The six hours passed faster than he expected.
Maybe because in a sealed space with no windows, time itself turned into something shapeless—a piece of chewed gum you could stretch and warp until the markings on it stopped meaning anything. Or maybe because he slept. Not on purpose. His body had burned through so much adrenaline that it simply executed an emergency shutdown. He closed his eyes at some point and opened them to the intercom already speaking.
"Players, game two is about to begin. Please proceed to the game hall."
The corridor was still candy-colored—pink, blue, yellow—but nobody walking through it noticed the paint anymore. A hundred and seventy-one faces wore the same expression: drawn, gray, a dead kind of numbness. Too many people had died in the last game. The survivors had crested the peak of terror and come down the other side into something flatter—a dried-out, blunted tension, like a nerve that had been firing too long and given up.
Jiang Han walked in the middle of the group. The system panel sat quietly in the corner of his vision. He glanced at it—no new corruption alerts. Good news. Or the bad news just hadn't arrived yet.
The corridor ended not at the massive indoor track from last time, but at a set of doors that split into six branching paths.
Above each path's entrance hung a different shape: circle, triangle, star, umbrella, key, flower. The first four were from the original show. The last two were new.
A staff member stood at the junction, reading the rules in that flat synthetic voice:
"Game two: Sugar Honeycomb."
"Each player will choose a door. Entering a door constitutes selection of the corresponding shape."
"Each player will receive one honeycomb candy and one needle. Within the time limit, you must use the needle to carve the shape from the candy along its outline, without breaking it."
"Time limit: seven minutes."
"Players who fail to complete the task will be eliminated."
"Each door has a limited capacity. Doors that are full will be closed."
"Please choose."
The crowd stirred. Most people had no idea what honeycomb candy was and looked at each other blankly. But anyone who'd seen the original show—if there were others—was already pushing toward the circle door.
Jiang Han headed for the circle too. Circle was the simplest shape in the lineup: one smooth curve, no sharp angles, no serrations. With steady hands you could do it with your eyes closed.
But when he arrived, the circle door was packed.
A staff member held an arm across the entrance: "Circle door is full. Please select another shape."
The triangle door was filling fast too.
Jiang Han stood in the middle of the junction and spent three seconds scanning the remaining options.
Star—five points, each point a fracture risk. No.
Umbrella—a curved canopy plus a straight shaft plus the hooked handle. A lot of transitions between lines and arcs. Doable, but not optimal.
Flower—five petals, each with a scalloped, wavy edge of fine serrations. Nightmare.
Key—looked complex at first glance, but think about it: the main body was an oval handle plus a straight shaft. The only tricky part was the teeth at the bottom. And those teeth were angular, right-angle folds—sharp but clean, much easier to control than the flower's organic curves.
He chose the key.
A man in his thirties beside him glanced over and snorted. "The key? With those serrations? You're done."
Jiang Han didn't acknowledge him and walked through the key door.
Behind the door was a massive outdoor space—or rather, an indoor arena dressed up to look outdoor. Overhead, a projected blue sky with white clouds. Warm yellow lights simulating afternoon sun. Artificial turf underfoot. Even wooden picnic tables scattered around.
If you ignored the armed staff member standing beside each table, the place could pass for a pleasant afternoon gathering.
Two items on each table: a round caramel-colored candy disc, and a thin metal needle.
The candy had the chosen shape pressed into its center. Jiang Han sat down and looked at his. The key. Burnt-sugar amber, the outline stamped clean: oval handle, straight shaft, three uneven teeth at the bottom.
Seven minutes.
He didn't start immediately.
Analyze first.
The technique for this game—he'd memorized it from watching the show on his couch—the core idea wasn't "carve with the needle." It was "lick the back." Saliva would slowly dissolve the sugar on the reverse side, loosening the shape from the disc naturally. Instead of racing the clock with your fingertip precision and a needle point, you let chemistry do the work.
He ran the needle lightly along the key's outline first—not cutting through, just scoring a shallow guide line to mark the path and identify the danger zones. The teeth at the bottom were the thinnest. The handle was the thickest. The shaft was a straight line, no problem.
