Chapter 1001: Venue Appearance
Qiao Jiajin and Zhang Shan had agreed that if they were to meet again at "Chuhe Hanjie," they would settle things there directly. After all, the other rooms were too small, and the central door would only get in the way. When the time came, they would each stake their own "character," and the winner would take the loser's.
After parting with Zhang Shan, Qiao Jiajin immediately turned and walked toward another door. As far as he remembered, this path should have been explored by Zhang Chenze, but for some reason she still hadn't shown up.
From Qi Xia's "Preparation Zone" to "Chuhe Hanjie," in theory, it only required passing through two rooms. Not only had he already passed through two rooms, he had even chatted with Zhang Shan for a while. In all that time, no one else had come out. Could they have run into danger? Or perhaps the rooms they were exploring didn't just contain "doors"?
Feeling something was off, Qiao Jiajin reached out and opened the door, intending to start from the opposite direction and meet up with Zhang Chenze. But when he stepped into the room, he found it no different from the route he had explored—another door, the only difference being that this one had the character "Chou" written on it.
"Lawyer lady, are you in here?" Qiao Jiajin called out. No one answered him.
"Strange..." There wasn't a single person in the room. It seemed Zhang Chenze hadn't even made it past the first room. Both of them had been sent out to scout the terrain, so Qiao Jiajin couldn't understand why their paces were so different.
A bad feeling crept into his heart. He could only make his way to the first room.
"Lawyer lady..." Qiao Jiajin opened the door again, and again found no one.
He frowned immediately. He and Zhang Chenze had entered two different rooms at the same time. He hadn't seen her emerge from the other end, and now, backtracking along her path, he still hadn't spotted her. "Disappeared...?" Qiao Jiajin muttered, countless questions flooding his mind.
He walked over to the wooden door standing in the center of the room and looked at it. Above it was written "Shen."
"Damn it..." Qiao Jiajin stroked the door and looked around for a while before a bold idea occurred to him. Could Zhang Chenze's understanding of "surveying the rooms" be different from his own? What exactly was she investigating...?
Before Qiao Jiajin could figure it out, the wooden door in front of him was gently pushed open, and a bewildered Zhang Chenze stepped out.
"Hey! Lawyer lady!" Qiao Jiajin quickly pulled her out of the door. "Damn! You're pretty gutsy! You just went in by yourself?"
"Yeah..." Lawyer Zhang patted her chest, still a little shaken. "I hesitated at the door for a long time, but I felt that going in to investigate was the best choice. Otherwise, if everyone else finished scouting their routes and found out I knew nothing about what's inside the doors, I'd be holding everyone back."
"How could you be so silly!" Qiao Jiajin said. "You understood it differently from everyone else. None of us investigated inside the doors—we just took a look at the terrain."
"I... understood it differently from everyone else?" Zhang Chenze was taken aback. "You mean... everyone else had already reached 'Chuhe Hanjie'? Only I didn't go?"
"Uh..." Qiao Jiajin was silent for a long moment, then it dawned on him that it was actually he who had understood things differently. No wonder he had been able to rush straight to "Chuhe Hanjie" and run into the equally single-minded Zhang Shan from the other side. No wonder he had waited so long without seeing anyone else come out. It turned out everyone else had been investigating the "doors."
"Ah, forget it..." Qiao Jiajin said. "So, what's inside the doors? Did you find out?"
"More or less..." Zhang Chenze nodded. "But there's another room."
"Oh, you're still going?"
"I can skip it too." Zhang Chenze thought for a moment and asked, "Is the next room also a 'door'?"
"Yeah," Qiao Jiajin replied. "I checked both my side and what's ahead of yours—they're all doors. Nothing else."
"Then I understand..." Zhang Chenze nodded. "What character was written on the door ahead of me?"
"I think it was 'Chou.'"
"Good." A thought seemed to occur to Zhang Chenze. She said to Qiao Jiajin, "Let's go back to Qi Xia first and tell him what we've seen."
"Huh?" Qiao Jiajin was startled. "I didn't see a damn thing."
"It's okay, I did."
She led Qiao Jiajin back to the "Preparation Zone." As expected, they were the first to return. At that moment, Qi Xia was facing the wall, rubbing his chin in thought. His brows were tightly knitted, as if something was bothering him.
"Conman!" Qiao Jiajin called out. "We're back!"
"Oh?" Qi Xia snapped out of it and turned to look at Qiao Jiajin. "What's in the venue?"
"There are doors!" Qiao Jiajin said. "Lots of doors, conman."
Qi Xia nodded, then looked at Zhang Chenze. "What's inside the doors?"
"The game venues of the Zodiacs," Zhang Chenze said calmly. "These doors lead directly to the 'Human-level games.'"
"Lead to the game venues..." Qi Xia frowned. "Even crazier than I imagined..."
Qi Xia had thought Qinglong might be crazy enough to have those Zodiacs bring their own game props here to help, but he never expected him to simply open a door inside "Cangjie Chess" to teleport everyone out.
"But wouldn't that be considered 'leaving the venue'?" Zhang Chenze asked.
"Probably not..." Qi Xia replied. "Since Qinglong opened a door to the 'Human-level game' venues, it means he must have gotten their permission. In their games, 'chips' have become 'characters.' Besides, after the game ends, we still need to come back through the door. Only leaving their actual venue would count as 'escaping.'"
"Then the map for this game is way too big..." Zhang Chenze said. "We still have so many 'Human-level' games to deal with..."
"You're overthinking it," Qi Xia said. "The 'Human-level games' are only auxiliary to the 'betting duel.' We don't need to enter all of them. As long as we have the right method, we can get our hands on the opponent's 'characters' right here."
"Speaking of which... there's something strange," Zhang Chenze said quietly.
"What?" She stepped forward and said in a very low voice to Qi Xia, "I just entered a room with the character 'Shen' on it. The Zodiac inside looked very nervous... Their mental state was even more tense than ours."
"That's not strange at all..." Qi Xia sighed. "Once you understand 'Qinglong,' you'll know that when he communicates with those Human-level Zodiacs, he definitely scares them out of their wits. Maybe in this game, those Human-level Zodiacs have an even more daunting task than we do—their mission might be to find a way to kill us."
"That makes it even stranger..." Zhang Chenze said. "Qinglong and they are superior and subordinate. Why would they be so afraid?"