Chapter 521: Conundrum
Three months later, an exit suddenly appeared and several people heaved a sigh of relief.
Seeing this, Jiang Yue also sighed and looked at Yu Nianzhen.
"You were right." He said with a solemn look in his eyes.
As Yu Nianzhen theorised, an exit appeared after two conditions were met.
The first condition was the day.
After the first fire attack, nothing happened until a month later.
On that day, another fire attack happened but this time, the fire was several times more powerful.
During that attack, twenty people died but the exit still didn’t appear.
Another month later, the third fire attack happened.
As expected, the attack was more powerful than the previous two.
Fortunately, the fire disappeared after three people died.
Otherwise, even Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue would have found it difficult to survive.
"Counting the days, the exit only appears on the full moon. Most importantly, only ten people can exit the room." Jiang Yue stated.
"Mmmm." Yu Nianzhen nodded with a frown on his face.
"What’s wrong?" Jiang Yue questioned.
"There is only one door."
"One door..." Jiang Yue muttered but soon realised the relevance.
Since there was only one door, no one had a choice.
They could only go through the door and hope the exit led to the outside and not a more dangerous place.
Unfortunately, wishes were not horses.
As soon as they walked through the exit, Yu Nianzhen and Jiang Yue realised they were not outside but in another room.
Like the previous, this room was also made of blue stone.
It was larger but it had no door or window.
"Damned it." Jiang Yue cursed.
"Let’s look around." Yu Nianzhen suggested and Jiang Yue had no choice but to agree.
However, everything was as expected.
After searching for several hours, they found nothing peculiar.
In the end, they could only stake a corner and sit down to wait.
"Will we have to face another fire sea?" Jiang Yue wondered.
After every fire attack, the survivors received fire seeds.
Most importantly, the fire seeds after the third attack were incomparably more powerful than those after the second and first attacks.
However, even for the fire seeds, Jiang Yue didn’t want to face the fire attack a fourth time.
"Probably not." Yu Nianzhen supposed but his supposition was not confirmed until several days later.
This time, the ten were not attacked.
Instead, metal pieces rained from the ceiling and writing appeared on the walls.
"What is this?" Someone exclaimed as they looked at the writing.
"It looks like a formula." Another said with a frown on their face.
"Who can understand the writing?"
"I can understand it." Jiang Yue suddenly said.
[You can?] Jiang Yue transmitted.
[Not me. The spirit of my primordial yin-yang flame can understand it. Xiao Lan can also understand bits and pieces.]
Normally, Jiang Yue would not reveal his understanding to a group of strangers.
However, their situation was not ideal and there was no other option.
"The writing on the wall is a procedural for assembling a mechanical puppet. Each of us needs to assemble a puppet within one year." Jiang Yue said and everyone couldn’t help but be surprised.
"Mechanical puppet?" Wang Peng muttered and looked at the metal pieces covering the floor.
There were millions of small pieces and gears on the floor.
At a glance, it wasn’t easy to distinguish one piece from another.
When he thought they had to assemble the pieces into puppets, Wang Peng couldn’t help but shudder.
"This..." Someone said with a horrified look on his face.
"Is anyone here a puppet master or mechanic?"
Unfortunately, there were no puppet masters or mechanics among the ten.
"What a bloody mess." Someone cursed and everyone felt the same.
"Did the Zhao family throw us into the ruins of a puppet sect?"
"I don’t think it’s a sect. Maybe an inheritance trial." Someone said and everyone couldn’t help but think about it.
If they were at a trial ground, there would be an inheritance at the end of the trials.
However, none of them were puppet mechanics.
The chance of getting to the end of the trial was infinitely low.
Still, they had to try.
Otherwise, their lives would not be guaranteed.
"Fellow Daoist Yu, can you help us translate?" Someone asked and everyone turned to Jiang Yue.
Hearing this, Jiang Yue smiled but didn’t say anything.
"Of course, we won’t let fellow Daoist Yu work for nothing. I am willing to offer a flame seed for the translation."
