Everyone was hidden

"This is the Seeker's exclusive item, the Spray Soul Tool." Qin Chuan patted the gun.

"It can fire unlimited Soul Power blasts."

"Anything it hits will give off a dull thud and shake from the impact."

"It doesn't deal physical damage, but the impact acts directly on a Hider's disguised form. Get hit, and you're exposed."

"What about the Hiders?" Xiao Wu asked.

"Once the game starts, the six Hiders will each randomly turn into an object." Qin Chuan held up one finger.

"A vase, a wooden table, a rock, a vegetable, a piece of fruit, a door panel, a floor tile-anything is possible."

"Whatever you become, you have to hide yourself somewhere that makes sense."

"For example, if you become a vase, you can stand with other vases or on a suitable tabletop."

"When the Seeker comes over and sees a room full of vases, it'll be hard for him to tell which ones are real and which one is you."

"But if you're a vase standing in a vegetable patch, you'll stick out like a sore thumb."

Everyone understood.

Xiao Wu clapped her hands. "This sounds fun!"

Hu Liena asked, "So how do we win?"

"If the Seeker finds everyone within five minutes, he wins. If anyone is still unfound when the five minutes are up, the Hiders win."

Yan rubbed his hands together. "Great, this sounds fun!"

Qin Chuan glanced around. "Who wants to be the Seeker?"

Yan was the first to raise his hand, shooting it straight up. "Me!"

Qin Chuan glanced at him. Yan's broad, bronze face was brimming with excitement, every inch of him itching to give it a try.

Making him the Seeker, carrying a gun and spraying the whole map, certainly suited his personality.

"All right, Yan is the Seeker. Is everyone else ready?"

"We're ready!"

Qin Chuan snapped his fingers.

Hummm~~

Yan vanished.

He hadn't left; the domain had sent him into another space, a temporary waiting area. He would only be let back out once the one-minute disguise period ended.

At the same time, the remaining six people's bodies began to change.

Xiao Wu looked down and saw her hands turn into orange-red skin. Her fingers retracted, and her body rapidly grew shorter and thicker.

Two seconds later, a carrot stood where she had been.

"Ah!" Xiao Wu's voice came from inside the carrot. "I turned into a carrot! Hahahaha, this is so much fun!"

Zhu Zhuqing said nothing.

Her body shrank again and again until she became a palm-sized black stuffed kitten, crouching on the ground with two round fabric eyes staring ahead.

"I turned into a stuffed kitten." Zhu Zhuqing's voice came from the cloth cat's mouth, sounding a touch colder than usual.

Xue Qinghe looked down and found that he had become a rectangular wooden board.

It was brown, with two streaks of wood grain across it.

"I turned into a door panel." His voice came from the board. After a pause, a hint of resignation crept into his tone. "That's bad."

The door panel was too big-two or three feet wide and five or six feet tall. Finding a sensible place to put it would take some thought.

Xie Yue became a silvery-white dagger, thin and gleaming coldly.

He looked himself over and said evenly, "I turned into a knife."

Hu Liena became a reddish-brown clay flowerpot, with a ring of dirt marks around its base. She twisted her body, and the pot wobbled twice.

"Ah, I'm a flowerpot. A little conspicuous."

Qin Chuan looked down at himself.

He had become a grayish-white floor tile, perfectly square and roughly the same size as the blue bricks paving the ground beneath him.

"It's fine. I'm a floor tile." He paused. "You can all make copies of yourselves."

"What? We can make copies too?" Xiao Wu's voice burst out of the carrot.

"Yes, up to ten. The copies can cover for you and make it harder for the Seeker to tell you apart." Qin Chuan urged them on. "Hurry up and hide. One minute isn't much time."

"Okay!"

Six people, six different objects, started moving.

The scene instantly descended into chaos.

A carrot pumped its two tiny legs furiously, thumping across the courtyard.

A stuffed kitten scampered away along the foot of the wall, its four short legs flailing in turn.

A door panel turned sideways and inched away from the courtyard entrance, creaking with every step.

A dagger flew straight into the air and sliced through it with a whoosh.

A flowerpot rolled along, giving off muffled rumbles as it went.

Qin Chuan's floor tile floated lightly upward and flew off horizontally through the air.

Xiao Wu laughed as she ran, laughing so hard her voice went off-key. "Hahahaha, running like this looks so ridiculous!"

