Chapter 160: My failure is that I have feelings that do not belong to the truth.

Before Zhao Xiaofei drew a map of the corridors and rooms on the first floor with her lipstick, she took off her jacket and drew a rough map on it before she left. The calm female player decided to spread her jacket out on the floor and counted every corridor she had just walked down, finally she looked up: "These are probably the only corridors we haven't been in, and we won't be able to get to them later, and Schrödinger is in them?"

The third rule of the game is that the doors are located on both sides of the corridor and each player can only walk through the same corridor once. When a player walks through a corridor, a human footprint is left on the corridor.

The rule seems complicated, but it is actually a restriction on players not going backwards.

Corridors that are walked through cannot be walked through a second time, so every choice the player makes can lead to a dead end for his future self (there are footprints all along the way). It is only the first round of the game and the group does not yet know the map of the fortress, so they inevitably take a few wrong turns on the first floor, and some rooms are never reached again.

Li Miaomiao agrees: "It must have been in these rooms. We've only just arrived on the ground floor, and on the ground floor we've walked in a single line without forking out, which means we haven't made any choices on the ground floor, let alone the wrong ones. The fact that the Truth Clock says we must not have found Schrödinger means that Schrödinger is hidden in those corridors upstairs."

But there is another problem with this.

Zhao Xiaofei's face is ugly："Actually I don't remember the path we just walked ...... very well."

The rest of the group looked embarrassed as the words left their mouths. Tang Mo also pursed his lips as he turned his head to look at Fu Wenduo. When his eyes met those dark eyes, Tang Mo's heart was immediately stilled.

Fu Wenduo looked at him, and his low voice rang out, "I remember."

The crowd turned their heads to Fu Wenduo.

Fu Wenduo takes the lipstick from Zhao Xiaofei's hand and smoothly draws a curved route on the map on the first floor.

He started at the top of the sixth diamond, which was the kitchen. Then, calmly, he connected each of the corridors the five men had walked through upstairs, even marking the positions of the eighty or so rooms they had entered, dotting a small red dot on the door of each one. Zhao Xiaofei looked dumbfounded, and when Fu Wenduo reached the place where they were currently standing, she took the lipstick Fu Wenduo handed her and, after a long moment of silence, said suspiciously, "...... Are you sure you've drawn it correctly?"

Fu Wenduo raises an eyebrow.

Tang Mo: "He drew it right."

Zhao Xiaofei looks at them with suspicion.

Unbeknownst to Zhao Xiaofei, Fu Wenduo had modified her map in a few places, making the crude map much more accurate. In a darkened room, with a middle-aged butler crouching in a corner licking cat food, Schrödinger stares at the map in Zhao Xiaofei's hand, his eyes wide with anger and a sweet grunt of exasperation.

This map is a miniature version of Schrödinger's Iron Fortress, which even Schrödinger himself didn't always draw so accurately!

After Earth came online, every player became more and more fit by the day. However, it is one thing to remember what kind of path you have walked on, and it is more important to have a keen sense of space and distance in order to draw a map in such a confined space. Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo were walking at the end of the group when Tang Mo whispered, "Are there really only four corridors on the first floor that we haven't walked down?"

Fu Wenduo looks down at him.

Tang Mo, who had just said with great certainty that he had drawn the right picture, now came back to ask him about the correctness of it.

An imperceptible smile crossed Fu Wenduo's eyes, "Yes, there are only four of them."

Tang Mo explained, "I believe you, but if it's only those four, something doesn't feel right to me."

"Where it's not right."

Tang Mo: "Do you think ...... Schrödinger is hiding in those four corridors?"

Fu Wenduo stops in his tracks, the three people in front of him still walking. He looks steadily at Tang Mo and says softly, "I don't think so."

Tang Mo suddenly smiled, "I don't think so either."

Tang Mo never doubted the accuracy of Fu Wenduo's maps, and he had absolute confidence in the man. Fu Wenduo did not let him down either. This kind of map was not a challenge for him at all, and he could have drawn it even without the physical improvements he had made since coming online on Earth. On a previous mission Fu Wenduo had once entered a very complicated secret military base on his own, and after just one walk inside, Fu Wenduo had drawn a detailed map of the base and marked the exact location of the laboratories and control rooms, the map being accurate to the metre.

However, if the map is really what Fu Wenduo drew, then everything becomes even stranger.

Tang Mo follows Zhao Xiaofei's trio, head bowed in contemplation.

