“Don’t you find it a bit strange?” Yun Yao quietly asked Chen Junnan beside her.
“What insight do you have?”
“If I heard correctly… the questions Earth-Snake is giving out are all true-or-false questions, right?” Yun Yao pondered. “It’s clearly a game where it’s extremely easy to distinguish each person’s ‘right and wrong,’ yet he deliberately uses ‘minority obeys majority’ for the answers…”
“Isn’t that simple?” Chen Junnan said carelessly. “It means Earth-Snake, this old lecher, isn’t giving out ‘true-or-false questions’ but rather questions with unfixed answers.”
“Unfixed answers…?”
“This old scoundrel talked about the rules for so long but never once mentioned the issue of ‘right’ and ‘wrong,’ so whether you can survive in the end has nothing to do with the questions being ‘right or wrong.'” Chen Junnan smiled as he looked at Yun Yao. “Big star, one room per person—I might not necessarily be able to protect you.”
Yun Yao nodded, appearing unconcerned: “You protect yourself. If possible, try not to kill me in the opening stage.”
“Kill you in the opening stage…? Damn it… what kind of bullshit are you talking?” Chen Junnan looked at Yun Yao with some displeasure. “You think we have some huge grudge?”
“I…” Yun Yao said cautiously, “I just can’t completely trust you.”
“Everyone, if you understand the rules, please freely choose your rooms.” Earth-Snake thought for a moment and added, “Oh, and I especially encourage people who know each other to become neighbors.”
After hearing this, Yun Yao froze slightly, then said to Chen Junnan: “Then we’d better not stay together. I’ll go find a room on the opposite side.”
“What are you afraid of him for?” Chen Junnan smiled. “Just be my neighbor with peace of mind.”
“But…”
“No buts. You probably don’t understand me.” Chen Junnan reached up to fix his hairstyle. “All tricks don’t work on me. That old pervert can say whatever he wants. Today you just watch this young master’s dashing heroic bearing carefully, and when you go back you can tell Old Qi all about it.”
“Dashing heroic bearing…?” Yun Yao looked at him somewhat doubtfully. “Are you sure?”
“Completely sure.” Chen Junnan nodded and reached out to open the door before him. “Big star, you live on my east side.”
After Chen Junnan entered the room, he sat down in the seat and looked again at the screen before him.
It was like a tablet computer, with a button on each side of the screen.
The left side had a green button representing “Yes,” and the right side had a red button representing “No.”
Yun Yao pondered for a while, then walked into the room on Chen Junnan’s right, while the others also successively chose their rooms.
Chen Junnan looked up and saw that since the doors weren’t yet closed, directly opposite him was the girl in the white dress, while the other rooms were difficult to see clearly due to angles—he couldn’t tell who was sitting where.
Earth-Snake nodded, then pulled down the lever beside the lectern. All twelve doors closed at that moment.
“Please familiarize yourselves with the various facilities inside. The game will begin in five minutes.”
Chen Junnan reached out to push the door and discovered that by some unknown mechanism, this door was completely stuck.
He felt his old impulsive habit still hadn’t been corrected.
If he’d known, he should have entered the room last. Now, aside from Yun Yao and that white-dressed girl’s positions, he had no understanding of anyone else’s location.
“Well, take it one step at a time.” Chen Junnan sat in the room for a while. “This young master’s life philosophy is ‘when the cart reaches the mountain, there will be a road.'”
A few minutes later, Chen Junnan saw four characters slowly light up on the screen before him—
“Game Begins.”
“It’s starting already…?”
The room was extremely quiet. Chen Junnan stood up and knocked on the wall beside him, discovering that the walls here all seemed to be specially thickened.
Whether for soundproofing or to prevent participants from escaping, they seemed to be made of pure iron, then painted over on the outside.
He stomped on the ground and found the floor construction was even more simple and brutal—almost entirely cast from pure iron, extraordinarily hard to step on.
Just as Chen Junnan was staring at the floor in a daze, the telephone in the corner suddenly rang with an extremely loud sound.
“Ring ring ring—!!”
Chen Junnan jumped in fright. In such a quiet room, the sudden telephone ring was truly somewhat frightening. He took a deep breath and picked up the phone.
On the other end was Yun Yao.
“Chen Junnan?”
“Ah, yes it’s me, this young master. What advice do you have?”
After hearing this, Yun Yao breathed a sigh of relief and said: “There’s only one button on this phone. It’s really miraculous that I could call you.”
“Haha, is that so?” Chen Junnan smiled as he looked at his own phone, discovering there really was only one button. “So what should we two chat about? Do we need to report our ages first?”
“Be serious.” Yun Yao said. “Just now a question appeared on my screen.”
“Oh?” Chen Junnan nodded with interest. “What question?”
“The question is ‘Are you female?'”
“Ah…?” After hearing this, Chen Junnan was slightly stunned. “This, this counts as ‘question-and-answer’?”
“I don’t know either, but I answered truthfully.” Yun Yao said. “Next it’s your turn to answer the question, then pass the question to the next person.”
After Yun Yao finished speaking, she hung up. Chen Junnan came before the screen and discovered the text on the screen had changed to “Call received, please answer question.”
“Am I female…?”
Chen Junnan pondered for a while and placed his hand on the “No” button, but after thinking for a few seconds, he decisively pressed “Yes” on the left side.
This young master answered incorrectly—but so what?
“Today this young master is female. This way maybe I can call out to that old lecher Earth-Snake for rescue.”
The screen gradually lit up with “Answer completed.”
Chen Junnan got up and walked to the corner, reached out to pick up the phone, and pressed the only button on it. Before long, a man answered the phone.
“Hello…?”
“Listen carefully…” Chen Junnan said. “The question is ‘Are you female?'”
“Huh?” The man was stunned. “This, this question…”
“Alright, question delivered, hanging up.” Chen Junnan hung up the phone and sat in the chair pondering.
Currently there were twelve participants total—seven males and five females.
If everyone answered according to the normal answer, using the principle of minority obeying majority, the final answer to this question should be “No.”
But was that really the case?
After waiting a few minutes, it seemed everyone had finished answering. The screen also flickered, and the text on it made Chen Junnan smile.
“The final answer to this question is—’Yes.'”
“What the hell?” Chen Junnan smiled. “Are there this many perverts?”
As soon as the words fell, an enormous sound of chains rang out from above everyone’s heads.
Chen Junnan suddenly looked up to see the ceiling was pitch black, but above the ceiling, something massive seemed to be moving.
“Clatter clatter—”
Along with a tremor in the room, the chain sounds stopped.
Chen Junnan carefully examined the ceiling but had no idea what was above his head. He could only come back to his senses and stare at the screen.
At this moment, his screen was already displaying the second question. It seemed this time he would be the one transmitting it.
“Please read the question and then pass it via telephone to the next person: Did the Jewish physicist Albert Einstein formally publish the Theory of Special Relativity in 1918, and in this theory, for the first time equate gravitational fields with the curvature of spacetime? Is the above statement correct?”
“Damn you!” Chen Junnan cursed loudly. “Earth-Snake! Damn you! You’re messing with me, aren’t you?!”