Old Mo's handkerchief had doubled in size since the first one he saw. Luckily, the white handkerchief Liu Qiao gave him could keep expanding, even becoming a 2-meter-long curtain, which made it easier for Old Mo to draw maps on it.
In addition to the diamond-shaped map of the secret rooms, Lao Mo also marked each secret room with a card that appeared on the wall.
For example, the cards on the wall of room 2 are diamond 8, red heart 8, spade 8, and plum blossom 8; the cards on the wall of room 4 are 6 cards of four different suits; room 6 has king cards of four different suits; and room 7 has 3 cards of four different suits.
The four rooms 2, 6, 4, and 7 that Lao Mo mentioned are the teleportation points from the [ Diamonds District] to other areas.
CEO Shao just won a card game, and they got an extra Hearts 6. Gui Yuanzhang suggested, "Let's collect Hearts now, we already have a Hearts 6."
Old Mo said, "Okay, let's go to room 6 and get the King of Hearts too."
With a map in hand, finding room 6 would be quite easy. Led by Old Mo, the three quickly arrived at room 6, took the [ King of Hearts ] card from the wall, and found that the door at the end of the corridor was no different from the previous one. The three walked into the door and found that there was a straight corridor in front of them, but there were no playing cards on the walls on both sides of the corridor, only Marble Bricks.
A soft red light was flashing in the distance, clearly indicating that this corridor was not a "secret room" but a "teleportation channel".
Old Mo looked down at the map he had drawn.
Based on the path we just walked, this three-dimensional maze can be understood as a "seven-story" structure. In the diamonds area, 2 is on the top floor, 8 is on the bottom floor, and 6 and K are both on the fifth floor. After they took the [ King of Hearts ] from room 6, there were no stairs or falls, but a horizontal passage appeared. This means that the heart room they are about to go to must also be on the same horizontal plane.
Old Mo continued to expand the handkerchief, and along the horizontal line from 6 to K, began to draw the secret room in the Hearts area.
A moment later, the three entered the secret room.
The interior of the Hearts section is exactly the same as the Diamonds section, with a white ceiling, black marble floor tiles, and walls covered with playing cards on both sides.
Four cards also appeared on the wall.
If they hadn't taken the time to figure out the structure of this three-dimensional maze, and if people had just randomly collected cards without distinguishing their suits at the beginning, the identical internal structure from the Diamonds section to the Hearts section would have completely messed up their sense of direction!
Old Mo marked the cards on the handkerchief, while Shao Qingge collected them in ascending order, and directly took the heart 5 from the four cards on the wall: heart 5, hearts 7, hearts 9, and hearts J.
The mechanism was activated, and the three entered the door to Heart 5. Sure enough, their bodies began to fall rapidly!
Upon arriving at the Heart 5 room, they discovered that the cards here also had four suits: Red Heart 8, Spade 8, Diamond 8, and Plum Blossom 8. Shao Qingge immediately said, "It seems that this room 5 is a teleportation point for the Hearts area. We can use this to return to the Diamonds area, or we can go to the Spade area or the Plum Blossom area?"
Old Mo nodded: "Yes, I've marked them. Take the cards first."
The card to pick up was naturally the hearts. Gui Yuanzhang picked up the red heart 8. The road ahead was straight, indicating that rooms 5 and 8 in the hearts section were on the same level.
With Lao Mo drawing the map, Shao Qingge and Gui Yuanzhang felt reassured and continued walking.
As soon as they entered room number 8, a huge wall appeared in front of them, covered with shattered fragments. The fragments were of various shapes, and there were many human face patterns among them. The fragments were mainly brown, black, white, and red, and they covered the entire wall.
Immediately afterwards, a familiar mechanical voice came from my ear: "Puzzle game. Once completed, you can activate a double buff and collect two playing cards in this room. Game start."
Before Shao Qingge could react, Gui Yuanzhang suddenly stepped forward, picked up the fragments on the wall with his right hand, and began to quickly piece them together. As he gradually sorted and assembled the fragments by color, Shao Qingge leaned close to Lao Mo's ear and said, "I almost forgot, Senior Gui is the president of the Jiangzhou City Calligraphy and Painting Association. Judging from how fast he's piecing it together, he might have seen this painting before."
Old Mo nodded: "Yeah, a jumble of fragments, and so many faces, I can't figure out any pattern..."
If you haven't seen this painting before, you can certainly piece it together slowly. A person's face is generally symmetrical, so after it's been fragmented, you can find the other half of the face, the clothes, and so on. You can eventually piece it together in 1 to 2 hours.
The problem is, it's a timed maze now!
