บท 150: Ripples Become Waves

It was a sequence puzzle—a Destiny's Realization puzzle. There had been only one of them before, a relatively short one that I won by only half a second. Like then, I kept up well till about a dozen inputs in, but I made a mistake once it extended to 16. Unlike most puzzles, this was set up so that we could perceive the other person's instance of the puzzle as well, and I saw a thin smile on the lips of my opponent, a woman Core Disciple of Earth Ascension, as I started over.

She finished all 20 parts of the sequence without a single mistake. We were congratulated on "putting up a tremendous fight" and shown the exit of the Contest of Knowledge. Personally, I was relieved that I hadn't needed to throw the last puzzle—I had enough trouble to deal with without annoying the #1 sect as well. Fan Zhonying and Nan Hong seemed to feel the same way.