When Xia Liang's team had already been through a battle, Lin Xiaolu and the others were still racking their brains over the puzzle in their hands.
——"Bo Xue, are you done on your side?"
"Uh... just a little more!"
"Hurry up, I'm almost there on my side!"
"I'm going as fast as I can!"
"Bai Mei, how about you?"
"Supplying magic power! Mind your own business! Stop asking!"
Yes, they had successfully found a puzzle.
Or rather, it's not "found," but successfully "snatched" a puzzle.
After discovering traps set by other teams in the passage earlier, they used them to their advantage, confirming and checking the number and types of traps set by others in the passage, and then detonated those with destructive effects. Finally, they successfully blasted a hole in the passage of the maze.
Following Mint's suggestion, the three were cautious not to move the trap positions and minimized their magic power usage when triggering them, so indeed, the responsibility for the explosion wasn't pinned on them but on the magical girls who set the traps.
They knew about it because, after the explosion, a string of curses from the other end of the passage was undeniable.
After passing through the passage, where traps had been nearly cleared, as Mint guessed, Lin Xiaolu and the others found a puzzle that was halfway solved.
In the passages around the puzzle, there were fairly chaotic magical power fluctuation residues and many traces of human activity, so it can be confirmed that not long ago, another team was working on solving the puzzle here.
Perhaps too excited after discovering the puzzle, or perhaps due to taking too much time solving it and making a misjudgment, this team laid numerous traps in the passage they came from to protect their claim on the puzzle. Ultimately, the trap tools backfired and were used by Lin Xiaolu and the others, leading to a "destruction of the passage" and "rule violation" judgment of failure, and they were directly ejected from the maze.
Of course, it's not really wrong to say that their actions were mistaken, because Lin Xiaolu and the others' method indeed exceeded the imagination of typical magical girl teams. "Checking all traps in the passage" is not something an ordinary magical girl team could do, but Bai Jingxuan's sensory abilities were out of the ordinary; "strictly controlling magic power usage to concentrate the explosion of props" sounded like circus acrobatics, yet Lin Xiaolu easily accomplished it thanks to her high reaction speed after the Magic Shift.
Exhausting all efforts to set traps, only to encounter a team defying common sense, is just a matter of time and fate. Consequently, when the members of this team heard the "rule violation" notice from the examiner, they first assumed it was a false judgment, only realizing what had happened afterwards, emitting desperate curses.
Then, the half-solved puzzle became the possession of Lin Xiaolu and the others.
This was a puzzle without any small map or hints. Solving it from scratch would likely take the team a lot of time just probing for information. Fortunately, due to the traces left by the previous team solving it halfway, Lin Xiaolu and the others quickly figured out the content:
A wide passage with a device at each end, and between the devices, the floor was made up of a 10x200 grid of square tiles with a side length of 0.6 meters.
As long as magic power was injected from one side of the devices, all the floor tiles on the grid would turn into one of three colors: red, yellow, or green. When a candidate stepped on a tile, the tile itself and the four tiles surrounding it (front, back, left, right) would all change color. The color sequence was red turning to yellow, yellow to green, and green to red.
When the three discovered the puzzle, the grid already had a path extending about 50 tiles, suggesting that the ultimate goal of the puzzle was to connect a path of green tiles between the two devices.
The three conducted a simple division of labor, and after initial calculation by Mint, they ultimately decided: Lin Xiaolu would supply magic power at one end of the device, while Mint and Bai Jingxuan would explore the path.
Now, after much effort, their interconnected green path finally covered more than half of the passage.
"... Hmm, where was I just now, oh right, about the Black Ash Dawn being transformed into a giant moth."
Maybe because the atmosphere during this process was quite relaxed, Lin Xiaolu began, under Mint's curious questioning, to selectively talk about the events on the day of last year's Full Moon Festival, when Black Ash Dawn attacked Fangting City.
She certainly knew what could be said and what couldn't, so she glossed over many matters related to Emerald Sparrow's identity and Seeder. In her description, the new generation team of Fangting City comprised five members: Captain Emerald Sparrow, newcomer Jin, Bo Xue, Long Dan, and herself. The depicted Emerald Sparrow was just a "experienced and thus strong and reliable" "ordinary senior".
Being a long-time gossip enthusiast, Mint could naturally hear that Lin Xiaolu's narrative concealed certain things, and some logic didn't add up, but as she was just listening for gossip and entertainment, she didn't plan to delve deeply.
So the three of them continued chatting while solving the puzzle, with Lin Xiaolu talking about the oppressive rules after Mosi turned into a Trembling Beast, and Mint responding with astonishment; when speaking of Emerald Sparrow using all her strength to counterattack Mosi, Mint would respectfully applaud. Bai Jingxuan listened attentively to Lin Xiaolu's story, occasionally chiming in or correcting her. In such a leisurely atmosphere, Lin Xiaolu finished recounting her story.
By this time, the connectivity progress of the passage was nearing 90%.
——"Hmm, it does sound thrilling, it's really not easy to come out of situations like that unscathed."
And Mint timely expressed her impression after listening: "Also, your senior, is she called Emerald Sparrow? She seems like a very strong magical girl."
"Of course, Emerald Sparrow is the best magical girl."
Lin Xiaolu took a breath with satisfaction, feeling proud to have conveyed the greatness of Emerald Sparrow to others: "In fact, words alone are completely insufficient to describe Emerald Sparrow's amazingness!"
"That's right, that's right!" Bai Jingxuan harmonized promptly.
"More powerful than the description? That's really…"
Mint blinked, a slight smile creeping onto her lips: "Makes you want to meet her."
Her words gave Lin Xiaolu pause. Seeing Mint's "tomboyish" demeanor and neat, dashing appearance, she inadvertently recalled Asou Haruka's hand-kissing gesture to Emerald Sparrow in the past and then unconsciously replaced Asou Haruka in the imagery with Mint in front of her. The thought of that scene inexplicably left her feeling a bit sour:
"You probably won't get to meet her."
"Not see her?" Mint was somewhat puzzled: "Not even if I go to Fangting City?"
"Not see her means not see her."
Lin Xiaolu said resolutely: "Besides, you're a magical girl from another city, right? Is it really appropriate to just run off to another city without a mission?"
"Well... At least from the map, my city isn't close to Fangting, but it's definitely not far either."
Mint showed a pensive look, seemingly genuinely considering the feasibility of "making a special trip to Fangting": "Well, at least closer than Tiandu City."
"Your city?"
This piqued Lin Xiaolu's interest, so she half-deliberately diverted the topic: "Come to think of it, have you ever told us what your city is like?"
"Indeed, I haven't."
Mint turned around on the tile, smiling and looking at Lin Xiaolu: "Why, interested in understanding it?"
"Go on, tell us, I've talked so much about Fangting, my mouth is dry."
Lin Xiaolu hit the nearby device, making a "bang bang" sound, while urging: "Now it's your turn!"