Moreover, they had wasted a lot of time walking the same paths repeatedly in the Diamonds area trying to figure out the maze's layout. With only 35 minutes left on the countdown timer in the floating window, Shao Qingge and Lao Mo couldn't help but feel anxious.
But Senior Gui's expression was serious and his movements were swift, so the two of them didn't dare to make a sound and disturb him.
34 minutes to go...
33 points...
As time flew by, the paintings on the wall gradually revealed their original appearance. Shao Qingge and Lao Mo were overjoyed. Just as the countdown reached 31 minutes and 35 seconds, Gui Yuanzhang finished piecing together all the murals.
The two looked up and saw a wall covered in a perfectly complete painting. Although the colors were somewhat dim, each woman looked incredibly lifelike. There were twelve women in total, all dressed in red. They were gathered around a long table, some drinking tea, some drinking wine, and some playing the pipa…
…
Gui Yuanzhang explained, "This is the 'Palace Music' section from 'Ladies of the Tang Dynasty,' one of the ten most famous paintings handed down through the ages."
Shao Qingge had heard of this masterpiece before, but had never seen it in person. Now, seeing Old Gui piece it together in 5 minutes, he couldn't help but admire him, saying, "It's fortunate that you are very familiar with this painting. Otherwise, if it were me and Lao Mo, it would probably take us an hour to piece it together."
Gui Yuanzhang said, "Let's hurry up and get the cards."
The mural disappeared, and four cards appeared in front of them, exactly four hearts.
Shao Qingge picked out Red Heart 2 and went into the next room...
Thanks to their experience in the diamonds section, their process of collecting playing cards in the hearts section went exceptionally smoothly.
As Old Mo walked and drew, as he collected more and more Hearts cards, a shape gradually appeared on his handkerchief. Old Mo excitedly said, " All the rooms in the Hearts section are indeed arranged in the shape of the Hearts on a playing card!"
Gui Yuanzhang glanced at his handkerchief map and said, " The Spade and Plum Blossom districts might also follow this pattern? Based on a seven-story maze, with 13 rooms arranged on the seventh floor according to the shape of the floral pattern?"
Shao Qingge said, "Very likely! Where do we go next?"
Even though the Hearts area went smoothly, it still took them 10 minutes. With 25 minutes left, they had to race against time.
Gui Yuanzhang said, "Go to Plum Blossom."
Old Mo marked the Hearts teleportation point on the handkerchief. Upon hearing this, he immediately led his two teammates to room 5, took the [ Plum Blossom 8 ] playing card from the wall, and entered the plum blossom area.
The experience from the previous two areas made the three of them speed up in tacit agreement. To avoid getting distracted, they even talked less. The two of them followed Lao Mo all the way, taking the lowest-ranking plum blossom card they saw on the wall, until they collected 13 plum blossom cards.
The Plum Blossom Maze also features games, located in Plum Blossom 9.
The familiar mechanical voice said: "Welcome to the Coin Elimination Game. There are a lot of coins of varying amounts on the coin wall in front of you. You can eliminate two coins of the same value by clicking on them. Once all the coins are eliminated, the game is over and you will receive a double buff reward and take two cards at once."
Since there was no way to backtrack in this maze, the three of them couldn't skip the game and go directly to other rooms to get cards, so they could only make the most of their time playing a match-3 game. The massive amount of gold coins covering the wall dazzled the three of them. Shao Qingge said, "Let's eliminate them by their face value. I'll eliminate 50,000 gold coins, Lao Mo will get 100,000, and the senior will get 1 million."
The round gold coins, almost blindingly bright under the lights, were scattered everywhere. Coins of denominations of 50,000, 200,000, and 1,000,000 were scattered in varying quantities. The three people used both hands to quickly eliminate coins of the same denomination, while the game's sound effects of "ding-dong" and "clatter" filled the air...
Honestly, the sound effects were not pleasant at all; Shao Qingge just found them very noisy.
This game was definitely orchestrated by Plum Blossom Youth. Everyone knows he's the money controller in Card World, so why would he create a wall of gold coins to show off how rich he is? Is his place also covered in gold coins on all four walls?
It took another 5 minutes for the three of them to eliminate all the coins.
Shao Qingge transformed into the Insect King, able to climb all over the gold coin wall, which was tough on Lao Mo and Gui Yuanzhang. Already old, they had to use both hands, not daring to stop for even a second. After 5 minutes, their arms felt so sore that they almost lost all feeling...
[Game Complete]
[In this Coin Elimination Game, a total of 58.35 million coins were eliminated, and the amount has been deducted from Shao Qingge's account.]
[ Card Bank notification: 58.35 million gold coins have been transferred from your Card Central Bank account. Your current balance is 10 million.]
