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Chapter 883 Just pretend nothing happened

There's a rumor that if you encounter a bear in the wild, playing dead will make it lose interest and escape. This belief, somehow carried over to the lower dimensions, is now widespread among various ghost groups.

Of course, in the lower-dimensional version, the protagonist of the story is not Xiong but Gu Mian.

Legend has it that if you unfortunately encounter Gu Mian in a dungeon, you can save your life by quickly lying down and pretending to be dead.

The math devils did it this way before, and the question-and-answer devils do it this way now.

At this moment, the Question and Answer Ghost had completely lost the composure that Gu Mian and Liu Ruyan had displayed when they first entered the room. Disregarding its image, it lay sprawled on the ground, rolling its eyes before "dying," trying to make its death as realistic as possible.

The fortune-telling stick in the ghost's hand also fell to the ground, and the slips of paper inside were scattered all over the ground.

Gu Mian picked up the slips of paper and unfolded them one by one; they contained many idiotic questions.

For example, questions like "Is your father male or female?"

There are also some more normal ones, such as "How many squares have you moved from the start of the instance to here?" or "How many groups of players are there on the field?"

There are also some extremely difficult ones. The one Gu Mian just drew is one of the extremely difficult ones. Other extremely difficult questions include "Are you male or female?"

Gu Mian pondered the question mark surrounding her gender, realizing that she might not be able to answer it if she were to draw this question.

Gu Mian thought about putting all the other slips of paper into her pocket, leaving only the extremely difficult one, "Are you male or female?", back into the lottery box for Hao Laoshi.

Although Gu Mian will still be in the room after Hao Laoshi enters, there's no guarantee that the question-and-answer ghost won't regain its power and interrogate Hao Laoshi again after he leaves in the next round. Gu Mian isn't worried that the two-severed ghost in the previous room will harm Hao Laoshi, because after she leaves, only Hao Laoshi will be left in the room, which won't trigger the two-severed ghost's killing condition.

He didn't have any handy tools to kill the ghost, so he could only exploit a bug to make the question-and-answer ghost ask Hao Laoshi the difficult question right under his nose, so he wouldn't have to worry about the ghost settling scores after he left.

“We’re very close to the second room 605 now,” Liu Ruyan thought about their current position. “If I remember correctly, we’ll be at the second room 605 if we go down one more step.”

Gu Mian nodded: "I can't be certain that the evil god is being tracked in the four rooms of 605, but the probability of him being in those rooms is higher."

Because of the rule that "the player cannot let a piece enter a room that the piece has already entered", if you want to find the evil god as much as possible, it is best to have 007 choose an S-shaped route for them. An S-shaped route means going to every square, and then going down when you reach the end of a row.

This ensures that every room has been searched and that no one has been missed.

Of course, since other groups are also helping them explore the rooms, they can try to skip the rooms that other groups have already explored.

However, while the ideal is appealing, reality doesn't allow for such actions.

If they really use an S-shaped route and try to cover every square, other groups might find the treasure chest before they've even finished searching half of the squares. It's also possible that Gu Mian finds it while exploring the squares herself.

That's why Gu Mian devised four routes to room 605, aiming to reach the room where the evil god was most likely to be in as quickly as possible, and to minimize the number of slots where treasure chests might be located.

"Have you ever considered that the evil god might be hiding in the treasure chest?" Liu Ruyan asked, "Just waiting for you to open the chest so he can jump out and give you a surprise."

Gu Mian had also considered this possibility, but if the evil god wasn't hidden in the treasure chest, they wouldn't be able to stay in the dungeon to find the evil god once they found the treasure chest.

"Anyway, now it's just the two of us. It seems like the player in Group Four is going to keep Hao Laoshi following us. His turn is after ours. Unless the effect of the square disappears and Group Four keeps throwing two while our group keeps throwing one, he won't be able to overtake us." Gu Mian analyzed. Although she felt that the probability of this was very small, given her luck, it wasn't impossible.

However, if Hao Laoshi really went ahead of them, then he couldn't guarantee Hao Laoshi's safety.

"I want to see the evil god, and the evil god wants to see me too. Sometimes I wonder if he'll really hide in a square and let us find him? He should be the one coming to us." After all, this board game is too restrictive; players can't explore freely within it.

007 told them in the group that the second group, which had all died, did not skip a round this time, but instead delayed for two minutes before it was the third group's turn to act. The third group also delayed for one minute, and now it was the fourth group's turn to act.

Just as Gu Mian was looking at this message in the group chat, a door appeared on the wall next to her, and Hao Laoshi walked in from there.

When Hao Laoshi opened the door and came in, Gu Mian could still see the two ghosts huddled in the corner of the previous room. They were still crouching with their hands behind their heads. Only when Hao Laoshi entered the room where Gu Mian was and was about to close the door behind him did he secretly glance in this direction. After noticing that Gu Mian was looking at him, he quickly turned back and pretended that nothing had happened.

