"...As long as you don't get caught, the game continues, right?"

Hohenheim nodded, his expression returning to calm. "I understand. Then, I'll toss again."

He propelled the mage hand, flipping the coin.

Second round, tails.

Third round, tails.

The next two rounds also landed with the snow mountain side facing up.

Claude grinned, his three arms drooping down, swaying gently with the rise and fall of his chest as he breathed. "This time, I've won again.

Two to two. Still match point."

"..."

Hohenheim was silent, his eyes fixed on the copper coin gripped by the mage hand.

In these two rounds of tosses, he had already used more than a dozen abilities such as Word Magic, Divination, Precognition, Prediction, and Extrasensory Perception. Before flipping the coin,

he had already calculated the surrounding air density, wind direction, wind speed, the strength of the mage hand, the point of contact between the mage hand and the coin, the trajectory of the coin's rotation, and the side it would land on.

From any angle, the coin landing on heads was definitely the predetermined outcome.

However, the result was, against all odds, three consecutive tails. He didn't even know which part had gone wrong.

He only felt that after the coin was flipped into the air, it naturally deviated from the predicted trajectory in a subtle and chaotic way. This insignificant deviation eventually evolved into a completely different outcome.

What exactly was going on?

Hohenheim raised his head, his brow furrowed as he scrutinized the unremarkable three-armed monster before him.

The other party had cheated. This was certain, definite, and affirmative.

The only two questions were, what was the other party's method of cheating, and how could he find evidence...

"What's wrong?"

Claude chuckled. "Is there a pattern on my face?"

"It's nothing,"

Hohenheim said calmly. "It's just that I've found a way to win."

"Oh?"

Claude raised an eyebrow. "Sounds confident. Then please continue tossing. Let me see if you have the strength to leave this forest.

I still choose tails, tails, tails."

"Same as before, heads, tails, tails."

Hohenheim's expression was calm, his heart as still as water. The other party had again chosen three of the same sides in a row, and he still had a seven-eighths chance of winning on paper.

But this round, he would not lose again.

Hohenheim gently closed the Sand Book in his hand, canceled the mage hand, and touched the brass alloy coin with his palm. He placed the coin flat on the tip of his right index finger, and flicked it heavily upwards with his thumb from below.

Clang—

The sound of the fingernail colliding with the brass was crisp and pleasant. The coin tumbled and rotated, every line, every stain on it clearly visible under the surveillance of the magic formula.

————

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

On the flat ground below the rocky pillar where the coin duel was taking place,

Ding Zhensi, in the cockpit of the Kui Ox mech, stood a little further away, looking worriedly at the rocky pillar platform, which had been silent for some time.

Around him,

Anbury idly held a rag smeared with special ointment, gently maintaining the Tidebringer scimitar, cleaning the blood groove of the scimitar.

Liu Wudai stood in place with his bow and arrow, closed his eyes and concentrated, reducing his body's energy consumption. The jade bracelet on his wrist emitted a warm, misty light in waves—it should be some kind of divination-type item that could detect danger, and was extremely expensive.

David had already dissected the wild boar's corpse, dismantling it into more than a hundred large and small parts, arranged on a transparent plastic sheet. At this moment, he was washing the bloodstains on his hands with bottled water from his storage device,

occasionally raising his head to look at the rocky pillar platform with a deep gaze.

"They've been gone for three minutes and fifty-four seconds,"

David used the last bottle of bottled water to wash away all the bloodstains. While throwing the empty plastic bottle back into the storage space, he said to his companions in a calm voice, "I'll go up and take a look in another minute."

The top of the rocky pillar platform was just infinitely close to the height that would continuously trigger lightning. Trying to climb it would be attacked by the rocky pillar itself, and flying up next to it would be struck by lightning.

"Mr. Hohenheim should be alright, right?"

Ding Zhensi couldn't help asking, "There hasn't been any movement for so long."

"He should be fine."

David smiled. "After all, it's just a game of guessing heads or tails, not a battle to the death."

"Don't worry, that's the fourth-ranked individual strength player,"

Anbury said leisurely from the side. "There isn't a single weakling in the top twenty, and the top ten are even more monstrous than each other.

