Chapter 85: Who is it?
Translator: Pluto Editor: Tehrn
After reaching a successive number of dead ends, Lin Sanjiu had no choice but to turn back. Due to Zhong Junkai’s physical condition, Lin Sanjiu had already lost him at some intersection. Within this massive maze with a seemingly endless number of paths, she could only hear her own weak breathing.
Lin Sanjiu had no energy to run so she could only drag herself forward. Supporting herself with the walls, pushing forward step by step, she had no idea where she was heading. When she reached a fork once again, she could no longer endure any longer and sat heavily on the ground. After she found Old Wang and Lara’s corpses, she pushed herself to move faster, but she was still unable to find that specific area even after ten minutes.
That was another ten days without food. In total, she had not eaten for almost two months. A normal person would have died long ago. Even though she was not dead yet, she felt like she was going to die even with her Overall Physical Enhancement. Her vision had been blurry for a long time, and she felt bouts of dizziness, she could also hear illusionary sounds of waves in her ears getting louder and louder.
If this continued, she knew that she would become unconscious, and then she will die.
"Ssss!" She felt a sharp pain in her leg. It dragged her out of her reverie. Lin Sanjiu opened her eyes and realized that she had fallen to the ground. Her hand trembled as she reached for her thigh.
"What… What?"
Lin Sanjiu pulled out B.Rabbit from her pocket, holding his ears. He had probably just woken up, and his eyes were still unfocused. His mouth was still moving, and he was making a nibbling sound. Lin Sanjiu carried him up and scolded him with a hoarse voice, "Why did you bite my leg?"
B.Rabbit regained a little of its sense. "Huh? Huh? That was your leg. I thought it was grass…"
[That is just the design of my pants!] Lin Sanjiu wanted to yell that out, but she didn’t have the strength to move her mouth.
"Hey, did you save me?" B.Rabbit asked feebly as he regained his consciousness though he still looked like he was near his deathbed. "Thank… Thank you."
"Um…" Lin Sanjiu looked as ghastly with her pallid lips.
Both their minds were in a haze of hunger. They laid on the ground for a while and finally started to drink quite a few mouthful of water from the puddles on the floor. After they swallowed those large gulps of muddy water, they seemed to have managed to trick their stomachs, so they felt a little better. This must be the reason why she heard that people would resort to eating mud when they were starving.
Since they were thinking straight again, they had to continue searching. Lin Sanjiu wanted to move while she felt that she still had some energy.
"Wait!" B.Rabbit, who was sitting on her shoulder, suddenly said. He lifted his small nose in the air, it quivered rapidly as if he had picked up a scent.
Even though his physical enhancements could not compare to that of Lin Sanjiu's, as a rabbit, his hearing and sense of smell were naturally superior to humans. After a few seconds, B.Rabbit turned to Lin Sanjiu and said, "I can smell a faint scent of blood from the left path."
"Let’s check it out!" Lin Sanjiu immediately perked up.
The left path was very long, and after a few turns, they reached another fork. If B.Rabbit didn’t lead the way by sniffing that undetectable scent of blood, Lin Sanjiu would have gotten lost. She mobilized all the energy she had and ran for five minutes until she felt that she would lose her consciousness the very next second. Finally, she noticed something weird.
"Blood… Bloodstains?" Lin Sanjiu’s body only had a bit of mud to digest over that space of five days. She was really at her limits, and it showed on her deep-sunken cheeks. B.Rabbit didn’t have the strength to stay on Lin Sanjiu’s shoulder so she placed him in her pocket. He poked his head out of her pocket and looked at the path ahead.
The few drops of blood on the floor formed a trail which continued down the path. For an instant, a thought, which even shocked her, flashed in her mind: [If there’s no food, it would be good to even have some blood to drink.] Lin Sanjiu spent a great effort before she got back her rationality.
"Should we go over?" B.Rabbit asked weakly. "It could be dangerous."
"If we don’t go over, we won’t last much longer anyway." Lin Sanjiu was very dizzy, and she didn’t know how she could still walk. She supported herself with the walls and followed the trail of blood. Bit by bit, she walked into that dimly-lit path with her wobbling legs.
She felt that she must have brushed past death too many times, her eyesight was failing as patches of darkness filled her vision. She moved forward mechanically and squinted her eyes subconsciously. Suddenly, she realized that she was walking toward a bright light.
[Light? Where did it come from?]
"Is… Is there another person coming?"
Lin Sanjiu heard an unfamiliar female’s voice, it was soft and hoarse as if it took a lot of energy for that person to say that. Lin Sanjiu quivered a little as she looked up and realized that something was wrong.
She walked forward muddle-headed, so she did not notice until now that there were many people standing in the same path. The woman with the red mini skirt stood closest to Lin Sanjiu. Her mini skirt was covered with dust, and she was obviously the person who spoke just moments before. There were also two other people, one was tall, and the other was shorter. It was Hai Tianqing whose face had turned green due to hunger and Hu Changzai. The Loser from the first game was leaning against the wall as he gave Lin Sanjiu a dark stare.
