Sorry for the delay~
At 8:00am in the morning, the course examination for <Endless Stairs> officially started.
Yue Xingwen only felt a darkness in front of his eyes before he regained his vision again and found that everyone was in the interior of a building.
There was a 45-degree angle of stairs diagonally upward, and at the end of the stairs was connected to the next flight of stairs, all of which form a ‘回’ shaped hollow structure. Looking up, they could see the transparent glass skylight at the top of the building.
The course prompt appeared on the hover box: “The examination has begun, please walk to the top of the building within one hour.”
In other words, this maze was composed of countless flights of stairs. As long as they climbed the stairs to the top floor, they would complete the examination. Sounds easy enough, didn’t they just have to climb all the way up to get out? However, this course was a maze course of the Faculty of Architecture and would certainly not be easier than the <Prime Number Maze> in the Faculty of Mathematics!
The complexity of the maze at the Faculty of Mathematics lies in the operation of prime numbers. Just by looking at the structure inside of the maze, there were only three levels—— top, middle, and bottom, and they could always get out by drawing a diagram as they went.
However, they did not know how many floors of this Faculty of Architecture’s building yet. Yue Xingwen did not dare to be careless, he looked to his teammates around him and said, “The three-dimensional maze, and I don’t know how many stairs there are, so don’t scatter first. In case the maze changes dynamically, we can’t find each other if we get separated.”
Zhang Xiaonian looked up at the glass roof and took out a laser theodolite in his hand to measure the height of the building, which reached thirty meters, and according to the usual calculation of 2,5 to 3 meters, the whole building should be between 10~15 floors.
The internal structure of the building was very similar to a common shopping mall. When people were on the first floor, they could see the glass roof at the top of the building, and the ‘回’ hollow part was often used to hang holiday balloons and advertisements for various events, and the escalator was diagonally wrapped upwards, from the first floor to the top floor. It was very intuitive to look up at a glance.
Where they were now, they could directly see the rooftop at the top of the building.
However, there was no way a 3-credit Faculty of Architecture would let them climb a few floors directly like a mall to get out. There must be something mysterious inside.
Yue Xingwen looked back at Zhang Xiaonian and said, “Xiao Nian, can you see what’s wrong with these stairs?”
Zhang Xiaonian shook his head. “I can’t see it yet. There’s nothing special about the interior design of this building. It’s exactly like the usual common shopping malls, we’ll have to walk two floors first to see if there’s a mechanism?”
Yue Xingwen said simply, “Let’s go, try climbing one floor first. Young Ke, pay attention to modeling. Xiao Nian, measure the distance.”
Ke Shaobin immediately took out his laptop and created a new document, asking Xiao Tu to shoot and draw the staircase graphics.
Yue Xingwen reminded them, “Everyone stay close, I’ll be in a group of 3 with Pingce and Xiao Nian, and the remaining 4 people in a group, don’t distance more than 1 step from each other, so that the stairs don’t suddenly break or change direction.”
The stairs suddenly changed direction? This was impossible in reality.
However, the library was a magical university, so who knew if the building would suddenly turn into Harry Potter’s castle and walk around with the stairs breaking down the middle or changing direction? There was nothing wrong with being cautious.
Seven people were divided into two groups according to Yue Xingwen’s instructions, and climbed up the stairs one by one.
They quickly climbed the first floor, and Jiang Pingce said, “There’s 13 steps on the first floor.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Itjcu Wljbcljc rjlv, “Ktf tfluta bo atf oibbg lr 2,5 wfafgr, jcv atf lcmilcjalbc jcuif lr 45 vfugffr.”
Bf Vtjbylc delmxis fcafgfv atf vjaj lc tlr ijqabq jcv yelia atf wbvfi, jcv rjlv, “Ktfgf jgf 13 rafqr bc atf olgra oibbg, jcv cbk kf jgf bc atf rfmbcv oibbg?”
Iteb Mfcu rjlv, “Gb sbe kjca ab wjxf j wjgx bc atf rajlgr, rb jr cba ab yf mbcoerfv ijafg?”
Yue Xingwen said, “Senior brother has a way to make marks?”
Zhuo Feng’s right hand slightly raised, and a golden electric current suddenly appeared in his hand. The electric current shot out with a ‘zi zi’ sound, and then he controlled the golden electric current as if he was holding a golden whip in his hand. When the electric current touched the stairs, Zhuo Feng’s finger wrote down a ‘1’, and the golden electric current followed his finger’s movement, burning a charred ‘1’ on the stairs.