In sports competitions, you have to remove a lowest score and a highest score, and take the average.

Hohenheim is that highest score.

His individual ability is definitely higher than the average difficulty of this scenario mission, which is based on each of our strengths.

He might not die even if you do.

Besides, each of us has a detachment ticket rewarded from the last Doorway Contest. If it really doesn't work out, we can just run away."

"Ah..."

Ding Zhensi had a strange expression on his face. What did he mean by "He might not die even if you do"? Is that how you comfort people...?

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!

The muffled, rhythmic sound rang out once again.

Everyone's eyes turned to Li Ang, who had been knocking on the trees nearby since just now.

"Uh... Brother Li?"

Ding Zhensi scratched his head, and said uncertainly, "What are you... doing?"

Li Ang, who was knocking on a tree with the Hegemon's Halberd, turned his head and said casually, "Didn't I plant some trees in Ant Forest before? I'm seeing if any of them are in here."

Uh, actually, Ant Forest plants *sausu* trees that look like grass...

Ding Zhensi suppressed the urge to complain, but heard Li Ang continue, "This forest is quite strange."

"Hmm?" Ding Zhensi asked subconsciously, "What's strange about it?"

"The types of trees."

Li Ang held the Hegemon's Halberd in one hand and knocked on the trunk of a tall tree. "The bark is dark brown, with small vertical cracks, thick twigs, thick papery leaves, oval or obovate.

This is *Syzygium buxifolium* from the Myrtle family in the dicotyledonous order."

"Eh?"

Ding Zhensi was stunned for a second or two, and immediately reacted, "This is a species that exists in the real world?"

"Yeah."

Li Ang nodded and said, "In the real world, *Syzygium buxifolium* only exists in the deep, dense forests of Xishuangbanna's mountain valleys at an altitude of 500-1100 meters. It is quite rare and belongs to critically endangered species."

"That's not right?"

Ding Zhensi pressed the control buttons, commanding the AI to search for information on [*Syzygium buxifolium*] in the Kui Ox mech's database, and said, "My mech has sensors that come with a scanning function.

It can scan plants, animals, minerals, buildings, text, paintings, and other carriers. If there is information that matches the real world, it will automatically report it.

The scanner didn't detect it..."

"That's because this tree has mutated."

Li Ang said casually, "Wild *Syzygium buxifolium* are 25 to 30 meters tall, while this one is 40 meters tall.

The shapes of the male flowers and seeds are also quite different from wild and artificially cultivated *Syzygium buxifolium*."

Liu Wudai frowned slightly, "Could it be that it looks similar, but it's actually not the same plant?"

"I checked the cells of this tree, and they are very similar to the modern Xishuangbanna *Syzygium buxifolium* samples I obtained a long time ago."

Li Ang said indifferently. When he was managing and building automated pet feeders, he found shops in the game plaza that could do almost anything as long as they were given enough money, and purchased a large number of rare animal and plant samples, coming into contact with a large number of endangered species.

"In addition,"

Li Ang held the Hegemon's Halberd and pointed to the surrounding forest, "Kapok, magnolia, ginkgo, dove tree... they are all mutated types of plant species from the real world.

Besides that, if I'm not mistaken, there are also seed ferns, tongue ferns, and Bennettitales... these are all extinct gymnosperms that died out around the Permian-Triassic period."

"Extinct ancient plants?"

Ding Zhensi said in shock, "What's going on?"

"Too little information, too many possibilities."

Li Ang retracted the Hegemon's Halberd and said casually, "It's possible that this scenario world is located in an area with space-time chaos.

It's possible that the entire scenario world is a closed space similar to an ecosystem, specializing in collecting all kinds of messy species—from the words of that three-armed monster Claude, it can be seen that the worldview of this world is quite large, and the indigenous residents living in it are not weak either.

It's also possible that we are now in a worldview drawn by a third-rate cartoonist—for the sake of convenience, that creator simply grabbed some plant materials from the Internet to use as a background.

But one thing is certain."

He paused, and swept the ground with his halberd, removing the dead branches and leaves piled on the flat ground, revealing soils of different colors. "This forest is indeed modular, and each area changes position every once in a while."