The corridor on the ground floor is much simpler than the second, without too many turns and forks, almost a neat rectangle. The rooms were spread out on both sides of the corridor, and the five players walked halfway along the corridor, looking for eleven more rooms. Zhao Xiaofei, who was at the front, stopped in his tracks: "Is there another staircase here?"

The crowd took out their maps and compared the locations of the two floors.

Li Miaomiao concludes, "This staircase is the one we first saw earlier, I think."

While on the first floor, the five players saw a total of two staircases leading to the ground floor. Tang Mo made the decision not to choose the first staircase and the group descended the second staircase and walked into the ground floor and into the room of the truth clock.

Zhao Xiaofei: "It's useless for us to go up there, the corridor above is full of footprints and the game will be over if we go up there. The corridor on the ground floor is not finished yet, so let's finish the ground floor first."

Everyone followed a few more steps when Tang Mo turned his head and said curiously, " Viktor ?"

In the dark steel corridor, tall men stand with their backs straight between the walls. Fu Wenduo looks at the wall to his left, then the wall to his right. His frown tightens, and suddenly he looks up and walks over to Tang Mo. Tang Mo was frozen for a moment, not understanding what he wanted to do. But Fu Wenduo had already lowered his head, put his lips to his ear and whispered a word in a voice that only two people could hear.

Tang Mo's body froze abruptly.

Ten minutes later, the five players walked along the ground floor corridor to reach the room of the truth clock again.

As Zhao Xiaofei completes the map of the ground floor with lipstick, he says: "The ground floor is really much simpler than the second, just a plain rectangular corridor. There are 29 rooms in total, and we looked through them all, but couldn't find Schrödinger. Schrödinger must have been on the first floor, in the corridors we didn't manage to get into."

Grea laughed, "My lady, I don't think it's that simple."

Even Zhao Xiaofei, not to mention Grea, thought this answer was a bit too simple. Is a tower attack game that simple?

It is certainly not impossible. They would never have had the information they have without Fu Wenduo's powerful scouting skills and the clue revealed by the truth clock that "it is no longer possible for you to find Schrödinger". In addition they encountered very dangerous inventions in several rooms and would have been killed by those inventions if only they had been less powerful.

And the map of the first floor of this fortress is so complex that a normal person walking inside might not even make it to the ground floor and already waste a round of play.

Zhao Xiaofei thought about it: "We've already searched over a hundred rooms anyway, we're still a few short. There are still two more chances, and for the second round, we'll just go through the rooms we haven't found. There's always a third round of the game, so don't worry about failing."

This is a very reasonable suggestion, and Li Miaomiao nods. She was about to echo Zhao Xiaofei's words, but then she suddenly remembered Ruan Wangshu's advice and quietly looked at Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo. When she did, Li Miaomiao was frozen for a moment.

Tang Mo shook his head at her.

Li Miaomiao is confused.

Tang Mo sighed. Li Miaomiao was not Fu Wenduo, and it was impossible for Li Miaomiao to understand what he meant with a few glances at such a complicated matter.

Zhao Xiaofei: "So we'll go straight back to the first floor now and see all those rooms we haven't been in?"

"I'd like to look for the truth clock again."

Zhao Xiaofei looks at Tang Mo curiously and asks in surprise, "You're looking for the Truth Clock? What are you looking for it for."

Tang Mo looked calm: "The door to the Truth Clock room faces the stairs, so since we have decided to start the second round of the game, we can use this room as a starting point. From this room you can also go straight up to the first floor."

"...... is not a no-no."

Li Miaomiao hammered home the point: "Let's go."

This round was doomed and it didn't seem to make any difference where to start the second round. Tang Mo stood at the front of the group with a torch, his right hand gripping a door handle made of steel. He flicked it and in a flash, a blue glow lit up from the room, enveloping the five players in it. When they opened their eyes, they were already immobilised on the floor, unable to move their feet.

A calm female voice rang out calmly, "Welcome to the world of the Truth Clock. I am Wei ...... Wei ...... Great ......"

Truth Clock: "......"

How the hell is it you guys again aaaahhhh!

The Truth Clock never thought that these toxic humans would come back to it before it had even started its second round of hide-and-seek. Corridors are not re-enterable, but rooms are. The Truth Clock looked at the five players in front of it in silence, and all five players looked up at it with wide eyes.

Five men and a clock stare at each other in silence.

Truth Clock: "......" makes the clock big!

