TDU Chapter 478
TL Note: GUYS, SHOOTING OF TDU’S LIVE ACTION JUST WRAPPED UP AND WE’RE BLESSED WITH ANOTHER TEASER - https://www.reddit.com/r/TenDayUltimatum/comments/1vbjt0a/ten_day_ultimatum_aka_the_infinite_10_days_live/
Proofread SpeedDemon (ko-fi)
Chapter 478 Penglai
The sturdy Terrestrial Rabbit paced back and forth in the room. He first walked to the door on the left to take a look, then to the one directly across it.
“We’re now…” He reached out his thick arm and scratched his large, round head. “Do any of you remember which direction we came in from? Anyone bring a compass?”
“You sick or what?” Chen Junnan said while picking his nose. “Compass my ass! We’re in a rush here.”
Jiang Ten slowly opened his mouth and let out a yawn. “Yeah… we’re in a…Hooah… rush here…”
Terrestrial Rabbit turned his head in confusion; he truly couldn’t see any sign of urgency from the two of them.
“How about you all wait here…” Terrestrial Rabbit waved awkwardly at the group. “I’ll go look for the path myself… When I find it, I’ll come back to get you. How about that?”
Song Seven was just about to agree when Chen Junnan suddenly stepped forward. “How would that work? Plump Rabbit ge, how could we let you shoulder all the trouble alone? Since we’ve already entered your game venue, we’ll go together.”
Even though Terrestrial Rabbit had the face of a rabbit, everyone could clearly see the change in his expression.
“Together?”
“Yeah, Terrestrial Rabbit ge.” Chen Junnan nodded, pointing at the tainted walls around them. “Every room here is splattered with blood; it stinks to high heaven… How many people have you killed here, exactly?”
“Ah… not too many…” Terrestrial Rabbit replied. “At most a hundred or so.”
“Right.” Chen Junnan nodded. “A game only allows six people to enter yet you’ve already killed over a hundred, how many times have you hosted this game as of now?”
Terrestrial Rabbit’s gaze hardened noticeably at this.
Seeing that he didn’t respond, Chen Junnan pressed further. “Let’s say you killed sixty people. That means this game must have been played at least ten times, and yet you still dare to claim you {got lost}?”
“Oh?” Terrestrial Rabbit slowly crossed his arms over his chest, his muscles straining against his suit. “Since I’m not {lost}, what do you think I’m doing right now, then?”
“You’re deliberately messing with our sense of direction, aren’t you?” Chen Junnan remarked bluntly. “If it weren’t for what you just said, I wouldn’t have been sure.”
“Heh…” Terrestrial Rabbit’s eyes grew colder. “You really don’t seem like someone with such meticulous thoughts.”
“Yeah, I didn’t want to be this meticulous either,” Chen Junnan nodded. “But you insist on leaving us behind to find the exit yourself. Wouldn’t it be possible that, at some point, you’d suddenly announce {Game Start}? Then we’d be lost, not knowing which way to run.”
“So?” Terrestrial Rabbit asked with a cold laugh. “If you knew the way to the starting point, why would you have wasted so much time following me?”
“Because this young master wishes to see what foul water you’ve got sloshing around in your gourd.” Chen Junnan let out a cold laugh as well. “Just to let you know, I grew up in the hutongs, and I’ve had a keen sense of direction since I was a child. These straight passages and simple turns could never throw this young master off.”
“You—” Terrestrial Rabbit’s plump head trembled ever so slightly, as though he felt he had already been outmaneuvered before the game had even begun.
In the past, whenever he received {participants}, he would lead everyone in circles through the rooms. After passing through a dozen‑plus identical chambers, even the sharpest would lose all sense of direction. Once they forgot which way led to escape, Terrestrial Rabbit would tear them apart one by one.
“What a sly and disobedient little rabbit you are.” Chen Junnan raised a hand and patted Terrestrial Rabbit’s sturdy chest. “Quit wasting time, this young master’s teammates are about to fall asleep. Move.”
“Heh.” Terrestrial Rabbit again gave that skin‑deep smile before crossing to the door on the left side of the room and pushing it open. “It matters not. Even if you know the way out, I will still slaughter every last one of you.”
Terrestrial Rabbit did, in truth, have an impeccable sense of direction. He kept turning left and right as he led the group forward.
At that moment, Song Seven whispered behind him, “Chen Junnan, you really are meticulous. You’ve been observing the directions since we stepped inside… if not for you—”
“This young master wasn’t observing a damn thing.” Chen Junnan muttered with a frown. “I was f*cking lost ages ago.”
“Huh?”
