The time goes back about thirty minutes ago.

While Ji Lu and Ren Jianmo were still competing with a group of murlocs in the Black Water Lake, Mo Tiangen and Fan's sister and brother had just ran through a long cave tunnel and came to a gorgeous spiral staircase.

After figuring out that this is a three-dimensional maze, they no longer struggle with the inconceivable logical problem of why an exit that looks like a natural cave is connected to a spiral staircase.

The stairs are divided into four sections, each section has a circular platform, and each platform has another ladder leading to a different corridor.

From a remote perspective, the environment the three of them are currently in is quite interesting to Hogwarts Castle.

Mo Tiangen and others have stayed in the maze for a long time, and they are already quite experienced in dealing with these diversions.

They climbed up the stairs in one breath, made a mark at the first platform, and then stepped up the stairs.

The stairs on the first platform lead to a corridor covered with red carpets, and at the end is an open-air garden, which is set up as a gorgeous wedding scene, and a couple of couples dance in the presence of hundreds of guests.

Such a scene of harmony and harmony appeared here, but it was so abrupt and chilling.

Mo Tiangen and Fan's sister and brother bit their heads and entered the garden. Without disturbing the guests as much as possible, they circled inside, trying to find any exits or sideways.

However, it did not.

It's just a garden.

In the short few minutes that the three of them stayed, everything except them was changing rapidly.

The neatly trimmed green plants quickly go through the entire life cycle from deformation, leaf fall to withering; the rich food decays and deteriorates, and finally there is only a handful of gray and black dregs that cannot be distinguished from the original shape...

The gorgeous robes on the guests became dirty and torn, and their bodies rapidly aged and shrank, until they turned into shriveled mummies with only a layer of skin on their skeletons.

But even so, those guests still danced in the sound of out-of-tune music until they discovered Mo Tiangen and Fan's sisters and brothers who still maintained their human appearance.

What else can I say?

The wedding scene became a filming set for a zombie film. The three jumped up and down and ran wildly while chasing and intercepting a group of mummies. Finally, they rushed out of the garden gate and closed the heavy door firmly.

They returned to the spiral staircase, climbed to the second platform, and then climbed up a dark and narrow corridor along a steep wooden staircase.

At the end of the corridor, there is a stone door with a hole, leading to a large space with a vault.

Or, to put it more appropriately, it was a huge, perfectly circular shaft.

The entire shaft has an area of ​​more than 100 square meters by visual inspection, with a depth of more than 100 meters.

Looking down from the current heights of Mo Tiangen, Fan Hemian, and Fan Luming, one can only see the bottomless darkness below, and at the same time feel a rush of draughts.

Fan Luming never felt that he had a fear of heights, but looking at the pit in front of him that seemed to be devouring people, he was still a little weak inexplicably.

In the center of the shaft is a huge floating board composed of four concentric circles, which occupies about half of the area of ​​the shaft. Each round board is suspended at the same height by four iron cables like a hanging basket.

From where the three Mo Tiangens were, there happened to be a wooden suspension bridge leading to the floating board.

In the few seconds of their stupefaction, there was a muffled sound behind them, and when they looked back, the stone gate they passed through when they came in slowly closed automatically.

"Rile!"

Mo Tiangen turned his head and tried to rescue the door panel that was gradually closing with brute force.

However, the outer wall of the entire shaft slowly turned clockwise, and the closed stone door moved to a place out of their reach.

The walls are made of marble and polished very smoothly. Unless they are three geckos, it is basically an impossible task to climb on such a wall.

"okay."

Teacher Dagen turned his head and shrugged helplessly, "It looks like we can only go forward."

So the three of them walked across the rickety suspension bridge and came to the floating slab suspended by many iron cables in the middle of the shaft.

"I guess, this should be an escape room game."

Fan Luming looked around and made a guess.

The suspended platform the three of them are on is not known how deep from the bottom of the shaft, but relatively close to the top.

As long as they raised their heads, they could see an arc-shaped dome covered with exquisite colorful murals and inlaid with gems of different shapes.

In addition, the only thing on the floating board is a one-meter-high column in the center. A stone plate is held directly above the column, which is the size of two palms, and the surface is also carved with exquisite patterns.

Mo Tiangen and Fan's sister and brother approached the column and carefully studied the texture carved on the stone plate.

The pattern is a vine.

The vines are twisted into a spiral, with a total of five flowers and eleven leaves, and each flower is inlaid with a gem-two are yellow, and the other three are red, blue, and green. three colors.

"Look, these leaves..."

Fan Luming gently rubbed the grooves on the blade with his fingers, and said to his companion:

"I guess, shouldn't I have to set some gems?"

