Zong Rui performed a beautiful backflip in mid-air and kicked away a locust that flew too close. With the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the situation on the ground and was so shocked that her jaw dropped.
“What are you doing? Why are the stone balls increasing more and more?!”
More and more…
Mu Shan was startled awake by her words. When she looked again at the giant balls slowly rolling along the “river channel,” she finally guessed the true nature of the game.
But one person spoke up faster than her.
Li Gang roared, “I got it! This game is actually a giant version of Zuma!”
Xia Xueqin raised her voice, “What horse?!”
Li Gang’s expression was certain. “Zuma. An old game from twenty years ago. You young people might not know it. Simply put, it’s a same-color match-3 game.”
Xia Xueqin said, “I know match-3 games!”
“Look closely. The first ball that appeared was gray. It was so ordinary we didn’t notice. After the second one came out, it turned into a black stone. The third stone ball was brownish-yellow, the fourth was white. No repeated colors—this isn’t a coincidence!”
Li Gang spoke rapidly. “In the Zuma PC game, the round balls roll forward along a winding path, one after another, increasing in number. Players have to eliminate them within the time limit. It’s exactly like our instance game!”
Li Gang was excited, his eyes brimming with hot tears.
He never imagined there would be a day when he became the main force in clearing a game!
Nearby, Xia Xueqin slashed off a locust’s antennae with one knife strike. Drenched in sweat, she roared, “Stop talking nonsense! Tell us exactly how to eliminate them!”
This question stumped Li Gang.
“Eliminate… If it’s really Zuma, the player should have a toad that spits stone balls. Create three consecutive balls of the same color, and they eliminate.”
“But where’s the toad??”
The group looked around. The valley was filled with chaotic yellow rocks everywhere, and swarms of locusts danced in the sky, disrupting their vision.
Xia Xueqin jumped in frustration. “Not even a speck of bird droppings!!!”
Mu Shan soothed her. “Don’t panic. We still have plenty of time. Let’s look again.”
The locusts flying in the sky and running on the ground increased. Even with Yu Da and Zong Rui actively drawing fire, they gradually shifted their targets to the few trying to crack the game.
The locusts’ sturdy hind legs had astonishing jumping power. If one failed to dodge, they could be kicked flying instead. Moreover, their long, powerful wings spun like helicopter propellers, shredding any obstacles nearby at high speed. Most terrifying were their mouthparts, which chewed nonstop like steel gears with a “crunch crunch” sound.
Wounds gradually appeared on Yu Da’s body, and Zong Rui’s old injuries, not yet healed, began to seep blood.
With too many teammates in the field, Xia Xueqin couldn’t summon Smog or acid rain. She could only use her Sunny Day skill to heal her allies’ wounds.
In this brutal battle, Li Gang clutched his head like a madman, racking his brains. “Toad, where’s the toad…”
Lacking combat power, Wang Ruizhi also picked up a machete and joined the fight against the giant locusts. She didn’t forget to instruct, “Shanshan, don’t worry. We’ll hold them off here!”
Mu Shan nodded.
He Yuncong stood behind her without any big moves, but from time to time, a surge of quicksand erupted from the ground, wrapping up nearby locusts and dragging them underground in an instant.
In the suffocating extreme heat, Mu Shan took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down.
Sweat rolled down her cheeks drop by drop, splattering on the ground. She raised her eyes to the stone balls rolling slowly not far away.
Their speed was increasing. Ten balls had accumulated on the track, in four colors (gray, black, yellow, white).
The winding track below occupied most of the valley, circling around like an incense coil, packed tightly.
The end of the track was at the valley’s center.
Mu Shan’s breath hitched. Suddenly, she bolted toward the center of the valley. “It’s a circular loop!”
He Yuncong followed closely like a shadow, protecting her. “What do you mean?”
“To avoid ‘instant elimination at the start,’ based on Zuma’s mechanics, the toad’s launch point must be far enough from the stone ball track to give players time—simply put, the farthest distance on the computer screen!!”
“Since the launch point is absolutely not covered by the track, and this valley’s path is a looping circle, the launch point must be right in the center of the field!”
Mu Shan dodged the locusts swarming chaotically in the sky, which occasionally swooped down to grab people. She ran stumbling and staggering. The entire valley now resembled a wartime scene with bombers whistling overhead, while the players scurried below like refugees.