After a long time, the truth clock tried to sound very calm: " The black tower intruders, what do you want again. I have told you everything I know, and I am already to be made into various things by the great Lord Schrödinger and given to several other lords. Must you all be so driven to extinction?"

Why does that tone sound a bit like a grouch ......

Li Miaomiao said: "We just decided to end this round of games with you in this room as the end point. And then use this as the starting point to start the second round of the game" Who has nothing better to do than to beat you up again ......

The Truth Clock was depressed: "Yes, you have indeed lost the round the moment you walk into this room again."

The black tower cue sounded at the right time: "Ding-dong! The first round of 'Schrödinger's Game of Hide-and-Seek' is over."

"The second round of play begins!"

A sweet, sticky cat cry mixed with gloating laughter echoed triumphantly through the steel room: "Ha ha ha ha, you stupid players! You'll never find me, you'll all become my collection! Rubbish clock, get these shameless humans out of here, I can't wait to put them in my warehouse, I'm going to make a stinking toilet out of them all and give them to Santa!"

The faces of the two female players blackened in half.

Li Miaomiao clenched her fingers, intending to leave this room and go straight upstairs and storm the rooms they hadn't entered.

The Truth Clock said obediently, "Yes, Your Greatness Schrödinger, I'll get this group of humans out of here."

The next second, however, a voice rang out, "Who said we were going out?"

The Truth Clock froze violently.

In the darkened room, the little black cat also blinked dumbly, staring blankly at the human.

In the closed steel room, Tang Mo and Fu Wenduo stood at the front of the five, Tang Mo looked up slightly, calmly at the huge clock, and asked in a firm voice: "We have entered your world, can we start another game of truth clock? Become the truth, or crush the truth."

Truth Clock: "But you already know the answer, The black tower Intruder."

Tang Mo asked again, "Can we play another game?"

Truth Clock didn't understand what he was trying to do at all: "...... can."

Not only the truth clock, but also Li Miaomiao and Zhao Xiaofei couldn't understand why Tang Mo was wasting his time in this place. Grea looks thoughtfully at Tang Mo's back, and the little black cat, with his paws on his head, is staring at the back of Tang Mo's head from somewhere in the room, as if trying to see what is going on in his head.

Suddenly, Schrödinger caught sight of Fu Wenduo's slightly curled mouth. The little black cat's green eyes snapped open and he said quickly, "Truth Clock, you get them out of here, they are not allowed to ask ......"

"My question is, the second round of the game has begun and as of now," Tang Mo's voice rang out along with the little black cat's as he stared calmly at the large clock in front of him, "the truth clock ...... we have lost this round game yet?"

The air was quiet for a moment.

In the Truth Clock room, Zhao Xiaofei and Li Miaomiao stare in disbelief at Tang Mo's back. Grea is also a little surprised, as he taps the floor with his staff. No one had realised that his staff was magically unrestricted by the room and could be moved around the floor at will.

But this time, the truth clock actually did not answer.

For the first time, the clock was silent for so long. Its blue body trembled slightly with a magnitude that was hard to detect with the naked eye, and the little black cat roared with a heartbreaking roar: "Don't answer him! You failed piece of shit clock, you are not allowed to answer him! I won't let you answer him!!!"

If it had eyes, the Truth Clock would be looking at the sky right now, and it would see The black tower, the world's greatest inventor, Schrödinger, through the heavy steel walls.

Three seconds later, in a calm, undulating female voice, the Truth Clock said, word for word: "Great Sir Schrödinger, I am a failure, but my failure is not that I do not know all the truths of the world; my failure is that I possess feelings that do not conform to the truth. Whenever someone asks me a question, I am sure to answer it. I cannot lie, and he is asking a question of right and wrong. If I tell a lie, these intruders of The black tower have defeated the truth, and they will still know the right answer. As you know, the fact that they asked the question means that they already know how to get through the game."

The little black cat roared, "You useless piece of crap clock!!!"

The hour, minute and second hands on the huge dial of the Truth Clock once again clattered to life. As if it had not heard Schrödinger's rant, it said in a smooth, emotionless voice, word for word -

"Welcome to the world of the Truth Clock. I am the great Truth Clock, chiming accurately for the great Lord Schrödinger. Intruders of The black tower, you have the right to ask questions five times. Be the truth, or crush the truth. To your question," the Truth Clock seemed to "look" at Tang Mo, and it replied coldly: "My answer is, yes."

"At this point, as of now, The black tower intruders, you have lost the second round of hide-and-seek."

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