Chapter 32: Deadly Room Numbers (Part 12)

The five remained completely unaware, already immersed in the new situation. Xiao Muyu also pushed the slight unease in her heart to the back of her mind.

The new carousel lantern was still octagonal in shape, and just as they all entered, it began to rotate.

When it stopped, the eight walls had suddenly transformed into eight doors.

The doors were painted a deep red, its somber shade reminded them of something ominous, like coagulated blood. Each door was also distinctly marked with a golden number.

They ranged from 1 to 8, with no 9 or 0.

“Are we supposed to exit through one of these doors?”

Chen Kaijie felt his hairs rising at the sight of the eight doors. He hated these kinds of strange, arbitrary choices.

What would happen if they chose the wrong door? And what was the correct answer?

*Ding*, the familiar system notification sound appeared.

“We are pleased to announce that five players have successfully reached the final stage of the sixth, ‘The Carousel Lantern of Life.’ Just like people, numbers have their own cycles—their own beginnings and ends.

Behind these doors lies your personal carousel lantern of life. Please choose carefully. Numbers may repeat, but life does not. If there is a price to pay, you won’t be able to bear it. But if you stop moving forward out of fear, there is only one path left—death.”

This time, the system’s voice was unusually lively, and Xiao Muyu recognized it—it was the voice of Arbiter No. 002.

“This voice sounds a bit familiar,” Zuo Tiantian said nervously, squeezing her fingers.

“It’s Arbiter No. 002’s voice. Why has the system announcement switched to her?”

Chen Kaijie frowned, completely puzzled by the earlier message.

“Because this is the final stage. No. 002’s presence signals that we’re about to clear the game; otherwise, she wouldn’t show up.”

This was Shen Qingqiu’s third instance, so she was knowledgeable in this regard.

Chen Kaijie kept pondering over No. 002’s words and voiced his thoughts. “The clearing condition is still ‘get out’. With how many doors there are, it probably isn’t as simple as picking one. No. 002 called this stage the ‘Carousel Lantern of Life’. Do we have to go in, and see our own carousel lantern of life?”

Shen Qingqiu glanced at him and sneered, “Are you sure you want to see your carousel lantern of life?”

Chen Kaijie was stunned, and Xiao Muyu, seeing this, added calmly, “The carousel lantern of life refers to a person’s life experiences flashing before their eyes like a carousel lantern. Think. When does that usually happen?”

Su Jin, who had been listening carefully, supplied to Chen Kaijie with a serious expression, “When you’re about to die.”

Chen Kaijie and Zuo Tiantian felt a chill run down their spines, and their goosebumps rising.

Chen Kaijie even shivered and quickly said, “Forget it; I don’t want to see it!” A frustrated look then followed. “This system is too cruel.”

“It gave us a pretty clear warning: numbers may repeat, but life doesn’t. But if we pick the wrong door, will we immediately see our own carousel lantern of life?”

Shen Qingqiu touched her chin, speaking so casually that it even carried a hint of mockery, drawing Zuo Tiantian and the others to look at her in astonishment.

Xiao Muyu was also glancing at her.

She had long known that Shen Qingqiu didn’t care about life or death, and while Xiao Muyu herself didn’t care much either, seeing Shen Qingqiu’s indifferent attitude still made her feel inexplicably uncomfortable.

“This is the final stage of the sixth round, but so far, we haven’t found anything that requires a password to unlock. However, we did discover seven clues, or more precisely, eight letters. Could this be related?”

In her mind, Su Jin had already started connecting the previous clues to their current situation.

“Yeah, where are we supposed to input the password for the exit?”

Chen Kaijie also realized something was off and frowned.

“The carousel lantern inherently signifies a cycle. We’ve already witnessed the cycle of numbers,” Xiao Muyu said slowly, furrowing her brows.

Then, as if something suddenly occurred to her, she relaxed and spoke more quickly.

“In the last few rounds, we’ve been using passwords to open doors. However, we seemed to have forgotten that in the first round, we were opening doors in order!”

