“We discovered magnetic field anomalies… actually, that’s not quite right. To be precise, we didn’t just find regions with abnormal magnetic fields — we found that in some areas, there’s simply no magnetic field at all.”

Li Li paused and looked around at everyone. Seeing no reaction, he couldn’t help feeling dejected.

“You all don’t get it, do you? Earth is one giant magnetic field — magnetism should be everywhere! Yet the data we collected shows that in many places, there’s no magnetic field at all! It’s like those places suddenly ceased to exist!”

“Those areas must be labyrinths,” Bai Youwei said lazily. “Can you tell us something we don’t already know?”

Li Li: “……”

“Yeah, Li Li,” Lu Ang said. “We can’t follow all the theoretical stuff. Why don’t you tell the others about the labyrinths.”

“The labyrinths…” Li Li thought for a moment. “A labyrinth is a mysterious substance that cannot be detected — at least at this stage, none of our instruments can do anything about it. It gradually expands over time, and the anomalous magnetic field regions nearby — the doll games — repel the labyrinth and maintain a significant distance from it, much like how two magnetic poles of the same type repel each other.”

He paused for two seconds, then continued: “When we were evacuating at the time, we used that pattern to avoid the games all the way along the edge of the labyrinth. But… we miscalculated the labyrinth’s expansion timing and range. I… I and several teammates from the special operations unit were forced to enter the labyrinth. They… they all gave their lives.”

He turned to look at Zhu Shu. “Later, I met Zhu Shu inside the labyrinth. I was exhausted and parched — she saved me.”

“That’s not quite right — Li Li was the one who saved me,” Zhu Shu said with a mild smile. “At the time, my manager and I were trapped in Nanchang. The fog came on very suddenly. My manager said he was going to look for help and never came back. Then the driver went to find a way out too, leaving me alone in the nanny van. If Yan Qingwen hadn’t brought people to rescue Li Li, I wouldn’t have gotten out either.”

After saying all this, she thought for a moment and spoke with some hesitation: “As for myself… I’m twenty-four. I can speak foreign languages. I’m good at… singing and dancing, I suppose. I also know a bit about clothing design and makeup — though none of those skills are much use anymore, I imagine.”

She laughed at herself.

Tan Xiao asked in surprise: “Aren’t you twenty years old?!”

“Oh, that…” Zhu Shu smiled. “My manager changed my records. Being younger brings in more fans, you see.”

Tan Xiao: “Oh…”

The illusion shattered once again.

Bai Youwei asked curiously: “Which number labyrinth was the Nanchang one?”

Yan Qingwen said: “Number 8. The city became a desert. Every skyscraper turned to ruins. Vehicles sank into the sand and couldn’t move. People either died of thirst or were swallowed by quicksand.”

Bai Youwei asked: “So in your opinion, comparing it to the Hangzhou labyrinth — which one was harder?”

The Hangzhou labyrinth was Number 7.

Yan Qingwen furrowed his brow and deliberated for a moment. “Number 7 was harder, I think. Number 8 had brutal survival conditions, but there were no monsters that would harm people. As long as you found the right direction and avoided the quicksand, you could find the exit.”

After a pause, he asked Bai Youwei: “Do you think the labyrinth number might correlate with difficulty?”

“It’s just a guess.” Bai Youwei shrugged. “We’ll need to go through a few more labyrinths before we can say for sure.”

The next person to introduce themselves was Su Man.

She had nothing much to say and spoke plainly: “The Su family and the Li family are old friends. I’ve known Li Li since childhood. When I heard he was in trouble, I came with Yan Qingwen. My strengths are… close-quarters combat and weapons.”

Teacher Cheng said: “I’m a Chinese language teacher at Nanjing No. 13 Middle School. I’ve just turned sixty — I hope everyone will look after me.”

Tan Xiao asked: “What does ‘just turned sixty’ mean?”

Teacher Cheng: “Ahem — it means sixty years old.”

Tan Xiao: “What about twenty years old?”

Teacher Cheng answered in his literary fashion: “That would naturally be the age of the coming-of-age.”

Tan Xiao’s expression grew complicated upon hearing this: “……So it’s a very feeble age?”

He had been thinking of using some elevated four-character idioms, but now, on second thought, he’d better not.

—