Bai Youwei looked around and asked the man: “Which room did you throw them into?”

“All of them, over time…” the man answered honestly. “All four rooms, any one of them worked the same. Anything thrown in there — as long as it was unclaimed — would automatically disappear.”

Bai Youwei’s brow knitted. “What does ‘unclaimed’ mean?”

The man explained: “Anything left behind by a person, or any trace made by a person — after the person leaves, the room treats it as unclaimed, and then… it gets erased…”

Everyone exchanged another look.

This was exactly the same as what they had encountered in the stone chamber just now. So, the mark Shen Mo had carved, and the battery Bai Youwei had left behind — they had disappeared because the stone chamber had judged them as “unclaimed objects.”

Bai Youwei reassessed the three men before her.

“It seems… you know quite a few things about this maze. Let’s hear it then. If the clues are valuable, taking you along isn’t out of the question.”

The man eagerly blurted out: “We’ll talk! We’ll tell you everything! As long as you’re willing to take us out of here, we’ll tell you everything we know!”

The three men spoke in what was almost a frenzied rush to confess.

Whether because they had been trapped in darkness for too long, their speech was somewhat jumbled. Sometimes a single word would have sufficed to convey a point, yet they would describe it over and over again at length. Their minds were also not entirely clear — at emotional moments, they even broke down into tears.

But it was precisely because of this that Bai Youwei actually let her guard down a little.

Because these few people genuinely looked like individuals who had mentally collapsed after a prolonged confinement.

When someone has already broken down, where would they find the presence of mind to scheme against others? Even the tiniest sliver of hope, and they would throw themselves at it with wild abandon!

……

The man holding the keys was called Mark.

The man with the leather pouch was called Dylan.

And the third one — who spoke the least and whose mental state was the most disturbed — was called Slade.

These three had apparently all been sailors before. Entering the maze with them had been another dozen or so crewmates, all of whom had been killed by the Minotaur.

The Minotaur was said to be immensely powerful, with a taste for human flesh, and could move freely in total darkness. Once encountered, casualties were nearly inevitable.

These sailors had wandered through the maze, suffered greatly, lost many of their number, and only slowly pieced together a pattern —

First: as long as they didn’t move, the Minotaur wouldn’t move either.

Second: if they moved, say, a certain number of rooms, the Minotaur would also move that same number of rooms.

Like a game of chess — you move so many steps, and your opponent moves the same.

And once they walked into a dead end, or misjudged their escape route, they would often be caught by the Minotaur.

Once caught, the four doors of the room would lock into a sealed state. No force could open them, until someone inside had been sacrificed — only then would the doors open and let the survivors escape.

Their companions had died in exactly this way, one after another.

At first, when they encountered the Minotaur, they would fight it together. But after they discovered that they were completely unable to stand against it, they could only scramble desperately to flee — and even hoped that their companions would be the ones to suffer, because only a death could open the doors.

These three that Bai Youwei’s group had encountered were the last survivors. Knowing they were no match for the Minotaur, they didn’t dare move easily, and could only hide inside the stone chamber — eating their bread, drinking their spring water, enduring the interminably, boundlessly long passage of time…

After hearing all of this, Bai Youwei thought it over for a while. “Based on what you’re saying… that Minotaur creature actually knows the precise location of every person in the maze, is that right?”

“Yes! It knows! It knows everything!” The man called Mark said. “But we don’t know its position! That’s not fair — we can only tell the direction when the distance is large. If the distance is very close — say, only one room away — its echo comes from all four directions, and we have absolutely no idea which way to run!”

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