Everyone’s eyes immediately lit up in response.

Chen Kaijie slapped his thigh and exclaimed in sudden realization, “That’s right! In the first round, we had six doors. The order we opened them in was essentially a password.”

“So as long as we decipher the password, we can use it to find our way out?”

Zuo Tiantian also began to get excited.

Shen Qingqiu glanced at Xiao Muyu, who nodded and said, “In theory, yes. But how do the letters H, N, F, K, C, CA, and I, relate to numbers?”

Everyone fell silent.

This question had been lingering in their minds for a while. The previous clues had at least involved numbers, but the only numbers they could think of in connection to these letters, were based on their positions in the alphabet. However, that didn’t match up either—it just didn’t fit.

“We’ve been thinking in terms of the English alphabet, but what about pinyin¹?” Zuo Tiantian suddenly had an idea and blurted it out.

The group immediately shifted their thinking. If they were to use pinyin, they would need to consider initials and finals².

Su Jin, who was quite familiar with this, immediately objected, “It’s still not right. Some of the numbers go beyond ten. Even if the password isn’t six digits long, there are eight doors, so it shouldn’t go past eight.”

“Su Jin raises a valid point. Is the password still six digits?” Chen Kaijie posed a question, which once again threw them into confusion.

If they couldn’t even be sure about the number of digits in the password, there was no point in trying to guess the numbers.

“I think it should be eight digits. Wasn’t it six doors, and six digits before? And there are indeed eight letters,” Su Jin concluded, and her reasoning sounded solid.

But Xiao Muyu still felt something was off.

After a moment of contemplation, she continued, “Normally, when something stands out as special or coincidental, that’s the key. Eight letters might be correct, but why was ‘CA’ on the same person? Doesn’t that seem odd?”

“It does. Only seven of the eight portraits moved, so does that mean there are actually seven digits?” Shen Qingqiu, seeing that everyone was getting more frustrated, spoke up.

When Xiao Muyu looked up at her, Shen Qingqiu added another point: “If the English alphabet and Chinese pinyin don’t work, could these letters represent something else?”

Just as Xiao Muyu was on the verge of uncovering a clue, the carousel lantern they were standing in suddenly sank. The five of them lost their footing, and were instantly terrified out of their wits.

“What’s happening?” Su Jin grabbed onto Zuo Tiantian, her face pale. The floor beneath them was still trembling, as if it were about to collapse.

Xiao Muyu’s expression also changed. After a moment, her face grew more serious and cold. “If we stop moving forward out of fear, the only path left is death.”

“What?” Zuo Tiantian, growing more terrified, instinctively asked in a tense voice.

“The system warned us!”

Chen Kaijie recalled the system’s last words, his face darkening with dread.

“It’s forcing us to make a choice. Time’s almost up—if we don’t open a door, we’ll die!” He yelled through gritted teeth.

The damn system said there was no time limit, so why was it rushing them this way?

There was no more time to waste. Xiao Muyu immediately turned her attention to the eight doors.

There was no 9! The core of the six rounds was based on the cyclic numbers: 1, 4, 2, 7, 5, and 8. The number 9 was the resting point, but what about 3 and 6?

“We’re going to 6!” Xiao Muyu decisively made the call, glancing at Shen Qingqiu.

Shen Qingqiu immediately understood, drawing her dagger.

“Get ready. We don’t know what’s behind door 6, so be mentally prepared,” she urged, feeling the urgency of the situation as they struggled to maintain their footing.

After speaking, she quickly made her way toward door 6.

“Is it because 6 is a blank? Could 3 work too?” Su Jin’s mind was racing.

Despite her nerves, she wanted to have a clear plan.

“In the first round, you girls came out through 4316, and us guys came out through 4313. It should be the same!” While speaking, Chen Kaijie pulled Zuo Tiantian along.

As soon as they pushed the door open, the five found themselves on another narrow path, surrounded once again by carousel lanterns.

The path shook along with the carousel lantern.

