The candles were lit.
In the enormous stone chamber, the only sounds were the faint crackle of burning candles and everyone's breathing, some light, some heavy.
Leorio stood before the candleholder, his arms folded across his chest and a confident smile on his face.
He stared fixedly at the two candles, his gaze so sharp it seemed he meant to burn straight through them.
To him, this was no longer a wager, but a coronation of his own intelligence.
He firmly believed he had seen through the trap and exposed the question setter's psychological tricks. Now, all he needed to do was wait for the result and savor the fruits of victory.
Gon and Kurapika stood behind him, looking tense.
Although Leorio's analysis sounded perfectly reasonable, fifty hours were at stake-almost everything they had left. They couldn't truly relax.
Killua, meanwhile, looked utterly unconcerned. He leaned against the wall and yawned.
He had no interest in such a slow-moving wager. Only occasionally did he lift his eyelids to glance at the two candles, a trace of impatience in his eyes.
Tonpa hid at the back of the group, wearing a gleeful smile.
He couldn't wait for these rookies to lose, preferably and get eliminated outright. Seeing Leorio stubbornly blunder ahead filled him with delight.
Lin Yan stood behind and to the side of everyone else, his expression calm, his gaze equally so.
He wasn't watching Leorio or the mild-mannered prisoner. From the very beginning, his eyes had been fixed on the two candles.
More precisely, on the "aura" emanating from them.
To an ordinary person, they were simply two ordinary candles, burning and melting.
But through Lin Yan's Qi Observation, the two candles presented entirely different sights.
The aura of the long candle on the left was perfectly normal.
It was a mass of gentle, steadily diminishing white energy. As the candle burned, it dissipated slowly and steadily, consistent with the normal decay of an object's energy.
But the aura of the short candle on the right was very strange.
Within its white energy field were wisps of pale blue energy, extremely faint yet unusually active.
Like hidden currents beneath the water, these wisps didn't dissipate as the candle burned. Instead, they grew increasingly active.
They wound around the wick, as though waiting for something.
It's oil!
Lin Yan confirmed his suspicion.
The short candle had definitely been tampered with.
It had a specially made "double-layered structure"-a thick outer layer of ordinary wax concealed any difference in smell or feel. Only when the flame reached its core would it encounter the highly flammable oil.
For now, the flame was still burning through the candle's upper half. Once it reached the oil-soaked section, the burning speed would skyrocket!
There was nothing particularly clever about this scam.
It exploited neither reverse psychology nor anything of the sort, but simple greed and an information gap.
The prisoner had dared to let Leorio inspect the candles because he knew an ordinary person couldn't possibly discover the secret inside without breaking them apart.
And Leorio had trapped himself in the assumption that "the Hunter Exam wouldn't openly cheat." All his inspections had been superficial.
Lin Yan glanced at the mild-mannered prisoner across from them.
The man was smiling, looking perfectly composed. But in Lin Yan's sight, his murky, swamp-like gray-green aura was churning happily, an emotion called "smugness" almost spilling over.
Then he looked back at Leorio.
He was still immersed in his own world.
He noticed that the long candle seemed to be producing more melted wax than the short one, and that it was flowing faster.
"See that?" Leorio lowered his voice and spoke excitedly to Kurapika behind him. "The long one's burning faster! I was right!"
Kurapika frowned and examined them closely. That did seem to be the case-the wax running down the long candle appeared to flow more heavily.
Could it be... that Leorio really made the right bet?
Time ticked by.
Five minutes...
Ten minutes...
The long candle had visibly burned down farther than the short one.
This discovery inflated Leorio's confidence even more. The corners of his mouth began rising uncontrollably, as though he could already hear the bells of victory.
"Heh, looks like we've got this in the bag." He nudged Kurapika's arm smugly. "Well? Pretty smart, aren't I?"
Kurapika said nothing, but his tightly furrowed brow did ease a little.
Gon smiled happily too. "That's great! You're amazing, Leorio!"
Only Killua cast a suspicious glance at the mild-mannered prisoner.
The smile on that man's face hadn't changed once.
He was too calm-so calm that something felt wrong. If he was really about to lose, how could he show no reaction at all?
Lin Yan shook his head slightly.
It's almost time.
He saw that the short candle's flame had reached its middle section.
At that very moment, the pale blue currents lurking deep within its aura suddenly ignited!
Whoom!
It might almost have been an illusion, but the short candle's flame seemed to leap upward in that instant. Its color also shifted from a warm orange-yellow to an eerie pale blue.
"Huh?"
Killua was the first to notice something wrong.
"Hey, look. Isn't there something weird about the short candle?"
The moment he finished speaking, everyone focused on the short candle on the right.
Then they witnessed something that left them dumbstruck.
The short candle, which had been burning steadily, suddenly began blazing furiously, as though kicked into overdrive!
Its flame no longer merely flickered upward. The entire candle seemed to be engulfed in blue fire. The melted wax no longer trickled down drop by drop, but poured like a waterfall!
The candle was shrinking at an astonishing speed, visibly dwindling before their eyes!
"Wh-what's going on?!"
The smile froze on Leorio's face.
His eyes widened, unable to believe what he was seeing. "How... how is it suddenly burning so fast?!"
Meanwhile, the long candle continued burning at its unhurried pace. Compared with the short candle beside it, now blazing out of control, it might as well have been in slow motion.
As one burned furiously while the other remained steady, the balance between victory and defeat underwent a stunning reversal in an instant!
"It's oil! There's oil inside the candle!" Kurapika realized it immediately, his expression turning grim.
"You cheated! You're cheating!" Leorio pointed at the mild-mannered prisoner and roared in outrage.
The prisoner's smile finally lost its friendliness, filling instead with mockery and scorn.
"Cheating? I did no such thing."
He spread his hands, looking innocent.
"I only said these two candles were made from the same material and had the same wicks. I never said there was nothing else inside them."
"Besides, I gave you a chance to inspect them before the wager began. You failed to find anything yourselves. Who can you blame for that?"
"You bastard!" Leorio trembled with rage. He tried to charge forward, but Kurapika held him firmly back.
"Calm down, Leorio! The wager isn't over yet!"
Although Kurapika said that, he knew in his heart that it was already over.
Everyone watched the short candle in despair as it approached the end.
It was no longer a candle, but an hourglass counting down to "failure."
And all they could do was watch their last hope drain away, little by little.
Leorio's mind went blank.
The intelligence he had been so proud of, the reasoning he had believed could see through everything-all of it had been smashed to pieces by a blatant scam.
He felt like a clown who thought himself clever, performing his heart out onstage while the audience had been laughing at his stupidity from the very beginning.
Why did it turn out like this?
He couldn't understand.
But I checked them...
Lin Yan...
He suddenly remembered Lin Yan.
He remembered Lin Yan's firm opposition from the start, his warning that "this is a trap," and his words that "the other side may have tampered with the candles."
So he'd seen through everything all along.
So I was the only real clown.
Pfft.
A faint sound.
After consuming the last drop of wax, the short candle's flame finally went out completely.
The long candle still had a full half remaining.
They had lost.
It was an utter defeat.
"All right, time's up." The mild-mannered prisoner clapped his hands and announced the result with a beaming smile. "As agreed, fifty hours will be deducted from your remaining time."
The moment he finished speaking, the numbers on the timers around their wrists began racing downward.
71:59:...
71:58:...
22:00:...
21:59:...
At last, the glaring numbers stopped at "21:23:15."
The entire world seemed to fall silent at that moment.
Before you continue