Chapter 1442: Game Time Over

In the silent mall, the game reached its 58th minute.

Chen Hanwu had been restless for several minutes. Holding a stopwatch he found in the mall, he paced back and forth, occasionally peeking through the shelf gaps to the other side. Not seeing any sign of Silvan"s team only made him more anxious. In stark contrast, Advaita seemed eerily calm, as if her soul had already departed. Even her hair didn"t flutter. She sat cross-legged under a shelf, her gaze fixed on Lin Sanjiu.

Lin Sanjiu, pierced by her stare, kept her eyes closed, trying her best to remain composed.

The decisive moment of the game was drawing near.

Advaita suddenly looked up and smiled. "Hear that? There"s some movement on their side."

The faint rustling noises were so soft that even when Lin Sanjiu strained her ears, she could barely discern them. She opened her eyes, met Advaita"s gaze, and asked, "What are they doing?"

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"I think they"re splitting up and heading towards their respective domain shelves," Advaita replied, her tone more certain than her words. "They wouldn"t take anything from the shelves until the very last moment."

Between the two teams, Silvan"s had fewer target items in their domain than Advaita"s. If both teams managed to retrieve all their target items by the end, Silvan"s team would undoubtedly lose.

"Don"t you need to go?" Lin Sanjiu asked as she slowly rose to her feet. She was waiting for the right moment to sprint beyond Advaita"s reach.

"I certainly don"t need such a primitive method," Advaita replied, tilting her chin slightly.

Her positioning, combined with Chen Hanwu"s, seemed to semi-encircle Lin Sanjiu. No matter which direction she tried to dash, she would be blocked. Lin Sanjiu knew she had to act fast to get a head start.

Chen Hanwu, standing to her left, suddenly widened his eyes as he looked at the stopwatch. In Lin Sanjiu"s heightened state of focus, everything around her seemed to play out in slow motion: Chen Hanwu involuntarily raised his hand, his mouth forming the shape of the word "five"—

Lin Sanjiu pushed off with one foot against the shelf behind her. As it creaked and started to fall, she lunged at Advaita.

Advaita was ready. As Chen Hanwu exclaimed "Five!", Advaita raised a hand to intercept Lin Sanjiu.

"Ten!"

Chen Hanwu, realizing the sudden change in front of him, s.h.i.+fted his eyes from the stopwatch to the scene ahead.

While Lin Sanjiu"s body lunged forward, her Higher Consciousness was directed backward. The shelf she had knocked over hadn"t crashed to the ground yet when it was struck at an angle by her Higher Consciousness. With a heavy metallic sc.r.a.ping noise, it skewed and pushed to the right.

Chen Hanwu, still processing the sudden developments, instinctively continued to count. "Nine!"

The aisle between the shelves was only wide enough for two or three people. Even though Lin Sanjiu controlled her forward momentum, her face was about to come into contact with Advaita"s palm — she could already see the lines on Advaita"s hand very clearly.

A face etched in the lines of Advaita"s palm suddenly emerged. "Want to come in? Join us. There"s plenty of s.p.a.ce here."

"What?"

Lin Sanjiu"s thoughts came to a screeching halt, her mind a blank slate. Behind her, the shelves toppled like dominoes. Despite the chaos, she was fixated solely on the face within the palm and the world that seemed to unfold from it. She watched another figure, eerily lacking a torso, approach from this palm-world, laying out a path before her as if rolling out a carpet.

The figure, along with the face and several others who appeared out of nowhere, sang in unison, "Come in. Those touched by her will fall in, those touched will fall out."

How much time had pa.s.sed? Why had Chen Hanwu stopped mid-sentence, not completing the word "minutes"? Why did it feel as though time had ceased to exist?

Lin Sanjiu knew she must resist—her lingering consciousness reminded her of the danger of being touched by Advaita"s face-filled palm. Yet, in that crucial moment, her body refused to obey; she found herself irresistibly drawn towards Advaita"s hand, like a moth to a flame.

"Wherever you touch, you enter," the first face sang, underpinned by an eerie silence.

Her Higher Consciousness unleashed, Lin Sanjiu"s powers toppled countless shelves with a formidable force, sending dust and shadows swirling through the air. As she nearly collided with Advaita"s palm, Advaita suddenly twisted away, slightly misaligning her hand. Instantly, Lin Sanjiu felt as if the ropes restraining her were cut. Regaining control of her body, she quickly leaned back, stopping her forward momentum.

"The minute"s up!" Chen Hanwu said.

Advaita, having missed her chance to ensnare Lin Sanjiu, darted towards the fallen shelves. Lin Sanjiu cast a glance in the direction she rushed towards and couldn"t help but smile.

In the chaos caused by her Higher Consciousness, one particular shelf—their team"s domain shelf—was teetering on the brink of collapse. Advaita"s timing was impeccable. Had she greedily attempted to capture Lin Sanjiu, the shelf would have inevitably crashed, scattering its contents indiscriminately with those of other shelves.

Even for someone as skilled as Advaita, identifying their original target items within such a mess within a minute was impossible.

By the time Advaita had narrowly stabilized the shelf, preserving most of its contents, Lin Sanjiu had already made a quick escape deep into the maze of shelves, maximizing the distance between them. She had deduced the general location of their team"s domain shelf, though pinpointing it with absolute certainty was impossible among the four or five potential shelves. Searching all of them within a minute was impractical, especially once Advaita began retrieving items from her domain shelf.

Lin Sanjiu had mere seconds to act.

She spoke faster than she ever had in her life. The somewhat intricate description had been rehea.r.s.ed repeatedly in her mind, distilled to its essence. Still, compressing it into mere seconds nearly caused her to bite her tongue.

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Just as she finished, she caught a faint "huh?" from Advaita—a ma.s.sive weight lifted from her heart. Overwhelmed, Lin Sanjiu"s knees buckled, and she sat down abruptly.

In what felt like both an instant and an eternity, the volunteer"s voice rang through the mall, "Time is up! Game over!"