Chapter 11: Continue

Chapter 12: Your Hometown

If the phrase "rules are absolute" still applies to this second "game," then the words written on the mask must be the key to solving it.

But how exactly to solve it?

When will the harpoon launch?

"The clock never stops for a moment"...

Could it be at 1:15?

Qi Xia turned his head to look at the table clock on the desktop. It was already 1:05, so if "1:15" was the launch time for the harpoon, they had less than ten minutes left.

"Toward the direction of hometown, turn one hundred circles"...

The nine people present all had different hometowns, and "one hundred circles" was no small task.

If they were thinking in the wrong direction, they could easily waste those ten minutes.

In this room, besides himself, what else could be turned?

Qi Xia's gaze settled on the table clock in the center of the table.

He leaned forward and gently touched the clock, only to find it was firmly fixed to the desktop and couldn't be moved at all.

"The clock won't move, so could it be the chair?"

Qi Xia looked down at the chair beneath him. It was an old, musty-smelling ordinary chair, just casually placed on the ground with no mechanisms.

If not that, then the only option left was...

Qi Xia reached out and turned the tabletop slightly, and sure enough, a faint sound of chains came from inside the table.

However, the table was very heavy, and even with a lot of effort, he could only manage to turn it a few centimeters.

"One hundred circles..."

This number was definitely not something two or three people could accomplish alone. The nine people present would need to work together to turn the tabletop and have any chance of survival.

Lin Geng quickly noticed Qi Xia's actions and shouted for everyone to stop.

The group hurried over to the table to check and confirmed that the tabletop could indeed be turned.

"You're quite something, liar," Qiao Jiajin said with a nod. "If we turn this table one hundred circles, we should be able to open that invisible door."

Qi Xia glanced at the clock again. Time was pressing, but the problem had become more straightforward.

Turning this round table toward the "hometown" direction one hundred times boiled down to two possibilities.

Left, or right.

But with everyone's hometowns scattered across the east, south, west, and north, how could they determine left or right?

"Qi Xia, have you figured out when the harpoon will launch?" Lin Geng asked, covering her mouth and nose.

"The clue says time 'never stops for a moment,' so it's probably at 1:15," Qi Xia said softly.

Qiao Jiajin's face changed upon hearing this. "That means we have less than ten minutes left? Let's start turning it now."

Zhao Yisheng moved the corpse lying on the tabletop to one side and slowly sat down. He tested the table's weight and said, "But we only have one chance. This table is so heavy—if we turn it the wrong way for one hundred circles, what then?"

"That's still a fifty percent chance of survival!" Qiao Jiajin said anxiously. "If we don't move, we're dead for sure. If we turn it, we have a fifty percent chance to live. Let's not waste time!"

With that, he put all his strength into turning the tabletop to the left.

Qiao Jiajin looked skinny, but he was surprisingly strong and managed to turn the table half a circle by himself.

"What's everyone standing around for?! Come on, help out!" Qiao Jiajin shouted at the group.

The others realized he was right and had no choice but to join in and turn it together.

There was no correct answer now—they'd just have to take a gamble.

But Qi Xia still hadn't moved.

He couldn't figure out the right direction to think.

Left, or right?

Why was the key word "hometown"...

Everyone was Chinese, so was it "east"?

In traditional directions, north is up and south is down, west is left and east is right, so the answer might be "right"?

But what about people from the west?

Or maybe everyone's hometowns were related to the ancient "Zuo Zhuan" from the Spring and Autumn period, so the answer could be "left"?

Qi Xia closed his eyes slightly. He thought about using the two corpses to block himself, but if everyone else died, what would happen in the next game...

"This isn't the time to give up on them."

Qi Xia muttered to himself, then reached out and grabbed a piece of white paper from the turning tabletop. He picked up a pen, stood up, and walked to a clear spot to sit down, starting to write quickly.

The others were confused but kept turning the table, which was already more than ten circles in.

"If he hadn't said he was a 'liar' during his introduction, I'd think that guy was a mathematician," Qiao Jiajin said to Tiantian beside him.

Tiantian was getting dizzy from the turning and just nodded vaguely.

This time, Qi Xia didn't write out any vertical equations; he simply sketched a rough map of the country on the paper.

"Hometown...?"

His mind raced, and suddenly he thought of something.

"Hold on, hold on..." Qi Xia widened his eyes. "If the 'organizer' has such vast abilities to select people with similar experiences from so many provinces, is 'province' also a key point?"

He turned back to the group turning the table and asked seriously, "Did anyone lie about their hometown earlier?"

Everyone shook their heads.

After all, "hometown" involved accents and habits, so lying would easily give them away.

"Good." Qi Xia nodded slightly. "Now, please tell me your hometowns again, one by one."

Li Jingguan spoke first: "I'm from Nei Meng."

Qi Xia marked a black dot on Nei Meng on the map.

"I'm from Sichuan," Zhang Chenze said coldly.

"I'm from Shaanxi..." Tiantian said.

"Yunnan Dali," Xiao Ran said.

"Guangdong," Qiao Jiajin said.

"Ningxia," Lin Geng said.

"I work in Jiangsu," Zhao Yisheng said.