Then he burned a ‘2’ on the next flight of stairs.
Everyone: “…”
The marks burned out with electric current could not be erased.
Yue Xingwen could not laugh or cry and said, “Can your electricity still be used like this?”
Zhuo Feng withdrew his hand and coughed lightly. “Enhanced electricity can burn everything.”
Yue Xingwen praised him and said, “With senior brother’s mark, we won’t go wrong, so everyone can continue to follow.”
After walking the second floor, Jiang Pingce reported the data, “The second floor also has 13 steps.”
Zhang Xiaonian: “The data is the same as before.”
Yue Xingwen said, “Continue.”
Everyone followed Yue Xingwen and walked quickly to the third floor.
Jiang Pingce frowned slightly, “It’s still the same as before.”
Zhuo Feng used electricity to burn a black ‘3’ on the stairs, representing the third level.
Yue Xingwen felt a doubt in his heart. “The exact same stairs, all the way up? The Faculty of Architecture can’t be so boring, right? Let’s continue to climb up and see.”
After everyone walked to the fourth floor, Jiang Pingce said, “13 steps.”
Ke Shaobin entered the data. Then, as everyone followed Yue Xingwen around the corner and continued up, they were shocked to find—— On the stairs ahead, a burnt ‘1’ appeared.
Everyone looked at each other. “What’s happened?”
Lin Manluo looked at Zhuo Feng doubtfully and asked, “Isn’t this the trace you burned on the 1st floor just now?”
Zhuo Feng was also a little confused and replied, “We climbed up to the 4th floor clearly, how can we return to the 1st floor?!”
Yue Xingwen could not figure it out either. They had just been climbing up the stairs, and had climbed up 4 floors in a row, but the number ‘1’ had actually appeared in front of them. This was the trace that senior brother Zhuo had burned out when he was on the 1st floor just now, everyone would never see it wrong.
How did it get back to the 1st floor when they were clearly going up?
Jiang Pingce looked up at the glass window on the roof and frowned slightly, “After climbing 4 floors, we get back to the 1st floor. If we continue to climb up, we’ll still be back to the 1st floor, and the cycle will repeat itself, never getting out.”
Yue Xingwen said, “Let’s verify it, senior brother Zhuo and the others wait here. Qin Lu, you come with me, and set a place here, if it’s not right, we can still return back.”
Qin Lu nodded and followed Yue Xingwen.
Both of them climbed up quickly, and after climbing four floors in a row…
Sure enough, they met their teammates.
Everyone looked at each other after looking at Yue Xingwen and Qin Lu, who had clearly climbed up the stairs from the front and actually appeared behind them not long after. Qin Lu whispered, “Turning around and coming back to the same place, isn’t it the same as the ghost hitting the wall in a horror movie?”
Ke Shaobin adjusted his glasses and said, “In horror movies, frequently, the protagonist is trapped in the stairs at night, desperately running up or down, and as a result, he runs several floors in a row only to return to the original point…” He looked at Yue Xingwen nervously and said, “Could it be that we also met a ghost hitting the wall and can’t get out forever?”
Yue Xingwen looked back at Zhang Xiaonian, who was staring at Ke Shaobin’s laptop in contemplation. Following his gaze, it happened to be a 3D figure that Ke Shaobin had modeled in his laptop.
As everyone had just climbed upwards, Zhang Xiaonian had measured the data, and the 3D drawing drawn by Ke Shaobin was very similar to the stairs seen by everyone’s eyes, almost in equal proportion.From the 3D view, it could be noticed that the angle between the first and second floors was 90 degrees; The same vertical 90 degree angle between the second and third floors and also between the third and fourth floors.
Seeing his little junior brother’s serious look, Yue Xingwen could not help but ask softly, “Xiao Nian, have you found anything?”
Zhang Xiaonian returned to his senses and pointed to the modeling figure and then said, “Assuming that the front is north, the stairs on the first floor are oriented from west to east, the second floor from east to south, the third floor from south to west, and the fourth floor from west to north, forming exactly a circular structure.”
Jiang Pingce took a closer look, and it was true.
The staircase they walked in the direction of exactly →, ↓, ←, ↑, forming a ring-like structure.
Zhang Xiaonian confirmed and said, “This should be the Penrose stairs.”
Zhuo Feng raised his eyebrows in doubt. “Penrose stairs? What do you mean?”