“That whole nonsense analysis was straight out of Ole Qi’s playbook. Who knew it’d actually work?” Chen Junnan hovered a hand over his mouth and whispered, “When this young master was a kid, I got lost in the hutongs more than eight times. The neighbors had to escort me home every single time. If I had a good sense of direction, would I have gotten lost that many times?”
The nearby {Cats} members all overheard his muttered confession; whatever shred of respect they’d gained for him moments earlier dissolved instantly into profound speechlessness.
As they advanced, everyone noticed that the building had probably been a medical facility at some point. The floors were coated in a bluish-green paint, yet all the interior equipment had been removed, leaving only empty rooms.
After passing through roughly eight or nine rooms, Terrestrial Rabbit finally arrived at the last chamber.
This room was unlike the others; only two adjacent walls had doors, clearly marking it as the {top-left corner}.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” Terrestrial Rabbit steadied himself and turned to the collective. “The rules of my game are simple. I call it {Penglai*}.”
(TLN: A mythical paradise located in the eastern seas and populated with immortals. More info in tlnote.)
“Penglai…?” Chen Junnan scratched his head, feeling the name seemed to have little to do with the game before them.
“To put it plainly, it’s a type of {sixteen-square chess}, except the board is made of rooms. There are sixteen rooms in total, four per row and four columns. Each of us represents one chess piece. Your task is to move from the room you start in to the diagonally opposite room and escape. Doing so counts as a victory.”
“Got it.” Chen Junnan nodded. “Now explain how the {pieces} move.”
“I mentioned it before entering the venue." Terrestrial Rabbit scanned the six people in front of him. “As {prey}, you all get three actions per turn. These actions include {opening doors}, {closing doors}, {unlocking}, {locking door}, and {moving rooms}. But note… {locking door} and {moving rooms} each consume two action points.”
“Wait a moment, let me sort this out.” Chen Junnan raised a hand to interrupt. “This young master is already confused.”
He turned to his teammates and asked, “Did you all get that?”
Jiang Ten opened his mouth. “I did…hooah… not.”
“Sss…” Chen Junnan frowned at Jiang Ten. Every time he talked to this child, he found himself wanting to yawn as well. This was indeed a troublesome matter. “This young master now has a new life goal. Besides getting Zhou Mo to stop starting every sentence with a {tsk}, I also need to get you, kid, to speak without yawning.”
“Oh? Really?” Jiang Ten yawned and nodded blandly. “Good luck.”
“I more or less understand it,” Song Seven said. “But there’s still something I don’t quite comprehend."
“Of course,” Terrestrial Rabbit said, fixing his gaze on Song Seven. “I will answer any question before the game begins. Once the slaughter starts, I won’t concern myself with your lives or deaths.”
“Alright.” Song Seven nodded. “You said earlier that we are allowed to {open} or {lock} a door. If we were to {lock} a door… does that mean you cannot open it?”
TL Note: According to the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas(山海经)’, Penglai Island (蓬萊仙島), known in Chinese mythology as one of the great immortal realms, was said to lie on an island somewhere in the Eastern Sea, aka the Bohai Sea (渤海). It was counted among the three or sometimes five mythical islands where immortals resided, the most famous three being Penglai (蓬萊), Fangzhang (方丈), and Yingzhou (瀛洲). The ‘Shizhouji (十洲記)’ explains that only immortals could ever reach Penglai, yet the First Emperor of Qin (246–210 BCE), still sent an expedition in hopes of securing the fabled herb of immortality said to grow there.
And to explain, the ‘Classic of Mountains and Seas’, or ‘Shanhai jing (山海经)’, is an early Chinese compilation of mythic geography, strange lands, and legendary beasts. Although portions may date back to the 4th century BCE, the text reached its present form in the early Han dynasty. It offers a fantastical depiction of the geography and culture of pre-Qin China and preserves many early myths. The work is divided into eighteen sections and describes more than 550 mountains and 300 waterways. The ‘Hainei shizhou ji (海內十洲記)’, translated as "Ten islands in the inner seas", or ‘Shizhouji (十洲記)’ for short, is a collection of phantastic stories traditionally attributed to the Former Han period (206 BC- 8 AD) Daoist Master Dongfang Shuo (東方朔).
But I digress… All living creatures on these mythological islands were said to be white, and the palace that crowned Penglai was described as pure gold. In the cosmology of Chinese myth, the domain of the Queen Mother of the West (西王母) and the Kunlun Range (崑崙) formed the western paradise, while Penglai (蓬萊) stood as its eastern counterpart, a mirror realm of immortality and perfection.
If any of you read LOM, this island was also mentioned there, book two, to be exact xD
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