Du Lai’s footsteps halted, and Leonid, who had been on his way out, also stopped.

“The exit has already appeared — aren’t you leaving?” Du Lai asked, puzzled. “Besides, didn’t you say the keys’ greatest use was as trail markers? We don’t necessarily need to collect all of them.”

Leonid was also getting impatient. “Let’s just get out as fast as possible. These lice have been following us the whole time — no matter how we try to shake them, we can’t. Even after washing with alcohol, it doesn’t last long before they come crawling back.”

He pulled off the towel wrapped around his face, unable to endure it any longer. “If we keep staying here, won’t our symptoms get worse? I’m honestly… starving!”

“The exit is right in front of us. Finding the last few keys won’t take much time — just hold on a little longer.” Bai Youwei looked at the glowing square shape, her expression troubled. “After all, none of us can be certain… whether these lice will disappear once we leave the maze.”

“They… they won’t stay, right?” Ashalina’s heart, which had just settled, clenched again. “Every time we leave a maze, don’t we get a physical upgrade? And no matter how badly injured our bodies are, almost everything gets healed!”

Bai Youwei pressed her lips together and said nothing.

What she wanted to say was that it wasn’t always like that — when Cheng Weicai had left the maze, the fish scales on his body hadn’t disappeared; instead, they’d upgraded right along with him. Like a creature that had once been purely aquatic and evolved afterward into an amphibian, capable of surviving both in water and on land.

And as for these “lice”… what the maze might upgrade them into, Bai Youwei had no way to predict.

Chen Hui glanced around awkwardly before speaking up: “I think… we should just do what Weiwei says. We’re only three keys short, and there aren’t many stone chambers left we haven’t searched. If we spend just a little more time, we can collect all the keys and open the iron door… Whatever happens then, at least when we leave, we’ll feel at ease.”

“But what if the exit disappears?” Du Lai frowned. “Will the exit stay here forever, or does it have a time limit? …It must have a time limit, right? Otherwise, wouldn’t the next group of people to come in discover the exit far too easily?”

Bai Youwei thought for a moment, then replied: “How about this — since the minotaur is dead now, we don’t need to worry about step counts anymore. We’ll leave one person here to keep watch, and everyone else will go find the keys. Then we’ll all rendezvous at the center of the maze — the stone chamber with the murals.”

“I’ll stay,” said Du Lai.

Everyone looked at him.

Anyone with eyes could see that Du Lai didn’t want to miss this chance to leave.

He wasn’t one of Bai Youwei’s subjects, and he had no particular ties to her — he genuinely had no obligation to follow her orders.

“Fine. You stay.” Bai Youwei gave a calm nod and directly assigned tasks to the others.

Leonid would search the stone chambers to the east, Ashalina would go to the south, Chen Hui would take the west, and she and Shen Mo would cover the north.

Before leaving, Bai Youwei handed Du Lai a white conch shell.

It was a sound-transmission device — as long as Du Lai spoke through the white conch, even through layers of stone walls, Bai Youwei and Ashalina and the others would be able to hear him clearly.

The only pity was that the device couldn’t carry responses back; otherwise, its practical usefulness wouldn’t be far behind a phone.

Du Lai held the white conch and sat cross-legged before the glowing square, calmly saying: “If the exit shrinks or disappears, I’ll use the conch to notify you immediately.”

He paused two seconds, then continued: “But if you don’t come back… I won’t wait forever.”

Bai Youwei gave him a long look.

Tiny black insects crawled around his neck; faint green veins bulged at his temples — he seemed to have reached the very edge of his endurance…

“If you leave before us, I won’t hold it against you.” Bai Youwei said evenly. “But you’d better think it through carefully. Don’t let it end with Fu Miaoxue recovering while you turn into something ghastly like this.”

—