Daniel’s face went ashen.

He was only two or three steps from the Sphinx’s position — close enough to push on and finish the climb — but his arms and legs had gone numb. He couldn’t move.

Why?!

Why had Bruce died?!

The answer to that riddle was obviously a human! — In the morning of life, crawling on two legs and two hands; at noon, walking upright on two legs; and in the evening, bent with old age, needing a cane — three legs!

A universally known answer. So why didn’t it work here?!

Miutte was already dead. Now Bruce too. If he got it wrong, this game was over.

The sun beat down mercilessly, yet Daniel broke into a cold sweat.

He wracked his mind, over and over. Where had it gone wrong?! The answer was a human — why was that wrong?! Could it be… could it be… that the answer wasn’t precise enough?

Daniel slowly began to calm himself.

Was there more than one correct answer? Maybe he should say: infant, adult, elderly person.

That didn’t seem right either.

Children walk on two legs too, so limiting it to “adult” wasn’t accurate enough. Then how should he phrase it? Grown-up? Adult? Young person?… None of these were precise enough.

Daniel yanked at his own hair in frustration.

His eye caught the stone swords above, and another thought flashed through his mind: what if it was the sword, not the answer, that was the problem?

Maybe Bruce’s answer had been correct — but he’d chosen the wrong sword. Nothing had explicitly said they needed to pick the right sword — but perhaps that trap was built into the rules.

Daniel clenched his teeth, pushed his arms, and hauled himself up the final few steps.

The Sphinx loomed directly before him.

A puddle of mangled flesh and blood lay on the ground. Daniel forced himself not to look, directing all his attention to the stone swords, searching for any difference between them.

The sun had bleached the stone pale. The swords were thrust into the cracks, and at a glance they looked like a dense field of grave crosses.

Daniel’s body wouldn’t stop shaking.

He was terrified of being crushed as Bruce had been, yet he couldn’t bear to lose. He refused to go down like this.

“Damn it, if I’d known it would be this kind of game…” he muttered, biting down hard as regret crashed over him in waves, suffocating.

If he’d known, maybe he never should have entered…

He’d been misled by Vilrad into thinking that a numerical advantage meant victory was only a matter of time — but in reality, numbers counted for almost nothing here.

So what now?

He couldn’t see any difference between the stone swords at all. If this continued, there was nothing left to do but wait to die.

The enormous Sphinx lay in the center of the platform, motionless, apparently waiting for him to select a sword before posing its question.

Daniel paced among the swords, hesitating, comparing endlessly, growing more lost by the minute.

The blazing sun baked him alive. Time ticked by. His mouth was parched, his vision darkening — if this didn’t end soon, the Sphinx wouldn’t even need to act. The heat alone would kill him.

A faint scrabbling sound came from behind. He turned, bewildered — and saw Pan Xiaoxin at the edge of the platform, fingers bleeding, clinging to the stone and pulling himself up inch by inch.

His face was smeared with blood. The fall had split his forehead open, and who knew what other injuries he’d sustained. He was covered in grime and dried blood.

Daniel stared at him for a full half minute.

When Pan Xiaoxin had fully hauled himself up, Daniel suddenly laughed. He looked at Pan Xiaoxin with something like hope and said: “Kid, why don’t you have a go at the Sphinx’s riddle?”

Pan Xiaoxin read the words on the step:

【Choose one stone sword. Answer the question correctly and you will receive what you seek.】

He looked up — and saw the gruesome remains ahead.

Pan Xiaoxin pressed his lips together and looked at Daniel. “What did he answer?”

Daniel went still.

Pan Xiaoxin asked again, quietly and seriously: “Just now — what did the dark-skinned man say?”

—