Fu Miaoxue looked left and right, saw that no one was speaking, and said eagerly, “How about we go first?”

Yan Qingwen tapped the table gently with his fingers and asked calmly, “How do we guarantee that the people sharing information are telling the truth?”

Lu Yuwen also raised a concern: “In a situation of information asymmetry, if someone provides false information in exchange for real intelligence, it will be very difficult for us to detect.”

Chu Huaijin explained, “The base has previously collected data not just on various games, but also on mazes. Some players have escaped from mazes—even if the exit was found by someone else—their descriptions of certain maze clues still hold some reference value. So if someone lies, I can compare it against our records and should be able to tell.”

Fu Miaoxue said, “Oh, come on, you guys~ Don’t think so poorly of people. I genuinely want to cooperate with everyone—why would I deliberately provide false intelligence? Let’s all just clear our mazes, then take each other’s subjects in to grind experience. Wouldn’t that be great~”

She gave Du Lai beside her a light nudge with her elbow.

Du Lai said, “The maze I entered before was Maze No. 9. The setting was a tropical rainforest—there were crocodile swarms in the river to the east and giant pythons in the river to the west. The method to clear it was to make the two sides fight each other, and then retrieve the electronic key from inside the belly of the winner…”

Once Du Lai broke the ice, things flowed much more smoothly afterward.

Yan Qingwen spoke after him: “Maze No. 8. The setting is a desert. The method to clear it is to find quicksand that flows like a river, while also ensuring you have enough drinking water.”

Bai Youwei said, “Maze No. 2. The setting has many mirrors, with multiple exits. The method to clear it is to ensure that you remain within the reflection range of a mirror at all times as you exit, while also being careful not to stare at the mirrors for too long, and not to get too close to them.”

Shen Mo said, “Maze No. 7. The environment resembles chunks of flesh and organs, with an infinite regenerative ability. Only a small type of creature native to the maze can gnaw through the fleshy membrane. Additionally, snake-like creatures similar to a serpent will harass players. Be warned: wounds must not come into contact with the flesh, or you will be assimilated.”

Fu Miaoxue couldn’t help but rub her arms. “Ugh… so disgusting.”

Then she saw Bai Youwei shoot her a cold sideways glance, and she explained in a small voice, “I meant the maze is disgusting—not your boyfriend…”

Bai Youwei rolled her eyes and continued, “Maze No. 3. The setting is a stone cave beneath the sea. Players enter the cave aboard a dilapidated boat, and inside there are seven further caverns. The method to clear it is to choose the correct openings: the next opening is always separated from the previous one by a number of caverns equal to its own sequence number. For example, if you first enter cavern No. 3, then the next opening is No. 7—three caverns away from No. 3. The one after that is No. 4, and you keep extrapolating until you loop back to the original No. 3 opening, forming a cycle—at which point you can exit the maze.”

Fu Miaoxue frowned listening to this: “It’s so complicated—I feel like Maze No. 3 is especially hard…”

“That does seem to be the case,” Yan Qingwen agreed. “Based on the maze numbers, it appears that the lower the number, the higher the difficulty.”

“Then doesn’t that make Maze No. 1 the hardest?” Fu Miaoxue looked around the room. “Has anyone been inside Maze No. 1?”

Everyone shook their heads.

Lu Yuwen said, “I entered Maze No. 6. The setting is an ordinary city with its blocks scrambled. Arrows are placed throughout the scene—if you blindly follow them, you’ll slowly turn into a puppet. The method to clear it is to first draw a complete map, then use the arrows to shift the city blocks, and when everything is finally assembled correctly, the arrows will point to the real exit.”

After Lu Yuwen finished, everyone shared a few more pieces of maze information, with some overlapping.

Once sorted, if Maze No. 9 was the highest-numbered maze, they were currently missing information on Mazes No. 1, No. 4, and No. 5—

Three mazes, with not a single clue.

Bai Youwei said coolly, “If the mazes we happen to encounter this time are exactly the ones none of us have been to—No. 1, No. 4, and No. 5—then this entire meeting will have been completely pointless.”

—