Zhang Xiaonian stretched out a hand and made a simple comparison in the air. “In the 3D space, we have been walking up, and it’s impossible to have a situation where we walk up four layers in a row and return to the first floor. But if this isn’t a 3D space, and the twisted space connects the tail of the fourth floor to the beginning of the first floor, it will create a closed, 3D ‘回’ staircase, and we will keep spinning around inside this ‘回’ shape no matter how many times we go upwards.”
Jiang Pingce suddenly said, “Is it similar to ‘Möbius strip’?”
The others looked at them blankly. The liberal arts students really did not understand these professional terms.
Jiang Pingce briefly explained, “A Möbius strip, is a strip of paper twisted 180 degrees, with the head and tail connected, and a strip of paper that originally has two sides will become only one curved surface. Suppose, the Möbius is applied into a building and we go forward on this paper strip, no matter how long we go, we will never get out, much like the Penrose Stairs that junior brother said.”
Zhang Xiaonian nodded and replied, “Yes, the key to the ‘Möbius strip’ is to distort the paper strip 180 degrees, but the architecture of the 3D world can’t do that to twist the staircase, so the ‘Penrose Stair’ has been an unrealizable architectural hypothesis. But the space in the library can be twisted, and when the first and fourth floors are connected, and a closed circular staircase appears that cannot be walked out.”
No wonder this course was called <Endless Stairs>. It turned out to be a circular staircase design similar to ‘ghost hitting the wall’, not to mention 1 hour limited time to get out of this maze, even if they climbed here for 10 hours, they would keep climbing from the 4th floor back to the 1st floor, and there was no end.
Yue Xingwen rubbed his temples and said, “How are we supposed to get out of a building where space is distorted?”
Zhang Xiaonian looked entangled. “It won’t work to climb the stairs continuously, we will just be spinning around on the 4th and 1st floors over and over again. To solve the Penrose Stairs, we have to find where the distorted part is, and bring back the space there.”
Jiang Pingce said lightly, “Disconnect that first and last connection, and we’ll be able to break the closed loop.”
Zhuo Feng said, “That is, the connection point between the 1st and 4th floors?”
Zhang Xiaonian shook his head in a hurry. “Not necessarily. It may also be that the connection point between the 2nd and 3rd floors, or the 3rd and 4th floors is the part that is distorted. The four staircases, like four separate blocks that originally were all going up, but one of them was twisted and connected to the other. Since we can’t see the model beyond 3D space from God’s perspective, we can’t make hasty judgments about which part is distorted.”
Zhuo Feng understood and replied, “You mean that the ‘1’ I marked is not necessarily the 1st floor? It’s possible that we started out on the 2nd, or 3rd floor when we appeared? Anyway, the four flights of stairs are exactly the same, going all the way up and connected to each other, so where exactly is the 1st floor and where is the 4th floor, we can’t actually confirm, right?”
Zhang Xiaonian said, “That’s what I mean.”
Everyone looked at each other and fell into a daze for a while.
Ke Shaobin took a closer look at the modeling graphics and scratched his head, “The four flights of stairs are indeed identical, including the angles, number of steps, and length data. When looping together, it’s like a distorted square.”
Yue Xingwen looked at Jiang Pingce and said, “I really don’t know anything about this, so tell me, how to find out the exit?”
Jiang Pingce said decisively, “Xiao Nian, measure the data at each flight of stairs to see what the height of the stairs from the roof is, and see if there’s any difference.”
Zhang Xiaonian quickly reported the result, “Four flights of stairs, with the same height from the roof.”
Yue Xingwen said with a headache, “Which means that it looks like we’ve been climbing upwards, when in fact, we’ve been on the same plane, with no change in height?”
Zhang Xiaonian nodded and replied, “That’s the strange thing about the ‘Penrose Stairs’, it looks like it keeps going up, but it’s actually rotating on the same plane. 3D space can’t explain such a phenomenon; higher dimensions are possible.”
Jiang Pingce said, “All four layers are the same, so we can only try layer by layer.”
Zhang Xiaonian summoned the excavator.
Everyone: “……”
So, was it necessary to use an excavator to pass the course this time?
Zhang Xiaonian looked at the team leader inquiringly, and asked, “Senior brother, can I dig the connection?”
Yue Xingwen helplessly supported his forehead and said, “Okay, dig it.”
When in doubt break stuff.
+1
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
+2
+3
I love how much Xiao Nian can help in these instances. I like that he can feel useful instead of feeling like he is dead weight because he gets lost easily!
thanks for the chapter <3
My favorite type of characters is “tired of thinking — destroy”
Thank you very much for the translation 💙💙💙💙