tang Lin’s.
This was a pale and slender man with deep, dark eyes. The smoke veiled his expression, and his cold, ominous aura resembled that of an assassin lurking in the darkness.
They locked eyes for a long while, and Tang Lin could keenly sense the danger emanating from him. However, he kept his gaze steady, showing no signs of flinching.
The man removed the cigarette from his mouth, and with his other hand, he raised it as if it were a gun, pointing it directly at Tang Lin.
Fang Peiyang was about to react immediately.
But Tang Lin placed a restraining hand on his shoulder.
The man squinted his eyes, as if he were genuinely aiming a gun.
Tang Lin stood still, not moving a muscle.
The man’s fingertip moved slightly, and at the same time, he formed a soft “bang” with his mouth.
A chill passed by Tang Lin’s cheek, accompanied by the faint sound characteristic of a blade slicing through the air.
At the same time, a clear and crisp impact sound echoed on the marble floor, as if a missed sharp weapon had fallen to the ground.
However, there was nothing on the floor.
The man put the hand he had mimicked the gunshot with back into his pocket, while the other hand held the cigarette, bringing it back to his lips.
The smoke once again veiled his face, as if nothing had happened.
Tang Lin finally removed his hand from Fang Peiyang’s shoulder and said, “It was the Stationery Tree.”
Fang Peiyang didn’t care about what the man had used, saying, “If it happens again, your attempts to stop me won’t work.”
Tang Lin, knowing that Fang Peiyang was angry, teased, “Should we send him a can of food?”
Fang Peiyang’s voice was devoid of warmth as he replied, “Send him on his way.”
Only Wang Zhengming from Nightwalker remained on the platform. The sound of the clear impact made him instinctively look up, but he couldn’t figure out what had happened. Instead, he saw only Tang Lin and Fang Peiyang. He decided to approach them and strike up a conversation, asking, “Do you think they can really solve it?”
Fang Peiyang suppressed his aggression and looked at the crowd’s calm and stable demeanor from behind as they worked on the advertising screen. He made an assessment and replied, “They should be able to.”
“Just with a strategy of overwhelming numbers?” Wang Zhengming remained skeptical.
Tang Lin finally withdrew his gaze from the Strawberry Sweet Doughnuts.
Since they had been warned, it wouldn’t be appropriate to push the boundaries any further.
However, the situation was already quite clear. With a hundred animals to choose from, there were 7,528,520 different combinations possible. Yet, they were not putting any effort into the puzzle. They were leaving it all to Trendy young man to figure out. Either this young man had an exceptional talent, capable of moving the password grid into his mind and trying each combination without worrying about getting “canceled” during the challenge, or they had discovered something that others had overlooked. The young man was working diligently based on this discovery….
“To decipher the password, there’s definitely more than one way, not just the jigsaw puzzle,” Tang Lin stated confidently.
With a countdown of 38:14 on the advertising screen, Nan Ge and Zheng Luo Zhu split into two groups, one going from left to right and the other from right to left.
Zheng Luozhu quickly examined the situation on the first two advertising screens and was now heading towards the third screen, the one in the middle.
It wasn’t that he wasn’t paying attention, but the progress on each advertising screen was quite similar. The edge frames were mostly completed, and puzzle pieces had been sorted into several small piles by color. However, they were still clueless about what each pile represented and where they should be assembled. Therefore, the next step was to divide into several small teams, with each responsible for a pile of a specific color. They would first try to assemble these pieces into smaller local images and then piece together these local images to form a complete large image.
The steps were clear, but the task of “assembling these pieces into smaller local images” was an extremely laborious and daunting one. Screens 1 and 2 were stuck at this stage, making slow progress. In any case, Zheng Luozhu hadn’t even seen a proper local image yet.
Nan Ge, on the other hand, was doing the opposite. She started with the fifth screen and was astonished as soon as she squeezed into the crowd.
Several local pieces of the puzzle had already been assembled, and when pieced together, they covered nearly a quarter of the whole image!