Without time to think about anything else, they quickly moved forward and entered another carousel lantern. The layout inside was almost identical to the previous one, but mirrored.

Mirrors and carousel lanterns—that was the theme of this entire instance.

“The number 6 has changed color,” Zuo Tiantian exclaimed, pointing at the door marked with a 6. Sure enough, the once golden number 6 had turned blood-red, almost blending in with the wooden door.

“Did we make the wrong choice?”

Although nothing dangerous happened, Chen Kaijie felt even more anxious. He didn’t loosen his grip on the frying pan, and couldn’t help swallowing hard. This feeling of imminence, filled with hope and fear of despair, was truly nerve-wracking.

“No.”

Xiao Muyu stepped up to door 6, reaching out as if to touch it, but Shen Qingqiu stopped her.

“Don’t risk it just yet. I think those letters still make up the password.”

Once they entered this space, everything became calm again, giving them time to think.

Xiao Muyu glanced at the door, then turned to stare at Shen Qingqiu.

“You said something just before we were about to open the door.”

Shen Qingqiu paused for a moment, thought back, then said, “I wondered if those symbols represented something other than letters.”

“Something other?” Xiao Muyu murmured, repeating the words, her eyes becoming slightly vacant, as if she had drifted into her own world.

She closed her eyes, discarding all other guesses, and focused on the first letter, H, muttering to herself, “If H isn’t a letter, then what is it?”

Chen Kaijie was about to speak, but Shen Qingqiu quickly raised her hand to stop him.

Whenever Xiao Muyu got lost in her own world like this, she was at a critical moment of figuring out the answer.

Shen Qingqiu kept her eyes on Xiao Muyu. She didn’t utter a word to disturb her, and carefully listened to every word Xiao Muyu said.

So when Xiao Muyu whispered to herself, “What could H be?” Shen Qingqiu also heard it.

Why would letters appear in a numbers game? If H wasn’t a letter, then it must be… Suddenly, an idea struck her, and her eyes brightened. Quickly, she turned to Xiao Muyu.

At that moment, both Xiao Muyu and Shen Qingqiu seemed to wake up from their thoughts, and they blurted out simultaneously: “氢 (qīng)!” (hydrogen)

Chen Kaijie, Su Jin, and Zuo Tiantian looked taken aback.

“清 (qīng)?” (clear)

Su Jin, still somewhat confused, repeated the word before suddenly stomping her foot in realization.

Normally calm and collected, she now beamed with excitement.

“Hydrogen! That means… I get why Tiantian’s portrait had two letters! CA should be a capital C and a lowercase a, representing Calcium (Ca)!”

“I… I get it now! Those aren’t letters—they’re chemical elements!”

Chen Kaijie and Zuo Tiantian immediately caught on, and the more they thought about it, the more sense it made.

Chen Kaijie felt so excited that his hands and feet went weak.

He quickly asked, “Does anyone here know the periodic table by heart? Which elements are these?”

“Hydrogen, nitrogen, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, sodium…”

Zuo Tiantian, having just started college, still remembered some of the periodic table, but wasn’t entirely confident, so she quietly recited it to herself.

“1, 7, 9, 19, 6, 20, 53,” Xiao Muyu quickly rattled off the atomic numbers, but the light in her eyes dimmed.

Su Jin and the others were awed, but realization doused their joy like a bucket of cold water.

While chemical elements seemed to make more sense than the English alphabet or Chinese pinyin in this context, the numbers 19, 20, and 53 were just too strange. Since there was no 0, the idea wasn’t feasible.

“So we got it wrong again?”

Zuo Tiantian wilted like a dried up flower, while Chen Kaijie hung his head.

The mental pressure was immense—after finally coming up with a solid theory, it turned out to be wrong.

It was better to not know anything at all.

“But Ca seems to fit. Did we miss anything else?”

Su Jin also felt uneasy, but she held herself together.

Losing hope here would truly mean waiting for death; she couldn’t give up until the very last moment.