The center of the valley’s circle looked no different from the surrounding flat ground: sand, dirt clods, broken stones, weeds.
The stone ball track vanished when it reached there, leaving about a 3-meter by 3-meter empty patch.
It was clear that if the time limit arrived and players still hadn’t found a way to eliminate the stone balls, these massive behemoths would fill the valley one after another. Players would have nowhere to stand, either crushed by the stone balls or snatched away and eaten by locusts.
This launch point was also the players’ last chance for survival.
Mu Shan urged anxiously, “Quick, search around here!”
He Yuncong glanced at the ground beneath their feet. He raised his palm, pressed it down, then slowly flipped it over.
“Ding-ling—ding-ling.” Camel bells rang.
With his finger movements, the sand and soil on the ground rustled and trembled, drawn by some unknown force to part to the sides.
As if attracted by a massive magnet, a large hole suddenly cracked open underground.
With a “rumble—” a stone toad, almost as big as a car, rose slowly from the hole.
The sound drew the attention of those fighting nearby.
“The Main God really made a toad?!”
The massive stone carving was rough and abstract in style. The toad crouched on all fours, with a flashing red gem on its head.
It cradled a white stone ball under its belly, identical to those rolling in the field.
Peering down the black hole, they could see giant stones lined up one after another. As they guessed, this was a MAX version of the real Zuma game.
Li Gang was thrilled, his voice trembling. “The fired ball is white. Quick, aim at those two connected white balls!”
He rushed up and hugged the toad’s head with both hands, trying to turn it.
But after trying hard for a while, even turning red in the face, the stone carving didn’t budge.
“What’s wrong? It won’t turn at all?!”
Mu Shan stood on the other side and hugged one of the toad’s front legs. “Try again. I’ll help.”
Xia Xueqin and Wang Ruizhi also rushed over. “Hold on, we’ll help too!”
He Yuncong had wanted to take Mu Shan’s place, but the locusts seemed especially interested in this toad. After it emerged from the soil, the bug monsters went berserk, abandoning their previous targets and swarming over.
The scene turned into a locust plague, with giant locusts blotting out the sky. He Yuncong protected the group single-handedly and couldn’t break away.
“I’ll count 1-2-3, push clockwise!” Mu Shan shouted.
The four exerted all their strength, their feet nearly digging shallow pits. Amid a teeth-grinding “creak—” the toad’s base finally began to turn slowly.
Xia Xueqin shouldered the toad’s rear, trembling from the effort. She gritted her teeth. “Which way to aim? I can’t see—!”
Li Gang climbed nimbly to the top of the toad using his claws. “I’ll align it!”
“A bit more to the left, everyone hold on!”
Once aligned, he leaped up and slapped the red gem on the toad’s head.
In the next instant, the white stone ball cradled under the toad’s belly shot out like launched ammunition.
Once the massive object rolled, it carried destructive force, even knocking away a locust in its path. It ultimately slammed into the other two white stone balls on the track as planned.
“Bang—” A massive explosion.
The three same-color balls connected, triggering the elimination mechanism. The ground suddenly caved into a large pit. The two-meter-diameter giant stone balls sank into the earth and vanished. The pit restored itself in an instant.
【Elimination Successful, White Balls +3】
Li Gang’s eyes brimmed with hot tears. “It worked! It’s really like this. We’re saved!”
Mu Shan watched the three giant balls vanish into thin air, shocked deep down.
—Until the very last moment, the system told players: Humid Heat Forest was a team cooperation instance.
If players killed each other until only one remained, that person couldn’t withstand the insect monsters attacking downstream every three days. Even entering the mini-game, they couldn’t hold off the swarming giant locusts, move the heavy stone toad carving, or align and fire at the same time.
Buoyed by the first success, the group’s confidence soared. They mustered their strength to turn the toad and fire giant stones of different colors, while Li Gang observed positions from above.
“Right, right, keep going right!”
“Left, to the left!”
One after another, stone balls rose from the black hole under the toad and shot toward the dragon-like formation of stone balls at high speed.
Some formed groups of three and vanished on the spot; others failed to eliminate and joined the formation.
Time ticked by. The stone balls on the track multiplied, the line growing longer. The players’ movable space shrank, yet the locust swarms in the sky showed no sign of thinning.
After endless waves, Yu Da’s mushroom power was nearing depletion. Caught off guard, he was kicked flying by two locusts’ hind legs. He soared through the air and crashed hard into the valley wall with a “bang.”
