After Hans left, Bai Youwei poked Shen Mo in the side and complained in a low, drawn-out voice, “Why is it that not a single player we meet is normal?”

Shen Mo thought about it seriously for a moment, then replied, “Maybe they were normal at first. They just… stopped being normal the longer they played.”

Bai Youwei burst out laughing. “You’re right.”

She pressed close to him warmly and tilted her head up to ask, “What about me? Have I become not normal?”

“You’re different from them,” Shen Mo said, lowering his head to murmur by her ear. “You started out not normal and have been slowly becoming normal…”

Bai Youwei’s expression darkened, and she pinched his arm hard!

…

After another three to five minutes, the referee finally arrived.

“Sorry~! Sorry~! I’m late!” The Clown appeared out of nowhere, riding a unicycle with a squeaky-squeak, and bowed to everyone. “More participants than anticipated—I had to make some last-minute adjustments to the game. My apologies for the wait~!”

Bai Youwei frowned. “Can battle games really be adjusted on the fly? Won’t that cause problems?”

“Not at all~!” The Clown stretched its mouth into an exaggerated grin. “Battle 1 is a little different from the other battle games—since it needs to meet a minimum number of participants, it has to account for the balance between the minority and majority sides.”

In other games, the number of participants was generally fixed. In Tomorrow’s Hotel, for instance, each team was five people. In the Safari, each team was eight.

In the current Battle 1, Bai Youwei’s side had two players while Hans’s side had eight. The Clown had said the game needed to ensure balance between the two sides—which made Bai Youwei curious. How exactly was it going to manage that?

The Clown cleared its throat twice and announced with great ceremony:

“Hello, everyone~! Welcome to this battle game! I am your referee for today’s proceedings. Allow me to explain the rules~!

It was so hot, a little sheep couldn’t take it anymore and went to get sheared—then it could never sleep again, because it lost its ‘fleecing’! Ahahahahahaha~!”

The Clown burst into uncontrollable laughter.

Bai Youwei: “…”

Hans and his group cooperated perfectly, offering a round of obliging chuckles.

Bai Youwei felt utterly baffled. “What on earth?”

Shen Mo said quietly, “This referee likes to pretend it’s funny. Don’t pay it too much mind.”

“Ahahaha… Now that we’ve laughed, the mood is so much better! Let’s begin~!” the Clown said cheerfully. “This game is divided into two zones, Zone A and Zone B. If a King emerges victorious at the end of Zone A, the game ends immediately. Conversely, if the two Kings cannot determine a winner by the end of Zone A, Zone B begins immediately.”

Bai Youwei frowned. “So we have to play two games?”

“You could put it that way, though it’s not necessarily the case.” The Clown rode its unicycle over with a grin. “Maybe you’ll settle things in Zone A. Oh~, I’ve even seen situations where both sides were entirely eliminated in Zone A~!”

Bai Youwei paused slightly. “…Seen it before?”

Hans said, “So that’s how it is. The Labyrinth War has occurred before in history, hasn’t it? What exactly is your purpose?”

“Purpose?” The Clown tilted its head and flashed a grin. “Soon—you’ll know soon enough. Once the war is over, any question you want answered will be answered. Provided, of course… you survive this battle.”

It rode its tiny, miniature unicycle over to the wall with a squeak-squeak and reached out to knock on the surface.

With each knock, a door appeared.

The Clown knocked five times in total, and five doors appeared.

“Zone A’s game—theme: The Chinese Room.”

—