Shao Qingge: "???"
A coin-matching game where you "eliminate" coins from my account? And you even get paid for winning?
Old Mo was stunned when he heard the notification: "What? We won the game, but CEO Shao's money was deducted instead?"
Gui Yuanzhang said with a stern face, "That's why it's called 'Coin Elimination' game." Guardian did it on purpose.
Shao Qingge really wanted to grab that expressionless boy and beat him up, but now was not the time to worry about that. He took a deep breath, suppressed the urge, and went over to take two plum blossom cards from the card wall.
Taking advantage of this brief moment, Lao Mo took out a beanbag chair and sat down with Senior Gui for two seconds each to regain their energy before catching up with Shao Qingge and continuing through the maze.
As he expected, all the small rooms in the plum blossom section have a three-dimensional structure similar to the shape of " plum blossom " on a playing card.
With all 13 cards collected, the next stop is the last Spade.
Old Mo took Spade 10 from the teleportation point and entered the Spade area.
Whenever spade is mentioned, people reflexively worry – is there any danger? After all, the theme of spade is "survival".
The three of them felt uneasy, and naturally became more cautious in their steps.
The moment they entered the door of Spade 10, as the door closed behind them, a dense rain of arrows suddenly shot towards the three of them!
Shao Qingge is not afraid of arrows, but if Lao Mo and Senior Gui are hit by arrows, they will die.
Gui Yuanzhang reacted extremely quickly. Seeing that the arrow tip was less than 10 centimeters away from his nose, he suddenly flung the brush in his hand outward, and the surrounding air formed a fierce hurricane in front of him, blowing away all the incoming arrows!
The fact that it could snap an arrow in two demonstrates just how terrifying Old Gui's brush control was...
Old Mo, relieved, said in a trembling voice, "It seems the Spade area is difficult to navigate. Everyone, be careful."
Shao Qingge stepped forward and said, "I'll go first, Senior. Please protect Old Mo."
Let him concentrate on drawing.
Gui Yuanzhang nodded and said, "Don't worry."
The three dodged the rain of arrows and entered the maze, taking a Spade 3 from the wall.
The passageway resembled a skylight, and the familiar feeling of weightlessness filled the air. As he plummeted, darkness enveloped him, and he couldn't see what was beneath his feet. Gui Yuanzhang sensed something was wrong and immediately threw away his inkstone!
Almost simultaneously, Shao Qingge said coldly, "Be careful, there are sharp knives all around you!"
The Zerg can see in the dark, and Shao Qingge saw the blade array beneath his feet. Fortunately, Old Gui had the foresight to throw down a huge inkstone. With a loud "boom," the blade array was smashed to pieces by the inkstone.
Old Mo said with a wry smile, " Ace of Spades really loves thrills..."
That's right. With only 10 minutes left on the countdown, they not only have to hurry up and collect cards, but also find a way to survive.
Besides the initial barrage of arrows and swords, the later secret chambers also revealed poisonous snakes, falling rocks, ghostly figures, and more...
While fleeing for their lives, they searched for cards, and it was thanks to the three of them's excellent mental fortitude that they managed to survive.
Old Mo's maze drawing was very complete. Senior Gui had been protecting him all along. Compared to the Hunter, these arrow rain and knife formations were not difficult to deal with. Perhaps it was because this maze was too difficult. The mini-games were relatively friendly - except for the coin match-3 game, of course.
Shao Qingge felt a pang of heartache when he thought about the more than 50 million gold coins that had been inexplicably deducted from his account.
The Spade 13 cards are finally complete. Old Mo glanced at the countdown display and said, "There are only 3 minutes left, but we are still missing two key cards."
Shao Qingge realized this serious problem: "The King and Queen... we've traveled all this way and never seen the King and Queen!"
A deck of cards consists of 13 cards of each of the four suits, plus two jokers.
Recalling their experiences in the Diamonds, Hearts, Plum Blossom, and Spade sections, following Old Mo's map, they had visited almost every room. Each room had four cards on the wall, totaling 208 cards in a 13x4x4 pattern.
But among these 208 cards, there are no jokers!
As the countdown reached 2 minutes and 59 seconds, the three of them suddenly became tense.
Gui Yuanzhang frowned and said, "Could it be that we missed a room?"
Old Mo picked up the map, which had expanded to over a meter in length, quickly glanced at it, and said confidently, "Impossible. Every secret room matches up. We've been through them all. I can't be wrong."
The two of them certainly trusted Lao Mo's sense of space and direction, but since they had searched all the "secret rooms" and had not found the [Little Joker] and [Big Joker], where could these two key cards be?
Could it be that there are still unexplored areas in the maze?!
※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※※