Chapter 187 Dream Stairs

"I probably didn't know you before." Shi Yu said this without any emotion, but was actually wondering, "Why did you push me down?"

The player took a deep breath and exhaled slowly: "You already know it, why are you asking?"

Shi Yu looked at him.

After a while, the player was so annoyed that he said, "You've already killed the eagle, why are you still harping on this?"

Shi Yu reacted for a few seconds: "Because I'm dead, the hawk will stop chasing you? The animals summoned by the stairs don't attack specific players. As long as one person dies because of their appearance, they can retreat?"

The player said nothing and agreed.

"But if it's just speculation, I can't support your decision. After all, it should be easier for two people to deal with an animal than for one person." Shi Yu said, "So this shouldn't be the first time you've done this, and it shouldn't be the first time you've succeeded. At least twice?"

The player's face flushed: "You've survived so many rounds, how dare you say you haven't discovered this?!"

Shi Yu said nothing.

This reaction was clearly an answer in the eyes of the other party. He sneered, "Since we both depended on other people's lives to survive, why are you pretending to be innocent in front of me? If you had said earlier that you could kill the eagle with one sword, why would you have caused so much trouble now?"

Shi Yu still didn't speak.

The other player, however, looked clear-headed and had seen through the other player's hypocritical mask: "In my opinion, neither of us should look down on each other. There are no animals here now, and we will separate in the next round. We might as well let each other go. If you have time to waste here with me, you might as well do it sooner..."

"Did you come down from above?" Shi Yu suddenly interrupted.

The player didn't react for a moment.

Shi Yu repeated, "You walked down this staircase? Have you been doing this since the beginning of the game?"

The player didn't answer right away: "Why are you asking that?"

Shi Yu only said: "Tell me and I will let you go."

When the player heard him put forward such a condition, his heartbeat began to speed up after being surprised, but he still looked suspicious and cautious: "Why should I believe you?"

Shi Yu was silent for a while: "You can also choose not to say anything and stay tied up forever."

"Wait!" the player shouted quickly, "It's me!"

Shi Yu looked at him.

"I just came down the stairs. Except for turning right once, I walked in a straight line. What's the problem? You choose to go up, and of course I can choose to go down." The player moved his arms, "Can you let me go now?"

Shi Yu reached out and took the silk thread wrapped around the other person's arms back into the bracelet.

The player felt that the shackles on his arms suddenly disappeared. He probably didn't expect to be let off so easily. He looked completely unresponsive: "You...you are just like this?"

"What?"

“You’re letting me go just like that?” The player bit his tongue and turned around using his hands and feet.

"Isn't this what you thought?"

The player stared at him for a few seconds and sighed: "Okay."

Shi Yu sat down on the steps.

At this moment, a flash of knife light suddenly appeared in the opponent's palm.

How could I let it go?

Eliminate the root of the problem. This is the primary truth in the minds of almost all players in the God's Domain.

Even if the other party had said in person that he would let him go, he would not believe that the other party would not retaliate later based on his own experience.

The player had a sarcastic look in his eyes, raised his hand with the big knife, and chopped down at the opponent!

A long howl suddenly sounded in the darkness.

A brown and black goshawk soared up into the sky, its milky white tail feathers falling like meteors, and its claws like steel thorns fiercely grabbed the back of the man high up.

The player was caught off guard and felt as if someone had suddenly slashed the area from his tailbone to his shoulder blades. The burning sensation almost overwhelmed his senses, and his brain went completely blank for a moment.

The goshawk swooped down again, and the sudden impact force added fuel to the fire, knocking him directly into an abyss that was impossible to see the bottom of.

Steady, accurate, ruthless, quick, neat and silent.

After the goshawk flew away, a long sword wrapped with several silk threads rose from below, with traces of blood still on the blade.

It was from the lower limbs of the bird that had been pierced when it was thrown out not long ago.

After a while, a corpse suddenly appeared out of nowhere on the steps.

The player still had the look of fear on his face. Not only his back, but also his face and chest were covered with scratches from the claws of a bird of prey. The flesh around his heart was completely rolled out. This was obviously the work of the hawk as he was falling. The moment he ran out of breath in the air, he was sent back by the rules.

It's like the procedure for returning to the city after the account character is killed.

In normal games, returning to the city means resurrection, but this player's return meant death.

Shi Yu untied the silk thread wrapped around the hilt and put his weapon back into his bracelet.

※

"Don Quixote is gone!"

When the scenery in front of Shi Yu became clear again, the first thing that caught his eye was the huge mural.

Ji Congyang looked up at the wall and immediately noticed the changes on the wall: "It's the knight painted here."

"Disappeared" means literally. Before the seven rounds of dice throwing, the knight riding on his horse and holding a lance was standing on the wall, looking like he was determined to fight the windmill for three hundred rounds. But now, the smoky gray paint on the wall was applied cleanly and smoothly, without even a trace of washing or wiping.

