“How about this…” Bai Youwei spoke up at the right moment. “Since neither side trusts the other enough to make a deal, we’ll need to find a place that everyone feels comfortable with.
We can choose a trap—let the person we want to save and the person you want to eliminate enter it together.
That way, the person we want to save will be secured, and the person you want to eliminate will be immediately out of the game.”
Ye Chong considered for a moment, then replied, “Fine.”
There were eight traps total in the forest—four in the northern forest and four in the southern forest, each one different.
“For safety’s sake, I’d like to choose one of our traps,” Bai Youwei said. “To prevent you from causing trouble for us afterward.”
Ye Chong smiled with faint contempt, tinged with condescending pity. “Fine.”
If he truly wanted to do something, even if they hid inside a trap, he had plenty of ways to handle it.
The two groups walked toward the southern forest, maintaining a distance of over twenty meters between them at all times, wary and guarded.
Ahead, the trees grew sparse, opening into a small clearing. In the clearing lay a net—nearly the color of soil, rough and coarse in texture, partially concealed by fallen leaves, barely visible.
Most traps in the forest were fairly obvious; a careful eye could spot them. But at night, even if you vaguely remembered their locations, it was easy to stumble into one.
Ye Chong dragged Tan Xiao forward. Shen Mo also walked toward the trap.
“You’d better handle him gently,” Shen Mo reminded Ye Chong. “If he dies midway, our deal is immediately void.”
Ye Chong smiled, about to continue walking, when he heard Shen Mo say: “Are you sure you’re choosing me? Maybe I’m not the elephant.”
Ye Chong’s footsteps paused. His smile turned provocative. “Even if you’re not the elephant, eliminating you is still the most appropriate move.”
The implication was clear—a dig at Shen Mo’s standing within the team, as well as his strength.
Shen Mo smiled and stood at the edge of the trap. “Throw him in.”
“Together?” Ye Chong watched him, his face wearing the cunning of someone who wouldn’t release the hawk until he saw the rabbit.
“That’s why I said throw him.” Shen Mo wasn’t looking at Ye Chong—his eyes were fixed on the center of the net. “He’s wounded this severely. I’ll catch him, which naturally means I’ll fall into the trap with him.”
Ye Chong thought it over again and decided he had nothing to lose. If the other side went back on their word, he could simply stab the hostage on the spot.
He did as agreed, flinging the barely-conscious Tan Xiao outward—
Sure enough, Shen Mo lunged toward where Tan Xiao would land almost simultaneously, catching him with both arms!
Then the mechanism triggered! The flat net instantly billowed upward and began contracting, like a dense fishing net entangling both men!
Shen Mo immediately applied mud to several vital points on Tan Xiao’s body, pulling him back from the brink of death.
Bai Youwei then released the rabbit!
The plush bunny was hurled high into the air. It grabbed hold of the net pouch hanging from the tree, then climbed inch by inch to the top, gave its ears a shake, and looked down at everyone below.
A ring of pale-blue electric light crackled and rippled outward.
Everyone involuntarily stepped back.
In truth, the electrical charge was quite weak. When it reached them, they only felt a faint tingling in the soles of their feet.
Bai Youwei explained coolly, “Just as a precaution, I’m leaving a tool here—so that if something happens to both of them, no one tries to come to me with another deal and trade away more animals. If that happened, this game would become impossible for me to play.”
Ye Chong had heard a thing or two about Bai Youwei’s rabbit.
He looked at it thoughtfully, then smiled and asked her, “Such a practical tool—won’t leaving it here be a bit wasteful?”
“No need to worry about me.” Bai Youwei smiled back at him pleasantly. “I still have a secret weapon. More than enough to manage.”
Ye Chong narrowed his eyes. “Oh? A secret… weapon?”
—
*Wildlife Park Supplementary Notes*
*There have been many questions in the comments section about this game lately. I may not have explained it clearly enough, so I’ll clarify here. Apologies.*
*1. Can a trap only hold one person?*
*No. A trap can hold multiple people. The reason “one person” was mentioned earlier is that once one person triggers a trap, that trap is spent—other players naturally won’t trigger it again. As an analogy: I dig a pit, cover it with straw and a thin layer of dirt. You step on it and fall in. At that point, others know there’s a pit there and will avoid it—but if someone really wants to jump in, they certainly can. Anyone who falls into a pit loses their eligibility to continue the game—they’re out.*
*2. The sphere said players cannot use any method to cause another player’s death.*
*This rule applies to lower-ranked animals attacking higher-ranked animals. For example: Mouse is a big strong man; Cat is a frail young woman. If Mouse uses his physical advantage to beat Cat to death—rule violation, eliminated. Mouse respawns. He pushes Cat off a cliff; Cat dies from the fall. Mouse says, “I only punched her once; she fell on her own”—still a rule violation, still eliminated. Mouse respawns again. This time he doesn’t hit Cat—he deliberately frightens her, chases her. In a panic she trips and scrapes herself, and Mouse takes the opportunity to use a tool to make her bleed uncontrollably until she dies—Mouse is eliminated. Mouse respawns yet again. This time he chases Cat again; in her panic, Cat runs into a trap—Cat is out, Mouse is fine. In short, as Cat’s lower-ranked counterpart in the food chain, any form of harmful action by Mouse will result in his own elimination—unless the game’s built-in traps are used.*
*3. Why can’t players enter the dollhouse?*
*During the game itself, players cannot enter the dollhouse—but they can in the labyrinth. The Labyrinth War may have “labyrinth” in its name, but it is fundamentally a game, not a maze. Even though Tan Xiao and Shen Mo are eliminated, they still cannot enter the dollhouse until the game ends—it’s like trying to shut down your computer when the system tells you a program is still running.*
*4. If you put the snowflake in a refrigerator, the snowman won’t melt…*
*I have complicated feelings about this one—it got a lot of likes. The snowflake disappears after use, and in its place, a snowman appears. The speed at which the snowman melts depends on the ambient temperature at the time. So unless the refrigerator is bigger than the snowman… it won’t fit.*
*5. The rabbit’s range.*
*After several upgrades through the labyrinth, the rabbit can act independently of the female lead—but it definitely has a distance limit when releasing electrical energy. If it’s a ring of lightning that ripples outward like waves on water: long range, low damage. If it’s a thunderball—energy concentrated into a sphere of ball lightning: short range, massive damage. If it’s a single bolt of lightning, think of it as a very long sword—a linear attack. If you’re not in that line of trajectory, even if you’re only a centimeter away from the bolt, you’ll be fine. Range is between the ball and the ring; damage is high.*
*…That’s about as well as I can explain it. It’s not your fault—my ability to express these things still needs work.*