Chapter 484: Showing Their Prowess
"I'm a bit confused," Chen Junnan said, turning back. "Fourteenth Sister, you said this thing belonged to which deity during the Havoc in Heaven?"
"Huh?" Cui Shisi felt like her train of thought had been completely derailed by Chen Junnan. "Leader, why are we so sure our speculation should be centered on the 'Havoc in Heaven'...?"
"Isn't it obvious? The hair divine power, the lotus divine power... What's this now? A silk manuscript?" Chen Junnan held up the icy-cold jade piece, examining it in his hand, then muttered softly, "Can't even read the characters... should be a 'heavenly book,' right? Could it belong to Lord Laozi or the Great White Planet or something..."
"Uh..." Cui Shisi scratched her head, her expression caught between frustration and bewilderment. She looked at Chen Junnan with a complicated face. "Leader... I feel like even if it really is the 'Havoc in Heaven,' that doesn't help us at all... Do we even need to think about this stuff?"
"But this jade piece is pretty..." Chen Junnan wiped the dust off the jade with his hand and stuffed it into his pocket. "I'll find a chance to give it to Sister Dong."
As the two were speaking, the door beside them opened. The burly bearded man and the middle-aged man walked in.
"Oh?" Chen Junnan raised an eyebrow. "How did it go? Smoothly?"
"This..." The two exchanged glances, looking as if they had encountered something strange as well.
"Just say it straight," Chen Junnan said.
The two nodded. Ma Twelve reached behind him and brought out his hand. In it was a small flower basket. Wu Thirteen held a black iron rod that looked like a hairpin.
"Huh?" Chen Junnan stepped forward to look at the flower basket and the iron rod, his confusion growing.
"A hairpin and a flower basket...?" Cui Shisi was also pondering the strangeness of it all.
What was the purpose of this bunch of completely unrelated items?
Chen Junnan thought for a moment, found no clue, and could only say to the group, "Forget about those for now."
He pointed to the door on the south side of the room. "That door leads to the exit. Let's head for the exit first, then figure out how to save Song Qi and little Jiang Shi."
Everyone knew the priority was to proceed with the game. Even if the items they found were bizarre, they didn't necessarily have to understand everything.
When the broadcast sounded, Chen Junnan was the first to open the door, and then the group was puzzled once again.
A sword was stuck into the table in the room. On the blade were two clearly carved characters: "Divine Power."
And on the doors directly ahead and to the left, both bore two characters: "Exit."
"Isn't this it?"
Just as they felt relieved, they suddenly sensed something off. These two doors leading to the exit looked very strange.
Someone had posted couplets on the doors: on the right side of the left door and the left side of the right door.
The first line read: "Male, female, old, young, rich, noble, poor, humble."
The second line read: "Sword, lotus, donkey, basket, flute, book, fan, crutch."
Below this couplet was an opening that looked like a ventilation duct. Above it was a large character written in cursive script.
"Show!"
"Crap!" Chen Junnan tossed the items in his hand, rushed to the two doors, and tried to pull them open. They were locked, unmovable no matter how hard he tugged.
"Leader... you..." Cui Shisi also noticed the doors were locked and didn't know what to do. These doors were distinctly different from the others—they had no bolts and seemed to be sealed by some mechanism.
"We need to 'show our divine powers'... Damn 'Havoc in Heaven,'" Chen Junnan said through gritted teeth. "It has nothing to do with 'Havoc in Heaven' at all, but the direction is similar!"
He stopped pushing the door, pulled out the black hair and jade piece from his pocket, and said to the others, "Bring everything over."
Ma Twelve and Wu Thirteen didn't dare to hesitate. They quickly handed over the flower basket and the black iron hairpin.
Chen Junnan carefully laid out all the items on the ground, then slowly raised his eyebrows.
"Just as I thought..." He touched the dirty blue-green floor and turned back to the group. "This isn't an escape game at all... It's 'The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea.'"
"'The Eight Immortals Cross the Sea'...?" The group looked at the items on the floor, still not quite understanding.
Chen Junnan stood up and pointed at the couplet on the wall. "Eight people: male, female, old, young, rich, noble, poor, humble. Combined with their magic artifacts, isn't that exactly the 'Eight Immortals'?"
"Then these items...?"
Chen Junnan picked up each artifact and said, "Flower basket—Lan Caihe's artifact. Lotus—He Xiangu's artifact."
"And the rest?"
Chen Junnan thought for a moment, then raised the hairpin-like iron rod. "When I first saw its size, I thought it was a black metal hairpin... but now, looking at its shape, isn't it a 'iron crutch'?"
The group looked at the hairpin again after hearing Chen Junnan's explanation and indeed saw it was a miniature iron crutch. This was Tieguai Li's artifact.
"As for this jade piece..." Chen Junnan paused, then said, "It should be Cao Guojiu's 'jade tablet.'"
Finally, he picked up the tuft of black hair. "What misled me the most was this black hair marked with 'Divine Power'... Think about it carefully—this isn't human hair. It's 'donkey hair.'"
"Donkey...?" After hearing Chen Junnan's analysis, everything became clear to the group. "Zhang Guolao's donkey?"
"Plus the 'sword' on the table, we've obtained six of the Eight Immortals' artifacts," Chen Junnan said. "We can't get out of this game on our own. Opening these two doors requires all eight artifacts."
Chen Junnan's leap of analysis made the situation seem extremely dire.
Meanwhile, Song Qi and Jiang Shi were constantly "closing the doors." They had thought the group could escape once they reached the exit, but who would have guessed they'd be stuck right there?
"As the saying goes, 'The Eight Immortals cross the sea, each showing their divine power,'" Chen Junnan said. "I should have realized this had to be about 'eight divine powers.' After all, the floor beneath us has been blue-green throughout, representing the sea. And this damn game is called 'Penglai,' which is exactly the 'Penglai Pavilion' where the Eight Immortals gather before they leave..."
"Then what do we do...?" Ma Twelve asked urgently. "Leader, where do we find the remaining 'artifacts'?"
"They must be scattered in various rooms," Chen Junnan said with narrowed eyes. "Do any of you remember which room numbers you found the 'artifacts' in?"
"I remember," the middle-aged man Wu Thirteen said. "At the start of the game, we found this 'iron crutch' in our room. After passing one room, we found the 'flower basket.' So it seems we got artifacts from rooms 'Two' and 'Four.'"
"That's right," Chen Junnan said. "If I'm not mistaken, the rooms where I got artifacts were 'Six,' 'Eight,' and 'Twelve,' plus the room we're in now, 'Sixteen.'"
"Ah!" Cui Shisi exclaimed. "Good things come in pairs, so maybe all the even-numbered rooms have artifacts?"