Chapter 62: Game in Progress

Games like [Spot the Difference] that test one’s observational skills were practically a piece of cake for Zhou Ke, even easier than sweet-talking Li Hua into treating him to dinner and paying the bill.

However, the rules of the game had changed. It had shifted from a single-player mode to a cooperative two-player mode.

The key to victory depended on the combination of both players' observational and descriptive abilities.

He had confidence in himself, but he knew nothing about his teammate on the other side of the wall.

In the event that the other person made a mistake, misidentifying or misdescribing a certain object, even if he were to execute his part flawlessly, they would still have to start all over again.

"Neighbor, do you know how to play this game?" Zhou Ke asked beforehand.

"Neighbor?" The girl in the neighboring room paused slightly, then realized this was the nickname Zhou Ke had given her.

She had no objections and replied succinctly, "I've played it, but I'm not very good at it. Do you have any suggestions?"

"Ah, I have quite a few."

Seeing how compliant his neighbor was, Zhou Ke felt it inappropriate to boast about himself on the spot, so he simply explained in a serious tone:

"Searching the room for anomalies separately will only make us like headless flies. It's better to divide and conquer: one of us will be responsible for describing the items in the room, and the other will be responsible for comparing whether they match."

The female voice paused in brief contemplation, then offered unsparing praise, "That's a good method. I can't believe you came up with it in just a few seconds."

"Shall we start now, then?"

She was already growing impatient to escape the predicament of being bound by steel cables, especially after Zhou Ke's vulgar analogy involving a "pet collar" just moments ago.

"No rush." Zhou Ke remained exceptionally calm, his lifeless, deadpan eyes staring at the swaying cartoon rabbit. "The game hasn't given us a countdown yet."

Games of the [Spot the Difference!] genre usually come with a time limit; otherwise, letting players search at their leisure would be far too easy.

Just as Zhou Ke finished speaking, the cartoon rabbit's cute, wide eyes flashed with a red light!

The tablet computer didn't change at all, but terrifyingly, the rabbit doll placed beside the bed slowly rose with its limbs twisted.

Once its soft, cotton-stuffed legs stood upright, the rabbit doll's size was comparable to that of an adult male.

The curved smile on its face, set off by its two button eyes, reflected a gloomy, evil light, as if it were watching you every single second.

"I told you that buying such a huge doll for a kid was bound to cause trouble! Life-sized dolls should just be left for adults to buy!"

Zhou Ke's erratic train of thought left his neighbor, who was experiencing the exact same scene, utterly speechless: "What on earth are you talking about?!"

Naturally, the rabbit doll didn't stop to chat with the two of them. It placed both hands flat against its abdomen and ripped them apart with a tearing sound, performing a public display of "ripping one's heart out."

Fluffy cotton spilled outward in clumps, while its hands continued to dig inward relentlessly, until it pulled a blood-stained kitchen knife from the very depths.

Next, the rabbit doll gripped the knife in one hand and walked toward Zhou Ke with the sluggish, stiff movements of a wooden mannequin, its button eyes blazing with murderous intent.

"Look, the countdown has started."

Zhou Ke lowered his head, spending a few seconds observing the rabbit's feet and estimating the distance between them, roughly calculating that it would take the creature only three minutes to reach him.

And after those three minutes, once his truth-seeking ability failed and he remained constrained by the steel cables, he would likely be decapitated within five to seven seconds.

Then, five minutes later, his skull would probably be scooped out and used as a bowl.

"Can we start now?" The female neighbor was clearly more jittery than Zhou Ke, or perhaps this was a more normal human reaction.

"No problem. You describe, and I'll compare."

Hearing this, Zhou Ke stopped calculating how many milliliters of liquor his skull could hold.

He said, "Start from the far right corner of your room. You must describe not only the color of the items, but also their state—whether they are upside down or upright—and ideally give a specific angle."

The far-right corner was precisely where the rabbit doll had originally been placed. Because of its rising motion, a huge mess of miscellaneous items on the bedside table had tumbled down, leaving everything scattered about.

That area had the highest difficulty for finding differences, and Zhou Ke deduced it was the most likely place for mistakes to occur.

"In the far right corner, there is a bedside table with two drawers. The top half is pink, and the bottom half is white."

As the female neighbor spoke, she remembered Zhou Ke's instruction about "the state of the items" and immediately added, "The upper drawer has been pulled out a little bit."

Ignoring the rabbit doll's threatening gesture with the knife, Zhou Ke kept his eyes fixed on the bedside table. Seeing that the upper drawer was indeed slightly ajar, he said, "Continue."

"Don't worry about me. Go ahead and describe at your fastest speed. Unless I tell you to stop, you don't need to stop."

Three minutes was very short, and there were many miscellaneous items in the room, leaving no room for a leisurely, slow-paced comparison.

"Alright, I'll do my best."

Since Zhou Ke had made such a bold statement, the neighbor had nothing left to worry about. Her speaking pace noticeably shifted up a gear and grew faster and faster.

Later on, she was spitting out six or seven words a second, hardly enunciating clearly at all, practically turning it into a rap battle.

"The yellow desk lamp on the cabinet fell onto the pillow, and next to it is a piece of paper with 'travel' written on it."

"Underneath the paper are three plane tickets, half a corner exposed, printed with Hawaiian islands."

"The quilt is pink, the pillow is pink, and the calendar on the windowsill says 'children'."

From the furthest corner to the corner beside her, shifting bit by bit from the far right toward the left.

The female neighbor felt her lips growing dry and her tongue threatening to tie itself into knots.

The physical hardship was secondary; the main thing was that while describing the objects, you could see the rabbit doll holding a sharp knife approaching without a single moment of rest.

As it drew closer, more and more items that lacked time for detailed description would become obstructed.

If one succumbed to fear, panic would naturally ensue, leading to a cascade of mistakes.

Fortunately, the female neighbor possessed decent psychological resilience and had not made a single error so far.

However, what concerned her more right now was the situation on Zhou Ke's end.

The female neighbor considered her speaking speed to be blindingly fast—so fast that her brain couldn't even retain the things she had just said, even with a mere one-second interval.

After all, time was of the essence, and sometimes she described three different locations in a single second.

Yet under these circumstances, she hadn't heard Zhou Ke tell her to stop even once.

It was as if the speed was completely within his tolerance, and occasionally she even heard Zhou Ke telling her to go faster, or demanding even more detailed descriptions.

One had to bear in mind that she only needed to say whatever she saw, whereas Zhou Ke needed to rapidly locate the items in the room based on her descriptions and make comparisons.

That might sound simple, but if such meticulous work continued for nearly two minutes without a single mistake or omission, frankly speaking, that could no longer be called human.

"Can the human brain really do something like this? Is there a robot on the other side of the wall?" the female neighbor couldn't help wondering in her heart.