I Have Yet to Become a Doll Today

Lu Yuwen also felt somewhat awkward. He was used to being alone, rarely opening up to others. When words of praise came out of his mouth, it unexpectedly seemed like sweet talk.

If he continued, would it make him seem frivolous?

Lu Yuwen averted his gaze, looked at the canned food in his hands, and said softly: “Anyway…as long as we work together, we can definitely escape the maze.”

“Yes! Absolutely!” Su Man was full of vigor. She stood up and declared, “I won’t give up! I’ll look around again. Maybe there are other useful things. We’ll continue tomorrow!”

Su Man turned to leave, full of energy.

Watching her retreating figure, Lu Yuwen felt his spirits, only just revived, dissipate again. He was again despondent…

That thing…he wasn’t able to tell her.

While she was full of expectations, telling her that they were trapped, that they would never be able to escape, he couldn’t bring himself to say those words.

Lu Yuwen irritably tugged at his hair.

What should he do?

Even if he kept it from her, he couldn’t conceal it for long! As soon as all 100 squares were explored and there was no next move, Su Man was bound to become suspicious!

Unless he could find a solution to the dead-end problem before that.

With this thought, Lu Yuwen paused.

Looking at the can of eight-treasure porridge in his hand, his thoughts began to settle…

Here they had food and water. If given more time, perhaps…perhaps he could find a solution.

Lu Yuwen reached once more for the maps…

…

After two more days, they had finally completed the diagram for the 100 squares.

Because the last dozen or so squares connect, presumably assembled by those before them, it saved them a lot of time.

After they finished drawing all the squares, Lu Yuwen took only 22 minutes to assemble the 100 scattered squares into a map.

Su Man was amazed, “That’s incredible…I wish I were that smart.”

Lu Yuwen said with a laugh, “This is actually quite slow. Some of the map drawings weren’t very accurate, after all, we’re not professionals.”

“So next, do we just need to match this map to assemble the squares?” Su Man looked at him expectantly, shining with admiration.

She had no resistance against such a clever man…or rather, against such a smart brain.

Lu Yuwen laughed and said, “Next, we need to assemble it again.”

Su Man froze, “Assemble it again?”

“Yes,” Lu Yuwen returned the map-drawing paper to its original position, “Just now was just a test. Now we need to find the optimal solution, or in other words, the method to assemble the squares in the fewest steps.”

Su Man nodded repeatedly, “Right, we have to assemble the squares in reality. Each square is about 2 kilometers away. If we can find the optimal solution, we can save a lot of time.”

She stood up, telling Lu Yuwen, “You focus on finding the optimal solution. I won’t bother you. I’ll take a walk outside.”

Su Man thought of Lu Yuwen as a scholar, and felt that such a clever person should be “singly focused on their studies, oblivious to the outside world”.

As for her, who couldn’t solve the problem and couldn’t come up with any ideas, she took care of all the physical labor.

Finding food, scouting the environment, clearing roadblocks, she managed all of these tasks perfectly well without Lu Yuwen’s assistance.

However, she didn’t expect that Lu Yuwen would take two whole days to find the optimal solution and still not find it…

Su Man hesitated.

She wanted to ask him, but looking at Lu Yuwen furrowing his brows and facing those messy maps, she didn’t dare to ask. She was worried that pushing him might stress him out, and even more interfere with his work in finding the optimal solution.

Perhaps noticing Su Man’s anxiousness, Lu Yuwen put away all the maps after one more day and told Su Man, “Let’s begin assembling.”