Falling Dreams Playing Games 4
The mirror dimmed again, and the reflection once more showed the three of them. The man was crying, clutching Huaiwen's sleeve, begging Huaiwen to take him out. He swore he would give Huaiwen all the money, as long as he could survive.
Huaiwen pulled his hand away and comforted him, "I will protect you."
The man barely managed to calm down. This time, Huaiwen walked in front. Recalling Huaiwen's bravery just now, the demon couldn't help but scrutinize her: "I was curious earlier, you're agile, and your magic is superior to mine, what's your background?"
Huaiwen smiled slightly: "People come here because they want something, and that's what I'm here for."
"Then what do you want?"
"Well... I can only tell the city lord about this."
During their conversation, they came to a fork in the road. Huaiwen hesitated for a moment, then turned right. The humans and demons behind her asked her how she could be so sure.
Huaiwen chuckled and said that any road could be a dead end, so he just took one randomly.
This infuriated the humans and demons behind her. But she was highly skilled and dared not fall behind alone, so she could only follow behind. In the darkness, she accidentally bumped her head and cried out in pain.
After navigating several forks in the road, they turned a corner. This time, instead of a fork in the road, they saw two doors. Huaiwen stopped at the front, examining the doors closely. From color to pattern, they were all identical; not a single detail was different.
Don't push open a door lightly.
Huaiwen sighed. She had focused solely on cultivation for the past five years; she should have learned more about the outside world. But to that person, Huaiwen's sigh was a sign of despair.
The man started crying again. Annoyed, the demon hardened his heart, turned around, opened the left door, threw the man inside, and slammed the door shut. Huaiwen stood there, stunned, turned to look at the demon, and asked him why he did that.
The demon shrugged and said impatiently, "I hate all this nagging and crying."
Huaiwen waved his hand, and could only push open the door on the left.
This time, Huaiwen and his group landed on the chessboard. But they weren't the only ones; the other two teams were also there. However, the team in blue had lost one member to the carnivorous plant and burned another, leaving only two members.
Everyone saw through the mirror that someone had been burned to death, but they didn't want to ask where the remaining person was. Asking would most likely reveal that they were also dead, or trapped here.
Now they are all on the chessboard, each occupying one square. Someone asked, "Shall we start playing chess?"
The boy in the blue shirt said, "You'll know once you try." So, mustering his courage, he stepped forward and landed on another square. Nothing happened on the board. He excitedly shouted, "Looks like we're going to play chess!"
The man in blue urged everyone to move, but no one paid him any attention. Only Huaiwen listened. But she felt this shouldn't be a game of chess. If they were chess pieces, there wouldn't be enough of them.
It's simply a different way of playing. But how do you play it?
With a loud bang, a door rose from the center of the chessboard. Now everyone knew that they had to go through that door to escape.
The person in Huaiwen's team was already panicking, thinking about escaping and being the first to open the door and claim all the rewards. Without saying a word, he rushed forward. Seeing this, someone else immediately followed suit.
But before they could run two steps, they suddenly lost their footing and fell.
The rest of the runners stopped abruptly.
Huaiwen peered over and saw that the chessboard pattern where they had fallen had vanished, leaving a hollow hole. She looked up again; now only six people remained.
They could hardly move an inch.
Things happened so fast that Huaiwen didn't even have time to see if there was any pattern to the blank spaces. She felt that Xuan Ye's games were always unexpected and left people completely clueless.
The demon on the opposite side of Huaiwen suddenly revealed its true form. It was a snake, hissing as it moved. It was clever; instead of moving on the squares, it slid swiftly along the lines of the squares.
I thought I had made it through, but then the lines on the chessboard seemed to come alive, wrapping the snake around in circles. They then held it high, a warning to everyone: cheating is forbidden.
"How are we supposed to survive like this! Your Drunken Dream Pavilion is such a rip-off!"
"That's right! I didn't come all this way here to die!"
"Hey! I'm done playing! Let me out!"
