Alice's Hell (18) - Fate's Gamble

After confirming their identities, the two exchanged information they had gathered. However, due to the precious time, Yu Xing only briefly mentioned the torn pages found in the pillow. They agreed to analyze the information back in their room after searching the fifth floor.

Zeng Lai searched two rooms but didn't find much. He muttered to himself, "Why do I feel like I'm doing so badly?" as he showed the charred little sculpture to Yu Xing.

This is a wood carving. Unlike the stone statues that can be seen everywhere in the castle, its style is more lively. It depicts a girl wearing a pleated skirt, carrying a bundle on her back, and wearing a wide-brimmed hat, as if she is walking.

The burning had disfigured her face, and her clothes were riddled with holes, revealing the grain of the wood beneath.

It's quite remarkable that Zeng Lai managed to put that palm-sized thing in his pocket; after putting it back, his pocket was bulging.

After sorting through the intelligence, they each went into a room, but their gains were minimal, and they came out again in less than ten minutes.

There are seven rooms in this corridor, and the last one is at the end.

Pushing open the door, Yu Xing let Zeng Lai go in first to get the room, then followed behind him and looked him over.

This is the largest bedroom compared to the previous ordinary rooms, and it is also more exquisitely furnished, about 1.5 times the size of the other rooms.

However, it was also the room with the heaviest burn marks. The walls were blackened, and even with the lights on, the room still felt dark and gloomy.

Zeng Lai said, "Let's look for it together."

As soon as he finished speaking, he remembered something and reminded her, "Don't tell Qu Xuanqing that I asked that question when we get out—"

Yu Xing found it amusing that he had finally remembered the sentence after taking so long, and nodded in agreement.

Judging from the fear most strategists have of Qu Xuanqing, Zeng Lai, true to his reputation for courting disaster, immediately came up with that question.

Yu Xing felt that this question was unanswerable.

Those things are changed every day, aren't they? Who knows what color they are now?

After a brief interruption, the two began a thorough search.

Yu Xing began checking everything one by one, throwing away anything unusable into a corner.

After watching for a while, Zeng Lai realized that this method was indeed more thorough, so he simply let loose and joined the demolition effort, regardless of who had lived there before.

Unlike Yu Xing, who still exudes an inherent elegance even in his violent actions, he was much more volatile. If Yu Xing was an assassin, he was a berserker, having inherited the spirit of the Siberian Husky perfectly.

After Yu Xing finished inspecting the cabinet, he looked back and suddenly felt a Ren Yi agreement with Ren Yi, whom he had never met before... Zeng Lai's outward appearance was indeed like that of a silly dog, no wonder Ren Yi said he was not composed.

After flexing her fingers, Yu Xing regained her focus, straightened up, and looked around.

Since there were no keys to the first six rooms, the key could only be in this large bedroom. He figured the key wouldn't be hidden behind some partition; otherwise, if the deducer came looking for the key while being chased, wouldn't they have no chance at all?

This Absurd World must give them a chance to "find a way out of a desperate situation" and "make a comeback from the brink of defeat," right?

The reason for the house-destroying search was actually to look for "collectible elements" with burn marks, but now that everything has been roughly searched, there's no need to waste time.

His gaze finally settled on the painting hanging on the wall.

Several oil paintings also suffered from the effects of the environment. One of them had a broken frame, with cracks in the glass resembling a spider web, teetering on the verge of falling off. The rest looked very old, with their frames covered in a layer of indelible black residue from years of neglect.

He reached out and took the picture frames off one by one. When he got to the broken frame, he felt something move inside.

Yu Xing shook it vigorously, and after a short while, a rusty silver key fell out and hit the pen holder that Zeng Lai had thrown on the ground with a crisp sound.

Zeng Lai's ears twitched, and she immediately looked at him. "Found it?"

"It seems so." Yu Xing picked up the key, squinted at it, and saw that the key was about the same size as the keyhole on the small wooden box, so it should fit.

"Great, it wasn't a waste of time." Zeng Lai breathed a sigh of relief and whispered in a voice so low that no one could hear her, "I thought my vote had worked from the start."

Coincidentally, Yu Xing's hearing was not normal. He immediately grasped the key point and recalled the sacrificial die that Zeng Lai had thrown out of the bathroom, and the blood-red "one" facing upwards.

Hearing Zeng Lai's tone, a guess flashed through his mind, and he immediately glanced at her sideways. "?"

"Are your dice the ones that control luck?"

Zeng Lai: "..."

"It's been discovered. Yes, that's my main offering, the one that helps me make decisions, and sometimes it even saves my life."

Yu Xing: "Sometimes it can be fatal."

Zeng Lai: "... Yes."

He didn't mean to hide it; he just wanted to take the opportunity to test Yu Xing had used points to enhance his five senses. He thought he had found out and thought to himself, "This kid has a lot of points. He's enhancing his speed, enhancing his five senses, and he even has several sacrificial items. His potential is truly amazing..."

He then briefly explained the abilities of his dice.