Although these local pieces weren’t contiguous, it was hard to say exactly what they were—such as the largest three pieces, one was a yellow-green sphere, one was a gloomy bluish-gray, and one had a strangely shaped dark gray-black edge—but at least there were patterns. Perhaps the next local piece could be the key to connecting them.
This screen had the fewest people working on it, with essentially only a bowl cut young man taking the lead in piecing it together. His movements weren’t fast, but they were smooth. Often, with a few flicks among the pile of pieces, he could find the next puzzle piece he needed.
This screen was being handled by Zhou Yunhui, who was standing next to the young man for some reason, feeling inexplicably proud.
“Our genius in the group—”
While piecing the puzzle together, Bowl cut humbly responded to the rainbow-flavored praise given by the leader. “It’s nothing really, as long as you recognize the shape of the puzzle piece’s edge, it’s easy to piece together.”
Zhou Yunhui: “So you mean you don’t need to look at the image?”
Bowl cut shook his head: “No need. When I was piecing together ‘Pure White Hell,’ every puzzle piece was white, there were no images at all.”
Zhou Yunhui: “What’s the point of piecing it together if there’s no image?”
Bowl cut: “It’s just pure white.”
Zhou Yunhui: “And after piecing it together, you get a blank white piece?”
Bowl cut: “No, no. After piecing it together, you’ll see. Each puzzle piece perfectly fits the image while maintaining its own beautiful edge. It’s pure white with ever-changing lines flowing through it, incredibly exquisite.”
Zhou Yunhui：“……”
It’s like comparing apples and oranges.
Nan Ge quietly took out her phone and snapped a picture of the situation on the advertising screen. She couldn’t discern the patterns, but perhaps Tang Lin and the others could.
Just after she took the photo, the Bowl cut suddenly stopped and then let go of the puzzle piece he was dragging, whispering to Zhou Yunhui.
Nan Ge overheard Zhou Yunhui asking, “Really?”
The young man with the beret responded firmly, “Leader, trust me.”
Zhou Yunhui contemplated for a moment, then abruptly started to frantically shuffle and disarray the puzzle pieces on the advertising screen with his hands. In just a few moves, all the hard-earned local images were turned into chaos.
All the puzzle pieces on the fifth screen returned to their original disordered state, just like they were in the beginning.
“Have you gone mad?!” The onlookers were getting agitated.
Zhou Yunhui shrugged innocently, “We piece it, we destroy it. Is there a problem with that?”
The onlookers were left speechless.
Zhou Yunhui politely stepped aside from the advertising screen, saying, “If you want to piece it, go ahead.”
Tang Lin, Fan Peiyang, and Wang Zhengming didn’t wait for their teammates to come and investigate the situation; they were the first to encounter Zhou Yunhui.
He led dozens of his subordinates to drive away the scattered challengers waiting at the five boarding points, and then personally guarded the area to prevent anyone from approaching.
Some challengers who were unwilling to leave clashed with them.
Strawberry Sweet Doughnuts obediently left and returned to their previous position under the stairs.
With no clues regarding the password, it wasn’t worth getting into a conflict with the Sky Lantern at this moment. Tang Lin, Fan Peiyang, and Wang Zhengming also moved away and found a secluded and quiet spot.
“It’s strange,” Wang Zhengming watched Zhou Yunhui from a distance, puzzled, “Why did he suddenly stop piecing it together?”
Tao Wenyu and Chai Ye also hurried back and, upon seeing Wang Zhengming with Tang Lin, Fan Peiyang, and Wang Zhengming, didn’t hide anything and said, “They might have figured out what animal it is.”
Wang Zhengming was astonished, “All of them?”
“One,” Tao Wenyu said, glancing at the advertising screen again, “but the rest are almost done too.”
Chai Ye added, “There’s a puzzle expert among the Sky Lantern’s members.”
If you love what Ciacia is doing, then consider showing your support by supporting a cup of tea for her at Kofi. If you can’t wait for the next release chapter, subscribe to advanced chapters membership on her Kofi to get access to up to 10 chapters!
<Previous Chapter<Table of Contents>Next Chapter>