Beep—

In the cockpit of the Kui Ox mech, a prompt sounded, indicating that the intelligent AI had already scanned a mutated species that was relatively close to the real world, under the premise of relaxed conditions.

Extinct ancient plants...

Liu Wudai frowned slightly and looked at Ding Zhensi, asking, "Your mech should have a processor installed, right?

Starting from when we entered the scenario, has the position of the sun changed?"

"The position of the sun?"

Ding Zhensi frowned deeply, and countless possibilities flashed through his mind. He suddenly raised his head and controlled the sensor scanner to observe the sky.

The sensor locked onto the sun's position in less than a second, calculated the sun's movement trajectory, and corresponded to the time flow rate.

"It's been almost thirty minutes since we were teleported into the scenario mission."

Ding Zhensi looked at Liu Wudai and replied, "The rate at which the sun is descending and the change in our shadow angles are the same as during the spring equinox in the real world."

"Is that so..."

Liu Wudai turned to look at Li Ang, "The amount of sunlight, rainfall, temperature, humidity, and soil conditions required by these extinct plants

are different, right?"

"Of course."

Li Ang smiled and nodded, "Seed ferns, tongue ferns, Bennettitales, and other gymnosperms were victims of the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

They have long been eliminated by angiosperms. If they haven't continued to evolve, then the required environment can be said to be vastly different from modern plants."

"If there are differences..."

Liu Wudai said slowly, "According to Claude's statement, the positions of different areas in this forest will change, but the growth of the plants is strangely not that bad.

This means that the time it takes for different positions to change is not very long,

otherwise different types of plants would die one after another due to long-term environmental differences, or at the very least, their growth rate would be slow and they would be weak and listless..."

"Yeah."

Li Ang nodded, "I understand what you mean.

Since the plants are growing very well, it is very likely that the positions of the areas in the forest change constantly every day,

but during a special, relatively long period of time, the changes will stop.

That is, all the plants and the soil beneath them will return to their original positions.

Specifically, these soils of different colors will be unified again at that moment."

"In other words,"

David, who had been listening from the side, suddenly said, "We can act at that moment without worrying about the forest's position changing, causing us to keep going around in circles in one place?"

"That's right."

Li Ang nodded, "Considering the huge differences between the environments required by these extinct gymnosperms and other plants.

The area of this forest may be larger than we imagined.

Claude's statement just now that we would never be able to get out after getting lost was not unfounded, but there is really such a possibility.

However, assuming our conclusion is correct, then we can get out without relying on his guidance..."

"..."

Ding Zhensi opened his mouth. He still hadn't reacted to how Li Ang had jumped from looking for trees in Ant Forest to discovering the secret of the positional changes in this vast forest.

What happened in between?

How did it feel like he had fallen asleep during one math class in the first year of high school, and the whole world had changed when he woke up?

"Then, isn't this a waste of effort?"

Ding Zhensi's Kui Ox mech raised its arm and pointed to the rocky pillar platform, "The Killing Game System placed an NPC at the entrance to the forest where we entered,

deliberately setting up a gamble to bet on our way out,

but we can actually get out without the NPC.

Then isn't the system being redundant?"

"It's not redundant."

Li Ang smiled slightly, "Think about it, it was precisely because Claude appeared and held us back that we had the patience to carefully observe the surrounding environment and discover the problem.

And the system set a time limit of five hours, which is actually a very subtle hint—if, in addition to winning the gamble, we can also find a way to escape the forest by observing the surroundings,

it means that the [time when the lands in each area of the forest return to their original positions] that we guessed must occur within 1-4 hours.

By the way, one or two hours are set aside for the players to travel after finding the solution.

One puzzle, multiple solutions.

Whether Hohenheim wins or not, we can escape. Of course, it's best if he wins. We can avoid being enemies with the NPC and get three treasure pouches—

Judging from the puzzle rules for finding the way in the forest, these three treasure pouches are probably the key props that can reduce the troubles we encounter in subsequent missions...

Ah, the gamble is over."

Accompanied by a violent noise, the rocky pillar platform carrying Claude and Hohenheim was slowly descending.