“We were wrong,” Xiao Muyu suddenly said, prompting the others, including Shen Qingqiu, to turn and stare at her.

Xiao Muyu could sense their emotions.

In the past, she wouldn’t have bothered explaining much, but after everything they had gone through together, some attachment had formed among the five of them.

While she didn’t feel malice from them, and she didn’t want to be relied on, the feeling wasn’t unpleasant.

“What I mean is… we shouldn’t have entered door 6.”

“Why?” Chen Kaijie asked, confused.

“6 is indeed a safe number, but it doesn’t provide us with any clues. Instead, we’ve wasted a safe space,” Xiao Muyu explained.

She then reached out and pushed on door 6.

Shen Qingqiu’s eyes narrowed. She almost reached out her right hand to stop her, but nothing happened.

“See, just as I suspected, door 6 won’t open anymore.”

“I understand now,” Su Jin said, her expression calming. “Out of the 8 numbers, we can eliminate 3 and 6 as safe numbers. That leaves the remaining 6 numbers. If something goes wrong, door 6 could have been our safety net, but now we only have door 3 left.”

Xiao Muyu gave Su Jin a surprised glance, impressed by her quick thinking. She nodded, acknowledging Su Jin’s reasoning.

“It wasn’t entirely a waste. We don’t know if this is the correct path or not, but it still served as a test. We’ve confirmed that 3 and 6 are safe numbers.”

Shen Qingqiu glanced at her, and Xiao Muyu felt as though she was subtly offering her some comfort through her words.

“Have you decided which door to open next?”

Shen Qingqiu looked at the seven remaining doors.

An odd feeling crept into her mind again, as if she were missing something, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was.

“We’ve been overlooking something important,” Xiao Muyu said, staring wearily at the doors.

“What is it?”

“The six game rounds in this instance have largely unpredictable setups. The strategy from one round can’t be used to figure out the next, because there’s no common thread in their design. If there are, it’s only two things: they all have mirrors, and involve the cyclic numbers, right?”

Shen Qingqiu’s gaze locked on Xiao Muyu’s face, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

She finally realized what she had overlooked, and she also knew that Xiao Muyu was about to surprise her again.

For some reason, she felt like she understood Xiao Muyu well.

For instance, at this moment, even though Xiao Muyu seemed tired, her expression was calm and relaxed, with a faint gleam in her eyes.

Her speech was unhurried, measured, and steady. This indicated that she had figured out something crucial.

Sure enough, after she received nods from the other three, Xiao Muyu’s gaze steadied, and she continued.

“We’ve seen the concept of mirrors multiple times already, and cyclic number for the passwords. In the previous four rounds, no matter the form of the password, we’ve verified it. No matter how nonsensical this instance is, it wouldn’t change the password logic so drastically in the final round. So, it should still be based on the cyclic number, but… there are seven chemical elements. Is there a seven-digit cyclic number?”

Chen Kaijie and the others didn’t know the cyclic number at all, so they shook their heads.

They thought they must have guessed wrong, and that the password was only six digits.

However, a moment later, they were confused again. If the password had six digits, then why were they given seven clues? Also, a six-digit cyclic number only had six results, so did that mean they had to try six times? That would almost certainly be a death sentence.

“No, the cyclic number has seven digits,” Shen Qingqiu added, unable to hide the smile in her eyes, especially when she looked at Xiao Muyu.

---

Footnotes:

1. 1. Pinyin is the most common romanization for Standard Chinese. It’s also referred to as the Chinese Phonetic Alphabet. For more details on pinyin, visit the pinyin wikipedia page. ↩︎
2. 
   2. I’ll use character names as examples.
   The Chen in Chen Kaijie: Initial ‘ch’, final ‘-en’.
   The Jin in Su Jin: Initial ‘j’, final ‘-in’.
   The Tian in Zuo Tiantian: Initial ‘t’, final ‘-ian’. ↩︎

---

Author had something to say:

One of you cuties had the right guess, but how do we apply the chemical elements?