But none of that mattered; their words couldn't change anything. Getting to that door was what mattered.
Huaiwen took a deep breath. She figured she might as well try anything, there's always a way out! She stretched out one foot to the side, but the chessboard didn't change. She gently placed it down, but it didn't change either.
She thought for a moment and then pulled her foot back. She suddenly remembered the previous challenge where she couldn't use fire. Did that mean she couldn't use fire in this challenge either?
Soon, the flame that rose from her palm negated her. She stood there, piecing together everything that had happened since she entered this place.
When they fell into this place, fire appeared first, then gauze appeared, and the word "mirror" appeared on the gauze, thus creating the mirror maze.
The reason we escaped was because of the burning white cloth. Although those white hands and those things weren't actually cloth, the truth is, they were burned.
Wasn't the answer to escape already written at the very beginning?
If they want to avoid falling by stepping on empty spaces, they should cover the entire board; then they won't get hurt.
Huaiwen calmed down and became excited. At that moment, the man in blue decided to fly over. He flailed and was quickly punished. The fire that had disappeared burned again beneath his feet, scalding him and causing him to roll to the ground.
As he rolled, he accidentally touched the chessboard again, creating another large empty space, and he fell off. His cries for help echoed back, and Huaiwen threw out his Mingjing Sword, trying to catch him.
But Huaiwen's actions were also punished. Her sword was thrown back, and flames erupted from the chessboard around her, enveloping her. Although it didn't burn her, it caused a burning, stinging pain.
This is a warning.
Now only two people and two demons remain on the chessboard. Everyone hesitated to move. They were unsure what would happen.
"Are we just going to be trapped here and wait to die?" the man on the other end roared, his voice choked with sobs.
It was the demon next to Huaiwen again, telling him to shut up. He hated people who cried. Huaiwen turned to look at him, and the demon glanced at her and said, "What, are you going to cry too?"
Huaiwen chuckled: "Who taught you to talk like that?"
"..."
The demon asked helplessly, "What do you mean?"
Huaiwen waved her hand to indicate that he was not targeting her or doing it on purpose. She explained, "Although demons can transform into humans, they still speak like children, learning gradually. Of course, it's possible that the demon was influenced by what it saw and heard from a young age, and its speech was already fixed."
The demon crossed her arms haughtily and retorted, "It's none of your business."
Huaiwen smiled and teased, "Would you like to learn from me? I can be quite humorous too."
The demon glanced at Huaiwen lazily, then remained silent. Huaiwen stopped teasing him.
She calmed down and asked if anyone here cultivated water or ice magic. The human and demon opposite her shook their heads. Huaiwen then turned to look at the demon beside him. He put on airs and said that he wasn't either.
Then she would have to do it herself. Huaiwen calmed herself, her eyes sharpened, and she sheathed her sword. She crossed her arms and chanted an incantation.
A chilling aura emanated from beneath her feet, the crisp, dry sound layer upon layer. In an instant, it covered the entire chessboard. The chessboard was clean, flat, and smooth. Huaiwen looked down; her face was reflected on the ice. She smiled; it was an ice mirror.
It was freezing cold; we shouldn't linger. Huaiwen immediately urged everyone to head towards the door. But they were still afraid something might happen.
Huaiwen sighed. How could this group of people never trust each other? Helpless, she took the lead and went out. The ice was slippery, but Huaiwen walked lightly.
Just as Huaiwen was about to reach the door, the person furthest away, both human and demon, rushed over. They wanted to win this battle. But the demon behind Huaiwen pushed the door open first.
Driven by the situation, Huaiwen hardened her heart and grabbed the demon behind her who was trying to avoid her and run inside. She conjured two magic ropes and, without saying a word, swung the human and the demon together.
They threw the three of them in first, and she followed closely behind.
The door slammed shut and fell to its new spot.
It was pitch black here, and now only two people and two demons remained.
"If I had known that the games at Zuimenglou were so dangerous, I would have quit long ago. I, Old Li, haven't even gotten married and had children yet!" Old Li complained tearfully.