"I am also willing to offer a flame seed."
Several people expressed their opinions and Jiang Yue directly agreed.
"However, I have one condition." He said.
"Please say it." Someone urged.
"The pieces here are exactly enough for ten puppets. We must swear an oath that no one will hide or destroy the pieces." Jiang Yue said.
"We can swear the oath but fellow Daoist Yu also has to swear an oath to give us the correct translation." Someone said and Jiang Yue immediately agreed.
Since he revealed his understanding, he didn’t plan to cheat people.
However, it was doubtful whether half of the ten would be able to assemble the puppets.
Looking at the procedures, even he was worried for himself and Yu Nianzhen.
"Since we have agreed, let’s get down to it." Jiang Yue said and began to translate the writings on the walls.
At the same time, the remaining nine pushed all the metal pieces to the middle of the room.
"Although we don’t have the manual, we can try sorting the pieces." Someone suggested.
"How to sort?"
"We can try sorting them into ten piles. One pile for each of us."
"I suggest we sort them by appearance." Yu Nianzhen suddenly suggested.
"Fellow Daoist Jiang, what do you mean?"
"Let’s first sort them into piles of pieces of the same size and shape. After that, we can divide each pile into equal parts of ten."
"I agree. Sorting like that is more practical. It will reduce the chance of mixing up the parts." Someone agreed.
"I also agree. It’s more practical this way." Wang Peng said.
After that, the nine people began to sort the parts.
However, there were millions of parts.
When Jiang Yue finished translating the writings, it was four days later.
Unfortunately, the nine were less than halfway through their sorting.
"I have made a copy for everyone." Jiang Yue said and gave everyone a jade slip.
After getting the jade slip, several people stopped their sorting and checked the contents of the jade.
"How can we understand this mess?" Someone complained.
"Fellow Daoist Yu, did you cheat us?"
Hearing this, Yu Nianzhen frowned and glared at the person.
"We made an oath." He said in a matter-of-fact voice.
"Fellow Daoists, I swear I have given you the correct translation. In fact, I also don’t understand it." Jiang Yue said and frowned.
"We are not puppet mechanics. It’s difficult for us to understand this kind of manual." Wang Peng said and the atmosphere became less tense.
"I suggest we finish sorting the pieces. It won’t be too late to study the manual after we each have our pieces." Someone suggested and everyone agreed.
Nine days later, the group finished sorting and dividing the pieces.
Fortunately, everyone kept their word and there were no missing or destroyed pieces.
"I suggest an alliance." Someone suddenly said and everyone turned to look at him.
"What does the fellow Daoist suggest?" Another asked.
"None of us is a puppet mechanic. If we don’t work together, there is a chance that none of us will be able to assemble a puppet within one year."
"How does the fellow doaist want to work together?" Jiang Yue asked with a smile on his face.
"If someone figures something out, they should tell the others." The person spoke righteously.
However, Yu Nianzhen, Jiang Yue and several others were not convinced.
After all, there was no merit in sharing information.
At the moment, they didn’t know what to do.
However, each of them had encountered countless things in their lifetime.
When they focused on assembling the puppets, there was a chance of enlightenment.
At that time, their past experiences would give them an advantage over the others.
Considering that, what was the motivation for giving up the advantage?
Although none of them was a puppet mechanic, an inheritance was valuable.
If the inheritance fell into their hands, it could be sold for reincarnation stones or exchanged for treasures.
"Fellow Daoist, we are strangers who don’t owe each other." Wang Peng said and looked at the person.
Hearing this, several people nodded but others frowned.
"We can find a way to compensate people for the information." Someone suggested.
"The Zhao family robbed us and we neither have treasures nor reincarnation stones. How can we compensate people?"
"We can make an agreement. Once we leave the ruins, we will settle the necessary compensations."
"What if we don’t leave the ruins? Most importantly, we don’t know the value of the inheritance or rewards from finishing this task. In that case, how can we value the information we contribute?"
