Chapter 142: Must Become Lighter
Chu Tianqiu slowly stood up, no longer looking at the chessboard on the table. Instead, he walked over to a dining table and stopped.
There lay the exquisite breakfast he had prepared for himself.
"Thump, thump, thump—"
A faint knock came from the door. Chu Tianqiu's movements paused briefly.
"What is it?" he asked.
"If someone dies, will it be hard to explain?" the voice outside the door said.
"It doesn't matter if everyone here dies, as long as that clever Qi Xia is still alive." Chu Tianqiu revealed a sinister smile. "Right now, he's both intelligent and arrogant. We need to deliver the most agonizing 'remorse' to him."
"I understand." The person outside the door fell silent for a moment, then slowly walked away.
...
Qi Xia and the other three pressed tightly against the wall, breathing heavily.
The two ends of the seesaw had once again entered an eerily stable state.
"We're incredibly lucky…" Yun Yao muttered to herself. "The weight of both rooms is exactly the same..."
"More than luck… I think that's how 'Human Dragon' arranged it from the start." Qi Xia gritted his teeth. "A stalemate like this is the best-case scenario. If we can hold it until we find a solution…"
Before he could finish, their room began to slowly descend again.
Qi Xia wanted a "stalemate," but the other side clearly didn't want one.
"Since you want to die…" Qi Xia clenched his jaw. "Don't blame me."
"W-what do we do?" Qiao Jiajin pressed against the wall, cold sweat streaming down his face. "How can we become lighter than them?"
Tiantian glanced at the long knife in Qiao Jiajin's hand, swallowed hard, and said, "Could it be… we need to cut off a hand…"
"Don't be stupid." Qi Xia cut off her thought. "No matter which hand you cut off, you can't throw it out of this sealed room. Our total weight stays the same."
"Then…" Tiantian lowered her head, a look of distress on her face.
"Sister, your idea is way too dangerous." Qiao Jiajin hid the knife behind his back. "I'm vetoing that one too. Let's think of something else."
Without a word, Yun Yao walked over to the small, tennis-ball-sized window, took out the "Tao" from her backpack, and tossed them out one by one like coins.
"You—"
Qi Xia was momentarily stunned but knew there was no better option now. Every bit of weight they could shed mattered.
"Let's do it together."
Everyone pulled out the "Tao" from their pockets. This wasn't the time to be stingy with them. If they sank here, this cycle would be over.
Qiao Jiajin and Tiantian dug out their "savings" and threw them all out in one go.
Qi Xia also tossed out a few "Tao," but kept one in his pocket just to be safe.
It was the one Officer Li had given him. Qi Xia had used that very "Tao" to beat the Human Monkey. It was his lucky charm, and he hoped it would bring them good fortune again in this trial.
But after they had thrown out nearly all their "Tao," they noticed the room's position hadn't changed at all.
That meant the other side was also trying to get lighter.
"Looks like there's a smart person on that team too." Qi Xia muttered. "Is there anything else we can throw out?"
Yun Yao bit her lip, slowly picked up her backpack, and reluctantly pulled out a lipstick from inside.
Cosmetics were even rarer than "Tao" in the Land of the End. She looked pained.
After hesitating for a few seconds, she tossed the lipstick out, followed by foundation, concealer, eyeliner, lip gloss…
All kinds of cosmetics fell like a light rain, clattering down.
Even Tiantian, who was also a girl, felt a pang of sympathy watching that.
Only then did the four of them finally feel the room slowly rising, the firelight below growing farther away.
"Good…" Qi Xia pressed against the wall and glanced down from a distance. "Let's keep it this way… Even a pound or two of difference is enough to decide the outcome."
But before they had been rising for even a minute, the balance was broken again.
The other room seemed to have done something, its weight dropping as well.
The metal column connecting the two rooms let out a loud "creak."
Qi Xia could clearly feel their room sinking.
Though the two rooms couldn't see each other, they were both fighting tooth and nail to survive.
"Are the 'Tao' gone? What about the knife?" Qiao Jiajin looked at the blade in his hand. "This knife weighs two or three pounds. Should we just throw it out?"
"No." Qi Xia shook his head. "Qiao Jiajin, I have a very difficult task for you."
"A difficult task?" Qiao Jiajin paused. "What is it?"
"This task probably only you can handle." Qi Xia pointed to the small stool nearby. "Smash it into pieces."
That little stool had been in the room from the very beginning. It couldn't have been placed there for no reason—it must serve a purpose.
Qiao Jiajin understood. He picked up the stool and hefted it. It was solid wood, definitely heavy.
"When it comes to strength, you're the only one who can break it into pieces in a short time. But you have to be careful—don't make too much movement, or we'll have trouble keeping stable."
"Got it."
Qiao Jiajin nodded, took a deep breath, and swung the long knife down on the stool, instantly splitting a crack in it.
Instead of continuing with the knife, he hooked his fingers into the crack and pried. The wood grain ruptured, and he tore the stool into two pieces.
He shook his hands and struck again at the remaining parts.
Since the small window was limited in size, Qiao Jiajin had to chop the stool into very fine pieces before he could possibly disassemble and toss it out.
So he decisively adopted the same strategy as "splitting firewood."
He picked up one of the stool's legs, stood it upright, split it from above with the knife, then pried it apart with his hands, pulling off a long, thin strip of wood.
"Throw these out first!" Qiao Jiajin shouted.
The three of them divided the labor efficiently: Qiao Jiajin chopped the stool, Tiantian picked up the wood strips and handed them to Qi Xia, Qi Xia passed them to Yun Yao, and Yun Yao tossed them out.
This way, they minimized the range of movement for all four.
In just two or three minutes, the four legs had been completely disassembled and thrown out. Only a wooden board remained.
"Strange…" Yun Yao kept peering through the small window toward the other side. "Why are we still level? What kind of tactic are they using?"
But a second later, she saw bits of wood debris being thrown from the other room's small window in the distance.
"Damn it, it looks like they're chopping up their stool too…" Yun Yao said. "We need to speed up!"
Qi Xia knew this was unavoidable. After all, both rooms should be furnished the same way.
That meant both rooms had only a small stool and a long knife.
In a situation like this, anyone would choose to chop up the stool.
The sooner they destroyed the stool, the farther they'd be from death.
Qiao Jiajin picked up the pace.
He used his strength with remarkable skill. Although his movements weren't large, each swing of the knife followed the wood's grain precisely. The stool quickly shattered into a pile of fragments.
Tiantian kept handing wood strips to the others, but Qiao Jiajin felt it was still too slow, so he gathered up many smaller pieces and dropped them through the iron grate in the floor.
Six minutes passed. With only four minutes left on the wall's countdown, there was no trace of the stool left in their room.
Now, the four of them felt their room slowly rising, clearly much lighter than the other side.
"Steady…" Qi Xia told everyone to gather close to him, trying to make the room as light as possible.
Yun Yao thought for a moment, then snatched the long knife from Qiao Jiajin's hand. She chopped her leather handbag into pieces as well and tossed them out through the gaps.