“Year of Calamity?”
“Exactly. In this game, I play the role of the final menace of the year—the ‘Nian Beast’—and you must do everything in your power to defeat me.”
After speaking, Earth Dog pulled a small remote control from his pocket and pressed a button.
Three incandescent lights suddenly lit up inside the central cylindrical glass tube, suspended in mid-air in a row.
“These three lights represent my ‘health points,'” Earth Dog said, turning back. “Each of you four will play one ‘stick’ per turn, and the game will last eight turns in total.”
“Wait a minute…” Su Shan felt Earth Dog was about to finish explaining the rules, but the most crucial part was still missing. “If these three lights are your ‘health points,’ how do we make them go out?”
“By using your ‘sticks,'” Earth Dog replied. “Some ‘sticks’ can deal ‘damage’ to me, which means they can extinguish the lights above my head. If you manage to put out all three lights within eight turns, you all win. No matter what happens, the game ends after eight turns.”
The four women fell silent. The rules seemed straightforward enough, but something still felt missing.
“Hold on…” Qin Dingdong said. “I mostly understand this card-game-like setup, but… do you not participate?”
“What?”
“Don’t you use ‘sticks’?” Qin Dingdong asked. “Are we just supposed to gang up on you while you sit there and take it?”
“Of course I participate,” Earth Dog said. “As I mentioned earlier, after all four of you have used your ‘sticks,’ that counts as one turn. I also get to use one ‘stick’ per turn. Sounds fair, doesn’t it?”
Su Shan immediately seized on the key point. “So, do you use your ‘stick’ before us or after us?”
“That depends on my strategy,” Earth Dog said. “I can use my ‘stick’ at any time during the turn, but only once per turn.”
Lin Qin noticed that this Earth Dog was indeed different from other “Zodiacs”—he answered every question without hesitation.
Thinking this, she stepped forward and asked, “Then tell me, how do you kill us in this game?”
The question struck a nerve, and Earth Dog’s expression darkened.
“I…” He hesitated for a moment. “Fine. Since I’m taking my job seriously, I might as well tell you. The ‘sticks’ I hold are slightly different from yours. I have eight ‘sticks,’ each representing a different ‘calamity.'”
Su Shan nodded. “So, you’re the Nian Beast who brings ‘calamities’?”
“Exactly,” Earth Dog said. “My ‘calamities’ can kill. So be careful.”
The four women fell silent again. Once the game began, they wouldn’t be able to communicate, so they had to make sure they had no unanswered questions.
“What about these four glass rooms?” Su Shan pointed at the square glass chambers. “What’s the order for playing our ‘sticks’?”
Earth Dog frowned. “Are you asking too many questions?”
“I—”
Before Su Shan could respond, Qin Dingdong stepped forward and said, “Isn’t it because your rules aren’t clear? If we go in without knowing the order, won’t everything be a mess?”
“I take my work very seriously. How could I forget the rules?” Earth Dog frowned. “I’ve said enough for you to play the game.”
“Seriously?” Qin Dingdong smirked. “Listen, Doggie, I don’t know if I should say this, but…”
“You can question my personality, but not my professionalism,” Earth Dog snapped.
Qin Dingdong scoffed and pointed at a dirty handprint on the nearby glass.
“You claim to be meticulous, yet you didn’t even clean the glass between groups?”
“Huh?” Earth Dog was taken aback, his dog ears twitching. “I didn’t clean it?”
“See for yourself.” Qin Dingdong gestured at the handprint. “You’ve already ruined our experience. We don’t care anymore—we just want to ask one more question. Is that too much?”
Earth Dog walked over and examined the handprint, his frown deepening.
“See? I’m right,” Qin Dingdong said, patting his back. “Answer one more question, and we’ll call it even.”
Earth Dog glanced at Su Shan and Qin Dingdong before reluctantly nodding. “Fine. Ask.”
“We already asked—what’s the order for playing ‘sticks’ in these glass rooms?”
Earth Dog pointed at the pink chamber. “The person in the pink room goes first each turn, then clockwise—green, orange, blue.”
“What do the colors mean?” Su Shan pressed.
“No idea,” Earth Dog said coldly, cutting her off. “That’s all. I’ve explained everything. The rest is up to you.”
He walked to the central glass cylinder and, standing inside, said, “Please choose your rooms quickly. The game starts in five minutes.”
With that, he shut the door, and an intricate lock clicked into place.
“That damn dog…” Qin Dingdong glared. “He’s way too confident. Now that he can’t hear us, we can plot against him.”
“I don’t think so…” Su Shan glanced uneasily at Earth Dog. “The fact that he locked himself in means he’s absolutely certain he can kill us.”
“So what do we do?” Qin Dingdong looked at the others. Given how well they’d handled the earlier “Human-Level” games, she believed they stood a chance against an “Earth Dog” if they worked together.
“Let’s pick our positions first,” Su Shan said. “I’ll go first. If possible, I’ll figure out the full rules and relay them to you.”
“Relay…?”
“Even if we can’t hear each other, we can still use gestures or lip-reading,” Su Shan explained. “After all, we can see each other through the glass.”
Zhang Chenze, who had been silent for a while, suddenly spoke. “Earth Dog could’ve put us in sealed rooms, but he chose glass ones. That’s suspicious.”
“Even if it is, we can’t guess his motives now,” Su Shan said. “Our priority is to pick rooms and start the game. From there, we’ll each have to rely on our own skills.”
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