Yu Da spat out a mouthful of blood. The swollen blue muscles on his body rapidly deflated.
The surrounding locusts seized the chance and swarmed. Their sharp mouthparts were about to tear into his body.
“Watch out!” Zong Rui tossed something in mid-air. She swung her bamboo pole, catching a broom head bundled with straw.
【Player Zong Rui (Cleaner) uses skill: Sweeping Monk
(Active) When the player uses a broom as a weapon, attack power rises to [High] level】
The seemingly fragile, rough broom swept horizontally, scattering the gathered giant locusts. The soft straw brushed their wings like steel wires, slashing gashes into the transparent membranes.
Zong Rui guarded Yu Da’s side, punching and kicking locusts. She twisted her head with difficulty and shouted, “You lot, hurry up!”
【Countdown 5:37】
In fact, the four who found the correct method weren’t relaxed either.
Li Gang crouched cat-like on the toad’s head on all fours, his face pale and drenched in cold sweat. “No… The elimination speed can’t keep up with how fast they’re appearing!”
The stone ball formation had already spread across half the valley.
Xia Xueqin cursed from below. “Damn it, can you even play?!”
Mu Shan wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked at the dire situation. “Let me try.”
Li Gang paused, worried. “Little sis, do you know how?”
Before Mu Shan could speak, He Yuncong cut in. “Her father was top three on the local Zuma leaderboard. Of course she does.”
With words like that, the two quickly swapped positions.
Mu Shan climbed to the toad’s head and began directing the three below to find angles.
One, two.
After firing several stone balls with no rumble, Li Gang sensed something wrong.
“Hey, why are they still increasing?! Little sis, you need three of the same color to eliminate. Why shoot a black one into two grays??”
Mu Shan’s eyes locked on the track’s stone balls, her mind racing nonstop. She didn’t even have time to speak.
He Yuncong answered for her nearby. “She’s creating symmetry.”
Li Gang was stunned. “Symmetry…?”
The stone balls had multiplied too much now. Traditional play couldn’t clear them all in time. But Mu Shan had watched her dad play since childhood and picked up some tricks.
Symmetry was an advanced technique testing a player’s eyesight and reactions.
First, select a blast point in the front segment of the current stone formation.
Using the blast point as the symmetry axis, artificially create color symmetry on both ends. At the same time, the symmetric same-color balls on both sides must total more than three to trigger a chain elimination effect.
For example, the current stone ball array was like this: gray black black gray yellow white white yellow yellow.
They selected two yellow balls as the explosion points.
Gray black black gray yellow white white 【yellow yellow · explosion points】
Mu Shan had to create symmetrical stone balls in front of the explosion points, which meant adding a single ball or a pair of balls at the front.
Gray black black gray yellow white white 【yellow yellow · explosion points】 + white yellow yellow gray gray black gray gray
The stone toad no longer needed to waste effort turning. They only had to keep pointing it at the head of the rolling stone ball array and shoot out useless colors.
A few minutes later, as they watched the narrow stone ball array stretch almost to the end of the path, a sense of fear welled up in their hearts.
Even Yu Da and Zong Rui had nowhere to stand and could only gather toward the center.
The seven players huddled close together, looking on in terror at the stone ball array rolling toward them.
【Countdown 1:03】
Xia Xueqin’s voice trembled. “Shanshan, n-now what?”
Mu Shan tapped the yellow stone ball under the toad’s belly, her tone firm. “It’s time. This is exactly the one I wanted.”
They pushed the toad together. In an instant, the yellow ball shot out at ferocious speed and quickly struck the two selected explosion balls. The three balls of the same color triggered the elimination mechanism.
With a “Bang—” a massive sound echoed as the three yellow balls sank into the ground and vanished.
But the elimination with the explosion points as the axis of symmetry was just the beginning.
The stone balls on both sides gathered together due to inertia.
Three white balls, “Bang”
Three yellow balls, “Bang bang”
Three gray balls, “Bang bang bang—”
…
Li Gang’s eyes widened, his mouth hanging open more and more. The others wore the same expression.
Amid a series of continuous, deafening collision sounds, the stone ball array retreated rapidly in the opposite direction until the final three gray balls sank into the ground. The valley was left completely empty.
【Elimination successful, stone balls +27】