Zhu Zhuqing ran past beside her, the cloth cat raising her head to glance at Qin Chuan overhead. "Look at Qin Chuan. A floor tile flying through the sky."

Qin Chuan drifted over their heads. "Enough talking. Hurry, we're short on time."

He flew out through the Main Residence's front entrance, turned along the courtyard wall, and found a side gate.

A small open area paved with blue bricks lay in front of the side gateway.

But the paving was incomplete. A small stretch near the gateway was still bare dirt, without any bricks.

Qin Chuan landed and lay perfectly flat on the dirt.

Then he began making copies.

One, two, three... seven floor tiles appeared out of thin air, neatly paving that stretch of dirt.

Including Qin Chuan himself, there were eight in total, joining up with the existing blue bricks beside them. Their color, grain, and size all matched.

Seamless, without so much as a stitch showing.

Hu Liena rolled over.

A flowerpot rumbled across the ground and stopped when it bumped into the step beside Qin Chuan.

"Haha, Qin Chuan, you're really good at this." Hu Liena's voice came from the flowerpot. "Then I'll put eight flowerpots by the gate. That makes sense, right?"

Qin Chuan warned her, "The Seeker can fire as much as he wants. If we stay together, we're more likely to get hit."

Hu Liena brushed it off. "It's fine. With Yan's brains, he'll never think of it."

She began making copies.

Eight identical reddish-brown clay flowerpots appeared on either side of the steps by the gate, four in each row, four on the left and four on the right, each with a bunch of artificial flowers inside.

Including Hu Liena herself, nine flowerpots stood neatly arranged there, looking like perfectly ordinary decorations for an entrance.

Just then, Xiao Wu came running over too. A carrot pumped its two tiny legs and rushed to the gate, panting.

"Planting carrots in flowerpots makes sense, right?" Xiao Wu asked.

Qin Chuan said, "No, Xiao Wu, the pots already have flowers in them. Can you plant carrots in them too? That obviously doesn't make sense."

"Right... then what should I do?"

Qin Chuan lay on the ground. Although he was in the form of a floor tile, his voice came through clearly. "Look ahead. There's a vegetable patch with scallions, cabbages, and tomatoes. A carrot like you would fit right in."

Xiao Wu kicked her two short legs twice. "You're right! That makes perfect sense!"

She turned and ran. The carrot's two little legs moved at lightning speed, trampling over Qin Chuan.

Qin Chuan: "..."

He decided not to hold a grudge against a carrot.

Xiao Wu ran into the vegetable patch, found a spot between the scallions and cabbages, and buried half her body in the dirt, leaving only an orange-red tip exposed.

Then she made eight carrot copies and planted them in a row in the soil beside her.

From a distance, it looked like a small patch of carrots, perfectly natural.

Meanwhile, Xue Qinghe found a doorway.

There was a side room on the eastern side of the courtyard, with only one half of a double door hanging in its frame.

The other half had gone missing, leaving an empty hinge on the frame.

Xue Qinghe stood himself upright in the doorframe.

The door panel fit the doorway without a crack. He made a few more wooden boards, leaning some against the wall as barriers and standing others at the woodshed entrance.

Xie Yue was even more direct. The dagger he had become flew into the Main Residence's kitchen and slipped straight into the knife rack beside the stove.

There were already three kitchen knives in the rack. He squeezed into the middle, handle up and blade down.

But he thought a step further. He was a silvery-white dagger and looked different from the black iron kitchen knives beside him.

Xie Yue hesitated, then made two dagger copies and inserted one at each end of the knife rack.

With three daggers interspersed among three kitchen knives, it looked like the household's standard kitchen setup.

Zhu Zhuqing chose the Main Residence's main hall. Its display shelf held a collection of little trinkets-porcelain vases, wooden carvings, and decorative stones-with an empty spot in the middle.

She jumped up and crouched in that empty spot, her round fabric eyes staring ahead.

The porcelain vase and wooden carving beside her were motionless, and she stayed still too. She was just an ordinary stuffed kitten sitting on a display shelf as decoration.

The minute was up.

[Clown Dwarf]'s voice rang out in everyone's minds. "The Seeker is about to reach the battlefield. The countdown begins. Ten, nine, eight..."

Everyone grew tense.

Qin Chuan lay on the ground without moving a muscle.

Hu Liena's flowerpot beside him fell still too. In the vegetable patch, Xiao Wu pulled her carrot tip inward and buried herself a little deeper in the dirt.

"Three, two, one."

"The Seeker enters!"