Everything had reset to the starting point. Once again they faced a choice.

This time — which cave to enter?

Ashalina found the spot where she had made her marker. On the volcanic rock, the cross shape she’d arranged in shells was still there.

So it really was the same place. They had come back to where they started.

Everyone looked at one another, and no one spoke.

Dark water, vicious fish-creatures, and seven impossible cave mouths. This Maze left them completely without direction.

“This time… which one?” Ashalina asked Bai Youwei.

She remembered Bai Youwei’s performance in the red-yellow-blue game, so she trusted her capabilities. That trust was also why she had willingly agreed to be recruited in the first place.

After all — following an unreliable King could cost you your life.

But Bai Youwei didn’t answer.

Ashalina tried again: “We just came from the first one — want to try the second next? We could go through them in order. Eventually one of them has to be the way out.”

Bai Youwei’s brow was knitted in thought. She still didn’t speak.

Ashalina looked at her curiously.

A’Long and A’Qing exchanged a glance, lowering their voices: “…Big Sis?”

“Shh!” Ashalina gave them a pointed look, dropping her voice. “Don’t interrupt. Let her think.”

And so every person on the boat fell silent.

A long moment passed before Bai Youwei finally spoke: “Let’s try the third one.”

Ashalina blinked. “Why the third?”

“Because I want to know whether the number of fish-creatures follows some kind of pattern,” Bai Youwei said.

She fixed her gaze on the cave mouths not far ahead, the black maw of each one perfectly dark. Her eyes were cool and steady.

“We now know for certain that we’ve returned to our original position. So we’re looking at two possibilities.

The first is that taking any wrong cave sends us back to the starting point — and we cannot progress.

The second is that no matter which cave we take, right or wrong, we always return to the starting point.

In both cases, the same problem exists: how do we tell whether the passage we’ve chosen is correct or not? The fish-creature we just encountered may be a clue.”

The reasoning was somewhat winding, but it made sense once you followed it through.

The objective of a maze is to find the exit. But if a player has no way of confirming whether their chosen path is correct, how are they supposed to find their way out? Would they be relying entirely on luck?

Ashalina’s thoughts drifted for a moment. “You mean… a fish-creature appears when you go the wrong way — is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes.” Bai Youwei gave a single nod. “A maze is different from a game. In a game, the Inspector lays out the rules openly. In a maze, you have to find the rules yourself.

If there’s no way for players to judge whether they’ve taken the right path, they can never find the exit — so there must be hidden clues somewhere in this environment.

I’ve been observing everything along the way: the rock formations, the shells, the water, the light, even the smell. Almost no differences anywhere. Even the rocks jutting above the waterline are evenly distributed, as if deliberately designed to give players no distinguishing landmarks.

The only thing that was different was the fish-creature.

The first time, we took the middle cave — no fish-creature. The second time, we took the first cave — a fish-creature appeared, and the air inside was far more pungent.”

Ashalina said: “But why the third cave specifically? I still don’t quite follow…”

“Because I want to find out whether the number of fish-creatures changes in some kind of pattern.”

Bai Youwei gazed toward the cave mouths not far away. Each black opening was silent and still. Her eyes were cold and clear.

“The first cave had one fish-creature. So — does the second cave have two? The third cave, three? Or is there no variation at all — any wrong cave simply produces one? Or does the count increase in sequence?… There are many possibilities here. We have to try once more.”

“I’m not against it, but…” Ashalina’s expression was grave. “I have to point out — if your first theory is right, and there are three fish-creatures in the third cave, we may… we may not be able to handle that.”