…Why had she entered the maze?

Su Man paused, then wrapped her fingers around her left hand, and for a moment said nothing.

Lu Yuwen’s gaze fell on her left hand. “How did your hand get hurt?”

“A game…” Su Man knitted her brows slightly. “My friends and I ran into a difficult game. She gave me her puzzle piece, or I wouldn’t have just lost a hand — I’d have lost my life too.”

“A puzzle piece?” Lu Yuwen froze, his eyes going involuntarily to the map he had drawn.

Su Man noticed his reaction and was startled. She quickly clarified: “Not this kind of puzzle — the kind… wait, do you not know about maze puzzle pieces?”

Lu Yuwen shook his head. “What are maze puzzle pieces?”

Su Man’s eyes went wide. “You don’t know about maze puzzle pieces?! When a player clears a maze, they receive physical improvements — and they also receive a puzzle piece! Each maze produces at most nine puzzle pieces, and once all nine have been claimed by players, the maze disappears! You didn’t know??”

Lu Yuwen genuinely had no idea. He shook his head again. “All I knew was to stay away from the white mist — the mist hid mazes that people couldn’t get out of. Where did you learn all of this?”

Su Man said without thinking, “We were with the rescue teams — almost everyone knew this.”

“That explains it.” Lu Yuwen gave a quiet smile. “There was no rescue that reached us. The city later lost power and communications, and we were cut off from the outside world. What we knew about mazes was told to us by other players we encountered inside the game.”

Su Man, hearing this, felt a little awkward.

Several of her older relatives were military figures, and Li Li’s family worked for the national research institute, so after the disaster struck, they had been classified as priority protected persons and assigned to the first wave of evacuations.

She herself had been safely evacuated, and had simply assumed everyone else had been too. She knew about the maze puzzle pieces, and had assumed everyone else did as well.

But the reality was that far too many people had received no rescue at all. They had to rely entirely on their own resources to find shelter, assembling allies and companions along the way, exchanging and passing information by the most rudimentary means.

The casualties along the way were beyond counting — and someone like Lu Yuwen, who had held on until now, was without a doubt among a very few.

Lu Yuwen didn’t dwell on that. He asked Su Man: “You just mentioned physical improvements — what does that mean?”

Su Man chose her words. “Well… it’s one way to describe it. Some people call it an improvement, some say an upgrade, some say a kind of evolution — but essentially, your body improves across the board. Depending on each person’s physical constitution, speed, strength, endurance, and self-healing ability all see marked increases.”

Lu Yuwen understood. “So… you’ve been inside a maze before?”

“Yes.” Su Man nodded. “I’ve been through two. This is my third.”

At that, her expression clouded, and she said quietly, “It always took everyone working together to make it through. Now that I’m on my own, I can’t do anything…”

Su Man looked up at Lu Yuwen and gave a small smile. “I really envy people like you — sharp mind, nothing a maze can throw at you.”

“It wasn’t really about cleverness…” Lu Yuwen looked at her. “When you’re down to just one person, it’s easy to fall apart. But when you have friends with you, supporting each other and encouraging each other, you keep finding ways to push through obstacles and come up with solutions.

“So — making it through a maze isn’t just because of their strength. Your strength matters too.”

Su Man stared at him.

After a moment, she gave an embarrassed little laugh. “Thank you… it’s the first time anyone has ever… said something like that to me…”

—