Zhou Niannian looked at Jiang Fan, utterly bewildered.
Jiang Fan, however, picked up a floor tile and rushed towards a nearby wall, making gestures on it.
He quickly realized that one wall could perfectly accommodate 99 by 99 floor tiles.
Then, Jiang Fan made markings on the wall at coordinates x9y13 and x13y9.
Zhou Niannian's eyes lit up; she understood.
"You mean the numbers appearing on the ground are hints to the mechanism's location."
"Clever, but we don't know which wall it's on, so we have to try every wall."
The viewers in the livestream chat went wild, switching to an aerial view to look down at the ground.
Indeed, they all saw the two numbers.
"My God, is this the truth behind the mechanism?"
"Zhou Niannian, as expected of the legendary Emperor of Luck, she can solve mechanisms even with a cockroach."
"Wait, the door hasn't opened yet, who knows if it will work."
"There are only five walls anyway, we'll know after trying each one."
Soon, Jiang Fan finished testing one wall.
He not only pressed with his hand but also used the black metal spheres from his bag, but they had no effect.
Quickly, Jiang Fan tested the other four walls, and no secret passage appeared at all.
Jiang Fan was speechless, was it all in vain again?
Suddenly, Zhou Niannian stood up and said.
"There's still one wall left to try."
Zhou Niannian pointed to the ceiling above.
Dai Xiao Mei shook her head.
"We just came down from there."
The viewers in the livestream chat were also chuckling.
"Zhou Niannian's ideas are always so unconventional."
"Is it because she has a wild imagination that she has such good luck?"
"It's not like we just came down from there, there was nothing, just stone walls."
Precisely because everyone thought the same way, no one bothered to test the ceiling.
But Jiang Fan's eyes lit up at Zhou Niannian's words.
"Wait, we descended from hundreds of meters up, what if it's tens of meters up?"
In Jiang Fan's mind, the place they descended from was like an elevator shaft.
There was indeed nothing in the elevator shaft, but perhaps next door, there could be something hidden.
No sooner said than done, Jiang Fan and the others formed a human ladder, lifting Zhou Niannian to the ceiling.
Zhou Niannian took out the metal sphere and pressed it hard onto the coordinate.
Something astonishing happened. The hard stone ceiling suddenly became as soft as cotton candy.
The metal sphere sank in, and a massive vortex expanded from the sphere as the center.
The stone walls of the ceiling receded layer by layer.
Only a giant black hole remained in the middle, waiting for Jiang Fan and the others to explore.
The livestream chat erupted in exclamations.
"Holy crap, the Emperor of Luck guessed right again!"
"The Emperor of Luck is simply divine!"
"You were just saying the Emperor of Luck was useless, and now your face is all swollen."
"This vortex looks so eerie, should we go in?"
Jiang Fan was also hesitant about entering, but as he hesitated, the vortex suddenly generated a strong suction.
With a scream, Jiang Fan and the others were sucked in.
In an instant, due to the vortex's powerful gravity, Jiang Fan and the others felt a sharp pain in their minds and lost consciousness.
When they woke up, Zhou Niannian was greatly surprised.
Her first feeling was, could this be a dream?
It was a dreamlike passage, with a chaotic space that shimmered with the peculiar ripples of old television screens.
Outside the space, as if through a glass wall, many strange, unknown creatures swam about.
Among them were luminous, multicolored jellyfish, their bodies radiating light like a slideshow.
There were also stingrays with three eyes, constantly discharging electricity, each discharge illuminating the air with a flash of white light.
Outside the glass wall was a miniature universe. Zhou Niannian could see the nine planets revolving around the sun in an orderly fashion.
That giant stingray seemed to be as large as a planet.
In the space, many strange objects floated.
Zhou Niannian saw a game console drifting over. It was the game console she had desperately pleaded her parents to buy when she was a child.
But her parents never bought it, and Zhou Niannian left in tears.
Many years later, Zhou Niannian no longer lacked game consoles, but they had become a precious part of her childhood memories.
She couldn't help but reach out to grab it, but with a *poof*, the game console dissolved into foam.
Zhou Niannian immediately became vigilant. This was an illusion.
Could everything here be an illusion?
The netizens in the livestream chat were in a state of shock.
"Everything in here must be an illusion, right!"
"No, part of it should be real."
"Real my foot, look, the game console disappeared as soon as Zhou Niannian touched it."
"Wait, if this is all an illusion, how can we see Zhou Niannian's illusion?"
"Exactly, everyone's illusion should be different, shouldn't it?"
As the netizens were discussing, Zhou Niannian saw a winged white unicorn galloping towards her.
Every girl has a princess dream in her childhood, and Zhou Niannian was no exception.
When she was little, she always imagined her prince charming arriving on a flying unicorn to pick her up.
This time, the prince charming didn't appear, but the unicorn really did.
This creature, which couldn't possibly exist in reality, was definitely an illusion. As expected, the unicorn vanished the moment Zhou Niannian embraced it.
Was she trapped in a dream within a dream? Zhou Niannian struggled to push herself up, but in the zero-gravity state, her body began to float.
She drifted towards the three-eyed giant stingray on the ceiling, and suddenly bumped into something.
An invisible glass wall separated Zhou Niannian from the outside world.
Whether the world outside was an illusion or not, Zhou Niannian had no way of knowing.
"Alright! God knows which layer of Inception this is."
"I don't know if everything here is an illusion, and where are Jiang Fan and the others?"
She looked around and immediately saw Jiang Fan floating not far away, fast asleep.
Zhou Niannian quickly floated over and tried to wake Jiang Fan, but he didn't react at all.
Zhou Niannian took the opportunity to pinch Jiang Fan's face hard, but Jiang Fan still didn't react.
"What a sleeping beauty. Wait, could this also be an illusion..."
Zhou Niannian trembled all over. The sleeping prince waiting for a kiss from the princess—wasn't this exactly the scenario she often fantasized about?
The Jiang Fan in front of her was the prince she longed for.
It seemed this was also an illusion.
However, this illusion was more solid than others; it didn't disappear even when pinched hard.
"Hmph, it's a product of fantasy anyway, so I'll just make it disappear faster."
As she thought this, Zhou Niannian couldn't help but cup Jiang Fan's face and gently kiss him.
"It's just an illusion, so it's okay to take advantage, right?"