Chapter 1377: The Restaurant That Disappears at Night
After the footsteps outside the door paced back and forth a few times and finally left, Xu Huo looked at the people in the room and thanked the female player in the peaked cap who had pulled him inside.
The female player waved her hand dismissively. "Maris told me to do it."
There were six people in the room: Maris, the peaked cap female player, another companion of theirs wearing a scarf, the woman they had rescued during the day, and two male players who were seriously injured.
Maris greeted Xu Huo and then invited him to join their discussion.
"We're studying the layout of the restaurant," the peaked cap female player said. "Which side did you come from?"
Xu Huo glanced at the paper spread out on the bed. It showed part of the layout from the restaurant to the guest room area, including the direction of the corridors, the positions of the rooms, and the room numbers.
"From the restaurant into the corridor area, turning right to reach our position, there are about six rooms," Maris said. "These two friends came from the other side, and they counted about six rooms as well."
He pointed to the left.
Xu Huo picked up a pen and added a note. "Room 55 leads to Room 172, and Room 172 faces the warehouse."
"Doesn't that connect?" the peaked cap female player said. "This corridor is a circle."
"It should be a hexagon," the woman who had just begun her evolution said, forcing herself to speak despite her discomfort. "The corridor directly opposite the restaurant has two rooms. Turning left leads to Room 172, which has only one room. Turning again leads to Room 55. On the other three sides, each corridor has two rooms. The corridors with two rooms are about the same length as the single-room corridor. Except for the corridor directly opposite the restaurant, every other room has an open space outside."
"Outside Room 172 is the warehouse, which is at least three times larger than the area outside the other rooms," Xu Huo added.
"The inside is a hexagon, and the outside is curved. Drawn out, it looks a bit like a flower shape," the peaked cap female player said, leaning in to look. "But this place probably can't hide dozens of people, right? What's across from the warehouse?"
Xu Huo shook his head. "The restaurant splits into two paths. Maybe the other side is the same as ours."
After a pause, he added, "When I came over just now, I noticed that the path from the restaurant had already disappeared."
Maris and the others were startled. "You can't find the restaurant anymore?"
"Are you sure you're not mistaken?" the peaked cap female player said. "How could the restaurant disappear? It should be open at night too."
"Is the restaurant open at night?" Xu Huo asked. "Is that information reliable?"
"Tabby Cat arrived at the restaurant yesterday," Maris said, pointing to one of the injured players. "Tabby Cat is his player nickname."
The player nicknamed Tabby Cat was in poor mental condition. He hesitated before saying, "Last night, I couldn't get into a room either. I hid on the beams all night and saw a player coming back from the restaurant."
Now that Xu Huo said the path to the restaurant had disappeared, the other players couldn't help but doubt the truth of his words. Player Tabby Cat forced himself to sit up and explained the process in detail. "There were props moving on the ceiling, and restaurant staff walking around downstairs, so I had to change positions every now and then. Near dawn, I saw a player coming from the direction of the restaurant... Although I didn't see him walk out directly, he had the smell of food on him, the same smell I'd noticed in the restaurant during the day."
"The restaurant hasn't released any details about the voting," Maris said. "So I think the difficulty of this instance lies in figuring out the voting rules. The restaurant at night is the most likely place to find clues. I thought that as long as you avoided the restaurant staff, anyone could reach the restaurant."
But in that process, the highest risk came from those staff members. Now that Xu Huo said the path to the restaurant had disappeared, it added another layer of risk—you had to find the path first to get to the restaurant.
"I originally thought the restaurant staff's activity times followed a pattern, but I didn't expect..."
The peaked cap female player explained to Xu Huo the rules Maris had summarized earlier, which essentially pointed to a relatively safe period of about two hours.
"But he just ran into a staff member. It's possible those people were deliberately making noise earlier to mislead us," the peaked cap female player said.
Xu Huo didn't think so. The Lame Butcher was very fast. If he linked that to the "Knock Kill," it would be reasonable for that person to appear anywhere in the restaurant at any time, so there was no need for sound-based inducement. Additionally, the props moving on the ceiling were also his. On the other hand, the Raincoat Cleaner and the person rummaging through the cargo boxes—who might be a third staff member—had yet to appear, which actually proved that their activities followed a certain pattern.
The key was figuring out what triggered his appearance.
But right now, he was more concerned about something else. He asked Player Tabby Cat, "Did you see that player today?"
Player Tabby Cat shook his head. "There weren't as many players in the restaurant when it opened this morning as there were yesterday, but by the time I went in, there were already quite a few people. So I can't tell if these people were left over from yesterday or just arrived."
"Do you know how many people ate the Deer Antler Soup yesterday and how many voted for it?" Xu Huo asked again.
"I already asked about that," Maris answered for him. "He can't remember clearly."
That was right—he simply couldn't remember clearly. Because players arrived at different times, and since the first three days were free, anyone could order food whenever they were hungry, regardless of mealtimes. So not only were the menus of players who came earlier and later different, but players also added orders later, moved around to temporarily recruit allies, or changed positions as the restaurant shifted. Some even changed their faces after entering the restaurant... This was no longer a simple arithmetic problem of a hundred players and hundreds of dishes.
Moreover, most people didn't announce what they were ordering. You only knew what someone was eating when you saw the actual dish, which added to the difficulty.
Even more troublesome was that players couldn't rely on the decreasing number of people to lower the voting difficulty, because those who died yesterday would be replaced today. It felt like there were always dozens or a hundred people every day. And trying to get those dozens or a hundred people to vote uniformly would probably be harder than training a hundred ducks to salute.
"Actually, there's a simpler method: seal the ballot box and interfere with the voting process," Maris said, looking at Xu Huo. "But that requires enough player cooperation."
"I have no problem with that," Xu Huo agreed readily. "But there's one thing: how do we get everyone to order the same dish?"
Based on his inference, the "Daily Special" was very likely to appear among the meat dishes. And in this special place called the Bauhinia Restaurant, ordinary players wouldn't dare challenge the meat dishes. Even if they could use props to check, players who came in later would refuse to cooperate out of fear of being tricked by unclear rules.
"Since we need to vote, having too many people abstain probably won't work."
In other words, the shortcut of preventing others from voting was also a dead end.
(Chapter End)