Kaidan Game Train: Abide Rule or Die!
Chapter 1211: Black Card 9

Chapter 1211: Chapter 1211: Black Card 9

Standing in the middle of the maze’s passage felt like standing between two skyscrapers. Underfoot was a wide and imposing commercial district, while on both sides were commercial buildings representing the city’s façade. Although the size of the passages might differ slightly, even the narrowest ones weren’t cramped.

In such an enormous maze, there were 162 correct routes where the overlapping segments accounted for less than one-third of the entire path length. This doesn’t even include the numerous dead ends and misleading paths designed to confuse players.

If fifty-four people were scattered inside, running into even two or three of them would be considered lucky—unless the starting points of the maze weren’t too far apart.

But if that were the case, the linking prop should have marked the location of Liang Shuang and the other two.

Xu Huo had been in the maze for less than half a day and had already encountered about ten players. Out of these, six had died, which was not a small percentage of the total. Based on the rules explicitly provided by the game, such a high encounter rate implied that, by the later stages of the game, the remaining players would be forced to resort to feeling their way along the walls repeatedly to obtain cards.

But the same issue persisted. This approach wouldn’t facilitate card circulation.

One of the pleasures of the Poker Card Maze was supposedly the ability to swap out different cards continually to uncover updated instance information. If the cards couldn’t circulate, where was the fun? Even in ten days, one could stumble their way to the endpoint... So there had to be more than fifty-four players in the maze.

Only players could enable the circulation of poker cards.

Moreover, although fifty-four cards were displayed at the starting point, the instance’s background and game rules did not explicitly specify the exact number of cards. It was uncertain whether the instance’s upgrade had altered this detail.

However, even if the number of people in the instance exceeded fifty-four, whether it was one deck or two did not make much of a difference, as the earlier players would quickly replenish the cards circulating back into the instance.

It wasn’t actually hard to verify this hypothesis. One way was to count heads, and another was to watch for duplicate cards.

Of course, the more cards a player could see, the higher the chance of encountering discarded duplicates.

Specific situations would only become clear when the time came.

Following the direction given by the Clue Card, Xu Huo advanced toward the maze’s endpoint while triggering mechanisms on the maze walls along the way.

After the white card 9 was discarded, the Mutant Plant Amity effect was nullified, but the likelihood of setting off traps remained high. There were also some effects like "Move forward 100 meters" or "Move back 100 meters," which were relatively inconsequential.

After half a day, Xu Huo randomly picked a spot to rest. After a simple replenishment of strength, he set off again. However, in the next few hours, he didn’t encounter anyone else, nor did he find the passage corresponding to his initial card. Instead, he stumbled upon the black card 9 passage—his second such discovery.

The process of walking was incredibly monotonous, so in the meantime, he decided to start a mini botany journal. He photographed the moments when the plants within the maze walls broke through the surface.

The myriad bizarre plants were, in a way, a spectacle of the Poker Card Maze.

At night, the maze had no lighting. Some plants active in the darkness appeared noticeably more sinister than during the day. These plants would occasionally appear in unexpected places, and some even grew in clusters on the maze walls, camouflaged as unremarkable grass. Initially, they wouldn’t react when someone entered their area, but they would attack once a person let down their guard. Their attacks weren’t particularly intense, mostly incidental touches, but many of these plants were poisonous.

In some places, there were even mushrooms with enticing aromas and appearances that seemed particularly appetizing.

Xu Huo picked a few with the intent of feeding them to the King Fungus.

In less than an hour of walking in pitch darkness, a gigantic plant ball blocked the passageway. It was about twenty meters tall, with a solid core in the center. Around its edges, slimy vines either trailed along the ground or hung from the maze walls.

Someone was inside it, and at the same time, Xu Huo’s linking prop showed a marker for a companion.

Xu Huo tossed a pebble at it. "Are you asleep?"

Inside the plant ball was a large, circular prop. Soon, a loud voice rang out from within, "Old Xu, is that you?!"

It was Jiang Zifeng.

"Why are you stuck inside that ball?" Xu Huo asked from ten meters away.

"Haha! Bad luck. I thought I’d found a shortcut, but it turned out to be full of traps, and I got surrounded... Anyway, it’s already dark, so I figured I’d deal with it tomorrow. These Mutant Plants are conveniently keeping watch for me for free." Jiang Zifeng replied, chuckling.

"Is your initial card the black card 9?" Xu Huo raised an eyebrow.

"How did you know? Did you see that passage too?" Jiang Zifeng said. "If I’d known you were nearby, I wouldn’t have gone ahead. We could have studied these mushrooms together. I just picked a bunch—they look pretty tasty..."

"You’re not planning to come out?" Xu Huo asked. "Talking through this wall doesn’t strain your voice?"

"Coming out now!" Jiang Zifeng responded. Several arcs of light flashed across the plant ball, which split apart and collapsed to the ground. Following that, the core sprayed out a pungent liquid, prompting the surrounding Mutant Plants to quickly withdraw into the walls.

Jiang Zifeng, holding a spray bottle, clapped his hands and grinned. "Advanced Weedicide. I specifically bought it. Works wonders on these things!"

Seeing Jiang Zifeng unharmed, Xu Huo asked, "Have you eaten?"

"Not yet. I had a little snack earlier and wasn’t too hungry, but now I could eat," Jiang Zifeng said as he pulled out his cookware and, with a gleam in his eye, revealed a bag of vibrantly colored mushrooms. "I’ve always wanted to see if eating toxic mushrooms really causes hallucinations. Back home, the medical facilities weren’t good enough; eating them would’ve been suicide. But now that we’re players, it’s super convenient. Most toxic mushrooms can’t do much to me!"

Xu Huo admired his daring spirit. "Any noticeable difference in taste between poisonous mushrooms and regular ones?"

Jiang Zifeng gave it some thought. "Not much, really. It’s just extra thrilling while eating. You never know which bite might be your last. At first, it was nerve-wracking, but then I started to enjoy the rush. Want to try some?"

Saying this, he pulled out a prop to test the mushrooms’ toxicity, only putting the ones with toxicity levels below 50% into the pot.

The water in the electric pot began to boil, turning into an indescribable color as the mushrooms’ pigments seeped out. The aroma, however, was quite sweet and pleasant.

"I’ve figured it out: any game rule the instance doesn’t explicitly mention as beneficial is probably a trap," Jiang Zifeng remarked, pouring a glass of wine for himself and Xu Huo. "Earlier, I found a clue on the wall pointing to the endpoint’s direction. But the farther I walked after exiting the passage, the further away it got."

Xu Huo clinked glasses with him and said, "So how can you be so sure the clue you found was genuine?"