Underworld Player

Bai Zhi sauntered over to the clown and lazily extended a hand, palm up. "Welp, game over. Pay up. You said it yourself, enter the black door, then exit the white door. I\'ve clearly done it in that order, so it\'s time to hold up your end of the bargain."

"But you\'re cheating!" The clown howled, glaring at Bai Zhi.

"Nuh-uh, this is what you call a perfectly rational solution that strictly obeys the rules of the game."

Bai Zhi rolled his eyes and rubbed his middle finger and thumb together in a near-universally-understood gesture.

"I\'m too busy to spend half an hour lost in such a dangerous maze playing hide-and-seek with the likes of you. Hurry up, gimme the money, I\'ve got places to be! Or are you just a sore loser?"

The clown huffed and puffed indignantly, it\'s chest heaving with suppressed fury. Just as Bai Zhi thought it might have an aneurysm, the clown shoved a stack of pale-yellow cards that looked made of jade into his hands with a frustrated, impotent roar.

"Get the Heaven out! People like you are not welcome here!"

"Tch, don\'t hate the player, hate the game, loser."

Smirking derisively as he tossed out that sick burn, Bai Zhi pocketed the jade-like cards and coolly walked out of the shop. As he got to the door, the sounds of a table being flipped could clearly be heard coming from behind him.

[ Item Name: Hell Dollar ]

[ Type: Special ]

[ Class: Normal ]

[ Description: Used as currency in special locations. Can be converted to in-game Coins at a rate of 1 HD to 10 Coins ]

[ Amount: 100 ]

[ Note: The Noble bookstore would have avoided doom, if you had written but one volume.* ]

Bai Zhi\'s interest was immediately piqued upon reding the description. "Well hey, these things aren\'t half as worthless as I thought! So 100 Hell Dollars is worth 1,000 Coins..."

The catch was that only Hell Dollars could be exchanged for Coins and not the other way around.

"If this place wasn\'t so deadly, it might have been a really handy way to earn a quick buck..."

Bai Zhi walked into the third shop as he muttered away to himself.

Whereas the first shop, Art\'s Pawnshop, had been manned by a mystical paper doll and the second, the Funhouse, had been where he faced down a furious clown, this one was called Riddle Room, and in charge of it was an extremely ugly ragdoll. The shoddy stitches that crisscrossed its body gave it the look of something haphazardly put together, and the tufts of hair that were forced into a loose braid on its head made it look as if it belonged more in a pile of trash than in a shop as its shopkeeper.

From the name of the shop alone, Bai Zhi had grasped a general idea of the kind of challenge to expect.

"So I just have to answer riddles?"

"Indeed so~ Each of us gets to ask three riddles, and the one who gets the most correct answers is the winner," said the doll, placing itself at eye-level with Bai Zhi as it floated above a high chair, which itself stood about a meter tall. "However! If it ends in a tie, I win. If you win, you can leave with a reward of your choice, but if I win, you have to stay and become part of my colle~ction."

As soon as it finished speaking, the doors of the weathered cabinets behind the doll flew open, revealing a plethora of dolls, a massive collection of what looked like at least two hundred of them, at a glance. They came in all shapes and sizes, and were displayed like merchandise for sale.

"These dolls are all my prized possessions—their souls are still bound to the dolls, you know. Do you want to join them as the latest addition to my precious collection?"

Each of the dolls displayed in the old cabinets had eyes that could move, but all their limbs, and even their heads, were nailed firmly to their respective shelves by long stainless-steel spikes. The only thing that indicated they were, in a sense, alive was the movement of their eyes. That, and the chorus of despairing wails emanating from the cabinets, as if from the depths of hell.

The wailing that had started as soon as the cabinet doors were flung open sounded, to the ugly ragdoll\'s ears, like the finest symphony in the world. It even danced a little jig in mid-air as it savored the sounds.

"What are the exact rules of this game?" asked Bai Zhi matter-of-factly. As he looked toward the shop counter, he lowered his eyes.

"There are no restrictions! You can present any riddle you like, as long as the answer has a self-consistent logic. If you have no answer to your own riddle, you lose!" said the doll cheerfully as it did a gleeful spin in mid-air. "My dear guest, would you like to go first, or shall I?"

"You go."

Bai Zhi leaned back on his own high chair, specially prepared for guests like him, and took out a bar of chocolate from his Inventory. He shoved it in his mouth and began to chew while his expression remained completely blank.

"Ooh, if you insist."

With a dramatic flourish, the doll magically shut the cabinet doors, sealing the wailing sound inside once more. Then, coming to rest on its chair, it began its riddle in a cheerful, eager voice.

"Somewhere in a vast, endless desert lies a corpse. It is known that it died from drowning, but there are no sources of water within a hundred-mile radius! How did that happen?"

Instead of offering an answer immediately, Bai Zhi looked straight at the doll and asked, "You said earlier that answers to the riddles just need to be logically self-consistent, correct?"

"That\'s right, and you can take as much time as you want to solve each riddle! You\'re not allowed to leave here while you\'re thinking of the answer, though! I don\'t mind waiting, so think carefully before you answer~"

As it lay there in a chair obviously too large for it, the ragdoll continued in the same upbeat voice, "While we wait, I can even provide you with food and water for free! The Riddle Room is an absolutely safe space while we\'re riddling, so you have nothing to worry about, even if you need a fortnight to figure out your answer, you know?"

The doll floated close to Bai Zhi. "How about a drink? What would you like? Or perhaps you\'d prefer a scrumptious feast instead?" it asked obsequiously. "My wonderful collection includes a few chefs of exceptional skill—it may not be worthy of winning Masterchef, but what they cook up is bound to be satisfying fare, you know?"

"No, I\'m afraid you misunderstand me. And here I thought it was going to be some mind-bending challenge."

Lifting his head slightly to look down his nose at the doll before him, Bai Zhi\'s voice dripped with contempt as he declared, "...That\'s it?"

*Derivative of a Chinese figure of speech. The original phrase is "Since you\'re so good at spinning a story, why don\'t you write a book?" as a lighthearted dig at people who are good at cleverly talking their way out of a situation. Netizens took the association further, evolving a variety of rhyming couplets about how bookstores would be saved from destruction or having to close down, *if only* the target of the jibe had used their talents to write a bestseller.