Mo Tiangen and Fan Hemian looked at each other.

They think the younger brother makes a lot of sense.

Now the three of them are trapped in this shaft, and they can't even automatically abstain. If they don't do anything, they can only wait for the time to run out and then GAMEOVER, or someone else finds "Vatican" to end the mission.

If they want to leave here, they must use the clues they can find to figure out how to break the level.

If Fan Luming's thinking is correct, the puzzle mechanism on the pillar is their only way out.

It's just... where do the missing gems come from?

Thinking of this, the three raised their heads together.

On the semi-arc dome about three stories high from them, a circle of murals is painted, and some key parts are also inlaid with red, yellow, blue and green gems-the size and shape are the same as they looked on the vines on the pillars. It's exactly the same.

"So, does this mean we want us to pick off the gems on it?"

Fan Luming stroked his chin, condensing his eyebrows in thought.

"only……"

He looked back at the slightly dangling floating board under his feet, and remembered the boundless darkness that the probe had just glanced at, and he was very worried:

"According to my experience in reading tomb robbery novels, such organ traps, if they are accidentally placed incorrectly, will cause big problems..."

Mo Tiangen felt the same way.

He looked up at the glittering gems embedded in the mural above his head, and then lowered his head to study the vine patterns on the stone pillars.

After pondering for half a minute, still clueless, he could only turn his head to look at Fan Hemian like asking for help:

"It has no beginnings and ends, who knows how to put these gems!"

Fan Hemian ignored him.

The girl just kept her head up, her eyes fixed on the mural painted by the ceiling.

Teacher Dagen and younger brother followed her gaze and raised their heads together.

Based on the art appreciation level of the three people, it is difficult to clearly say which country and age those mural paintings should be counted as styles.

If I have to describe it, Mo Tiangen felt that it was a bit like the painting style on the sheepskin scrolls unearthed in the Mesopotamia printed in the world history textbook, but the colors were much brighter than the cultural relics.

"Look at it."

Fan Hemian stretched out his hand and pointed towards the two o'clock above his head, "Is the person holding a steelyard in his hand?"

Mo Tiangen and Fan Luming followed her instructions together.

The mural painted a scene from a market.

A woman with a flower headscarf is holding a steelyard in her hand. On the small tray on the left of the scale is three feathers, and the one on the right is a blue gem.

Teacher Dagen touched his short stubble:

"What does this mean? Three feathers weigh the same as a sapphire?"

Fan Hemian nodded vigorously.

"There is another way!"

She turned and pointed in the other direction, "The two also have feathers and gems in their hands."

As the girl said, in a corner, there is a picture of a pair of businessmen bartering. One of them is holding two feathers, while the other takes out a citrine from a cowhide bag to pay the bill.

Fan Luming had an idea, and immediately raised his head, and began to circle around on the spot.

"Here too!"

Soon, he found two other scenes-a child who exchanged four feathers for a ruby, and a tax officer holding a feather and a green jade in each hand.

"I see!"

Mo Tiangen also recalled.

"In other words, if feathers are used as a commodity unit, the four colors of gemstones are equivalent to one, two, three, and four respectively?"

"Yes!"

Fan Hemian slapped his forehead suddenly, then rushed to grab Mo Tiangen's sleeve, and shook it several times in a forgetful manner:

"Why am I so stupid!"

As she said, she pointed to the post at her feet:

"This is a four-by-four Sudoku game for elementary school students!"

When Fan Luming heard what her sister said, he immediately bent down and carefully studied the position of the flowers and leaves on the vines for the second time.

The "4×4" Sudoku game can be regarded as the simplest entry level.

It consists of a grid array with four rows and four columns, and is divided into four grid arrays with two rows and two columns.

When cracking, the player needs to fill in the four different numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the sixteen blanks. Each number is used four times, and it must be in each row, column, and 2×2 square matrix. And it can only be used once to make the sum of the numbers of each row, each column, and each 2×2 square matrix equal.

Five flowers and eleven leaves are exactly divided into four rows, and each row is exactly symmetrical. If you ignore the fancy vines below and just look at the grooves that can be inlaid with gems, isn't it just a standard Sudoku table?

"A four by four Sudoku grid requires at least five basic numbers!"

While talking, Fan Hemian quickly counted the answers in his brain.

"The gems inlaid on the five flowers are equivalent to the starting number on the table..."

She muttered to herself:

"The first row is 3, the second row is 2, the third row is 4, the fourth row is 1 and 2..."

As he said, Fan Hemian turned his head abruptly, staring at Mo Tiangen with piercing eyes:

"Dagen, if you become a giant, you should reach out and get the gem on the ceiling, right?"