This is information disclosed by the star fortune teller gambler to other fortune tellers: [Fate's Gamble], a sacrifice in the form of a dice. Its first ability is to predict the correctness of a decision; it can only be used once per fortune teller. One point represents complete error, six points represent perfect accuracy, and two to four points increase the accuracy. Its second ability is a gamble on fate; rolling a number—one represents bad luck, six represents good luck, and two to four points increase the accuracy—is used to change one's luck.

This was a sacrifice Zeng Lai received a long time ago; his gambler title was only confirmed by the system after he obtained this [Fate's Gamble].

"The luck I get from each second roll of my ability doesn't take effect immediately. I don't know when it will come, or whether it will only affect me or others." Zeng Lai looked pale. "I can sense the result after I throw it, and if I throw a 'one'... I'm speechless."

Yu Xing: Then you're really unlucky.

Zeng Lai pouted, looking somewhat upset. "To be honest, I searched those rooms for ages but couldn't find any clues. Plus, I can't find the key anymore. I thought my bad luck was starting to strike and I'd hidden it in a hard-to-find place. Luckily, it seems like it hasn't started yet."

He thought to himself, "This is truly a stroke of luck."

Having achieved their goal, the two planned to leave through the corridor and return to the lobby on the first floor to check the time. At this moment, Yu Xing glanced at the messy room, her expression suddenly changed, and she walked towards the bed.

He had checked every room before, and he had lifted the bed frame once. But the bed in this large bedroom hadn't been touched yet, and he felt like something was missing.

Yu Xing wasn't obsessive-compulsive; he just noticed that the design of the bed being connected to the ground underneath was a bit strange, since the beds in their bedroom were all raised off the ground, allowing people to see underneath.

The fifth-floor room was noticeably less furnished than the third-floor room, but the bed looked a bit more expensive. Yu Xing a vague intuition about this—there must be a reason for it.

At that moment, seeing Zeng Lai's slightly speechless expression, he bent down, pulled out the sheets and mattress, and used his strength to lift the bed board.

"I said, are you serious? Are you addicted to demolishing houses...?" the gambler laughed, but his expression froze the next second. Well, he got slapped in the face pretty quickly.

Yu Xing also stopped in his tracks, because this time, under the bed was no longer a dirty, long-uncleaned floor, but a deep hole.

"Bang!" He pushed the bed aside and looked inside with a mixture of understanding and surprise.

It was pitch black, and the bottom was nowhere in sight.

The opening was slightly smaller than the bed, also rectangular, with an iron step on one side that extended down to form a simple staircase.

Zeng Lai, dumbfounded, leaned closer. "Awesome. This was supposed to be a clue from somewhere, pointing to what's below, right? But you, the demolition master, discovered it beforehand?"

Yu Xing readily accepted the praise; he was very confident in his intuition.

As a result, just as he was about to have Zeng Lai stick the tinderbox in to light the way, Zeng Lai accidentally stepped on a spherical craft that had rolled onto the ground, slipped, and fell forward.

"Holy shit!"

Zeng Lai's shin hit the bed wall, causing him to lose his balance and nearly fall into the hole. He instinctively reached out to Yu Xing: "Pull me up—"

Yu Xing hadn't expected this turn of events and quickly handed him his hand. However, Zeng Lai's outstretched hand was still holding a tinderbox, and Yu Xing grabbed nothing at first, but then felt something being forcibly shoved into his hand.

It's a tinderbox.

Zeng Lai: "..."

Yu Xing: "..."

Zeng Lai intended to pull Yu Xing back to his balance, but in the process of losing control, he accidentally shoved the tinder into Yu Xing's hand. Yu Xing gasped for breath, and then screamed as he fell to the ground.

Yu Xing lay at the cave entrance with a complicated expression, watching Zeng Lai's figure quickly disappear into the darkness, listening to the cries growing more and more distant, unsure of how to react.

The hole was deeper than expected. Zeng Lai fell in, it felt like he had fallen into a bottomless pit. However, this was also good news, as it meant he wouldn't be smashed to pieces.

When even the screams ceased to be heard, the dagger on Yu Xing's belt moved, and Yi Qing's voice rang out. "This person is truly optimistic, actually believing that bad luck hasn't taken effect yet."

"... So, his method is really starting to work?" Yu Xing sighed. "Never mind, let's go down and find him."

Since Zeng Lai didn't go down the steps, he could still help her if she got injured.

Yi Qing materialized into human form and floated in the air, surrounded by a swirling blue mist. "Try it."

Yu Xing raised an eyebrow and tried to step onto the steps in Yanbian, but felt a resistance.

The darkness here is terrifying; even with lighting, it's frightening. You notice that the entrance seems to be protected by a barrier, allowing only one person to enter at a time.

[There's more than one entrance to your destination; go find another one.]

"... Truly the worst possible outcome." Yu Xing glanced down with pity. "Then I'll have to find another way. I really don't know if his bad luck has affected him or others."

Yi Qing smiled gently, "Believe me, this is just bad luck unique to this person. He's probably not going to have a good time now. Yu Xing, if you want to help him, find a way to 'move downwards'."