It was as if the knight on the wall had never existed.

Qiao Yan was standing nearby and turned to ask, "What do you think the painting on the wall means?"

Shi Yu didn't hesitate: "The number of survivors."

"There are only four of us left in this game?"

Shi Yu did not hide it: "I met the player who was drawn as Don Quixote in the last round."

Qiao Yan raised an eyebrow: "The same step as you?"

"Um."

"Dead?"

The death of a player in the game was not something surprising. What surprised him was that the player died in front of Shi Yu.

Qiao Yan thought that his knowledge of Shi Yu was far from complete, but he still knew a little about her basic habits. If ordinary people saw her, they would probably stay out of it and protect themselves, but if it was Shi Yu, he would turn a blind eye...

He guessed: "Did that person provoke you?"

Shi Yu did not elaborate on his experience on the stairs: "He came down from the upper floor, and except for turning right once, he walked in a straight line."

Ji Congyang, who was standing next to him, watched his companion's eyes grow darker and darker, and hesitated for a while whether he should interrupt at this time: "What's wrong?"

Qiao Yan stared into Shi Yu's eyes and asked, "Did that person walk down the stairs?"

"Um."

Ji Congyang: "What happened?"

Qiao Yan didn't answer but asked, "Which way did you go on the stairs?"

Ji Congyang was confused for a while: "From the first floor... to the second floor?"

He paused, then suddenly came to his senses.

It's from downstairs to upstairs.

It was not just him, but also Qiao Yan, Shi Yu, and even Luo Huaishen. Whether they were lucky, by coincidence, or by observing the environment and direction at the first moment, they all walked up the stairs from downstairs to upstairs, and every step increased their altitude.

Therefore, "after throwing the dice on the stairs, the player must walk up the stairs according to the number of points thrown" has long become a common understanding among everyone.

But the disappearing "Don Quixote" was from top to bottom.

"In fact, after rolling the dice, whether to walk up or down the stairs is completely up to the player to choose. There is no fixed direction," Qiao Yan stood in front of the mural. "Is this guess likely to be correct?"

"generally."

"What do you mean?"

"The first roll of the dice determines the future direction. This possibility is greater."

Qiao Yan expressed his confusion.

"When I met that player on the stairs, it was the first time I knew that players could go down from the top, but it was not the first time he met a player going in the opposite direction." Shi Yu said, "He knew that someone chose the opposite direction from him, but he did not change the direction of going downstairs from beginning to end."

Qiao Yan: "Because he doesn't dare to change it?"

"Maybe it was because his companion's death gave him a warning, maybe it was because the players he met on the road gave him a demonstration, of course, it is more likely that he thought it over carefully. Suppose, if the player can walk up and down the stairs freely after throwing the dice, then as long as he has been to the safe floor once, once he throws an even number, he can stay in the safe floor forever."

"Such a big bug is indeed unlikely to appear in the shadow game." Qiao Yan solved the problem, but there was a bigger problem, "But what's the point of setting it up like this?"

Shi Yu lowered his eyes: "Because of the shape of the stairs."

Qiao Yan was stunned for a moment: "Do you know what this staircase looks like?!"

"I never figured out why the game requires players to roll dice and walk up the stairs." Shi Yu walked back along the mural. "If we look at it from the perspective of a board game, we would set a fixed end point, and each of the sixteen players would have an exclusive staircase. Whoever reaches the end first wins based on how many points the dice rolls. But this game is obviously not like that, because players will meet other players as they move forward, which means there is more than one player on each staircase. If that's the case, no matter where the end point is set, it will be unfair to some players."

Qiao Yan looked at him: "What if the route is like flying chess?"

"If everyone has a unique destination, players should not be given the right to choose their own direction of travel, otherwise the length of the route will be different, which is also unfair. Of course, even if the distance issue is excluded, each player has two winning destinations, one upward and one downward. The game not telling the player the chessboard and route is a loophole for any game, and it is also inconsistent with the 'awakeness' in the main storyline of this game."

Shi Yu stopped in front of the mural of Little Red Riding Hood: "The focus of this game is obviously not on the stairs. The forest is where accidents often occur. The human corpses you found by the river and the murals in this castle can prove this. If it were an ordinary game copy, the normal process should be to throw the player directly into the forest, and then dig out what happened in the forest and how it is related to the owner of this castle. But here, the player must go back to the stairs every once in a while, roll the dice, walk up a step, and then be sent back, over and over again. This can easily give people the illusion that it is the inevitable process of this game to go through these when the time is up. But they forget that the stairs are actually a dream. Since it is fake, there should be a way to leave completely."

Qiao Yan vaguely realized something.

Shi Yu said: "He turned right once when he was going from top to bottom. And you also turned left once when you were going from bottom to top."

Qiao Yan asked, "Is this a spiral staircase?"

Shi Yu turned around and said, "It is connected from beginning to end."