Seeking Truth with a Sword

He really did show up. Chou Jinghuan watched Li Ang walk into the exam venue, clicked his tongue in dissatisfaction, and then resumed examining the wooden box shaped like a Lu Ban Lock.

This Lu Ban Lock was entirely square, with an outer frame made purely of wood and topped with a wooden sword hilt.

In the middle of the frame, there were eight uneven and twisted wooden pillars. These wooden pillars interconnected within the middle section via a mortise and tenon joint structure to form a whole. In the center of each of the four sides, excluding the top and bottom, tiny square holes were left. These holes allowed the pillars to be moved up, down, left, and right by exploiting the available space.

In addition, the examiners distributed paper and pens to the candidates, also mentioning that the final exam results depended on the progress made in unlocking the wooden box. If a candidate truly couldn’t solve it, they could destroy the box, just as in the re-examination—as long as they achieved the desired effect, they could still pass the exam.

Ultimately, the examiners specifically emphasized that the paper and pen were merely tools for drawing diagrams and conjecturing the structure of the wooden box. They further clarified that the tools didn’t contain any hidden tricks that could be exploited.

The entire exam lasted for twelve hours, with lunch and dinner being served by the Ministry of Rites at noon and in the evening. Candidates were to eat while seated and could not leave the exam venue, but they could use this time to rest and chat.

There was plenty of time, but the question was... How to solve it?

Li Ang tried to move the wooden bars and discovered that initially, only two were mobile. After moving the bars, vacant spaces naturally appeared, allowing other bars to be moved. However, after a few moves, they would get stuck, making it impossible to remove any single bar. He had to reverse several steps, returning to the original position to try different approaches.

One begets two, two beget four, four beget eight. The possibilities in just the first few steps numbered in the hundreds, and each subsequent deduced step spawned even more variations.

It’s like a Lu Ban Lock with an incredibly complex structure, Li Ang muttered to himself. The sword hilt itself is also one of the twisted wooden pillars. Taking out the sword hilt means completely unlocking the Lu Ban Lock. Due to interference from the wooden frame and the sword hilt, it’s impossible to see the specific structure of each pillar inside. I can only rely on the faint light shining through the holes, sound localization, spatial imagination, and reasoning abilities to deduce the exact shape of the eight pillars plus the sword hilt.

Li Ang slowly exhaled a breath of murky air. What’s more terrifying, he thought, overwhelmed, is that drawing the shapes of the eight pillars and the sword hilt is just the beginning. I also need to deduce the specific solution based on this. Any mistake in the deduction process means I have to go back to the start.

Could this really be designed by humans?