Chu Tianqiu slowly stood up, no longer looking at the chessboard on the table, but instead walked to a dining table and stopped.
There he had prepared an exquisite breakfast for himself.
“Knock, knock, knock—”
A faint knocking sound came. The movement in Chu Tianqiu’s hands paused.
“What is it?” he asked.
“If people die, won’t it be difficult to explain?” said the voice outside the door.
“It doesn’t matter if everyone here dies, as long as that too-clever-by-half Qi Xia is still alive.” Chu Tianqiu revealed a sinister smile. “Right now, he’s both intelligent and arrogant. We’re going to deliver the most painful ‘regret’ to him.”
“I understand.” The person outside fell silent at the door for a moment, then slowly left.
…
The four of them—Qi Xia’s group—pressed tightly against the wall, taking tense deep breaths.
The two ends of the seesaw had entered an extremely bizarre state of stability.
“Our luck is too good…” Yun Yao muttered to herself. “The weight of the two rooms happens to be exactly the same…”
“Rather than saying our luck is good… it’s more accurate to say ‘Man-Dragon’ arranged it this way from the start.” Qi Xia said through gritted teeth. “This kind of stalemate is the best situation right now. If we can maintain this stalemate until we find a solution…”
As soon as his words fell, their room began to slowly descend again.
Qi Xia wanted to maintain a “stalemate,” but unfortunately, the other side didn’t want to “stalemate.”
“Since you want to die…” Qi Xia gritted his teeth. “Don’t blame me.”
“What should we do?” Qiao Jiajin pressed against the wall, cold sweat streaming down his face. “How can we possibly be lighter than them?”
Tiantian looked at the long blade in Qiao Jiajin’s hand, swallowed hard, and said, “Could it be that we need to cut off a hand…”
“Don’t be silly.” Qi Xia interrupted Tiantian’s thought. “No matter which hand you cut off, in this sealed room you can’t throw it out. Our weight would still remain the same.”
“This…” Tiantian silently lowered her head, her expression somewhat sorrowful.
“Beautiful lady, your idea is way too dangerous.” Qiao Jiajin hid the knife behind his back. “I’m vetoing this idea too. Think of something else.”
Without a word, Yun Yao came to the tennis-ball-sized small window, took out the “Dao” from her backpack, and tossed them out one by one like flipping coins.
“You…”
Qi Xia was slightly stunned but knew there was no better solution at the moment. Every bit of weight they could reduce counted.
“Let’s do it together.”
Everyone reached into their pockets for their “Dao.” Now was not the time to feel sorry about the “Dao.” If they sank down here, this cycle would be over.
Qiao Jiajin and Tiantian pulled out their “savings” and threw them all out at once.
Qi Xia also took out several “Dao” and tossed them out. To be safe, he kept one in his pocket.
That was the one Officer Li had given him. Qi Xia had used this “Dao” to win against Man-Monkey. It was his lucky charm, and he hoped it would bring good fortune again in this calamity.
But after everyone had thrown out almost all their “Dao,” they discovered the room’s position hadn’t changed.
This meant the other side was also finding ways to get lighter.
“It seems that team also has a clever person.” Qi Xia muttered to himself. “What else can we throw?”
Yun Yao bit her lip and slowly picked up her backpack, very reluctantly pulling out a lipstick from inside.
Cosmetics in the “Land of Finality” were even rarer than “Dao.” She looked extremely pained.
After hesitating for a few seconds, she threw out the lipstick, followed by foundation, concealer, eyeliner, lip gloss…
Various cosmetics fell like a light rain, pattering downward.
Tiantian, also being a girl, felt a bit of heartache seeing this scene.
Only then did the four finally feel the room slowly rising, with the firelight below getting farther and farther away.
“Good…” Qi Xia nervously pressed against the wall and glanced down into the distance. “Just maintain it like this… even a difference of one or two pounds is enough to determine victory or defeat.”
But they had risen for less than a minute when the balance was broken again.
Whatever the other room had done, their weight was also continuously decreasing.
The metal pillar connecting the two rooms made a huge “creaking” sound.
Qi Xia clearly felt his room sinking.
Though the two rooms hadn’t met face-to-face, both were doing everything possible to survive.
“We’ve thrown out the ‘Dao,’ what about the ‘blade’?” Qiao Jiajin looked at the knife in his hand. “This blade weighs two or three pounds too. Should we just throw it?”
“No.” Qi Xia said. “Qiao Jiajin, there’s a very difficult task I need to give you now.”
“A difficult task?” Qiao Jiajin paused. “What is it?”
“I’m afraid only you can accomplish this task.” Qi Xia pointed to the low stool nearby. “Chop it into pieces.”
This small low stool had been placed in the room from the beginning. It must not be without purpose—it surely had its use.
Qiao Jiajin understood. He picked up the low stool and weighed it. Solid wood—definitely very heavy.
“When it comes to strength, only you can chop it into fragments in a short time, but you must be careful. Don’t make your movements too large, or it’ll be hard for us to maintain stability.”
“Got it.”
Qiao Jiajin nodded, then took a deep breath. Swinging the long blade, he struck the low stool, instantly creating a crack.
He didn’t continue using the knife but instead reached his fingers into the crack, then forcefully pried it apart. The wood grain split, and he divided the stool into two halves.
He shook his hands and struck at the remaining parts again.
Due to the limited area of the hidden window, Qiao Jiajin could only chop the low stool into very small pieces before possibly disassembling it enough to throw out.
So he decisively adopted the same strategy as “splitting firewood.”
He stood one leg of the low stool upright on the ground, struck down fiercely from above, then pried with his hand, removing a thin, long strip of wood.
“Take these and throw them first!” Qiao Jiajin said.
The three had a clear division of labor. Qiao Jiajin chopped the stool, Tiantian picked up the wood strips and handed them to Qi Xia, Qi Xia passed them to Yun Yao, and Yun Yao threw them out.
This way, they could ensure the four people’s movements remained as minimal as possible.
In just two or three minutes, all four stool legs had been completely disassembled and thrown out. Now only a wooden board remained.
“Strange…” Yun Yao kept looking through the hidden window toward the opposite side. “Why are we still parallel? What tactics are they using?”
But the next second, she saw from a distance that wood fragments also seemed to be thrown from the hidden window on the opposite side.
“Oh no, they seem to be chopping their stool too…” Yun Yao said. “We need to be faster!”
Qi Xia knew the other side’s approach was perfectly reasonable, as the room arrangements on both sides should be identical.
In other words, both rooms only had one low stool and one long blade.
Under these circumstances, anyone would choose to chop up the chair.
The earlier they chopped up the chair, the farther they would be from death.
Qiao Jiajin couldn’t help but speed up his hands.
It must be said that his strength was used very skillfully. Although his movements weren’t large, each strike precisely followed the wood’s grain, splitting downward. The low stool quickly fell apart into a pile of fragments.
Tiantian kept handing wood strips to the two, but Qiao Jiajin felt it was still too slow, so he grabbed many small pieces of wood and threw them out through the wire mesh floor.
Six minutes had passed, and with only four minutes remaining on the countdown on the wall, there was completely no low stool left in their room.
At this moment, their room slowly rose, clearly lighter than the other side by more than one level.
“Hold steady…” Qi Xia had everyone gather around him, trying to make the room even lighter.
Yun Yao thought for a moment at this time, then snatched the long blade from Qiao Jiajin’s hands and also chopped her leather bag into fragments, throwing them out through the opening.