"A puzzle!" Wu Qiong was taken a back for a moment; he then started assessing the structure of the puzzle.
"The first part of the text implies that I have two choices: one is to jump, and the other is to stay and be struck by lightning by the tenth-minute mark. However, although the latter guarantees death, as it implies being struck, the first option simply says 'to jump.' There may be a possibility of survival, albeit not guaranteed.
"The second part of the text implies the opposite, by stating that I can stay or jump and die. This creates a contradiction, because the first part doesn't imply an absolute outcome of death or uses specific terms that harbor harm, such as 'struck'; it simply says I can jump. The second part negates that conception by stating that if I jump, I will die.
"Although separately they appear to conflict with each other, because they are intentionally included in the same body of text, this presumes both are valid at the same time. Once we take that into account, then both options necessarily lead to death, not contingently.
"This appears to be wordplay or an inherent paradox. Although I barely studied in my youth due to insufficient resources, I understood basic syllogisms and language; from that point on, I could only implement them further into new situations.
"This would be like positing:
'When will you stop stealing?'
A) If you answer, 'I will stop stealing,' then you are admitting to committing the act of stealing.B) If you answer that you will not stop stealing, similarly you are committing the same act of stealing.
"Although this could also be context-dependent—if the person is actually stealing, then this question may be valid—asking this question regularly seems off-putting because you are limiting the answer to a single valid conclusion.
"Better yet, you may ask:
'Why are you stealing?'
"Here we can see that there are no limiting factors, and you can either answer 'I am' or 'I am not.'
"So the main issue seems to be that the premise is faulty; thus, it is unsolvable by nature. However, there seems to be another problem present: when facing such a situation with clear rules, how do you survive despite it seemingly being impossible to solve?"
"That's right! You simply don't answer. I am not obligated to choose a course of action.
"If I were to visualize this from an outside perspective, as a spectator I would immediately assume that because there appear to be two distinct options, one must be chosen. Yet if I refuse to accept those options, I am no longer engaging with the problem itself. This constitutes an appeal to authority fallacy!"
"'Claiming something is true solely because an authority figure endorses it, without offering independent evidence.'
"This puzzle demands engagement, thereby compelling an appeal to the authority of the game itself. In doing so, it presumes the existence of a fixed truth where none actually exists. It tests one's capacity for independent thought under an implied state of obedience, challenging the individual to resist cognitive biases.
The text is not framed as a question but as a constrained set of choices that must be selected. As a result, the reader processes it as a genuine problem, expending cognitive effort on a fundamentally meaningless task.
Wu Qiong was confident in his conclusion and wrote it on the reverse side of the paper. As he stepped away from the table, a sudden bolt of lightning struck the page, dispersing it along with the flash of light. The invisible barrier dissolved, allowing Wu Qiong to advance to the next peak."
While walking, an instinctual realization hit him again. "The air has thinned even more. Will I be able to make it to the summit?"
"At the entrance to the second peak, the ground flickered like moonlight at midnight. Each step Wu Qiong took released a plume of cold vapor from beneath his feet.
This place was colder than before. Ahead of him, the ground stretched for roughly two hundred meters, terminating at three distinct lights arranged in chronological order:
Black → White → Red.
Wu Qiong glanced around and noticed four other people present. By immediate observation, he dismissed them as ordinary contestants—only those with exceptional aptitude would have made it this far. As he walked forward, they cast him brief, cold glances before turning back to their own trials. Wu Qiong neither cared nor paid them any mind.
There was only one rule: reach the end of the lights by any means necessary, without dying. At first glance, it seemed simple. Yet anyone capable of critical thought would recognize the hidden complexity, for as the saying goes, "If something is too good to be true, it usually isn't."
Wu Qiong took a step onto the field and realized that small traces of ice were enveloping his foot, gradually building up. He felt a chill in his heart as he inwardly thought, "Already the cold has accumulated so rapidly?"
He chose to wait and observe the others; however, he soon had to enter himself because all contestants had to enter at the same moment. Immediately, everyone began regulating their breathing and moving slowly.
By the tenth step, the ice had already enveloped the foot. Everyone was maintaining their momentum as they walked.
By the thirtieth step, the ice had built up toward the shin, reaching the knees. One of the contestants panicked at this observation and tried moving around, and the ice suddenly accelerated in growth, reaching his chest. He couldn't move at all. Normally, hypothermia would reach its peak after fifteen minutes; however, here his heart stopped beating after fifty-nine seconds. The other three contestants, along with Wu Qiong, showed looks of shock at this, but quickly began regulating their states.
