Choice

"Aaaah!! Aaaah!!!"

The screams were agonizing.

The moment Ye Lin rushed up one floor, his pupils contracted.

Beside the wall on the first floor, Huang Bin was screaming like a madman. A torrent of steaming, transparent liquid was pouring down onto his head.

Everyone on the second floor had gone deathly pale. They could only watch helplessly; no one dared go down.

The sulfuric acid that had appeared without warning melted his eyes in an instant. In such extreme agony, Huang Bin could no longer think straight.

No matter what the people upstairs shouted, he only stumbled around blindly on instinct, unable to escape the acid.

The heated sulfuric acid carbonized his skin within moments. Layers of his dermis peeled and split like dead tree bark, exposing the muscle tissue beneath.

Layer after layer dissolved. Layer after layer carbonized.

Only a few seconds passed.

Whether it was mercy or misfortune, once a large quantity of sulfuric acid poured through his mouth into his abdomen, his belly seemed to burst from within, "deflating" with a wet pop. Carbonized intestines and bloody fluid gushed through the rupture, splattering across the floor before he fell onto his back.

The system's icy announcement rang out.

"Candidate Huang Bin, ID E17514, has died."

Thud.

His body hit the floor hard, splashing up a puddle of reddish-yellow liquid.

Watching the dark red sulfuric acid spread toward his feet, Ye Lin's expression turned grim.

This was not his first time seeing someone die. But he had never seen a death this gruesome.

The acid covering the floor flowed beneath his feet and began eating through his soles.

Ye Lin dared not waste any time. He snapped Zhang Tie out of his daze and continued rushing toward the second floor.

Perhaps the shock had been too much for Zhang Tie. He stood rooted to the spot, as though stupefied.

He Zheng had warned them that people would die here, but seeing someone die so quickly, and so horribly, was simply too much!

So this was...

The Death Exam!?

There was no time for fear.

As a stinging pain shot through the soles of his feet, Zhang Tie gasped for breath and could only grit his teeth and follow Ye Lin.

"What happened? Why is there sulfuric acid?"

Ye Lin questioned the deathly pale group standing in front of the door.

Clearly, even He Zheng, who had survived several exams, had been shaken by Huang Bin's gruesome death.

"There must be a trap connected to the door's keypad! Enter the wrong code, and it goes off!"

"I heard a mechanical noise, but I thought the trap was on the second floor, so I wasn't watching the first! Who knew Huang Bin would chicken out? When he heard we had to keep going, he made an excuse and ran downstairs!"

After his brief explanation, He Zheng's eyes were full of lingering fear. Beside him, Lin Ya was sobbing loudly.

Although Huang Bin had died because he had run downstairs himself, his fate left everyone fearing they would be next.

Ye Lin's gaze darkened as he listened, then shifted toward Hu Jia, who was clutching his fingers.

"What about him?"

"Him?"

He Zheng turned toward the constantly groaning Hu Jia, his voice filled with disgust.

"He's fine. The keypad's just a little cold. His fingers froze to it when he entered the code."

"Fuck, he only lost a little skin, and he's screaming like he's dying."

"Ye Lin, did you find anything down there? It's a six-digit code. If we have nothing else, we'll just have to keep trying!"

Ye Lin said nothing, only shook his head. He noticed that the bones in Hu Jia's fingers were almost exposed.

To freeze fingers instantly, the temperature had to be at least seventy-eight degrees Celsius below zero.

The injury was far from minor. It only seemed insignificant compared with Huang Bin's death.

Huang Bin had probably fled downstairs because he was afraid He Zheng would make him try the code.

"There was nothing downstairs!? Then...!"

"The acid! There's more and more acid!!"

Before He Zheng could vent his anger, Hu Jia, who had been watching the first floor, shrieked as though he had seen a ghost.

The sulfuric acid, which had originally sprayed only from holes in the right wall, now began gushing out from the left as well.

It flowed so quickly that even Huang Bin's corpse rocked violently, as though driven along by waves.

"Fuck!!"

He Zheng was horrified, terror gripping his heart.

