Chapter 879: The Taste of Victory
After half a minute, a soul, the round pocket dimension owner, and an apple remained in a straight line without being eliminated.
"The third round is about to begin," Bohemia glanced nervously at Lin Sanjiu and asked, "What should we do now? He can already see two of our balls..."
"I know," Lin Sanjiu replied.
As they spoke, both sides added a new ball behind them.
Currently, on Lin Sanjiu's side, the balls visible to the pocket dimension owner were: unknown (actually the disguised warrior), empty chair, unknown (new ball).
On the pocket dimension owner's side, apart from the soul and apple that had come down from the balloons, the balls visible to Lin Sanjiu were: unknown (new ball), bacteria, unknown.
This time, when they turned around and saw a girl inside their new ball, Bohemia didn't get angry or frustrated. She just let out a long sigh.
"Sometimes, you really have to accept your fate," she said, looking at the new ball. Her tone suddenly sounded ten years older. "If you lose some potential, so be it. If only I had been more accepting back then, I wouldn't have ended up like this..."
Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but smile at her words. "Are you giving your final words already? We haven't been pushed to the brink yet."
Bohemia seemed indifferent. "Is that so?"
"Yes."
"Then please explain to me—aside from an empty chair that he definitely won't choose, no matter which option he picks from the remaining two, we are undoubtedly doomed. Isn't that a dire situation?"
"I've been prepared for this round for a long time," Lin Sanjiu replied calmly. "I can't guarantee that we will survive this round, but I've set up a trap for him. That trap will at least give us a chance to stay alive."
Bohemia's face turned gray, showing no confidence in her words. She snorted and pulled out a bag of snacks from her waist, containing raisins, cashews, and chocolate—she must have secretly filled her pockets with them.
"Suit yourself," she said, absentmindedly munching on the snacks as if trying to compensate for something. "I'm mentally prepared anyway."
"...You can eat if you want," Lin Sanjiu looked at her and said, "After all, you don't look like someone facing imminent death. It's more like you're confident of winning, enough to confuse him."
Bohemia crunched on something with a loud sound.
Under the suspicious gaze of the pocket dimension owner, Lin Sanjiu confidently and openly chose a "cat litter box" and placed it in the "girl" ball without any concealment.
Apart from the newly added third ball, there were no other balls for him to peek into. However, this time, the pocket dimension owner hesitated for a while before finally speaking up, "Peek into the third ball."
Bohemia's speed of stuffing food into her mouth suddenly increased. Watching her cheeks bulge and her eyes glistening with moisture, it was clear that she didn't enjoy the food at all. Even Lin Sanjiu couldn't help but hold her breath, staring intently at the pocket dimension owner's thin lips.
After a few seconds, he finally spoke, "...I choose to open the middle one."
The middle one, which contained an empty chair.
Bohemia was stunned, seemingly unable to believe her ears. When she realized what had happened, she stood up abruptly, tears and snacks falling together—thankfully, she remembered to contain the sound with her psychic power. She urgently asked, "What's going on? Why did he avoid the certain-death options and open one that he could already see?"
Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath, seemingly having to calm her emotions. Then she exhaled and said, "You know that the remaining two options are certain death, but he doesn't."
"I understand that, but—"
That gentle smile bloomed once again.
Lin Sanjiu glanced at the pocket dimension owner, who had a very unpleasant expression, and raised a finger toward Bohemia. "This is the first hidden rule I noticed, regarding the duration of disguises."
"The duration...?" Bohemia furrowed her brows, thinking for a moment, before suddenly exclaiming, "Right, he didn't mention how long the disguise would last after being placed inside!"
"He purposely led us to play a test round, not out of goodwill or any obligation. The test round is full of traps, and because of the events and the overwhelming amount of information to handle, some crucial rules were left vague by him, and we didn't notice them at the time. If you think about it carefully, many rules are unclear, aren't they? So, in reality, as long as the ball isn't opened, the disguise will continue."
"But what does that have to do with him choosing the empty chair?" Bohemia still looked puzzled.
"Did you forget?" Lin Sanjiu reminded her, "In the first round, he peeked at an empty chair, right? Although he saw it, the pocket dimension owner couldn't be certain if it was real or a disguise."
Bohemia listened in a daze.
