At this moment, a voice came from inside the slide: "Congratulations on passing the level! As time goes by, the sound of metal clashing will come at any time. Visitors who do not wish to continue playing, please go to the haunted house area or the roller coaster area after hearing the sound of metal clashing."
Qing Chen was confused again; a paradox had once again appeared in the reward information.
The first paradox is whether the roller coaster area is on the left or right of the haunted house.
The second paradox is whether there is one or two gecko sculptures, and whether or not to feed them prayer plaques.
The third paradox is, after hearing the clanging of metal, should you go to the haunted house area, the roller coaster area, or the maze area?
The next moment, Qing Chen and the kayak rushed out of the dark tunnel of the slide and plunged into the dark forest of the forbidden land.
He stared in astonishment at the gecko sculpture in front of him...
I've already entered the maze area?!
No wonder everyone entered different paths on the slide. It turns out that everyone can only complete the maze area alone? But how can we ensure that only one person is missing when entering the next level?
Chapter 923, They're all dead.
"Are we going to fight alone?" Qing Chen murmured. "No."
As he spoke, he turned to look at the ghost children following behind him, smiled, and patted the two water ghosts hanging around his neck, saying with a laugh, "I'm not fighting alone; you two are here with me. When you're not causing trouble, you're actually quite cute."
Water ghost: "..."
The ghost child: "..."
In the darkness, a stone-carved gecko sculpture sits atop a square stone base, standing over four meters tall.
It lowered its head slightly and stared in Qingchen's direction, just as when Qingchen rushed out of the slide, it was originally looking elsewhere, but suddenly turned its head.
Qing Chen watched silently as the gecko sculpture, which had appeared several times in the paradoxical hints, suddenly appeared before his eyes.
He thought it was something hidden and that it would take a lot of effort to find!
Moreover, there is more than one of these gecko lizard sculptures.
Based on the fact that 19 people entered, if each person had an entrance, then this maze should have at least 19 sculptures.
However, in the totem of the first level, Qingzhen's bionic body clearly stated: There is only one gecko lizard sculpture in the maze, but if you see two at the same time, please do not throw the prayer plaque into their mouths.
"Let's see how it protects me after I put the prayer plaque in," Qingchen said, taking a prayer plaque and throwing it into the sculpture's dark mouth.
The next moment, the stone gecko lizard suddenly moved. It twisted its neck, blinked its eyes slightly, and then suddenly stuck out a tongue from its mouth, wrapping it around the ghost child behind Qing Chen and preparing to suck it into its mouth.
“So this is protection,” Qingchen nodded, and Lightning pulled the ghost child’s ankle out of its tongue.
The gecko lizard paused for a moment.
Qingchen put the ghost child on the ground: "You were very well-behaved just now, you're a good child, you don't need to feed it."
The ghost child: "..."
Qing Chen looked at the gecko lizard: "If they are hallucinations, then... your tongue-sticking-out action just now was also a hallucination. So the visitor guide's instruction to have everyone come to you after the clash of metal is not to protect us, but to gather everyone here so that some unknown entity can find us. Or perhaps, it's to make it easier for you to find us."
Qing Chen smiled again: "Of course, this is just a guess, and the chain of evidence is not complete."
But why do both the visitor information and the Qingzhen biomimetic system say that there is only one gecko lizard sculpture here...?
He patted the ghost child on the head: "Let's go in and take a look."
At this moment, he seemed to have fallen into complete chaos, but strangely, he was able to maintain self-consistency in this chaos and still retain efficient logical analysis ability.
He knew it was all an illusion, yet he continued to interact with it anyway.
The next moment, Qingchen dragged the kayak behind him with one hand and carried the oar with the other, walking into the darkness of the maze. Two water ghosts grabbed his cheeks, and the ghost child hopped and skipped behind him.
The maze is a tall green wall, with thick, densely packed plants piled together, making it impossible to see what's behind it.
The night was thick overhead, but moonlight shone down, casting shadows that shrouded the maze's paths in the shadows of the maze walls.
Suddenly, the ghost child stopped and turned around. The sculpted gecko lizard had turned its head away at some point. It was no longer facing out of the maze, but was silently gazing into the darkness within.
Qingchen turned to the ghost child and said, "Don't get lost, keep up."
The ghost child continued to hop and skip behind him, his mouth opening and closing silently, as if singing an inaudible nursery rhyme.
Qingchen precisely calculated his stride after entering the maze. After walking 1000.2 meters, he turned back the way he came, but the place that should have been the entrance had turned into a wall.
