Su Man looked around the group and noticed that while there were many familiar faces, many others were absent.
“Where’s Zhu Shu? Where’s Lu Ang?” She looked around and couldn’t find them. “Yu Yaqing, Li Li — none of them are here either…”
Bai Youwei pressed her lips together and said nothing.
Yan Qingwen’s expression darkened.
Tan Xiao and Pan Xiaoxin were murmuring to each other in the back…
Su Man, noticing none of this, continued scanning the crowd for familiar faces on her own. “That’s strange. Yan Ge, weren’t Lu Ang and Zhu Shu always following you around? Why aren’t they here…”
Lu Yuwen noticed that Yan Qingwen’s expression was off, and guessed that among the names Su Man had just mentioned, something had likely happened to some of them.
It wasn’t hard to figure out. After all, with the world having become what it was, every game or maze you entered was a gamble with your life.
He and Su Man had spent so long inside the maze — how could her friends on the outside have remained entirely safe the whole time?
“Since it’s called the Maze War, maybe only people who have puzzle pieces in hand get brought here.” Lu Yuwen said to Su Man. “The friends you mentioned — they probably don’t have any puzzle pieces, do they.”
He was trying his best to redirect her attention, to spare Su Man from having to face the pain of losing friends so soon after the elation of escaping the maze.
Su Man was indeed thrown off for a moment.
— Zhu Shu and Yu Yaqing definitely had no puzzle pieces. Li Li had one piece but had joined the research group, so she’d probably handed it over long ago… As for the piece Lu Ang had, it might be in Yan Ge’s keeping?
Yan Qingwen gave Lu Yuwen a long, measured look, then said in confirmation: “That’s right. Everyone here is someone who has a puzzle piece in hand — including pieces that have already been used.”
“Did you all hear that announcement too? The Maze War has progressed past 55%. Standby competitors, please proceed to the registration grounds.” Lu Yuwen asked.
On the other side, Shen Mo gave a slight nod and said: “We had just come out of a game when we received the registration notice, and then we arrived here. The system told us that because some players are still inside games or mazes, the preliminary rounds won’t officially begin until all players have assembled.”
He paused, then surveyed Lu Yuwen and Su Man. He said mildly: “There are no new notifications yet, which means that besides you two, there are still other puzzle-carrying players who are in the middle of a game or maze.”
Bai Youwei muttered irritably: “The five of us suddenly disappearing — I don’t know how worried Teacher Cheng will be…”
Cheng Weicai was the one person among the five of them who had no puzzle piece.
Not far away, Fu Miaoxue said coolly: “The old man might be perfectly at ease, actually. No games to play, no mazes to enter — who knows how much more comfortable he is compared to us right now~”
Indeed — Fu Miaoxue was here too.
But Du Lai was not.
Most of Du Lai’s puzzle pieces had been used in his dealings with Bai Youwei, and the one life-saving piece he had kept was given to Fu Miaoxue.
Shen Mo swept a glance over the area.
Besides Fu Miaoxue, among the cluster of Asian faces there was also a semi-familiar “familiar stranger” —
White Gloves.
The person was around thirty years old, wearing a gray trench coat, slightly open at the front to reveal a pale blue Oxford cloth shirt beneath. Slender and lean in build, refined and scholarly in appearance.
He stood quietly among the crowd, and had it not been for those white gloves catching Shen Mo’s attention, he would have had almost no presence whatsoever.
Shen Mo silently withdrew his gaze.
The erratic Fu Miaoxue, the dangerous White Gloves, and the newly appeared Lu Yuwen whose background was still unknown… It seemed this preliminary round was not going to be easy.
A new wave of commotion stirred through the crowd.
New players were coming in through the glowing square tiles.
Shen Mo turned toward the sound and blinked slightly — yet again, a familiar face…
—