"The city lord has come up with another new game. I should have known better than to choose this door to come in!" The one who spoke was a demon from a different team than Huaiwen. He touched his leopard-print sleeve and looked Huaiwen up and down. "You must be an immortal."
Huaiwen shook his head in denial, and the demon asked again, "Really not? But you don't look like a demon either."
“I am merely practicing Taoism,” Huaiwen explained.
The leopard-print sleeve demon was initially skeptical, but then changed her attitude: "Then lead us out of here. Just by looking at you, I can tell you're dashing, decisive, kind, and have an extraordinary presence; you're destined for greatness!"
Before Huaiwen could even speak, she heard her teammate curse, "Incompetent!"
"If you're so capable, go out yourself!" the leopard-print sleeve demon cursed. "So what if I find someone to take me! I'm going to make money from Drunken Dream Pavilion!"
"Pah! Watch out, or I'll really make sure you don't get your money!"
The two demons started arguing, and Huaiwen pressed his temples, feeling a headache coming on.
"boom--"
The mirror reappeared.
The mirror once again reflected the likeness of Huaiwen and the others, but they discovered that the reflection in the mirror was not a reflection, but another living version of themselves.
In the mirror, they were talking and laughing, pointing at the four of them with a mocking tone.
What's the situation now? Huaiwen pondered.
Suddenly they heard voices coming from inside the mirror. The first to speak was Old Li's mirror image.
He shouted, "Don't think I don't know why you came to Zui Meng Lou. You just owe gambling debts and forced your neighbor to marry her daughter to you, but she didn't agree. You tried to force yourself on her, so you were kicked out. You had nowhere else to turn, so you came to Zui Meng Lou to try your luck."
Old Li's face turned purple. He clenched his fists and shouted, "So what? No matter what I do, I can still come to Zuimenglou to play games."
Old Li's mirror image laughed loudly: "Of course you have to come and play to pay off your debts and go back in glory. Do you want to win?"
Old Li nodded, and the mirror figure began to speak in a wicked and arrogant tone: "Then you should reach out and touch me in this mirror. Let's make a trade, and I'll win this game for you."
Old Li was a little confused. He drifted over and unconsciously reached out to touch his reflection in the mirror. Huaiwen sensed something was wrong and was about to intervene when she heard her reflection say, "If you interrupt him, he will be trapped in the mirror forever. That's their deal. If you break the balance, you'll only end up hurting himself."
Huaiwen stopped herself. She watched as Old Li swapped places with the person in the mirror. Old Li was swallowed up, and the person in the mirror came out.
Gradually, the mirror reflecting Old Li disappeared. The person in the mirror who replaced him was admiring their own body. Huaiwen stood frozen, her brows furrowed; something was wrong.
Then look at the demon in leopard print. His mirror image is trying to persuade him to go inside, but the demon refuses. Then the mirror image demon takes out a knife, slowly places it on his wrist, and first rubs it hard. Immediately, a red mark appears on the leopard print demon's hand.
Immediately afterward, the leopard-print demon in the mirror suddenly plunged in forcefully, and the leopard-print demon outside the mirror screamed in agony! He gripped his wrist, trying to stop the bleeding.
But he was completely useless.
The leopard-print demon in the mirror viciously pulled out his knife again and slashed across his face. He sneered, "Don't you care about your face? If I slash your face, do you think it will leave a scar?"
"No scars allowed!" the leopard-print-clad demon shouted; his face was his biggest concern.
"Then you can switch with me. I'll win the game for you."
The demon in leopard print nodded helplessly and walked over. Huaiwen was about to make his move again.
Her reflection in the mirror advised again: "If you stop him now, he will be stabbed all over, especially his face, which he cares about most. In the end, I think the person he will hate is you."
Huaiwen remained silent.
The mirror figure continued, "You clearly mean well, but by doing so, you'll hurt him. Aren't you in pain? Stop being in pain! You might save his life, but can you truly bring him back to life?"
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