Bai Chunian shuddered violently, and the severed hand on his shoulder slid to the ground. A small amount of darkened blood splattered. It was clearly not freshly cut within seconds.
The severed hand bore a ring mark, its skin color matching Bai Chunian’s. The fingertip was blackened with faint burn marks and a faint scorched smell.
“This is my hand. I threw it in a stairwell trash bin. Who brought it here?” he said, scanning the surroundings, but found nothing.
He looked up at the ceiling—still nothing.
“There’s something following us,” he concluded.
Time was running out. The incineration fire was approaching.
The room contained one hundred solid cubes used for strength testing.
Bai Chunian calculated that destroying them all would take at least ten minutes. The incineration would arrive in five.
They had to act.
The puppeteer activated a mechanical spike and shattered a cube through resonance vibration. Bai Chunian used a hammer form to smash others. They worked rapidly.
While working, Bai Chunian briefly considered killing the puppeteer, hiding a blade in his hand.
The puppeteer also subtly prepared his own weapon.
Both were thinking the same thing.
But suddenly—
Bai Chunian looked up and froze.
“…Fuck.”
Bai Chunian glanced at the last cracked glass panel and wiped the blood from his face.
“Not yet,” he said. “I’m still alive.”
On the other end of the communication line, Lan Bo’s voice softened. “Your breathing is unstable.”
“I’m fine,” Bai Chunian replied, then immediately exhaled and forced his shoulders to loosen. “Just a bit tired. This place is annoying.”
The puppeteer stood a few steps away, watching him through the dim reflective surface of the glass. “If you need recovery time, this test system will not wait for you.”
“I know,” Bai Chunian said. He rolled his wrist, the fractured bones and torn flesh already beginning to knit back together. “That’s why I’m resting for ten seconds. Don’t rush me.”
Erisi’s voice crackled through the communicator, impatient and loud. “Hey! We got another one. It’s like a sliding puzzle with numbers and colors. I smashed it and it gave me six points. What is this garbage scoring system?”
Lan Bo’s tone carried restrained irritation. “I broke it and reassembled it correctly. It still said I failed. Then it spawned another one.”
Bai Chunian let out a short laugh. “Yeah, sounds about right. This place doesn’t reward correctness, it rewards whatever mood it’s in.”
He pressed his forehead lightly against the edge of the shattered glass panel, then pushed himself upright again.
“Randi,” Lan Bo called softly through the communicator. “Are you tired?”
A pause.
Bai Chunian exhaled, then answered more quietly than before. “A little.”
Lan Bo didn’t speak for a moment. When he did, his voice had lost the earlier tension from the puzzle room, replaced with something steadier.
“Then breathe slower. I will count for you.”
Erisi scoffed in the background. “That’s useless.”
But Lan Bo ignored him.
“One,” Lan Bo said. “Two.”
Bai Chunian closed his eyes for a brief moment and stepped back from the glass. His bloodied shoulder rose and fell more evenly.
The puppeteer glanced toward the next unbroken panels. “We still have two layers left. If we continue at this pace, we can clear it before the incineration reaches this floor.”
Bai Chunian opened his eyes again, sharper now.
“Then don’t waste time talking,” he said. “Let’s finish it.”
He lowered his stance again, information systems in his mind already recalculating force, angle, and remaining endurance.
And on the other side of the system, somewhere deep within the same building, something unseen continued to move—quietly collecting what had been left behind.
“Nothing’s wrong, wife. Put the Rubik’s cube in your hand on the ground and read out the colors in order. I’ll tell you how to turn it.” Bai Chunian sat down, watching as flames spread again from the end of the corridor, mentally calculating the time.
Lan Bo obediently placed the Rubik’s cube in front of him and read out each face’s colors in order for Bai Chunian.
Only after he finished the first row did Bai Chunian realize this was a 7×7 Rubik’s cube, far more difficult than a 3×3 cube. And he didn’t have a physical object in his hands; everything had to be done through imagination and verbal description—and this was still under the condition that Lan Bo could completely follow his instructions and turn it correctly in sequence.
“Wife, hold the cube up, don’t change its orientation. Turn it exactly as I say. Don’t mess up the direction, absolutely don’t.”
Lan Bo sat on the ground with his fish tail curled, carefully turning the Rubik’s cube while listening to the slightly tired voice in the communicator, which made him a little anxious.
He lost focus slightly, and the cube in his hand shifted orientation.
“It’s fine.” Bai Chunian paused, then gave a helpless laugh and said patiently, “Don’t rush. Put it back on the ground and read the colors to me again.”
