The flying insects scattered in all directions, buzzing around like headless flies. The sudden shifting of the Maze made them uneasy, and for the moment, none dared to come near.
Su Er withdrew and sat quietly to the side. The Teng Snake Lord saw through the whole ploy—everything before had just been a feint. From beginning to end, Su Er’s real target was only these insects.
Coal Face Reveals Itself.
Clearly, he wasn’t the only one who possessed this tool.
Five minutes passed, yet the Maze showed no abnormalities, nor did any black heads poke out. Flapping its wings in the air, the Teng Snake Lord hissed, “Seems your goodwill has been taken as meddling.”
Su Er looked unsurprised. “Just leaving a way out.”
The Teng Snake Lord suddenly swooped down in front of him, its flicking tongue almost brushing his sharp nose. “On you, I smell the scent of a snake.”
Su Er’s body already housed a snake’s eye. At these words, his face remained unchanged.
The Teng Snake Lord seemed to sense that eye too, its throat letting out a strange vibration while its tail curled slightly. “You only acted after the first scream rang out—because the Maze must be opened with fresh blood.”
Su Er narrowed his eyes.
“Of course, bleeding doesn’t mean death. But Deception and the Maze are seamlessly linked. If every person cut themselves open to shed blood, then from the very start they would enter weakened.” The Teng Snake Lord softly uttered four words: “Cold-blooded animal.”
The words cut like blades, but Su Er sat there silently, unmoving even when the second scream came from inside the Maze.
The Maze appeared as a solid building, yet behaved as though it were satiated. Its walls trembled and briefly turned transparent, showing blood endlessly pouring in.
The Teng Snake Lord clicked its tongue. “Passing the Maze on your own strength brings higher rewards when the tally comes. The one you want to help, he’s the same type as you.”
“I take shortcuts because my strength isn’t enough,” Su Er finally said. “He’s different.”
With Deception about to open, throwing everything into growing stronger was the only way to survive. Dispersing the insects was merely leaving Ji Heng a path of retreat.
Besides, not harming others was the bottom line for Su Er. If he had extra strength, he would lend a hand; beyond that, everyone was on their own.
His eyes stayed fixed on the Maze, as though he wanted to pierce through its many layers of heavy walls and glimpse the world beyond.
No one knew how much time passed before the Teng Snake Lord, hovering in midair, said, “Someone’s coming out.”
With that, it darted forward and lashed its black tail, dragging a player back to the starting point.
At the sight of the sign at the entrance, the player worried about some mishap forcing them to start over from scratch.
“The Maze will only open Trickery once the last person comes through.”
The Teng Snake Lord told him, erasing his doubts.
Su Er turned his head and recognized the newcomer—Wan Yi from Wen Shi. At the last meal together, Zhao Sanliang had mentioned he’d also gotten an admission ticket. But since Su Er had twice been forcibly dragged into instances with too many accidents and too little time, he hadn’t noticed him before.
“Long time no see,” Su Er greeted first.
Wan Yi nodded. “The last time we parted was not long after your ‘wedding.’”
“…” Su Er coughed. “Did you see Ji Heng?”
“Grinding monsters.”
Su Er gave a soft “oh,” then calmly sat to wait.
Ji Heng didn’t appear too quickly. It wasn’t until the Teng Snake Lord’s seventh flight that it finally carried him back. The host’s serpentine eyes brimmed with displeasure, venomous fangs bared for a full minute without being retracted.
“What were you doing in there?” Su Er asked in a low voice.
Ji Heng replied, “At dead ends or forks, ghosts appear regularly. I tried my luck asking if any of them knew news of Deception.”
Su Er’s eyes brightened. “And?”
“Met them more than ten times. Useless.”
Su Er fell silent, staring ahead, no longer pressing the matter.
As the sky grew darker, the Teng Snake Lord set down a long-haired player just emerging from the Maze. “Everyone’s here.”
Su Er counted. At least seven players had perished inside.
“Not strong enough, getting eaten by the Maze is a blessing,” the Teng Snake Lord said, pleased at the growing death toll.
The Maze stretched itself, shaking the ground violently with its movement. Just before the players completely lost their footing, it stopped. By then it was no longer a building but a massive python coiled tightly, its body dozens of meters long.
Towering like a mountain, the ferocious beast cast a huge shadow on the earth, as though heralding the night’s early arrival.
“Line up. Sit on its tail.” The Teng Snake Lord excluded Su Er, personally escorting him. “You never entered the Maze—it doesn’t acknowledge you.”
From the outside, the phyton was covered in sharp scales. Its appearance was eerie, but compared to the Maze monster, it was almost small.
The players had no choice. They mounted the python’s tail one by one in the order they had emerged.
Su Er, however, was hooked by the tail tip and flung violently. If not for grabbing the python’s wing bone, he would have fallen from the air. They flew for a while until a blazing radiance surged before them, like staring into the sun.
“Don’t want to go blind? Then shut your eyes.”
He didn’t need the warning; Su Er had already closed his eyes. Even through his lids, he felt the searing brilliance. When the stinging faded, the wind brushing past his cheeks grew soft.
“We’re here.”
Everyone had wondered what Deception truly looked like, even picturing vast blueprints in their minds, but reality was far from imagination.
It was a city—more precisely, an empty city.