By the way, when Hao Laoshi comes to Gu Mian's room, the door connecting this room and the previous room will be open. The two ghosts stay in the corner, probably because they are afraid that when Gu Mian and Hao Laoshi enter, the door will be open and they will complain to Gu Mian, making Gu Mian go back and beat them up.

Although the rules state that a player cannot allow a piece to enter a room that has been entered before, the rules cannot confine Gu Mian; only an impenetrable wall can confine him.

If Gu Mian had the tools to chisel through walls, she would have already done what the person who chiseled a hole in the wall to steal light did and made several large holes in the walls of every room.

Liu Ruyan looked at the message 007 sent in the group chat: "Don't you find it strange? The second group was completely dead, but it took a full two minutes before the third group's player could make their move."

Each group can only delay for a maximum of two minutes per round, because the player has one minute to choose, and the piece has one minute to enter the door after it appears.

So even if they want to stall for time, a group can only stall for two minutes.

However, even though all members of Group Two were already dead, the pieces and the player still had a one-minute countdown. In contrast, in Group Three, only the surviving player had a one-minute countdown, while the countdowns of the dead pieces were skipped.

"Why did the countdowns for the three groups of pieces skip after they died? But the countdowns for the entire second group didn't skip?" Liu Ruyan frowned as she looked at the messages in the group chat. "One possibility is that the second group isn't completely dead yet."

When the second group died, there was no death notification on the grid; the pieces simply darkened and they didn't move again in the following rounds. They initially judged that the entire second group had died based on the information from the shared death grid.

"What's wrong?" Hao Laoshi looked at the two of them honestly. As soon as he entered the room, he came to Gu Mian's side. He was listening to Gu Mian and Liu Ruyan's conversation with a puzzled look. There was a fainting ghost at Gu Mian's feet. Hao Laoshi was a little scared and moved away from it.

"We're speculating whether the people in Group Two are dead or not," Gu Mian explained to him.

Oh, right, we also need to get Hao Laoshi to answer some questions.

Thinking this, Gu Mian kicked the ghost beside her feet: "Get up and get to work. Come and ask this newcomer your questions."

The question-and-answer ghost remained motionless, dutifully pretending to be dead.

Gu Mian kicked it again: "If you don't get up, I'll really kill you."

Upon hearing this, the question-and-answer ghost scrambled to its feet with lightning speed and quickly retrieved the lottery tube that had rolled to the side. It looked at the tube with a pitiful expression; inside was only a single slip of paper.

There was no need to ask any random questions. It spoke to Hao Laoshi at an extremely fast pace: "Next, I will ask you a question. You will receive a reward of 50 game coins after answering it."

They've changed their tune; they no longer set a time limit for answering the questions or say you'll die if you answer incorrectly. However, the last question is also very difficult to answer incorrectly.

"Are you male or female?" the question-and-answer ghost asked, his face ashen and his tone utterly flat.

Hao Laoshi was taken aback by the question, and after several seconds he stammered, "I'm a man."

"Haha, knowledgeable one! Congratulations on answering the question correctly. Here's your reward of 50 game coins. Please keep it safe." The question-and-answer ghost mechanically finished reciting "haha" and the following words, then died again. Hao Laoshi looked down at the question-and-answer ghost playing dead on the ground. It was the first time he had ever seen a ghost so pathetic.

Just then, he suddenly thought of something and looked up at Liu Ruyan.

Seeing that Liu Ruyan wasn't looking this way, she whispered to Gu Mian, "Why are all the people around you so scary? Didn't I tell you in the last room that Liu Ruyan's friend was an arsonist? You left before I finished speaking."

"You go on."

At this moment, Liu Ruyan looked at the two of them, and Hao Laoshi shrank back in fright, not daring to speak any further.

Liu Ruyan, however, didn't care at all: "What's so hard to say? Just say it. I didn't do it."

Hao Laoshi stared at Liu Ruyan for a while, and seeing that she seemed to really not care, he continued, "She saw her friend set fire to a family of three and burned them to death. Back then, it was still a society governed by law. She... just watched them die without calling the police."

"When?" Gu Mian asked.

"What?" Hao Laoshi didn't understand what Gu Mian was talking about.

When was the fire started?

“Well,” Hao Laoshi scratched his head, remembering that Liu Ruyan had mentioned it to him, “it seems to have been… eight years ago. Yes, it was eight years ago.”

Eight years ago...

Gu Mian looked up and realized that the time of Xie Ping'an's house fire coincided with the time when Xie Ping'an's house was on fire. Liu Ruyan and Chu Changge had both mentioned to her that Xie Ping'an's house had a fire eight years ago. After that fire, everyone thought he was dead, but unexpectedly he reappeared in the global game.

