Without showing us examples of the clues and how you worked through them, it’s hard for anyone to assess what’s actually happening here.
If someone were a genius, I think they’d likely anticipate this kind of response and provide evidence to support their claim beforehand. For instance, you could share specific moments where you figured something out before the characters and break down how you got there. Without that, the claim feels a bit incomplete—like there’s something missing for us to fairly evaluate.
So based on what’s here, I’d lean toward the idea that the author might just be making the clues clearer than usual.
This, for the record, is deductive reasoning. And yes, I am able to do that with mystery stories. It's part of the fun when I get engaged. I'm glad you're enjoying the thrill of that too!
Now, I must get back to figuring out what the hell the One Piece is. If you can crack that, I'll call you a genius.
In the first chapter we are introduced to the main character and 10 other people who find themselves in a completely sealed cement room. One of the people there was a strange man who wore a mask made out of a goats head.
So the man with the goat head mask is apparently some kind of game organiser and his goal is apparently to create a god, a figure like the goddess Nvwa.
So up to this point it's already clear that these people have either been transmigrated or are dead, because there is no way that someone who claims to want to create a god would resort to kidnapping( supernatural is also one of the genres for the book so this one was fairly obvious).
The first game the group played was spot the liar. The participants in the game were supposed to tell a story and find out who exactly among them is lying. The goat head guy then proceeded to hand out cards which indicated whether you had to lie or tell the truth. The main character got the card which required you to lie. So everyone started telling the story of what they were doing right before they got there. They all had different professions, a brain surgeon, a kindergarten teacher, an online novel writer, a street girl, a money lender, a gangster, a lawyer and our main character a fraudster.
The one thing I noted as everyone narrated their story is how connected their stories seemed and how likely the circumstances they were in prior to getting there were most possibly life threatening( except the writer) so I assumed they were all dead already.( I was right) And another thing was how this game was too rigged in the favour of whoever was the liar in the game as everyone there were total strangers, so I realised A. It's either the author wanted to show the gruesome deaths of all the other participants to show us how dangerous the games are or B. Every single one of them is a liar(And I was right every single one of them had a card that indicated they needed to lie). At this point I started getting interested in figuring out what exactly needs to be done and what was going on.
The second game introduced another character who is also a manager Human dog I won't go into the specifics of this game as it needed knowledge of the geography of china to solve so I didn't understand what was needed here.
The thing that got me really excited and made me understand that the author probably isn't a newbie is the challenge that you needed the answer to the second game to get through, a volley of harpoons with ropes attached shooting through the walls, the second challenge gave them pieces of a roundtable that they could use to survive the arrow rain, even though they managed to survive the writer got hit in the shoulder by one of the harpoons. While everyone else was clamoring for the doctor to try to find a way to pull out the barbed harpoon and suture the wound I was anxious because the harpoons were described as having ropes attached to them, sure enough the harpoons began retracting and pulling the writer towards the hole in the wall although the writer was saved in the end though.
Thirdly the manager for the fourth game called himself human snake and was equipped with a snake head mask, so I reasoned, Dog, Snake, goat there is surely a pattern here and based on the fact that this is a Chinese novel it's obviously based on the Chinese Zodiac. At the end of the fourth game they got out of the room and we're met with others coming out from other rooms also with them were people with, bull, snake, rats and other animals consisting of the Chinese Zodiac.
Some other miscellaneous things were easy to predict after all it's horror the author needs to disgust you, like the store owner who eats babies you know disgusting stuff like that.
Lastly there are two conjectures I've yet to verify and if once again I'm correct then regardless of this post I will assume that I am indeed smart or have maybe read so much books that nothing surprises me anymore.
The objective of this whole death game is to collect 3600 taos and with it become a god and the only way to get these Taos is to play games. Where I'm at now the main character met a manager who wore a bull mask so he as well as I assumed he would be Human-bull following the same naming sequence. The bull mask on the other hand said to not compare him to those guys as he is Earth bull. So since there are human and earth rank managers there obviously needs to be heaven ranked managers according to the theory of the unity between Heaven, earth and Man.
Also the writer was killed when everyone was asleep when they discovered him impaled on a black great sword he the writer said "impossible, Qi Xia it's impossible that's the seven star sword".
While everyone was busy wondering who the hell killed the writer all I could think was why does the writer know this sword(by the way the name of the sword was inscribed on it but in a direction facing opposite of the writers line of sight). So I have a very bold conjecture the only reason to be surprised not by the fact that your dying but by the sword itself can only mean one thing, the writer knows the sword very well and it is something that should normally not exist so in conclusion it's a sword that exists in his novel.
Mind you these last two are conjectures but I'm very sure they're right
Who knows. I never find any clues, and I can hardly ever predict the plot, but maybe that is because I am half cat. ?
