Instance Difficulty, Initial Map
After the Little Fire Dragon meticulously repeated, "The Clearance Conditions for our three-player Player to Instance this instance is 'reaching Willow Town '," Lin Yu felt a brief sound from the [One-sentence Lie Detector] he had in his pocket.
This means that what the other party said is indeed the truth.
Although the [Mind-Reading Mirror] and Mental Power perception can also assist in lie detection, Lin Yu can even rule out most cases of being Deception simply by observation.
However, this [One-sentence Lie Detector] does not require judgment or operation; it determines truth or falsehood based on the principle of Karma.
Therefore, at this crucial moment, Lin Yu naturally wouldn't hesitate to use the [Item] multiple times, choosing the safest way to confirm that the other party wasn't lying.
Lin Yu let out a sigh of relief.
"Very good, now there are no more questions."
Deadshot nodded. "It seems that Your Excellency Clonazepam used some kind of lie detector to verify the truthfulness of what we said, is that right?"
"Certainly."
Lin Yu did not hide anything.
Squirtle suddenly looked at Lin Yu: "Should we give this guy a lie detector test too...?"
"There's no need," the Little Fire Dragon said after thinking for a moment. "He mentioned the condition of 'reaching Willow Town's first—if he was lying to us, how would he know what our Clearance Conditions are?"
Lin Yu countered the Little Fire Dragon's statement. "That's not necessarily true. If my Clearance Conditions is something like 'preventing anyone from entering Willow Town within five days,' it's easy to deduce that the Player who are hostile to my faction might have the Clearance Conditions of entering Willow Town."
As Lin Yu spoke, the Little Fire Dragon nodded. "I see."
Deadshot spoke up, "Since you put it that way, I might as well test it out!"
As he spoke, the man put away his gun and took out a dark crystal box with a shimmering surface.
The box opened, and a white bat with tiny wings flew out.
Deadshot spoke up, "Why don't you repeat it too?"
Lin Yu also repeated the sentence, "The condition for our three- Player team to Clearance Conditions this Instance is 'reaching Willow Town '." Then, the white bat flew to Lin Yu's side, circled twice, and returned to Deadshot's side.
Deadshot put it back into the box and said, "This is a variant of the 'Heart-Devouring Bat Demon' from the Night Valley Realm. It feeds on the disloyalty produced by people... The fact that it didn't react to you just now means that what you said earlier was correct."
After both sides confirmed that what the other said was true, they finally became certain of one thing...
"This really isn't a 'Confrontation Instance'...?"
Li Nian said in disbelief.
"That's great news," Squirtle breathed a sigh of relief, "At least we don't have to face the 'Master Thief' anymore."
As he spoke, Lin Yu shook his head.
"No, this may not be a good thing."
"If you're going to be teammates with the three of us, it means this [Instance] is designed with the strength of all six of us in mind," Lin Yu said Leng Jing. "The three of you should all be 'Tier 2'... Although I'm 'Tier 1', I can say with certainty that I should be considered to have 'Tier 2' strength."
"Six 'Tier 2' characters, or two three-person teams... this means that if it's not a [Confrontation Instance], the pressure we face from the Instance itself will be even greater."
"The reason we judged this Instance to be a [confrontational] type is largely because the condition of 'reaching Willow Town's and our current situation are too simple, so we judged that the greater difficulty might come from other Player... This means that this Instance may harbor more crises and challenges than we currently know."
Lin Yu analyzed the situation thoroughly, and the Little Fire Dragon nodded repeatedly.
"That makes sense. Perhaps this [Instance] is closer to a [puzzle] type than [survival]... at least it should incorporate many puzzle-solving elements!"
As Little Fire Dragon spoke, his two teammates agreed with him.
"So, we'd better share our experiences," Li Nian said, resting her chin on her hand. "We're actually facing some... rather strange situations right now."
Afterwards, Li Nian briefly explained how they had mingled with the caravan, and informed them of the unusual attack by the Yaomo, the strange "goods" being transported by the caravan, the living dead in Chen Family Fortress, and the unusual events surrounding the disappearance of the two caravan members.
These experiences left Little Fire Dragon, Deadshot, and Squirtle speechless.
"This Instance feels pretty challenging," Little Fire Dragon remarked. "There are characters who seem dead but are actually alive, characters who seem alive but are actually dead... and people who mysteriously disappear."
"These sound like really tough questions."
As the Little Fire Dragon spoke, Lin Yu looked at them and asked, "Did you have a smooth journey all the way...? By the way, I haven't asked yet, how did you find this Chen Family Fortress?"
Upon hearing Lin Yu's words, the Little Fire Dragon honestly replied, "The initial location where the three of us entered the Instance wasn't at the caravan's meeting point, but in a dilapidated Daoist temple. There was a skeleton in that Daoist temple that looked like it had been dead for a long time—but now that you mention it, we didn't check it carefully. Maybe that skeleton is still alive."
"In short, the skeleton's clothes were quite tattered, so it was easy to see that he had a tattered Map in his arms, marked with several routes that led to different human settlements."
"One of the routes leads to Chen Family Fortress —and it's the shortest one, so we came here first."
As Little Fire Dragon spoke, Deadshot nodded and added, "The basic situation is as Little Fire Dragon described, but I want to add one point: the reason we chose Chen Family Fortress wasn't random, but because the Map didn't mark a direct route to Willow Town."
"So, our goal was to get to the human settlement as quickly as possible and ask for directions—but unexpectedly, we ran into you here."
"The old man from Chen Family Fortress said that a caravan had already moved into the stone house, and there were three people in the caravan who, like us, didn't seem to be locals. We guessed that they might be the remaining Player, so we came over to negotiate."
After Deadshot finished replenishing the supplies, Lin Yu nodded and raised a question.
"Could I see your Map?"
He took the Map and, based on the route on it, deduced the location where Little Fire Dragon and his party first entered this [Instance].
The location of that Daoist temple Chen Family Fortress was not much different from the distance of Chen Family Fortress from where I originally was.
This puzzled Lin Yu.
"That's strange, why are you arriving later than us?"