Editor: Elanor
At that moment, the sound of sparse applause came from not far away. People moved out of the way and Mr. Angus, the lawyer in charge, came over with a warm expression on his face.
“It’s a pleasure to see such a young talent,” he said, “that not only has a thorough grasp of the intent of this event but also a first-class ability to act.”
He continued with a smile, “Here I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that you all can act freely, we will provide unlimited resources for any medical treatment, alcohol and clothing, and will be your omnipresent backing.”
He smiled kindly at Xia Tian and said, “I will send you a few more sets of new clothes over.”
Xia Tian glanced at his suit and found that the hem had been cut by a knife. He smiled brightly at Angus: “Send the same thing.”
“Exactly the same, guaranteed,” the other man said, a kind smile plastered on his face, the kind of smile one often encountered after becoming a star.
Then Mr. Angus put down his glass and scanned the others around.
“As a sign of encouragement for the young talents to actively participate in this event, we also have specially set up a valuable first-kill reward for the first person to get a kill,” he said.
Xia Tian raised his eyebrows and the banquet hall quickly quietened down as everyone stared at the Lawyer-in-charge.
It was important to stress that the first-kill reward hadn’t appeared in many years.
Angus beckoned at someone, and a man in a crisp black uniform came over, looking like a butler of some grand mansion. He held an equally dark metal box, shaped like a monster’s egg, in his hand.
The man opened the box carefully, as if showing the treasure of the townhouse. The metal box was lined in deep red velvet, which at first glance looked like a pool of blood. The object lying in it was also in the shade of blood.
The Lawyer-in-charge picked it up and smiled at the crowd.
The next moment, a dark dagger materialized out of thin air in the Lawyer-in-charge’s hand.
At some point, some unknown material covered the back of his hand, like a pitch-black flowing rivulet… and then Xia Tian realized that it really was flowing.
High-end nanomaterials.
Mr. Angus swung the dagger with a swift, graceful, and quick motion befitting of a fighter on the champion team the yesteryears. The blade grew considerably almost immediately in this swing, as though the blade had spontaneously coalesced from something in the air, and the dagger turned into a long sword.
He swung again, the black substance flowed, and with a flash of pitch-black arcing light, the longsword turned into a pitch-black whip.
Everyone in the room stared at Mr. Angus, unable to take their eyes off the display of this series of weapons.
Xia Tian looked at it with glowing eyes. God knew how weapon manufacturers could design and build such things nowadays. This was by no means made by 3D printing. All of its forms were hand-designed and professionally optimized. It represented the pinnacle of individual weapons in the Upper City. It was incredibly expensive, just launched, and one of a kind.
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.
And from the professional point of view of a Killing Show star, this weapon was absolutely top-notch at killing, with some functions surpassing that of a small army.
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—That was definitely an advertisement line.
He solemnly handed over the weapon to Xia Tian. This scene was definitely highlighted and focused in front of every terminal on the planet that was watching the show.
In its original form, the “Doomsday Beast” looked like a stylized wolf, and the eyes of the beast were like an endless black hole capable of devouring everything. The moment Xia Tian received it, the relevant information automatically appeared on his contact lens. Xia Tian quickly swept through and found that while it was not difficult to operate, it did require some proficiency. He decided that he would have to get familiar with this thing at once tonight.
The nanomaterials covered the palm of his hand. It felt warm and gentle like holding the finest gauze in the Upper City, yet it had the weight of death.
Xia Tian raised his hand, and the “Doomsday Beast” grew more and more under his palm as if it was multiplying rapidly. Then a huge gun appeared in his hand.
The gun grew so slowly and seemingly out of thin air that the scene seemed magical. The heavy and huge gun was almost as tall as Xia Tian himself. It was full of metallic texture and destructive energy flow. It had a murderous aura, and it was both ice cold and scalding hot.
It was a copy of his weapon in the God of War Temple.
Xia Tian studied the new weapon with great interest, and his actions exuded a palpable aura of his murderousness that filled the room like a fog. Although the gun function was currently disabled, no one in the crowd—except for his teammates—dared to remain at a close distance from him.
