“Chrysanthemum…,” muttered Di She, pausing for a moment before turning to Qi Xia. “Qi Xia, it seems you don’t know much about plants.”
“Yeah,” Qi Xia replied, “although I’ve learned a lot, I still can’t cover everything. Do you know about this flower?”
“Chrysanthemum, also written as Tumi flower, is purely white, but only blooms during a specific season,” Di She explained. “Any idea which season that is?”
“No idea.”
Di She sighed. “It doesn’t fit the saying ‘flowers bloom in springtime,’ because it blooms in ‘early summer,’ fully blossoms in ‘midsummer,’ and withers when ‘summer’ fades away.”
Qi Xia slightly furrowed his brow after hearing this. “So this flower appears and disappears together with ‘summer’?”
“Exactly,” Di She nodded, then walked to the corner and began flipping through books.
Half a minute later, he pulled out a well-worn high-level plant identification book from among many old volumes. The book looked poorly preserved, as if it might fall apart with the slightest shake.
Carefully flipping through its pages, he eventually found an illustration of a flower with pure white petals and handed it to Qi Xia.
The pages before and after this one were already falling apart, leaving only this yellowed illustration barely clinging to the book.
“Chrysanthemum…” Qi Xia murmured, taking the book and examining it.
The flower looked like a species of Rosaceae, each blossom spotlessly white with yellow stamens.
Staring at the flower for a while, Qi Xia softly asked, “So if the Chrysanthemum blooms, doesn’t that mean autumn has already arrived?”
“Right,” Di She responded. “The blooming of Chrysanthemum often signifies the end of the flowering season. After this flower, no other flowers will bloom. This flower represents ‘ending,’ and likewise ‘the end.'”
Qi Xia nodded after hearing this. “Thanks to you, I’ve learned something new again.”
“But you should have noticed something too…” Di She added. “In this entire city, no plants can survive. The streets are filled with dead, withered trees and dried flowers. There’s no rain, no normal sunlight, and certainly no living plants. So why did you suddenly bring up the Chrysanthemum?”
“Perhaps precisely because all the plants here are withered and dead,” Qi Xia sighed. “That’s why this white flower caught my attention so much.”
Di She nodded after hearing this and said, “Qi Xia, the symbolism of the Chrysanthemum flower is ‘beauty at the end of the road.'”
As these four words entered Qi Xia’s ears, a distant memory gradually surfaced in his mind.
Back then, Yan Zhichun had softly said to Qi Xia, “Let’s use Chrysanthemum flowers.”
“Yan Zhichun… ‘beauty at the end of the road’…” Qi Xia slowly narrowed his eyes. “When everything has completely vanished, what could still be beautiful?”
“Hard to say,” Di She replied. “You might have to ask yourself for the answer.”
Qi Xia paused for a moment, then nodded at Di She and turned to walk outside.
Inside the room, the remaining few exchanged glances. Qiao Jiajin and Qin Dingdong soon followed Qi Xia out the door, leaving only Chen Junnan behind.
“Old Snake,” Chen Junnan called.
“What is it?”
“What kind of game is yours?” Chen Junnan asked.
“My game? Want to give it a try?”
“Not exactly,” Chen Junnan replied. “It’s just that your venue doesn’t seem to have any dangerous equipment. The only thing that could be used for games here is just books.”
“Indeed, books will be used for the game,” Di She said. “But I also have many other props here.”
Di She walked to the wall and lightly patted it. A hidden compartment slid open from the wall, immediately releasing a pungent stench.
The compartment resembled a large wardrobe, filled with a dazzling array of murder weapons, all stained with blood and rust, emitting a foul odor.
“My game is called ‘The Reader.’ It works no matter how many ‘participants’ there are. I give them books to read aloud, and then I and the other ‘participants’ take turns asking questions about the book. If they answer correctly, they pass. Of course, if they answer incorrectly, it’s fine too—they just won’t receive any rewards.”
“That sounds difficult?” Chen Junnan said doubtfully. “How does someone die in this game? And how do you use those murder weapons?”
“The difficulty of this game isn’t related to reading at all,” Di She explained. “There’s a death condition that runs through the entire game: before I say ‘the game is over,’ no facial expressions are allowed at any time. If anyone shows a change in expression, I will kill them.”
“Facial expressions…?” Chen Junnan still felt somewhat confused. “Who would be laughing and joking around in a deadly game like this?”
Di She pulled out a nearly falling-apart copy of “The Complete Collection of Jokes” from the corner and handed it to Chen Junnan.
Chen Junnan took the book, finding it almost encrusted with grime, clearly having been flipped through by countless people since its arrival here.
“If you read this book, could you really keep a straight face the whole time?” Di She asked.
Chen Junnan flipped through the book. It mostly contained short jokes of one or two hundred words. Unfortunately, these were all outdated jokes—nothing but stale puns and awkward old gags.
“Man, do people here have such low standards for humor?” Chen Junnan asked. “Reading these lousy jokes for a while might make me cry.”
Chen Junnan closed the book and flipped to the back cover, discovering that it had been published way back in 2001.
“Kid, this book has the highest success rate for me killing people,” Di She chuckled. “Think about it—when ordinary people read a book and find it boring, they can just stop reading. But in a situation where their lives are at stake, even knowing how unbearably dull this book is, they still force themselves to finish reading it.”
“That makes sense,” Chen Junnan nodded. “But how would they show any facial expressions? Under such pressure, wouldn’t they naturally become more expressionless?”
“Blame human nature for being too cautious,” Di She said. “This book is called ‘The Complete Collection of Jokes.’ Although the person reading it may find it utterly unamusing, they still fear that the next joke might be really funny. One moment’s carelessness could cost them the game—and their lives. If it were you… how would you avoid this situation?”
Putting himself in that scenario, Chen Junnan realized that under such survival pressure while reading jokes and trying to maintain a completely expressionless face, the solution he’d probably choose would be to “think about sad things” to neutralize his emotions.
Knowing that Chen Junnan had already figured it out, Di She approached him, slowly extending his hand and saying, “At moments like this, I would gently pat the other person’s shoulder, telling them to ‘relax.'”
“You really are something…” Chen Junnan helplessly sighed, handing the book back to Di She.
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