“It takes too much time.” Lan Bo interrupted him. “Have you gotten out yet? How far is the fire from you? Is it about to burn you?”
“Don’t worry, I’ve got it under control.”
Eris heard a sound from the Puppeteer’s side—like the flapping of clothing.
“Nix?”
The Puppeteer replied, “Wait a moment. The fire is about to come over. First put the Rubik’s cube on the ground and don’t touch it.”
Eris irritably put down the cube and stood up, pacing back and forth. “I’ve had enough. I’ve really had enough. Endless questions, none of them make sense. Every single one needs Nix to teach me. I hate this the most.”
Lan Bo also put down the cube, looking around, noticing the position where the cube had been ejected—
There was a square seam in the ground. The cube had just been shot out from here. Five meters ahead were two cube display stands. They had placed the previous cube on the stand and then received a failing score sheet.
Lan Bo hooked his sharp fingertip against the seam, but it was as hard as the ground material itself and didn’t budge at all.
“Unlucky guy.” Lan Bo lifted his chin toward Eris. “Come here.”
Lan Bo extended his tail tip, wrapped the cube on the ground, and threw it to Eris, ordering, “Put it up there.” He pointed with his tail toward the display stand across from them.
“We’re submitting it half-solved?” Eris didn’t care at all. He walked over casually and slapped the cube onto the display stand.
The stand lit up red, presumably about to spit out another failing score sheet.
As usual, at the same time the failure result appeared, the system automatically ejected a new Rubik’s cube.
Lan Bo lay prone on the ground, fully focused on the small square seam. The moment the cube was ejected from that opening, Lan Bo grabbed the small cover on the floor.
His two webbed hands rapidly scaled, transforming into dragon-like claws covered in scales. Lan Bo locked both hands onto the small opening, his dorsal fin spiking upward, and his fish tail instantly turned a fierce red.
With a tearing sound, the entire heavy metal floor panel was forcibly ripped open by Lan Bo, revealing the internal launching mechanism and densely packed cables.
Lan Bo crawled into the gap like a gecko through the torn steel floor.
“Nice, this is what I like.” Eris said, and also jumped in.
——
Bai Chunian and the Puppeteer were still trying to destroy the glass steel panels when they suddenly heard Lan Bo’s low voice through the communicator: “Move to the side.”
Then the communicator was filled only with chaotic sounds of glass shattering and Lan Bo’s steady breathing.
From the far end, the glass steel panels were shattered one after another like paper. Through the semi-transparent layers, Bai Chunian vaguely saw a shadow at the end rapidly breaking through them. Suddenly, the entire glass panel in front of them exploded, and shards flew like surging waves, revealing a blue figure leaping out from the center.
The wall display’s score rapidly increased, and a score sheet dropped down: “Score: 100, Rating: SSS, this test passed.”
As the flames behind were about to lick Bai Chunian’s back, Lan Bo bit the back of his collar like a kitten and dragged him out of the fire zone, transforming into a blue lightning bolt rushing toward the end of the corridor.
“Lan Bo! The floor ahead is hollow and collapsed—there’s a gap!”
At the end of the corridor, a pitch-black drop appeared. Lan Bo released his bite. Bai Chunian flipped down, leapt forward, grabbed the protruding edge on the opposite side with both hands like a cat, and swung himself up, climbing onto the platform. Lan Bo also jumped across, drawing a blue arc in the dark air, grabbing Bai Chunian’s outstretched hands and being pulled up.
Eris followed closely behind. He grabbed the Puppeteer and ran forward. When they reached the gap, he leapt upward with force. As he began to fall, the Puppeteer activated his J1 ability—Chess Substitute—and swapped positions, replacing Eris on the far platform. Eris jumped again, and the Puppeteer released a spider-thread puppet line, pulling him across.
When Lan Bo landed, he knocked Bai Chunian down, and they rolled on the ground several times before stopping.
The surrounding area lost lighting again, plunging into darkness. Bai Chunian lay on the ground gasping. When he opened his eyes, something brushed past his cheek—soft, furry, filthy contact—and instantly reminded him of childhood experiences.
A rat.
His eyes widened. In that instant, his mind went blank, only feeling the hair on his back stand up and his scalp tingle.
The body was then pulled into an embrace. Lan Bo wrapped around him, forcing his face into his neck, releasing a faint calming pheromone, and lowered his voice so only the two of them could hear: “Don’t be afraid.”
Then he touched the white lion ears that had unknowingly emerged on him, pressed flat against his head in a tightly pinned, extremely nervous state.