Xia Tian, unable to put it down, caressed it lovingly. The Lawyer-in-charge thoughtfully allowed him time, then looked up at the others, and said: “Also, I need to remind you that you should find weapons other than the dinner knife as soon as possible. The night here can not be considered safe…”
Someone nearby screamed at that precise moment and collapsed to the ground. He was covering his neck, but the blood kept gushing out. A man stood next to him, holding a bloodstained fork.
Everyone in the arena knew him. He was Qi Qing, a member of the previous champion team.
He was not tall and had a baby face. At this moment, he looked at the Lawyer-in-charge with an innocent look and asked, “Is there a reward for the second kill?”
Xia Tian loved his first-kill reward so much that Eric had to sarcastically comment: “You must be sorry it can’t have babies for you.”
He was so delirious with excitement that he was itching to kill someone with it, and it looked like Bai Jingan wasn’t planning to stop him.
The blade of the “Doomsday Beast” could even be reduced to a single molecule, but this function was disabled because it would otherwise be too frightful. The gun function was also currently sealed. With this gadget, you could enter any Doomsday game and have an unwavering victory against anyone.
Bai Jingan didn’t know how much financial resources had been spent to produce such a weapon. Only in the Upper World could such a huge amount of energy be spent to create a thing that looked like a work of art but could destroy a building full of people in a matter of minutes. The Lower City had not even solved the food problem, but the Upper City had advanced so much that a single person could mass-slaughter everyone and there was no one who could stop it.
“I don’t remember when was the last time there was a first-kill reward on the Killing Show,” Eric said.
“The third round of the 195th session,” Bai Jingan said.
The dinner was over, and the team of four people sat on the sofa in the living room of the four-person suite. There was a small bar here. Although there were no weapons, the room had a variety of everyday casual killing supplies such as knives and forks.
“Are they really going to make things like ‘Doomsday Beast’ all over the city?” Eric said, “This year’s homicide cases in the Upper City have reached a new high.”
“Few people can afford it, so it won’t reach the level of ‘all over the city’,” Wei Xi said. About a dozen screens were hovering in front of him.
As they were talking, the night outside the window became darker and deeper. Here the sky became darker earlier than the outside world.
The fourth round of the competition was said to be not set in a full studio, so you might assume that the organisers had less of a grasp on the competition, but in fact, they had used better technology to control the whole thing, and there was not even the slightest compromise on the details. The planning team still had complete control over all astronomical phenomena here. It was just a huge, well-constructed cage, where gory scenes were staged.
Bai Jingan glanced at Xia Tian. The man looked quite relaxed as he concentrated on studying the functions of his new weapon.
He was helping Wei Xi, but he couldn’t help but divert a little energy to pay attention to Xia Tian as well, even though the latter was in good health, happily holding his powerful weapon and there was obviously nothing bad going to happen.
Eric continued: “As long as people start buying it, the price will come down soon. At least a copycat version will be available soon.”
“But my ‘Marshmallow‘ is still unique,” Xia Tian said.
—That was the name he had given to his first-kill reward. The Lawyer-in-charge had painstakingly urged him to change it, but he was adamant about keeping it.
“Let’s stop worrying about weapon manufacturers for the time being and return to the topic of tactics,” Eric said, “We are Joker cards. Aren’t we in too much of the limelight right now?”
“We were given Joker cards to be in the limelight,” Bai Jingan said, “We have no better way than to be tough.”
He turned to look at Xia Tian, who was caressing his new weapon lovingly, and said, “Who wants to kill the second group?”
The second group delivered themselves to their door.
The group came to their door that night to snoop around, most likely attracted by Xia Tian’s tempting first-kill reward. Eric shoved one guy’s face into the juicer blade and pressed the start button. The scene was, without a doubt, horrific and gory.
Xia Tian killed another one and the rest fled in horror.
That night, Wei Xi successfully hacked into the garden’s surveillance network. There were a total of 1,173 cameras, most of which were distributed within the buildings. In contrast, the garden was a dark, unknown area.
And they witnessed some terrible things on the countless small screens.