Towering buildings, artistic sculptures, fountains still spraying in time with music… Everything pulsed with the signs of life, except there were no living beings. It was as though the entire population had evaporated in an instant.
The Teng Snake Lord was gone. The giant python too had vanished without a trace.
“Look there,” Wan Yi suddenly pointed.
Beside the fountain, someone had appeared without notice. He was tall and thin, pale, with delicate features.
“I am most pleased you all made it safely to Deception,” the lanky man walked forward and said warmly. “I am this round’s host—Green Lotus Sage.”
Using a completely unexaggerated metaphor, when their eyes met, what the players saw was a soul so pure that some even dug their fingernails into their palms, and even through the pain, they couldn’t bring themselves to doubt the man before them too much.
Just as many players were struggling against their own willpower, a voice rang out: “The clearance requirement.”
From the very beginning, Ji Heng’s attention was never on the host—he only cared about how to leave the instance.
“Find ‘Hope.’ The time limit is seven days.” Green Lotus Sage raised one finger, patiently adding, “Clue one: no two hopes are the same.”
Then he raised a second finger. “Clue two: Deception has a very high survival rate.”
The first statement was confusing, but the crowd didn’t react much. It was the second one that…
“High survival rate?” the long-haired player repeated, with a hint of mockery.
Green Lotus Sage didn’t get angry. Instead, he gently replied, “A host cannot lie about the rules.”
Everyone started nitpicking. To blend in, Su Er chimed in as well: “But according to outside news, nobody who came in has ever left alive.”
Green Lotus Sage shook his head. “Many players have survived—I can guarantee that.”
He seemed approachable, yet revealed no further information.
In the sudden silence that followed, Green Lotus Sage got to the point: “I will distribute missions at intervals. Whoever completes them will receive a clue.”
He paused. “The first mission: find a rabbit. Each of you must bring me one rabbit before nightfall.”
Time here wasn’t like in the Maze—it was still daytime.
Wan Yi asked, “Alive or dead? Size? Fur color?”
Green Lotus Sage shook his head. “Alive will do. Even if you steal one from someone else, it counts. But killing other players is forbidden.”
With doubts in their hearts, everyone scattered. To avoid having their rabbit stolen, most chose to remain nearby, so they could turn one in immediately once caught.
Wan Yi approached Su Er and Ji Heng. “Team up for now?”
Having worked together before, Ji Heng nodded.
Su Er suggested, “Let’s check the park first.”
When it came to catching animals, the first thought was grass fields in parks. They weren’t the only ones with the idea—some had already climbed tall buildings to scout greener areas.
Halfway, Su Er stopped at a billboard.
A man and woman in business attire smiled brightly. Beside them were the words: “Welcome to Hope City.” Not far away stood a hospital, the sign reading: “Hope City Third People’s Hospital.”
“Looks like this city is called Hope City.”
Wan Yi sneered. “What I fear is that in the end, it brings only despair.”
Ji Heng didn’t join the discussion. His eyes shifted to a real estate sales center across the road, and he walked over.
He pushed the glass door open—it wasn’t locked. After circling inside, he found a flyer. One of the selling points of a new housing project was its proximity to the forest park. With a glance at the floor plan, he roughly knew where to go.
At first, they moved with full vigilance. But Hope City, much like Green Lotus Sage, felt utterly harmless. They passed unimpeded. The supermarket doors stood wide open, with supplies readily available.
Amid the silence and pressure, the park gate finally came into view.
By the time they arrived, some were already there ahead of them.
Soon after, two more groups came—one with five players, one with seven.
“Competition’s fierce, huh.” A man in a floral shirt whistled, hands shoved into his pockets.
The first to arrive, a player named Zhao Ting, actually looked up and replied, “Plenty of rabbits, but hard to catch.” He held a dead rabbit. “They’re like water—use a bit too much strength, and they die. But these rabbits jump so high, if you don’t use force, you can’t catch them.”
Su Er went under a willow tree, stripped off a branch, and made a makeshift basket. He tested it on a rabbit hiding in the bushes, but the basket was kicked straight through with a hole, and the rabbit ran off with the twig in its mouth.
After the failure, his sharp eyes spotted alfalfa. He whispered, “I’ll gather some alfalfa for a trap.”
Ji Heng nodded.
Watching the entire scene of Su Er pitting his wits against a rabbit, Ji Heng gave a slight shake of his head.
The floral-shirted man, who had been carefree and flippant, frowned and came over, patting Ji Heng on the shoulder. “Hey brother, did a spy sneak into your group?”
Ji Heng didn’t answer. Wan Yi instead sneered, “Anyone with eyes can see that.”
Meanwhile, Zhao Ting, who was chasing a rabbit on the lawn, stopped dead when he saw Su Er carefully setting traps.
They hadn’t interacted much, but from the Maze incident, Zhao Ting was sure this guy never played by the rules. And now he was obediently following the host’s instructions to catch rabbits?
The hell?!
Zhao Ting sucked in a cold breath. That had to be a fake Su Er! He couldn’t help glancing back at his own teammates, wondering if anyone in his group had been replaced by an imposter.
And he wasn’t the only one noticing. Not far away, another player cursed under his breath.
Fake. Fake beyond belief.
The very same Su Er who’d forced the host to eject players from the instance twice—could such a person really follow the process meekly, not pulling any stunts? Even ghosts wouldn’t believe it!
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