Then he flipped the candy over, brought it to his mouth, and began licking the back with the tip of his tongue.
Licking—not biting, not gnawing. Using the moisture and heat of his tongue to melt the caramel a fraction at a time. The motion had to be light and even. Linger too long on one spot and you'd dissolve through it, causing a break.
The caramel's sweetness hit his mouth. Honestly, just as candy, it was pretty good.
I'm currently risking my life over a piece of sugar, and the sugar is actually tasty. This might be one of the strangest moments of my life.
Sounds were already rising around him.
The brittle crack of needle tips piercing caramel. Shaky breathing. Someone muttering "too thin, too thin" under their breath. And from further away—
A snap.
Then a gunshot.
Someone's shape had broken. Eliminated.
More snaps. More shots. Screaming. Crying.
Jiang Han didn't look up. His entire focus was on the point where his tongue met the candy's back surface—the caramel was softening, thinning. He could feel the resistance along the shape's outline diminishing with each pass.
Three minutes in. He flipped the candy back to the front side, touched the needle to the scored line, and tested. The handle's edge lifted away with almost no pressure. The shaft separated with a gentle push.
The teeth.
The teeth were the final test. Three right-angle bends, and the caramel at each fold was paper-thin. He flipped the candy again, focused his tongue on the teeth area for about thirty seconds, then flipped it back and began working the needle along each right-angle line at a crawl.
Can't rush. Can't shake.
His hand was steady enough to pass for a mechanical arm welded to the table.
Five minutes and twelve seconds.
The key separated from the candy disc cleanly, carrying a thin glaze of caramel, outline intact, not a single fracture.
He set the key shape on the table and looked up.
A staff member came over, checked it, confirmed it was whole, and marked a tick next to his number.
He stayed seated. Because Yoon Seo was two tables to his right.
She'd chosen the flower.
The scalloped petal edges were shredding her nerves. Her hand was steady, but the petals' curves were too finely detailed—three to four changes in curvature per petal, and any deviation would snap the sugar apart. She'd finished three petals but had two more to go, and the time—
He glanced at the countdown overhead. Less than two minutes left.
Yoon Seo's forehead was slick with sweat. She was biting her lip, the needle point resting on the fourth petal's edge—and her hand was trembling. Not from fear. From the involuntary fatigue of fine motor muscles held at maximum precision for too long.
Jiang Han waited for the nearest staff member to look the other way. Then he spoke, barely louder than an exhale:
"Flip it over. Lick the back. Saliva dissolves the sugar. Stop trying to carve it with the needle."
Yoon Seo's hand froze for a beat. She didn't turn to look at him—but she did it. Flipped the candy, licked the back over the remaining petals a few times, flipped it back, touched the needle to the edge, and lifted—
The fourth petal separated. Clean.
She picked up speed. Fifth petal—lick, lift, separate.
Six minutes and thirty-one seconds.
The flower was whole.
Yoon Seo let out a long breath, her arms dropping, her whole body going slack for one instant like a puppet whose strings had been cut. She didn't look in Jiang Han's direction, but her lips moved—he read them: Thanks.
He used the remaining time to watch the others.
101, Kang Dae, had picked the triangle—one of the easiest options. His thick hands held the thin needle like a man picking up a toothpick, but his technique was crude and surprisingly effective. The triangle was three straight lines and three corners. He ran the needle along each edge in one continuous stroke, gave a delicate twist at each vertex, and that was it. Under three minutes. After finishing, he tossed the needle on the table, leaned back, crossed his legs, and watched the people still struggling.
"Just die already," he said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Every one of you that goes is more money for me."
A contestant nearby, still carving, flinched at the words. His hand jerked—snap. Gunshot.
Kang Dae laughed.
218, the accountant Park, had picked the star. Five points, each one a fracture risk. He was sweating through his hairline, but his approach was unlike anyone else's—he didn't start immediately. He spent a full minute staring at the candy, just looking. Then he began carving, each needle stroke precise in a way that suggested he'd pre-calculated the angle and force for every single point. His speed was glacial, but he didn't make a single mistake.