The gecko lizard that should have been guarding the entrance has also disappeared.
"Has the shape of the path changed? Yes, it has," Qingchen said earnestly.
The path through the maze did indeed change after he traversed it.
At this point, he not only believed that there might be many living creatures among those geckos, but even that the maze itself might be 'living'!
Just as I was pondering this, a shrill scream suddenly came from afar.
The cry pierced through the layers of tree walls and then stopped abruptly; the person must have been dead.
Who, who killed him in the maze?
Qingchen dragged the kayak and ran quickly through the maze, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't get closer to the direction of the sound, even though he was running towards it.
Every path that leads to that place is a dead end.
Suddenly, he turned his head and saw a figure hiding in the shadows of the wall behind him, staring at him with wide eyes!
In the darkness, the other person's limbs were twisted, like a broken puppet!
Qing Chen walked over calmly, only to find a person whose hands and feet had been strangely broken off and embedded in the maze wall, as if they had become part of the maze wall.
He had no wounds on his body, yet he died without a sound.
Qing Chen recognized the other person; it was none other than the one who had entered the second level alone in the Trojan Horse area.
"That's strange. Why did you die here? And who killed you?" Qingchen pondered.
Something must be killing people in this maze. One of Gouwa's men is already dead. If more of them keep dying, I won't be able to continue.
Qing Chen turned around and continued walking forward. When he felt something was wrong and went back to check the corpse, he found that the corpse on the wall was no longer that person, but had been replaced by Gouwa's subordinate!
For a moment, the hairs on his body stood on end.
He possessed a memory palace, and he could not possibly forget the slightest thing he had seen. He was absolutely certain that the person embedded in the wall earlier was definitely not Gouwa's subordinate.
But he walked more than ten meters, turned a corner, and when he came back, he suddenly found that everything had changed.
Qing Chen slowly backed away, a sense of horror gradually enveloping his heart like a dark curtain. The ghost child on the kayak also stood up, opened its mouth towards him, and revealed its fangs.
"Don't make me slap you."
The ghost child shut his mouth and obediently sat back down.
Qingchen suddenly sneered. He took a few more steps forward, turned a corner, and came back. On the wall were still Gouwa's men.
He continued to drag the kayak deeper into the maze, walking and walking.
He heard Gouwa's screams.
They heard other people screaming.
If you count the number, almost everyone in this maze died, leaving only him in the end.
Is it a hallucination?
Unable to determine.
This maze area is like a meat grinder, and everyone is being pushed into the machine one by one in a line.
But if all those people are really dead, then Qingchen will no longer have the chance to continue clearing the game.
Immediately afterwards, Qingchen saw Gouwa and his men in the walls, all of them in bizarre shapes, absorbed into the maze itself.
He finally mustered the courage to pry open the vegetation on one of the maze walls, only to find white bones beneath the roots of those plants.
This labyrinth has stood for hundreds of years and has swallowed countless lives.
"They're all dead!"
"They're all dead!"
Qingchen stood blankly in the maze, which seemed to have no end.
He started running at full speed, from dawn until noon the next day, but no matter how hard he ran, he couldn't get out of the maze.
At his pace, even running at a steady speed to conserve energy, he would have covered at least nearly a thousand kilometers in those eight hours, yet the maze still seemed endless.
The sun shone on Qingchen's face, causing his lips to crack.
The spiritual pollution is getting worse and worse. The little boy on the kayak has grown into a young man in just 8 hours.
Qingchen turned around and said, "You were cuter when you were a child. Go back to your childhood."
The ghost youth has turned into a ghost child again...
"Does that mean everyone who enters the maze is doomed to die?" Qingchen wondered. "But why didn't I die? What's the difference between me and Gouwa and the others? Is it because I'm strong enough that no one dares to kill me, or did I do something different?"
He pondered for a long time, but came to no conclusion.
Night fell again, and the first day in the maze was over.
Qingchen was exhausted. Ever since entering the amusement park, he had been in a state of high tension, and his brain had been working at high speed. Now he was tired.
He lay down on the soft kayak and simply took a nap.
I've given up and am just sitting here doing nothing.
If anything wants to kill me, then bring it on!
Let's all tap it together!
When Qingchen woke up again, he glanced at the countdown on his arm: 112:00:00.
I slept for so long?
The problem is, there's nothing to kill me.
This is the situation Qing Chen is most worried about. If someone comes to kill him, that would be fine, as he can fight his way out and even if he dies here, he can take someone down with him.
But being trapped and killed here would be the most desperate and humiliating thing.
Water, food.