Initial Value ┃ Not necessarily. Apparently there used to be another initial value, who counted as... a senior?

Sure enough, this was the prayer letter mentioned in the question.

Black Granny handed the envelope to everyone, then pointed at the dolls on the wooden rack with her index finger, muttering, "yeck, dui, trin, store, pansch..."

"desh ta sho."

After speaking her gibberish, Black Granny rubbed her hands together in distress.

"What's she doing?" Yu Wen felt like he was watching a mime show.

"Counting heads," You Huo said.

Black Granny seemed dissatisfied with the number of dolls. She dragged the bamboo basket out again and stuffed a ball of yarn into each person's hands.

She turned the hourglass over and left again.

After what had happened to Liang Yuanhao, everyone looked at the balls of yarn differently.

How the hell were these balls of yarn? They were freaking meat cleavers!

"Who'd dare sew with these..." Old Yu muttered, tossing his ball of yarn back into the bamboo basket.

Everyone followed suit.

But You Huo suddenly spoke up.

He asked Chen Bin, "Repeat what you said last night."

Chen Bin looked blank. "Which part?"

"The part about obedient guests."

"Oh, the monster asked if we'd sewn the dolls, and we said we had. She said we were obedient guests, so we had no choice but to live..."

Obedient guests had no choice but to live?

Everyone froze.

They had been so frightened before that none of them had noticed that part.

Hearing it again now sent chills down their spines.

"Obedient guests have no choice but to live... Then what about disobedient ones???"

"They have no choice but to die," You Huo said.

"..."

Sew, and their hands, feet, and heads would be chopped off. Don't sew, and they would die.

So should they sew or not???

Everyone was frantic, and for a long while, no one had any idea what to do.

As the invigilator, Qin Jiu was bored out of his mind watching the show. He picked up Black Granny's envelope and took out several pages of the prayer letter to look at the gibberish.

He had barely read two lines when someone rudely snatched it away.

"Could you act a little more like an invigilator and stop interfering with the exam?" You Huo snapped at him, taking the letter and sitting down on the sofa.

"No." Qin Jiu kept his hand raised as if he were still holding the letter, rubbing his index finger and thumb together twice. He tilted his head and said, "What should I do? Being an invigilator suddenly feels a little boring..."

You Huo gave a cold laugh. "How perceptive."

"So when are you planning to use this Help Card?" Qin Jiu pulled out the card and waved it twice in front of You Huo.

The big shot was unmoved. "Let it go moldy."

The prayer letter was a mess of incomprehensible scrawls. You Huo flipped through it for less than five seconds before tossing it aside.

What a bullshit question.

The invigilator picked up the letter and drawled provocatively, "What's wrong? The top student's clever little tricks aren't working anymore?"

You Huo got up and walked away.

He walked around Black Granny's house, trying to find clues in a language other than Romani.

In the backstory for this exam, Black Granny's family member, possibly her husband, came from Russia. Black Granny herself should know Russian and use it in certain situations. He wanted to find traces of that...

But Black Granny had cleaned up thoroughly, and he found nothing at all.

What should he do...

Today's hourglass ran longer than yesterday's, but everyone still felt the sand was running out fast.

"The hourglass is more than half empty. What are we doing about the dolls? Sewing them or not?" Old Yu asked.

Yu Yao suggested quietly, "Let's keep looking. Maybe there's a way?"

"Or... why don't we go to the woods again tonight? Didn't we get through it that way yesterday?" Yu Wen said.

The woods were terrifying at night, but being scared half to death was better than actually dying.

With yesterday's experience behind them, everyone readily agreed.

Just as they were about to reach a unanimous decision, a certain big shot struck out on his own again. "I'm going back to my room to sleep."

"Why?" Yu Wen cried.

"I'll see if I die," You Huo said.

Everyone: "???"

You could freaking test that?

"You're staying here alone? How could we let you do that?" Old Yu objected at once.

But then the invigilator asked casually, "Excuse me, am I not a person?"

Chapter 25: Initial Value ┃ Not necessarily. Apparently there used to be another initial value, who counted as... a senior?

Did an invigilator count as a person?

Not in the examinees' eyes, at least.

But when Qin Jiu spoke, Old Yu didn't dare voice his objection.

They were afraid of him.

In fact, up to this point in the exam, Invigilator 001 hadn't done anything frightening.

He hadn't exercised his authority, caught anyone breaking the rules, or confiscated any items or tools, but the examinees were still afraid of him.

That was because everyone took it for granted that the invigilator was part of the system, its eyes and claws.

The Examination System was frightening, and so were its invigilators. Unless they had no other choice, no one wanted to provoke him.

Oh... except You Huo.

Thinking of You Huo gave Old Yu a headache. Thinking of the "rule-breaking" You Huo being left alone with the invigilator they "mustn't provoke" made his whole body ache.

"Maybe I won't go to the woods either," he said.

"We've only survived this long because of you. Leaving you here while we take shelter... I can't do that," Yu Yao said quietly. "What if I can help somehow?"

The others all chimed in, only to be flatly rejected.

You Huo tossed out, "Too many people make too much noise," and ignored them after that.

Unable to change his mind and afraid they would hold him back by disobeying him, everyone had to compromise.

The sky gradually darkened, and a few villagers came out on the opposite bank of the river, chopping at the ice as usual.

"Looks like it's the same ones again?" Yu Wen counted heads through the window. "That one in the long padded coat is the lady from yesterday, right? And there's that madman... Those two in fur hats, weren't they the ones who dragged the madman into the house yesterday?"

This student spent plenty of time on his phone and played plenty of games, but his eyesight was excellent, and he still didn't need glasses.

The others couldn't see that far, but from his description, a glance suggested he was right.