Editor: Junyans
Wei Xi pushed the VR headset up, looking like a trendy hacker.
“Angus had once said that they are biological weapons,” he said, ignoring the corpses around him and focusing intently on the subject matter, “but monsters can’t be used as weapons, because weapons must be controllable.”
Without waiting for anyone to answer, he threw a bunch of bloody chips onto the grass, and then a stack of holographic windows popped up. In an instant, the battlefield transformed into a strategy analysis room, filled with morphological analysis diagrams of white specters.
“I’ve collected chips on a large scale and summed up the pattern of the chips. This thing is modeled after the ‘Ultimate Control,’ the third form of Class C. The signals can all be traced back to a certain core area—”
The network logistician had had his attention on something since last night, even when he had been running for his life from the monsters. He couldn’t fight with the monsters, so Eric had been watching over him the whole way, but when it came to his own field of expertise, Wei Xi had always been a master.
“Shouldn’t it be outside the arena?” Fei Yu asked.
Wei Xi explained, “No. The arena is all set up to be self-contained. The development of this industry in the Upper City has been going on for many years, and the game rules are very sophisticated. If it’s set as a biological weapon, there must be a control valve. And it turns out, there is one.”
He skillfully popped up another data frame and said, “I’m pretty sure it’s some kind of signal transmission tower—”
All around him, people gathered, and those who were too injured to stand also looked in his direction, listening attentively to what he had to say.
Before Wei Xi finished speaking, a voice in the crowd suddenly interrupted him, “How to get there?”
Several people turned their heads to look at the person who had just spoken. He was wearing gray pajamas with the Star Network TV logo on it. The man was so badly injured that he didn’t look like he could move, but his tone was firm.
Wei Xi raised his hand and a route map popped up.
“The dark cave in the West Wing,” he said, “There are many white specters there, but…”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“We can go, right?”
Everyone looked down to receive the route, and a voice asked, “Then, are we still going to the banquet hall?”
“Who the hell wants to go to the banquet hall?!” Someone yelled.
“Let’s go and end that place,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan was quite sure of the upcoming plot.
Apparently, “Mr. Shi” had a secret laboratory deep in the garden where he conducted inhumane experiments, a relic from his glorious days in his youth. At this important moment of choosing an heir, it still played a major role, manipulating the monsters into starvation so that they devoured non-stop.
The lawyer in charge didn’t think that it was necessary to intervene. It was a bloody battle anyway, and it was better to add a dark and evil flavor to it.
It was all cliché after cliché, something the upper city residents were familiar with, but the countless real deaths added color to it.
After Wei Xi finished speaking, the group discussed what to do next. The smell of gunpowder on the battlefield hadn’t disappeared yet. Nearby, a few people were mocking Angus’ expression when Xia Tian had kissed Bai Jingan. None of their injuries were minor, but they seemed very happy.
“We have to find a place to rest first,” Bai Jingan said, “and then discuss the next step…”
Someone whistled from behind, and the two turned to look. The person closed his mouth, adopting an innocent expression.
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.
Bai Jingan turned around and said to Xia Tian, “I know you’re upset, but do you have to be this creative?”
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The players took stock of their weapons, and exchanged weapons and magazines while chatting.
Bai Jingan could feel everyone’s gaze directed in their direction… and then he realized that they were looking at Xia Tian. It was like when your gaze unintentionally followed something when there was trouble; they unconsciously looked at Xia Tian.
Bai Jingan also turned his head to look at him. The man hadn’t recovered yet and was sitting by the stone sculpture. Its sharp edges were protruding at angles, and the body of the white specter pierced on it was still twitching.
Xia Tian was looking down at his phone intently. A few locks of his hair were loose, and he was bathed in sunlight. Next to him were a mass of corpses the group had taken down. He seemed to be at the center of the stage.
Xia Tian muttered a curse.
“What’s the matter?” Bai Jingan asked.
“The Internet is down.”
“What did you do?”
“I just thought that something as good as a monster signal transmitter,” Xia Tian said, “should be announced.”
Eric, who was standing next to him, was stunned for a moment and said, “You’re announcing it, just like how you announced the arsenal before?”
Xia Tian let out a “hmm” and said, “And then the Internet went down.”
Eric laughed and said, “You really have amazing destructive power.”
Bai Jingan took the phone. He was glad that finally no one was whistling since everyone was focused on the Internet. On the terminal page, there was a sign indicating that there was no connection, and it said in big letters: In times of emergency, everyone must remain silent.
Someone in the back suddenly laughed and said, “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”
“Is the Internet broken?” Another asked.
“His destructive power is amazing.”
