Doomsday Wonderland Vol. 8: Heaven Underworld (pt. 2: 856-1023) [Complete]

982: A Plethora of Scheming

Human curiosity is truly a powerful force, especially when it concerns one's life and death.

Since entering the pocket dimension, for the first time, everyone sat obediently on the boat, waiting for Lin Sanjiu to continue explaining. Philibert seemed to still be recovering from the ordeal of escaping death, gasping for breaths that spread across half of the lake's surface.

"Mislead? Ah, I understand," the round-faced man shook his head. "Indeed, the pocket dimension never explicitly stated that we couldn't go ashore or anything like that..."

"I'm not referring to that," Lin Sanjiu interrupted him. Under the distant gazes of everyone, she took a deep breath and leaned back on her seat. Having ingested an unknown amount of lake water, she now felt heavy and in desperate need of rest, taking advantage of speaking to catch her breath.

"I guess the way the brain operates is different at the moment just before one's death... I thought I couldn't make it, desperately wanting to grab onto any life-saving straw. It was at that moment that I suddenly realized." Now, as she recalled that moment when she thought she would be forever trapped in the green lake teeming with corpses, it made her shudder with a lingering fear.

"What... What?"

"Think carefully, what did the loudspeaker actually say? Did it really mention that 'the water level would rise to 1.8 meters after thirty minutes'?"

"Did it not?" Natasha asked skeptically.

"No," Lin Sanjiu emphatically uttered two words. "Now that I recall, everything is crystal clear. If you haven't forgotten, you'll realize that when the pocket dimension introduced the rules, the exact words were, 'Once the water starts pouring in, it will rise uniformly over time, reaching 1.8 meters after thirty minutes.'"

She emphasized the words 'after thirty minutes,' and as soon as she finished speaking, someone indeed let out a low gasp.

"But... Isn't it possible that this sentence also includes the 'thirty minutes' itself?" The round-faced man hesitantly raised his voice.

Lin Sanjiu glanced at him. If it weren't for his gesture, she would have already had a hole in her temple courtesy of Philibert. Unable to understand why he had saved her, she temporarily suppressed that thought and replied, "Strictly speaking, it shouldn't include the 'thirty minutes' itself, but I don't deny that some people might have that impression. However, in my opinion, the pocket dimension deliberately misled and hinted at us... Have you ever wondered why we subconsciously associated the thirty minutes with the water level reaching 1.8 meters?"

"But you just said it yourself," Natasha immediately answered, "the pocket dimension mentioned thirty minutes—"

"That's true, but what does that thirty minutes refer to?"

Everyone seemed momentarily stunned, not understanding her point.

Furrowing her brow, Lin Sanjiu organized her thoughts and said, "Think about the order in which it introduced the rules. The pocket dimension initially mentioned that the water level in the lake would rise, but it didn't specify how long it would take. Instead, it continued to introduce the next rule about boat rentals. It was when we asked the pocket dimension why we needed to rent the boat for two consecutive thirty-minute periods that it replied because after thirty minutes, the water level would rise to 1.8 meters."

Finally, someone exclaimed, "Oh!" in sudden realization.

"So you see, the thirty minutes mentioned by the pocket dimension actually only refers to one thing—the boat rental duration. It has no real connection to the time it takes for the water to pour in," Lin Sanjiu said, shifting her gaze to Zao Peng. She then realized that the disciplined woman, who resembled a class monitor, had distanced herself from the group at some point. "Didn't Zao Peng mention it? She said there were two thirty-minute intervals in the pocket dimension, one for boat rental and the other for the water level. There could be a trap here... Even if it wasn't intentional, she inadvertently reinforced the suggestion. None of us objected at the time because we smoothly accepted the suggestion, thinking that it would indeed take thirty minutes for the water to rise."