Su Man was beginning to regret coming here.

When she had arrived, she’d been full of fighting spirit — passionate and stirred up, feeling herself brave, strong, and fearless of anything!

But now, she felt her own weakness and inadequacy more and more profoundly.

If she hadn’t met Lu Yuwen, could she have accurately drawn the map? Could she have reassembled the scattered squares? Most likely, before she’d even recognized those clues, she would already have been bewitched by the arrows, turned into a puppet.

Why was she always like this?

Why couldn’t she be like Lu Yuwen — calming herself down and thinking through problems quietly?

A shadow fell over her. Lu Yuwen had walked up and stood before her.

“Su Man — if I hadn’t met you, I wouldn’t have been able to make it out of the labyrinth on my own either,” he said.

He wanted to pat her on the shoulder as comfort, but as he raised his bound hands and remembered, he let them fall back.

Su Man straightened up a little, managing a feeble smile. “Don’t worry, I’m fine!”

It was just a brief moment of deflation. Nothing more.

Lu Yuwen added: “Whether it’s a game or a labyrinth — it has never been a one-person matter.”

Su Man nodded.

Out in the distance, a small boat appeared on the lake’s surface. As it drew closer, they could see Zhang Ke standing on it, waving to them.

Zhang Ke had found a boat after all —

It was the kind of pedal boat common at water parks: four-person, propelled mainly by foot pedals turning paddlewheels, pushing water backward for forward motion, with oars available as well.

When Zhang Ke had pedaled the boat to shore, Lu Yuwen said: “Even though you found a boat, diving in from the center of the lake means the depth is unpredictable — the risk is still too great…”

“Just tie a rope around the diver, won’t that do?” Zhang Ke interrupted impatiently. “There’s rope on the opposite bank. Get on board — I’ll take you to fetch it.”

Lu Yuwen stood still, eyeing the pedal boat with a skeptical look. “Are you sure the rope is long enough for us to dive down to the bottom…”

“Stop dithering!” Zhang Ke frowned. “If it’s not long enough, we can tie several ropes together. Get on the boat!”

Su Man quietly exchanged a glance with Lu Yuwen.

Just as he had predicted — now that Zhang Ke had proposed the plan himself, he was actively solving the practical problems of carrying it out.

Zhang Ke thought he was calling the shots. Little did he know that every bit of it was the outcome Lu Yuwen had been deliberately orchestrating.

The three of them boarded the boat, fetched some hemp rope from the opposite bank, and made their way to the center of the square — now submerged beneath the lake.

Looking down through the water’s surface, the outline of a submerged forest was dimly visible below. The bottom of the boat would sometimes graze the very tips of the trees, branches scratching against the hull with a creaking groan.

Once again, it was Su Man who went in first.

After she dove in, Zhang Ke kept staring fixedly at the water’s surface, his eyes betraying a conflicted, tangled emotion — wanting to dive in himself and see what was happening, yet afraid of being tricked.

He had played games with Lu Yuwen before. He knew this man was nothing like the honest, guileless person he appeared — he was, in truth, devious. Otherwise, why would A’Xiao and Yang Zi have been so wary of Lu Yuwen?

This dive took Su Man two minutes.

For an ordinary person, that was already quite a long time.

Zhang Ke frowned. “Why so long?”

Lu Yuwen also asked: “What was the situation underwater? Did you see any arrows?”

Su Man caught her breath, looked at the two of them, and said: “There’s good news and there’s bad news.

The good news is that many of the arrows are attached to tree trunks — which means we don’t need to dive all the way to the bottom. We only need to go down about three meters or so to reach the arrows.

The bad news is… the branches keep snagging the rope. When I was coming back up I got caught and it took me a few seconds to get free.”

Underwater, every second of delay could be fatal.

Su Man looked at Zhang Ke and gave her honest suggestion: “I’d recommend that when you go in later, you leave the rope behind — having it will actually make things more dangerous.”