The cameras that were installed on the edges of the buildings, facing the garden, captured nearly black footage. There was not a single camera installed inside the garden. The entire forest was completely dark, and it exuded a dark sense of foreboding and mystery.
They briefly caught a glimpse of something moving in the darkness, but they couldn’t see it clearly. However, they were sure that it didn’t move like humans.
They exchanged glances and gathered all the outward-facing cameras into one place to see if there was anything else like it. Not far from their back window, Bai Jingan spotted a hidden river with reeds that reached a man’s height. And under the faint light seeping out the curtains, something was dragging a player’s body into the grass, and only a pair of feet could be seen…
At that moment, the creature dragging the body flashed away, avoiding the light. All they could make out was a pale shadow, moving like a beast, but in some places, it resembled a… human.
They were silent for a while. This, it seemed, was the killer of the third sub-arena—danger from the depths of darkness.
It was unknown what the guy had wanted to do when he went out in the middle of the night, but his skills were clearly not good enough. He got caught by the highly mutated creature in the dark and was dragged into the depths of the garden.
Bai Jingan was sure that this creature that wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the relevant illustrations book, was a new product of the TV station.
He remembered that the Lawyer-in-charge had previously stated that the night here was not peaceful, but he was interrupted and didn’t intend to mention it again.
He stared at the cluster of screens. Further away there was no camera, and out there was a place as perilous as shown in the blockbuster movies.
But he also knew that even so, there would still be quite a few people outside. Nothing could stop people like them, not even extreme danger.
That night, Bai Jingan had a dream.
He dreamed of Bai Lin.
Although he must have seen him, he couldn’t remember the details at all. Even in his dream, Bai Lin was like a still picture.
He was standing on a street in the Lower City, holding a gun and looking down at the corpses at his feet. He was wearing a shoddy white T-shirt and grey loose serge trousers. The street lights were bright, shining down on him like the light of a stage, a seemingly crude, but grand and deadly stage.
The T-shirt was sticking to his body, outlining the slightly youthful lines of a young man. The body was still growing, with slender hands and feet, full of youthful energy, and extremely dangerous. The light shone on his clothes and skin, making his whole person glow.
His facial features still had the childishness of a young man, but they were also sharp and steep. There was no ambiguity in the whole body as if he had decided to grow up this way from the time he was born. But the colour that belonged to humans faded under the strong light. He stood in the depths of the darkness, like an overly clear and untouchable ghost.
The camera zoomed out, and the uncountable bodies piled up around Bai Lin’s feet spread out across the dark street.
There was a saying in the Upper World that people in the Upper City had always been completely unable to accept the Massacre. It was like a bone stuck in the throat that couldn’t be swallowed and couldn’t be spat out, choking them slowly, which was why people kept talking about it and tried to understand it.
But Bai Jingan didn’t think so… Well, it might be true for some locals, but the reason people kept talking about it was that it did have endless entertainment effects.
There had been far too many fatalities, there were far too many untold stories, and even millions of cameras hadn’t been able to capture them.
The image of the leadership that Bai Lin had gathered over the decades and the huge attention he had aroused were created by the countless corpses around him.
If they were the people on the stake in the entertainment society, then the firewood piled at Bai Lin’s feet was the highest. With more than three million lives, the firewood under his feet towered into the clouds.
This entertainment was dripping with blood and filled the air of the Upper City, engulfing everything.
Bai Jingan woke up with a start as if he had a nightmare, his heart beating very fast.
It was already bright outside. He continued to lie in bed for a while longer, thinking that he had dreamed of this because, just before going to sleep, he had been considering how things were progressing outside now.
Although it felt like you were in a haunted house, this was never an isolated world, but actually the centre of the spotlight. On the floating city, their reputation was getting stronger and stronger, much like the pile of firewood that was stacked under the feet of the person tied to the stake.
But the increase in the value of goods did not mean safety, they just would no longer kill you brutally, but they would pay more attention to you, create countless troubles, and look for higher value in you. The way to embody this value was definitely not fun, but a nightmare.
There would be trouble. And soon.
Marshmallow is so fitting for his weapon , how could the lawyer even want to change it
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