"In the first round, he opened a watermelon. Because he saw the movement of my eyeballs, he believed that the disguise was in the watermelon, so he didn't bother peeking and directly opened it. Although we did disguise the watermelon as a poet, this meant that the poet never had a chance to appear. He missed an opportunity to confirm whether the disguise was actually in the watermelon."
The pocket dimension owner took two slow steps, his gaze fixed on Lin Sanjiu's lips.
"After I intentionally misled him by telling him that I had seen through the eyeball movement trick since the test round, he naturally started to suspect whether we used the same tactic twice. If the disguise from the first round wasn't in the watermelon but in the empty chair—doesn't that mean the empty chair is just an illusion? It was based on this mindset that he opened the empty chair."
As Lin Sanjiu spoke, she suddenly chuckled softly, turned her head, and met the pocket dimension owner's gaze.
"I told you earlier that I had seen through the eyeball movement trap long ago. It was to redirect your thoughts to the first round." She suddenly withdrew her psychic power and spoke in a clear and gentle voice, "When your focus shifted to 'where is the disguise from the first round,' the effect of being blind to other aspects naturally emerged."
The excess flesh on the pocket dimension owner's face trembled a few times, and he chuckled lightly.
"I'm not in a hurry," he said in a slow voice, "I have plenty of time. If you get eliminated, you're truly dead, but if I get eliminated, I can come back. What does it matter if you manage to survive another round by chance? Can you still evade it in the next round? The ultimate victory in this game will always be in my hands."
"Is that so?" Lin Sanjiu tilted her head, a demeanor so innocent and natural that it was completely different from her usual demeanor. "But I've also discovered the second hidden rule of this game."
Bohemia couldn't care less about her demeanor and immediately brightened her eyes, asking, "What is it?"
"Peeking is just a distraction. It hardly provides us with any useful information. Instead, it only confuses our judgment with ambiguous and uncertain information. Think about it, is there any difference in the final probability between using peeking and randomly opening a ball?"
Lin Sanjiu smiled. "So, the second hidden rule is that winning the game doesn't depend on peeking but on whether we can find the commonality."
"But even if we find it, we still don't know the elimination condition," Bohemia immediately became discouraged again. "We don't know what the condition is."
"No, I know," Lin Sanjiu said.
There was a moment of silence in the pocket dimension.
The pocket dimension owner and Bohemia widened their eyes, staring intently at Lin Sanjiu, unwilling to miss a single word she would say next.
"The bacteria isn't that big, right?" Lin Sanjiu hugged her arms and said just that, but then she suddenly raised her voice, "I won't peek. I'll directly open the bacteria."
Bohemia stiffened her neck and slowly turned her gaze towards the ball containing the bacteria.
What fell out of that ball was not significant in size, but both of them had good eyesight, and at the moment it hit the ground, they had already seen what it was. For Bohemia, it was another strange gadget with an unknown purpose. Lin Sanjiu chuckled softly and looked at the pocket dimension owner, saying, "Windows XP operating system? This version is quite old... It seems like you died in the pocket dimension and became a pocket dimension creature many years ago."
The pocket dimension owner shrugged laboriously.
"So what? Even if you open a thousand balls, you can't eliminate me and will still remain here without being eliminated."
"That's true because after all, you're not a roll of toilet paper."
Lin Sanjiu's lips curved into a smile as she casually uttered these words. The pocket dimension owner's complexion turned pale in an instant, even startling Bohemia.
"Could it be..." the pocket dimension owner suddenly opened his mouth, the first half of his sentence somewhat incoherent, "Could it be that you—impossible, you're just bluffing."
"What are you trying to say?" Lin Sanjiu's smile grew stronger. "Are you suggesting that I have already discovered another trap you set in the testing facility? Have I found the conditions that can make you eliminate three in a row?"
Even Bohemia could sense the taste of victory in the air at this moment. She jumped up and grabbed Lin Sanjiu's elbow, saying, "Wh-What? Hurry up and tell us!"
"Why did the testing facility end after only two rounds? Was it really because he was impatient?" Lin Sanjiu stared at the pocket dimension owner and explained to Bohemia without turning her head, "Of course, that's not the case. After the male construction worker appeared, he urged us to quickly finish the testing facility and start the actual game... Why?"
She paused and whispered, "Because if we continued playing, we might have discovered that the construction worker is not the same entity as him, and the three-in-a-row elimination wouldn't be achieved."