The acid might not reach the second floor that quickly. They might even be safe until the first basement level flooded. But the ten-minute deadline was still hanging over them, and now only seven minutes remained!

After what had happened to Hu Jia, none of them even dared touch the door!

"Ye Lin! You really didn't find anything!?"

"I'm certain."

Knowing He Zheng refused to give up hope, Ye Lin did not bother wasting words.

Memories flashed through his mind like a rapid sequence of photographs.

He was certain he had missed nothing. Forget numbers-the first floor and the stairs above and below it were made entirely of metal. Their surfaces were smooth, without even a distinctive pattern.

"Fuck it, then we'll just have to keep trying!"

"You, and you! Try it right now!"

His vicious streak unleashed, He Zheng seized another student's hand and pressed it toward the keypad.

Losing a few fingers was better than waiting here to die!

The instant he touched the keypad, Hu Jia, whose left hand was the only one still intact, screamed. But before He Zheng could force another of his fingers down, Ye Lin abruptly grabbed He Zheng's hand.

"There's no way we'll crack it by trial and error."

"A six-digit code has a million possible combinations. Even ignoring the damage to our fingers, pulling them free alone would take more than five seconds."

"At seventy-two attempts in six minutes, the odds of brute-forcing it are only 0.0072 percent!"

"Then what do you want to do!? If we don't take a gamble, are we supposed to wait here and die!?"

He Zheng's eyes were bloodshot. He did not want to waste another second. Listening to the other students crying around him, he almost wanted to chop off a few hands to use.

"A gamble?"

Refusing to back down, Ye Lin drew a deep breath, his mind racing.

This wasn't how it should work.

If this really was an exam, even one where their lives were at stake, it shouldn't come down to gambling on luck. Otherwise, what was the point?

He had sensed something was wrong from the beginning, whether it was the vague question, the hall devoid of clues, or even the sulfuric acid that had appeared without any logical explanation.

From start to finish, all it had done was force them...

Wait...

A jolt ran through Ye Lin as he suddenly realized exactly what was wrong.

"He Zheng! What does Choice mean in the question?! Does it mean choosing an answer?"

Seeing Ye Lin still quibbling over wording, He Zheng nearly burst into curses.

"Of course it means choosing an answer! Choice is multiple choice! Completion is fill-in-the-blank! Insight is reading comprehension! This is the Death Exam-of course it works like an exam!"

"Fuck, don't you get it yet? Surviving here isn't about moving a pen. It's about putting your life on the line!"

Choice? It really meant a multiple-choice question, rather than standing for something else?

Ye Lin froze, realizing the question was nowhere near as complicated as he had imagined.

"A choice? If it really is a choice, why does only one answer look possible?"

"What the hell are you talking about!? Of course there's only one answer we can choose!!"

As time ticked away, He Zheng could no longer withstand the pressure. He shoved Ye Lin aside.

He could not worry about all that anymore. Even if Ye Lin held him at gunpoint, he was going to try a few more times!

"No. Having only one correct answer and appearing to have only one possible answer are two different things."

Answering his own question, Ye Lin turned and fixed his gaze on the metal door on the first basement level.

"Based on the current height, the acid would flood the first floor and kill us in nine minutes. The first basement level would take five minutes, and the second floor at least fifteen."

"In other words, once the acid starts pouring out, our only option is to run upstairs."

"And from the very beginning, the system warned us that the first basement level was extremely dangerous. Put those together, and anyone would assume the second floor was the way to survive. Even if they weren't sure, they'd still be forced upstairs!"

"So, when there's only one obvious answer, what need is there to choose?"

He Zheng jolted, and the hand he was pressing down stopped as well.

That was right. Looked at that way, it really had nothing to do with making a choice.

"You're saying... choosing the first basement level is the right answer!?"

"But the system clearly said that once the door downstairs opens, we...!"

Before He Zheng could finish, Ye Lin snatched the fire axe from his hand and charged downstairs as fast as he could.

"There are no buts!"

"If we really woke up on the first floor, then opening the door downstairs would indeed kill us!"

"But what if..."

"We were on the second basement level all along!?"