Leonid placed the rock between the two stone chambers.

The large boulder pressed against the door, half in the front chamber, half in the back chamber.

Besides this rock, Bai Youwei had deliberately splashed a pool of water on the ground, specifically to see whether the state of the stone chamber would change.

Everyone stepped over the rock and filed into the new stone chamber one by one.

The boulder sat quietly on the stone tile floor, without any change.

Bai Youwei shone her flashlight on the pool of water she had just splashed — the water stain was still there.

After waiting another seven or eight seconds, the water stain on the ground suddenly disappeared! Bai Youwei’s heart gave a start, and she immediately looked toward the rock!

Only half the rock remained!

The portion at the other end had vanished! As if it had been sliced clean in two — now, only half a rock remained pressing against the door!

A’Shalina couldn’t help but draw a sharp breath. If it hadn’t been the rock holding the door, but her instead, wouldn’t that mean…

The others’ faces didn’t look much better.

If every stone chamber was in this kind of state, then how were they supposed to find the keys? How were they supposed to find a way out?

Bai Youwei was, as ever, calm, analyzing in an even tone: “If every room has a spatial teleportation function, then there should be fixed teleportation points, or a set of teleportation rules — otherwise, no one could ever escape the maze. If it’s not spatial teleportation, but a state reset, then there must be a way to prevent the stone chamber from resetting, otherwise every room would be identical, and escaping the maze would be even more impossible.”

“You mean we missed some clues?” Shen Mo asked.

“Mm, possibly.” Bai Youwei said. “A maze can’t leave players in a completely dead-end situation~”

Du Lai, having heard this, said: “But we’ve already gone over that chamber with the murals multiple times — there shouldn’t be any missed clues… If only we could go back there, maybe there really is something we didn’t notice.”

“It’s too late to go back now.” Bai Youwei sighed quietly. “No wonder this maze exposed the key points to us right from the start — it knew all along that we couldn’t go back. Even if we collected all 12 keys, without being able to return to the origin point, it’d all be for nothing.”

When she finished speaking, everyone couldn’t help but feel a little discouraged.

It was as though they could only stumble around aimlessly like headless flies — truly demoralizing.

“Let’s keep moving.” Bai Youwei said. “We’ll keep heading south and see if we can reach the end.”

Chen Hui quietly murmured: “If the rooms are endless, that would be really terrible…”

“Don’t worry, they won’t be endless.” Bai Youwei turned her head and smiled at her. “If the rooms were infinite, the Minotaur would never be able to catch any players.”

So the number of stone chambers was definitely finite.

Everyone rallied their spirits, and opened the southern door once more —

This time, the moment the door opened, terrified screaming came from within!

“AHHHHHHH!……”

“Help!! HELP!!!”

“The Minotaur! The Minotaur is coming!!!”

“It’s here! The Minotaur is going to eat us!!!”

The screaming was hysterical, frenzied and unhinged — the sounds of human beings.

Shen Mo shone his flashlight toward them, and only then did those people finally go quiet, staring with hollow, clouded eyes at Bai Youwei’s group behind the beam of light.

Bai Youwei looked them over in turn.

Three men were huddled in a corner, gaunt to the bone, disheveled and filthy. Their hair and beards appeared as though they hadn’t been groomed in months. Their clothes were covered in stains — patches of black, patches of red — dried blood clots of indeterminate age.

They looked utterly wretched, barely human. At this moment, staring into the flashlight’s beam, their eyes were vacant and glazed.

Chen Hui was a little frightened, and softly asked Bai Youwei: “Are they NPCs?”

“They don’t really look it.” Bai Youwei frowned back. “Besides, we’ve never encountered NPCs inside the maze before.”

Those three men finally snapped to their senses. One of them came scrambling and rolling forward to throw himself at Bai Youwei’s feet, frantically explaining: “We’re human! We’re human beings! Not NPCs! We can help you get out!”

As he spoke, he held up three keys in his hand. “As long as you gather all 12 keys! We can escape from here!”

—