Somewhere on the mountain, a lone figure stood at the edge of a cliff, a blade resting in his left hand. Blood stained his face, yet he appeared utterly unfazed. His eyes glowed an eerie white, and behind him lay corpses stacked atop one another.
"Y-you demon!"
One of the fallen lingered on the brink of death, dragging himself across the ground toward—Yin Ren.
Yin Ren's expression remained perfectly calm as he spoke leisurely.
"It's quite a shame that I cannot witness this view firsthand. I can only visualize it in my mind, supplementing it with my other heightened senses. No matter how much I kill, I simply cannot feel anything. Do you know the reason for that?"
He didn't turn around as he addressed the figure crawling toward his legs.
"Feel?" the man rasped. "Y-you bastard. You're a murderer. The number of people you've killed can only be counted one by one. Can't you understand that? You have no empathy. You do this for no reason other than to feel something."
Yin Ren paused briefly before replying, almost as if speaking to himself.
"Why must I adhere to your man made rules? You condemn killing as wrong, yet you commit it yourself. What's the difference, because you call it justice? Were you not planning to dispose of your friend after using him to reach this point? Your entire value system collapses under your own conscious decisions."
Yin Ren lowered his gaze. For a moment, an urge surged within him to jump.
Instead, he simply stared at the crackling lightning swirling in the clouds below.
On the Second Peak something much more interesting was going on,
By the seventieth step, the ice had already reached the hips. The layer of frost was thin but incredibly cold; it felt like wearing a heavy piece of armor.
By the hundredth step, two of the three remaining contestants followed the first, dying of hypothermia due to cold shock responses. Ice shock response is an involuntary, immediate physiological reaction to sudden contact with ice or ice-cold conditions, triggering an uncontrollable gasp, rapid breathing, and sharp increases in heart rate and blood pressure. Thus, the ice that had already accumulated up to that point accelerated and stopped their hearts in a matter of moments.
"So cold!" Wu Qiong's eyelids were covered in frost; his previously delicate lips were now a shade of purple. His state was truly severe. He had barely recovered from his fight with Tian Li and now had to undergo such an ordeal. If it had not been for his mental fortitude, he would have already died. The cold was so severe that they were only able to take a few steps at a time.
"Damn it! I refuse to die!" The last contestant, named Ming Shu, was screaming inwardly. However, his body was reaching its limit. He was a few steps ahead of Wu Qiong when suddenly he felt a strange sensation gathering inside him.
"I can't! I—I can't die here!" His inner thoughts mirrored the drowsy state of his body.
"J-Just a b-bit more." Before he realized what was happening, Ming Shu froze on the spot. He reached his hands forward one last time, pointing with his fingertip.
It was just Wu Qiong left. He wasn't special; it was his relentless will that had kept him alive up to this point. Currently, he too was feeling quite drowsy, his eyes half open.
"The lights—why are they in that order specifically?"
"The color black often symbolizes death or dissolution in myth and folklore; it is the last phase in life."
"I observed that emotions would accelerate the ice's growth, meaning that there were specific conditions or symbolisms. The symbolism of dissolution of being and self starts with deterioration and death."
Wu Qiong had a strange idea. He continued walking forward, letting the ice naturally envelop his body instead of resisting at the phase of dissolution. He was simply not ordinary. Letting the ice overtake one's body due to mental collapse would leave one at dissolution, or rather death—but ice had three forms.
These were vapor, solid, and liquid. They complemented each other; they were phases of a single unified substance, but with different molecular structures. Similarly, dissolution didn't have to end at that point. Ice could eventually melt; there were no eternal winters in the world.
Wu Qiong reached the 199th step, and before he could reach out his hand, his entire body froze. But if one looked closely through the crystallized remnant, the person's eyes—albeit in a state of death—held a look of indescribable purity.
The second color, white, following black chronologically, symbolized purification and rebirth. Dissolution didn't have to end at death, because death is in life as life is in death; none are mutually exclusive, and they must complement each other. The ice slowly cracked, and Wu Qiong's arm was the first to break free. His arm slid against the shattered ice fragments and cut the underside of his arm as blood poured out profusely.
However, this time he spoke to himself.
"The third color—red: completion and holism!"
Wu Qiong opened his eyes, screaming with the last of his energy, and reached past the lights to the end.
He did it. He was the only one who passed the second peak.