"Aaaah! Aaaah!"
The screams were agonizing.
The instant Ye Lin reached the first floor, his pupils contracted.
Huang Bin was screaming hysterically beside the wall. Large quantities of steaming, transparent liquid poured down over his head.
The others stood pale-faced on the second floor, helpless to do anything but watch. Nobody dared go down.
The sulfuric acid had appeared without warning and dissolved his eyeballs in moments. In such extreme pain, Huang Bin couldn't think straight.
No matter how the people upstairs shouted, he only staggered blindly about, unable to escape the falling acid.
Heated sulfuric acid carbonized his skin almost instantly. Layers of dermis split like dead tree bark, exposing the muscle beneath.
Layer after layer dissolved and charred.
A few seconds later...
Whether it was mercy or another horror, the acid pouring into his mouth filled his abdomen. His belly burst with a wet splutter. Carbonized intestines and bloody water gurgled through the opening and slapped onto the floor as he fell backward.
The system announced coldly,
"Examinee Huang Bin, ID E17514, deceased."
Thud.
His body hit the floor, splashing red and yellow liquid.
Ye Lin's expression darkened as he watched the blood-red acid spread toward his feet.
This wasn't his first time seeing someone die. But he'd never seen a death this horrific.
Acid flowed across the floor and began eating into his soles.
He couldn't delay. Snapping Zhang Tie out of his stupor, he ran for the second floor.
Perhaps the shock had been too much. Zhang Tie stood rooted to the spot, as though he'd lost his wits.
He Zheng had warned them that people would die here. But seeing someone die so quickly, and so horribly, was something else entirely.
This was...
The Death Gaokao?
There was no time for fear.
Pain stung the soles of his feet. Zhang Tie gulped air and forced himself after Ye Lin.
...
"What happened? Why is there sulfuric acid?"
Ye Lin fired the questions at the pale-faced group by the door.
Even He Zheng, who'd survived several exams, looked shaken by Huang Bin's death.
"The keypad must be booby-trapped! Enter the wrong password and it triggers!"
"I heard machinery moving, but I thought the trap was up here. I wasn't watching the first floor! Huang Bin lost his nerve when he heard we had to keep going. Made some excuse to run downstairs!"
He Zheng gave a quick explanation, lingering fear in his eyes. Beside him, Lin Ya broke down sobbing.
Huang Bin had died because he'd run down there himself. But his fate made everyone fear they would be next.
Ye Lin's gaze darkened. He looked at Hu Jia, who was clutching his fingers.
"What about him?"
"Him?"
He Zheng glanced at the whimpering boy with disgust.
"He's fine. The keypad's a bit cold. His fingers froze to it when he tried entering the password."
"Fucking hell, it's a little scraped skin. You'd think he was dying."
"Ye Lin, find anything downstairs? It's a six-digit password. If all else fails, we'll have to force it!"
Ye Lin shook his head without speaking. He could see that Hu Jia's fingers had almost been stripped to the bone.
To freeze his fingers on contact, the temperature had to be at least seventy-eight degrees below zero Celsius.
The injury wasn't minor. It only seemed that way beside Huang Bin's death.
Huang Bin had probably fled downstairs because he feared He Zheng would make him try the password.
"Nothing downstairs? Then...!"
"Acid! There's more acid coming!"
Before He Zheng could vent his frustration, Hu Jia screamed, staring down at the first floor as though he'd seen a ghost.
The acid had initially poured only through holes in the right wall. Now it was gushing from the left as well.
It flowed so fast that even Huang Bin's corpse lurched in the current.
"Fuck!"
He Zheng's heart seized with fear.
It might take a while for the acid to reach the second floor. They might even be safe until Basement Level One was flooded. But the ten-minute deadline was fixed, and they only had seven minutes left!
After seeing Hu Jia's fingers, none of them even dared touch the door.
"Ye Lin! You really found nothing?"
"I'm sure."
Knowing He Zheng wouldn't give up, Ye Lin wasted no time arguing.
His memories flickered through his mind like photographs.
He was certain he hadn't missed anything. Never mind numbers. The first floor and both stairways were made entirely of metal, smooth and unmarked.
"Fuck it, then we'll have to keep trying!"
"You, and you! Start entering numbers!"
His vicious streak surfacing, He Zheng seized another student's hand and shoved it toward the keypad.
Losing a few fingers was better than waiting to die!
Hu Jia, whose left hand was still intact, screamed the moment it touched the keys. But before He Zheng could force another finger down, Ye Lin grabbed his arm.
"There's no way to brute-force it."
"A six-digit password has a million combinations. Even ignoring the damage to their fingers, pulling them off each time would take more than five seconds."
"At seventy-two attempts in six minutes, the odds are only 0.0072 percent!"
"Then what do you want to do? If we don't gamble, do we just stand here and die?"
He Zheng's eyes were bloodshot. He couldn't stand wasting another second. With the students crying around him, he was tempted to chop off a few hands and use those.
"Gamble?"
Ye Lin refused to budge. Taking a deep breath, he thought as fast as he could.
This wasn't right.
If it really was an exam, even one where their lives were at stake, it shouldn't come down to random luck. What would be the point?
He'd felt something was wrong from the beginning. The vague question. The hall without a single clue. The acid that had appeared out of nowhere, without any apparent logic.
All of it had done nothing but force them to...
Wait.
A jolt ran through him. He finally saw what was wrong.
"He Zheng! What does 'Choice' mean in the question? As in choosing an answer?"
He Zheng almost swore at him for still quibbling over words.
"Of course it means a choice! Choice is multiple choice! Completion is fill-in-the-blank! Insight is reading comprehension! This is the Death Gaokao. Of course it's like an exam!"
"Haven't you fucking figured it out? Surviving here isn't about pushing a pen. You've got to put your life on the line!"
Choice? It really meant a multiple-choice question, not something else?
Ye Lin froze. It suddenly seemed much less complicated than he'd thought.
"A choice? If it really is a choice, why does only one answer look possible?"
"What the hell are you talking about? There's obviously only one right answer!"
Time was slipping away. He Zheng could no longer bear the pressure and shoved Ye Lin aside.
He didn't care anymore. Even if Ye Lin put a gun to his head, he would try a few more combinations!
"No. Having only one correct answer and having only one apparent option are different things."
Answering his own question, Ye Lin turned and stared at the metal door on Basement Level One.
"At these heights, the acid would make the first floor lethal in nine minutes. Basement Level One in five. The second floor would take at least fifteen."
"Which means once the acid starts flowing, our only option is to run upstairs."
"And the system warned us right from the start that Basement Level One was extremely dangerous. Put those together, and anyone would assume the second floor is the way to survive. Even if they weren't sure, they'd still be forced up here!"
"Then if there's only one obvious answer, why would we need to make a choice?"
He Zheng jolted. The hand he'd been pushing down stopped.
That was right. Put that way, there was no choice involved at all.
"You're saying... going to Basement Level One is the right answer?"
"But the system told us clearly. The moment that door opens, we'll...!"
Before he finished, Ye Lin snatched the fire axe from his hand and sprinted downstairs.
"No buts!"
"If we really woke up on the first floor, then yes, opening the door below us would kill us!"
"But what if..."
"We've been on Basement Level Two all along?"