Game of Deception Chapter 24: I Am a Person Favored by Heaven

Ming Po stood up, his body swaying.

"It seems you have your answer? Or perhaps... you can no longer hold your liquor?"

The hoarse, low voice offered neither confirmation nor denial. Instead, laced with faint mockery and provocation, it continued, "Personally, I feel... this shouldn't be enough.

"Actually, this is easily solved—you just need to drink four more glasses, and I'll give you a new piece of information. I'll tell you which path is the shortest and help you eliminate another wrong answer!"

"No need," Ming Po said casually as he walked toward the fourth door. "I choose this one."

He opened the door and strolled leisurely inside.

He finally understood another layer of the designer's malice—the passage beyond the door was not straight at all.

After proceeding for about seven or eight ters, there was a sharp right-angle turn. A short distance later, there was another.

Any strategy of running halfway down to check the end before turning back was completely impossible.

By the ti he rounded the third right-angle turn, Ming Po understood the structure of this trial—

It was a maze.

Four separate, non-intersecting paths stretched from start to finish, and three of them were dead ends. The passages varied in length, most likely due to their differing degrees of twists and turns. Because of this, it was impossible to judge whether the end was open based on how winding the initial section was.

Despite this, Ming Po was not in any hurry.

He looked around as if on a spring outing.

The passage was not a bare, sheet-tal corridor. Instead, it was lined with two densely packed rows of bookshelves—

"What Life Could an to You", "The Interpretation of Dreams", "The Crowd", "The Evolution of Cooperation", "Thus Spoke Zarathustra", "Beyond Good and Evil"...

Whenever Ming Po drew close to them, a section of the bookshelves would suddenly jut outward, as if soone had shoved it from behind.

If Ming Po had sprinted wildly without looking, he might have been knocked down by a suddenly protruding bookshelf, even if the movent hadn't startled him.

Instead, as Ming Po strolled leisurely past, the shelves looked as though they were respectfully presenting their books for him to browse.

"Oh?"

Ming Po glanced over the string of book titles and let out a soft laugh.

Instead of rushing forward, he stopped and pulled out a copy of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra".

He flipped through it briefly and found the content accurate and the printing flawless. He could even see the ticulous notes and confused reflections left behind by the owner during an earnest reading.

"Heh..."

Seeing this, Ming Po laughed once more.

His laughter was ambiguous, yet it inexplicably infuriated the other person.

"—Three minutes have passed."

The voice rang out, echoing through the passage.

The declaration sounded as majestic as a deity, attempting to place more pressure on Ming Po. "It is still not too late to turn back.

"But the price is that once you exit, you will never be able to enter this door again.

"Do you plan to keep moving forward, or... run away?"

A hint of provocation and temptation laced the voice.

Ming Po rely sneered. "Save your breath. Do you know how many mistakes you've made?

"Do you know why, the mont you eliminated the third path, I walked straight into this one?"

At those words, the other party instantly fell silent.

Neither admitting nor denying anything.

They had clearly resolved not to reveal any more information that could help Ming Po judge the current situation—

But it was already too late.

The other party's reaction had already told Ming Po—he had chosen correctly.

Ming Po mocked in a low voice, "If you really wanted to kill , you would have been better off saying nothing and doing nothing. That way, I would have had at least a three-quarters chance of dying in this passage.

"Oh, I see... You don't want to kill outright, do you? Or rather, you don't want to kill that easily."

The first hint required drinking one glass of liquor, and gave nothing in return.

The second hint required drinking two glasses of liquor, which eliminated a wrong answer—the third path was definitely the longest, so it could not be the correct choice.

The third hint required drinking four glasses of liquor, which would eliminate another wrong answer, turning the trial into a choice between two.

Following this pattern, if one still didn't dare to move forward... then to learn the true answer, one would have to drink eight more glasses. That would add up to fifteen glasses of high-proof liquor.

One glass was roughly fifty grams, aning a total of seven hundred and fifty grams.

Even for a healthy person, that amount of alcohol would leave them thoroughly drunk.

Not to ntion that under normal circumstances, by the ti this swimming coach reached this stage, he would be half-dead.

"If I'm not mistaken, the next stage... should be a ga that requires precision, right?"

Ming Po said serenely, "In the first stage, you tried to destroy my right hand or exhaust my stamina. That's why you locked my right hand instead of my left. But you didn't want to kill directly... because you had prepared more 'gas' for later.

"I imagine that before I truly succumbed to hypothermia, you would have used other ans to keep alive.

"In the second stage, you tried to force into a painful dilemma—whether to risk completely destroying my right hand, or to destroy my left hand along with it. Obviously, you harbor deep malice toward my 'hands'. But if you rely wanted to torture , you should have prioritized destroying my 'legs'... You didn't do that, because you wanted to enter the next ga.

"And in this third stage, you started trying to force alcohol down my throat. The maze is nothing more than a diversion, a deterrent. Your true purpose is to compel to trade 'drinking' for information, so that I enter the fourth stage in a drunken stupor.

"Stamina depleted, hands crippled, dead drunk... Obviously, the fourth stage will test the precision of my hands. And at that mont, I would experience 'regret'—wondering why I made those choices. In other words, your real trap, your truly agonizing test, lies in the next stage.

"You want to make feel regret, don't you? But what a pity, kid."

Ming Po said slowly, "I've already seen right through you.

"I only drank three glasses, and my condition is still acceptable—at least much better than drinking seven. In other words, if soone wants to pass this stage normally, they can take two hints at most.

"Under these circumstances, having to endure an injured body while carefully pondering the dilemmas you throw out... is a bit too difficult for an ordinary swimming coach like ."

Just as he finished speaking, the heavy thud of an object hitting the ground rang out.

The five minutes were now up.

The door locked shut, and Ming Po no longer had any chance to turn back.

That voice finally realized that Ming Po had not been bluffing.

"...Why?"

The voice sounded deeply unwilling. "Did you gamble on it? A one-in-three chance?"

"Think whatever you like. You can also just interpret it as being soone favored by heaven."

As Ming Po spoke, he had already reached the end of the path.

An open door stood there.

—Obviously, this was not a dead end. Ming Po had chosen correctly.

Yet, he wasn't particularly surprised.

Because the mont he first stepped through the door, the other person's reaction had already given him the answer.

"Bring on whatever tricks you have left."

Ming Po said softly, "Otherwise, you won't get another chance.

"I'm getting... closer and closer to you now, aren't I?"