“What’s wrong?” Su Man asked.

Lu Yuwen came back to himself. He looked at her, startled, unable to find words.

Su Man grew more confused by the second, staring at him. “Are you not feeling well?”

Cold sweat was forming on Lu Yuwen’s forehead.

A theory had struck him like a great bell swung straight into his skull — his entire mind was ringing, his thoughts a blur. In what state was he supposed to be able to speak?

“Is your leg hurting again?” Su Man was an impatient person by nature, and his silence only made her more anxious. She asked again and again: “What’s wrong? What is it, exactly? Say something!”

Lu Yuwen took a deep breath…

“Let’s… let’s find somewhere to rest for a while,” he said, keeping his voice as steady as he could manage. “We’ve been walking a good stretch. The wound does hurt a bit — let’s rest, and I need to review the map as well.”

Su Man surveyed the area. A small convenience store stood not far off, so she helped support Lu Yuwen and guided him there.

As they walked, she couldn’t help grumbling. “I said from the start to let me carry you, and you wouldn’t have it — look what happened, the wound must have gotten worse. Such a stubborn ‘die with face intact’ type!”

Lu Yuwen gave a strained smile and offered no defense.

Once they reached the convenience store, Su Man set down the bags, cleared out a rest area with quick, practiced efficiency, then went to look for tinder nearby to start a fire and boil water.

Once Su Man had gone, Lu Yuwen took out the map he had drawn.

He had prepared 100 sheets of A4 paper in total, cut into squares, with the map drawn on one side and a sequence number marked on the other.

Most sheets now had maps drawn on them. According to their plan, it would take at most two days to complete all 100 grid sections — and then would come the process of assembling them.

A sliding puzzle, once you knew the technique, was no problem for Lu Yuwen whether it was 10×10 or 100×100. Then he would piece the maze’s sections together in order, and the correct path would emerge.

That was the ideal scenario.

The reality before him now was… he had overlooked the problem of uneven ground.

Nearly every section they had encountered so far was on the same flat plane. Even when there was a difference, it amounted to a step-like drop — but he hadn’t anticipated that the difference in elevation could be this extreme.

What this meant was: at certain positions, the arrows would be completely unreachable. In other words — dead zones.

Mountaintops, for instance. Underwater.

The reason the maze sections had remained in their scattered, disordered state all this time was probably because someone, while attempting to piece them together, had accidentally shifted a section into a dead-zone position — and as a result, the entire puzzle had become impossible to complete correctly.

He and Su Man… might genuinely be unable to get out.

They might be trapped here forever.

What to do…

Should he tell her?

Outside, Su Man came back carrying an armful of branches and firewood.

She didn’t come straight inside — instead she started building a fire on the pavement outside the store. By chance she glanced in through the window and saw Lu Yuwen looking back at her at exactly the same moment, and she smiled at him.

Lu Yuwen’s heart sank even further.

He couldn’t say it.

Su Man trusted him wholeheartedly. She had always believed he could lead her out of the maze. But the truth was… there was nothing he could do.

He looked down at the map again.

Was there really not a single option left?

“Do you want to eat some eight-treasure congee tonight?” Su Man found some canned goods in the store and called over to him. “We’ll get tired of crackers and instant noodles eventually, won’t we? There’s canned eight-treasure congee — do you want some?”

Lu Yuwen gave a small nod. “Sorry to trouble you…”

Su Man laughed. “Not trouble for me — trouble for you. Opening cans takes a bit of effort with my hand, so you’ll have to do it.”

Then she fell silent for just a moment.

It was odd, actually. When it came to this missing part of her hand, she hid it from friends and family — yet she could mention it to Lu Yuwen, whom she had known only a few days, without any psychological burden at all. Why was that?

Sharing the same kind of misfortune?

Or… was it precisely because he was an unfamiliar “outsider,” so it didn’t matter?

While Su Man was still in that brief daze, Lu Yuwen took the can from her hands and asked, in a casual tone: “Su Man — why did you come into the maze?”

—