Doomsday Wonderland

Chapter 1443: Lin Sanjiu's Ploy

Lin Sanjiu lay on the corridor floor, gazing at the fluttering dust and flickering fluorescent lights above, her chest heaving with each breath. She felt no urge to rise; instead, she wished to remain there, cloaked in the respite of exhaustion. Further, the mall echoed with the volunteer's amplified voice announcing the game results.

"This can't be right," Advaita said sharply. "There's something wrong with my shelf!"

"The setup of all shelves and items is correct," replied the volunteer, his voice growing louder as he approached from the main entrance. "Advaita's team has secured five target items, while Silvan's team has eight. Silvan's team wins."

Lin Sanjiu reflected on this outcome. So, Advaita had managed to salvage an extra item? It must have been from the teetering shelf she had barely caught in time—the only one Lin Sanjiu hadn't tampered with.

Advaita's tone chilled further. "As I said, something's wrong with my shelf. There isn't a single target item in my domain shelf. I demand an explanation."

"The game's conditions are intact," the volunteer said. "Hold on, I'll go check."

It seemed he too had to get information from the back-end operators of the game world.

"There's no need for that," Lin Sanjiu interjected. "I did it."

"It was you?" came Advaita's voice.

In an instant, Lin Sanjiu propelled herself off the floor with a swift, carp-like leap and sprinted down the corridor. She had barely surged forward like a startled rabbit when a figure loomed behind her, aiming a palm strike at the very spot she had just vacated.

Knowing she couldn't face an enraged Advaita alone, she yelled, "Silvan, help! Silvan!"

As if he had been waiting for a while, a blond figure emerged from behind a shelf at the end of the corridor, extending a hand towards her.

Advaita did not give chase. Standing amidst the myriad of shelves, she slowly said, "I've been watching you closely the entire time, and you never touched anything on any of the shelves. How could this be?"

She probably wouldn't be nearly as angry if someone like Ji Shanqing had come up with the strategy to win. Being outsmarted by someone who seemed careless, with muscles that worked faster than their brain, was frustrating for anyone, especially the meticulous Advaita.

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"I figured out your route..." Lin Sanjiu said, catching her breath beside Silvan.

Advaita paused. "How did you do it?"

"Everything in this mall is functioning normally – electricity, water, air conditioning, even the arrangement of goods. So, when I saw the security room, I thought there might be a functioning surveillance system inside," Lin Sanjiu explained, then flopped down beside Silvan. Her physical exhaustion wasn't too severe, but the sudden release of her sustained tension made her feel weak all over.

"Come to think of it, I should thank you," she continued with a smile. "If you hadn't insisted on making me take off my pants, I wouldn't have thought about changing in a room and then noticed the mall's security room."

She could feel Silvan's gaze on her at the mention of taking off her pants.

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"I took note of every spot you appeared in the surveillance footage and quickly deduced your route," Lin Sanjiu said, deciding not to mention [Conscious Mimicry]. "I noticed that after you found the domain shelf, you would purposely avoid it in your subsequent moves."

"You couldn't have possibly figured out my route," Advaita said with a scoff, slowly emerging from the depths of the aisle. "I don't even move along a set path—"

"When you move, it's as if you don't exist in the same world as us," Lin Sanjiu interjected, looking around. Various items lay haphazardly on the shelves: a mug's round body was topped with a phone case, forming a triangular shadow between them; a vacuum cleaner box took up most of the shelf space, leaving a human-sized gap.

The corners and gaps in this three-dimensional space seemed to connect to another dimension, forming a pathway for Advaita to traverse. Lin Sanjiu wasn't certain how accurate her guess was, but one thing she was sure of.

"What you perceive as space is fundamentally different from what we see, isn't it?" Lin Sanjiu said almost patiently, reassured by Silvan's presence behind her. "In areas we see as impassable, you see clear pathways. I guess when you look at this mall, you also perceive another dimension formed by connecting all these gaps and corners. You know where the routes are that only you can traverse."

Advaita remained silent, neither confirming nor denying.

Lin Sanjiu took a deep breath. "That's why you lost."

"What?" Chen Hanwu's voice suddenly sounded from the other side. He must have been in shock for a while, as he hadn't spoken since the game ended.

"I watched all the surveillance footage with you in it. You would emerge from one shelf and then take your next step dozens of meters away," Lin Sanjiu said, lowering her voice slightly. "I thought then, with your erratic movement, how could you remember the location of each shelf? The reason you could avoid your domain shelves was that you recognized their shelf numbers from afar, right?"

Chen Hanwu made a choking sound.

"At first, I wasn't very sure, so I thought about it carefully—" To be more accurate, she thought in Ji Shanqing's state of mind— "Is it possible that the mall you see has a different sequence? Like a different map. If you remember the location of the domain shelves on your map, then my method would be completely useless."

Lin Sanjiu reached out and picked up a box of quick-bake cake mix. "However, I remembered that you levitated all the goods into the air to attack Silvan's team. When they all fell back down like rain, even if there was an original sequence, it would have been messed up. Yet, you could still weave through the gaps between the products."

She knew very well what Advaita faced in the last minute of the game. Who would have thought that such a simple, almost childlike method could have such a significant effect? It seems the principle of Occam's razor can be applied in many places.

"So, I changed thenumbers on your domain shelves," she said, grinning. "Like changingthe appearance of A to B or changing 3 to 8. I was worried I wouldn't have timeto finish the description."

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