Just past six minutes, the star came free intact.
Smart man.
199, Sergeant Ma, had taken the triangle. Finished cleanly.
And 001, the old man—
Jiang Han's gaze landed on a table further away.
The old man had picked the umbrella.
In the original show, the umbrella was considered one of the hardest shapes—the curved canopy, the straight shaft, the hooked handle, with multiple transition points between curves and straight lines. Most people who drew it panicked immediately.
But the old man's hands—those thin, age-spotted hands—held the needle with a steadiness that bordered on mechanical. His speed wasn't fast, but the placement of every needle stroke was impossibly precise, like a calibrated instrument tracking a programmed path.
No hesitation. No pauses. No exploratory jabs.
He started from the tip of the umbrella, traced the arc of the canopy in one continuous line, crossed the junction between canopy and shaft—the most likely break point—without the needle deviating a hair's width. At the hooked end of the handle, he used a tiny wrist vibration to detach the final millimeter of caramel.
Four minutes.
A perfect umbrella.
He set the needle down, picked up a fragment of leftover candy, popped it in his mouth, and chewed slowly.
Like he'd done this a thousand times before.
The game ended.
Survivors were led back to the dormitory. The number on the overhead display scrolled past cold and final—
Remaining players: 131.
Forty more gone.
Honeycomb candy. A piece of sugar had killed forty people.
Jiang Han sat on his bunk in a brief pocket of quiet and let the system panel refresh:
GAME 2 COMPLETE
Survivors: 131 / 456
NP Earned: +100
ALERT: Game 3 will be a TEAM-BASED game.
Original format: Tug of War (10 vs 10)
⚠ CORRUPTION MODIFICATION DETECTED
New format: UNKNOWN — will be revealed on site.
Team game. Rules unknown.
He remembered the original tug of war perfectly—ten on ten, platforms above a chasm, losing team gets pulled over the edge. In the show, the old man 001 had won that match with a critical strategy: at the last possible moment, he told his team to let go of the rope, using the enemy's momentum to yank them off balance, then pull them back before they recovered.
But now the format had been corrupted into something else. Something "unknown."
My plot knowledge just became completely useless for the first time.
He was staring at the red UNKNOWN on his panel when he heard footsteps behind him.
Light. But not Yoon Seo—her stride was faster.
He turned.
001, the old man, stood less than two meters behind him. When had he walked over? Jiang Han hadn't heard a thing.
The old man smiled, his raspy voice like sandpaper drawn across old wood:
"Young man... you finished very quickly earlier."
A pause.
"And you helped the girl next to you."
Every muscle in Jiang Han's body went taut at once. When he'd whispered to Yoon Seo, he'd kept his voice barely above breath, and he'd checked that the nearest staff member wasn't watching. What he hadn't checked was whether 001 was watching.
The old man tilted his head slightly. In those cloudy eyes, something flashed—something that didn't belong to a "harmless grandfather." A blade of sharpness, there and gone.
"You know things, don't you?"
The air solidified.
Jiang Han's brain completed three assessments in half a second. One: this old man's observational ability was far beyond ordinary. Two: he was probing. Three: denying it now was useless, because denial itself was a form of confirmation.
He chose silence.
The old man watched him. His smile deepened by a fraction. Then he reached out and patted Jiang Han's shoulder. Dry palm, light pressure—the exact gesture of a genuinely kind grandfather comforting a younger person.
"Relax. I'm just a curious old man."
Then he turned and walked away. Unhurried pace, not a trace of weight in his step.
Jiang Han stood where he was. His heart was hammering his ribs.
He knows.
This old man—he saw through me.
The question is how much. Did he see through "Jiang Han knows the rules of every game"—or something deeper: "Jiang Han doesn't belong to this world"?
If it was the second one...
The system panel offered no new prompts.
Jiang Han sat slowly back down on his bunk and clenched his fists.
Six hours until game three. Team game. Rules unknown.
And a man who might have seen right through him was sitting somewhere in this dormitory, on some iron bunk, smiling quietly.