Gu Mian had never known the cause of the fire before.

Now he learned from Hao Laoshi that someone had set the fire, and it was Liu Ruyan's friend who had done it.

“I remember you said that you had only been in this world for a short time when that fire happened.” Gu Mian turned to look at Liu Ruyan.

“Yes.” Liu Ruyan nodded, waiting for Gu Mian’s next question.

"What are you talking about?" Hao Laoshi was completely confused. What did he mean by "not long after arriving in this world"?

Neither of them spoke to him.

Liu Ruyan had only been in this world for a short time when the fire occurred. What kind of friends could she have made back then?
They're just a few guardians.

Gu Mian had long suspected this, but she hadn't been able to confirm it until now.

Xie Bi'an was clearly aware of the arsonist's identity, as could be seen from his usual attitude.

“I know a lot more. Are you not going to ask any more questions?” Liu Ruyan was very concerned about revealing the truth. She had wanted to tell Gu Mian and Xie Bi’an what had happened to them more than once.

“I guessed it,” Gu Mian said.

"I think you guessed it too. Judging from your previous attitude, you probably already guessed it. You have no curiosity whatsoever about what I want to say."

"Do you know why?" Gu Mian asked her.

Liu Ruyan shrugged: "You'll have to ask him yourself. He probably thinks Xie Bi'an is some kind of unstable factor. He's probably told you more than once not to trust Xie Bi'an. Maybe Xie Bi'an knows why. He was already awake before entering the dungeon. You can ask him after you leave the dungeon, but no one would kill you outside while you're inside, right?"

That really sounds like Chu Changge's style.

Hao Laoshi, standing nearby, glanced at Gu Mian and then at Liu Ruyan, scratching his head in bewilderment. He couldn't understand what kind of riddle the two were playing. After listening for a while, he finally asked, "Who is Xie Bi'an? Is he from Group 3 or Group 2? But weren't all the people from Group 2 dead...?"

Hearing this, Gu Mian thought of something and turned to Hao Laoshi: "Before the game starts, each group draws a bonus. What did your group draw?"

"Specify the number of steps three times"

Guigu looked at the bonus on the left side of the chessboard. As the player in the fourth group, he had three chances to specify whether his pieces should move one or two steps forward in this round. Before each round of dice rolls, the screen would ask him if he wanted to use the specified number of times.

He has now used up two chances, and only one chance remains.

With his left hand, which was missing three fingers, he tapped the cubicle where Old Hao was currently located to check the information inside. There were three people in the room, and he knew who the other two were.

He was still holding a pen and a thin notebook in his healthy right hand.

Pen-shaped real-time repeater

[Introduction: The essence of humanity is repetition... no, this thing doesn't seem to be human?]

[Function: Repeat, repeat in writing form. Press the button on the pen to record the surrounding events in real time. The level of detail depends on luck.]

[Usage frequency: Can be used three times a week, each time for about half a minute (time depends on luck)]

Fortunately, the pen-shaped real-time repeater hasn't been used this week, so I can use it three times in total after entering the dungeon. However, I've already used up almost all of my three uses of the pen-shaped repeater in the previous rounds.

At the start of the game, he thought he would be in this instance for a long time, and this item could only be used three times, so he had to use it sparingly. Unexpectedly, in the first round, their pieces stepped into the trap square and died.

Guigu felt very guilty, and from then on, he no longer hesitated to use the number of times he could.

When Hao Laoshi first entered the game, he used his skill once. After Hao Laoshi stepped into the honest square, he used it again. Unexpectedly, the honest ghost would follow the piece. After the honest ghost followed Hao Laoshi into the next square, he had to use his last third chance as well.

He also learned the number of steps Hao Laoshi had chosen in those two squares. Fortunately, their group's bonus allowed them to specify the number of steps three times, so he chose the number of steps Hao Laoshi had told Honest Ghost in both rounds.

However, the pen-shaped real-time repeater can only be used three times, but Honest Ghost will continue to follow Hao Laoshi. Guigu originally thought that after using the pen-shaped real-time repeater three times, he would no longer be able to save Hao Laoshi's life, but he did not expect that when he used the repeater for the third time, he saw a familiar person in the content written by the repeater.

The notebook in his right hand contained the contents of the tape recorder on three separate occasions when it was used.

Haha, this broken record is awake! This is your first time using me this week, let me see where I am!

[Time: Who knows what time it is right now?]

[Location: There are many rooms here. We're in a corner with two rooms next to each other. There's a corpse in the room next to us, and a ghost in the other room next to us. Let's look into the other rooms... Good heavens! How can there be so many ghosts in this place? There's one in almost every room!]

Gugu needs to stand up again!