Lin Sanjiu could easily tell who the owner of the blood was. It belonged to Flowery shirt with a broken leg caused by Lin Sanjiu. That man laid on the ground rigidly, his hands were wrapped tightly around his throat. The blood, which sprayed from his throat, covered a long distance. He was definitely dead.
However, all this did not draw as much attention as that warm light coming from her left
Behind a clean glass door, a lamp illuminated an enclosed space with a warm, orange light. Under such lighting, the dinner table covered with a white cloth looked even more inviting, and the clear drinking glasses shined brightly like diamonds. Logically speaking, the door should have blocked the fragrance from the food, yet Lin Sanjiu was convinced that she could smell the delightful scent of the food within those four cloches.
That was the dinner table!
Lin Sanjiu stared at it with widened eyes, and just as she was about to move, she spotted a metallic item flying toward her. Perhaps because of the motivation, she gained from the food in front of her, Lin Sanjiu felt a rush of energy. She called out her card and pulled out a mouthpart. She waved it and deflected the weapon within the time of a single breath.
"Clang!" The item fell to the ground, and Lin Sanjiu found out that it was a steel needle.
The red skirt woman wore a threatening expression and made a gesture as another steel needle appeared in her hand. The other young man also stepped forward, clenching his fist tightly.
"You’re really quite unlucky!" Though the woman in the red skirt could only smile weakly, it did not cover up her viciousness. "We even got rid of our own extra member… Do you think we will spare an opponent like you!?"
Despite knowing early on that the woman was not someone to be trifled with, Lin Sanjiu was still stunned. "There might only be four portions of food, but if everyone shared the food, we would still survive. Why do you have to kill?"
Her question was answered by an attack coming from the young man. He held a sickle-like weapon in his hand and waved it toward Lin Sanjiu’s face. But before it even got close to Lin Sanjiu’s face, the young man was hit by a muscular arm. He flew backward hitting the black wall, and blood sprayed out from his mouth. When he slid down from the wall, both his eyes were tightly shut. He had lost consciousness.
"What are you doing?" The long-legged woman was shocked. She stepped away from Hai Tianqing.
"Why are you helping her?"
"Sorry, she is actually our companion."
Hai Tianqing did not say anything. Instead, it was Hu Changzai, who said that as he nodded apologetically. "We will try our best to end the game before you die of hunger."
"You must be joking!" the long-legged woman roared angrily, but her legs were shaking uncontrollably. "Are you idiots? The losing team will lose everything… Which of you are willing to lose this Challenge? Companion? Companion, my as*!"
Even though Hu Changzai was very pale, he was very composed. Hearing what that woman said, he looked at Lin Sanjiu and repositioned his spectacles. "Are you sure you have a way to deal with this?"
"I am about pretty confident." Lin Sanjiu gasped and laughed lightly. Just then, a rabbit poked out from her pocket and greeted Hai Tianqing, "Hi, Executive Hai."
"It feels like I haven’t seen you for a long time, Rabbit." Hai Tianqing looked relieved after he saw B.Rabbit. "Well, we are finally together again."
The long-legged woman crumbled to the ground hopelessly as if she realized instantly that the advantage that she had was now gone. She mumbled something to herself, but it was inaudible to the rest.
Lin Sanjiu couldn’t muster a hint of pity for the vicious woman that was before her, but she could not understand the despair which showed on the woman’s face. Just when she turned to Hu Changzai with a puzzled expression, the latter grimaced. "It isn’t that we don’t want to share the food, but… look."
Lin Sanjiu looked at where he pointed and saw a few lines of words on the glass door:
"A table laid out for four people should be for four people.
Only four people can walk through this door.
Throwing food out of this door is forbidden and punishable by death."
Lin Sanjiu could now comprehend the woman’s despair. Death by starvation seemed to be an unavoidable fate for that woman…
Lin Sanjiu thought about it, feeling perplexed. She followed her companions and sat down at the table. Just a few minutes before, she was going up against her own team members within the dark confines of the maze, she had witnessed her team members poisoned, and then she was confronted by the White Team. Yet now, they found themselves in a clean, decorated space. They were sitting under a bright light, they were holding their cutleries and preparing themselves for a meal. This all felt very unreal to her.
Lin Sanjiu lifted the cloche and smelled a warm, appetizing fragrance. Lin Sanjiu’s heart beat so fast that she thought that she might get a heart attack. She felt as though there was a monster in her stomach which was howling for her to gobble down the food in front of her.
"Huh?" She hesitated, holding a ladle in her hand.
All the dishes were covered with a plastic wrap. Whether it was that lavish-looking, warm red soup with floating slices of carrot, that soft like cotton bread, or that green, refreshing salad...
A few eye-grabbing words were written on a piece of yellow paper attached to the top of the plastic wraps.
Fourth game: [Among the four of you, who is Mr. Dot?]