A few others echoed his sentiment, saying that Xia Tian “knew how to stir things up.”
Wei Xi checked the network and said, “The internet has been closed by using a high level of authority, so it can’t be fixed for a while. But we can go directly to the banquet hall and announce about the transmitter, can’t we?”
“This is the fourth round of the Killing Show, not exactly a perverted tycoon’s private garden,” Eric said, “We’re not going to make it there alive.”
“Even if we get there, we won’t make it alive out of the hall,” Fei Yu said.
Wei Xi was taken aback and nodded, indicating that he understood. If you stayed here for long enough, you would get to know these things slowly.
“If it were me,” said the guy in the blue groundhog pajamas—almost completely stained red with blood—said, “even if I don’t usually watch the Killing Show, I’d take a good look at this scene.”
“Yeah, I’ve never seen the planning team look so ugly. They evolved the monsters to resist light, poured rain to douse the fire, brought the Joker cards, and cut the Internet,” another person said. “What else can they do?”
“Launch a missile to level the arena,” Mo An said.
The group laughed, laughter that reeked of anger and blood. They were at a complete disadvantage, but they were talking and laughing like desperate villains.
The organizers no longer stood high in the clouds. The crowd below looked up at the throne, holding bloody knives in their hands.
The group dispersed for the time being, and Xia Tian’s team found an empty house to rest and recuperate.
They sorted weapons, dealt with wounds, and spoke very little. Rather than resting, the atmosphere was more like that of preparing for war.
Before every great battle, there was always a period of time where you packed everything up and got ready, and no matter what the road ahead was like, you had to walk it.
Xia Tian roughly treated his wounds, took a shower, changed into fresh clothes, and came out.
The good thing about this place was probably that there were clothes with uncut labels and food with logos all around. It was like a land of luxury where all the necessities of life grew on their own.
Bai Jingan had also tidied himself up and was in the process of sorting the weapons. Although everything that should be packed up had already been packed up, he knew what this trip entailed and how dangerous it would be.
They didn’t know who this house had belonged to previously. The style of clothes was serious, different from the type they wore at normal times. Fortunately, the formal attire of the Killing Show never got in the way while fighting.
Xia Tian, clad in a stern style outfit, came out of the kitchen with a box of snacks in hand and said, “This honey egg tart tastes good.”
He sat down beside Bai Jingan and handed him a piece. Bai Jingan, having just fought countless filthy white specters, felt he should have no appetite. However, after eating, he found that it tasted very good. Besides, he hadn’t eaten anything since the night before, so he was indeed hungry.
Eric also reached out and took one, while Xia Tian tossed one to Wei Xi who turned his head to look over.
Wei Xi couldn’t find the clothes he was accustomed to, and wore an overpriced formal suit without a coat and unbuttoned three buttons of his black shirt. He sat cross-legged on the carpet, surrounded by a circle of nearby surveillance videos. The webpage of the discussion board showed it was “connecting,” while numbers flashed on the attached decoding window, showing that it was in operation.
The group finished their tarts and found a box of fresh fruit mille-cakes which acted as their breakfast.
They barely spoke. There were probably a lot of people outside looking for random food, while this place was filled with the most famous food and drink brands of the upper class.
Bai Jingan looked at Wei Xi’s monitoring screen while eating breakfast.
In the monitoring screen, the distant view of the main banquet hall was open. The screen was enlarged to the maximum, and it hung in the living room like a promotional poster for a disaster movie.
The main hall had originally been very magnificent, but now it was half blown down by Xia Tian and looked like a half eroded giant cake. The white walls had collapsed and shrunken to a pile of black charcoal, unable to return to their original state.
Just as they were watching, one of the pillars couldn’t hold up and fell down, startling several contestants who were attending the banquet.
The engineering department of the TV station wasn’t allowed to repair the site in the middle of the game, so it could only remain in this collapsed state.
All the contestants received a banquet notice—obviously, the communication network through which the organizer sent tasks wouldn’t be interrupted—and gathered over in increasing numbers
In the video, Bai Jingan saw one of the players gesticulating to his companion about the scene of the night’s battle, and the other party listened with a joyful face.
More precisely, everyone was talking about it. Although they hadn’t participated, news of yesterday’s events had quickly spread to everyone’s ears. Those who came were all discussing the same thing: the fire, and what the fuck Xia Tian had gotten up to again.
The gloom that had been drifting along with the crowd dissipated considerably. Players’ smiles flashed under the dark clouds, extremely dazzling and smelling of gunpowder. They were overflowing with schadenfreude, eager to see blood and a big mess.
The group of four rested, packed their weapons, and met up with several other teams next to a badly burned pavilion.
The scenery along the way was woeful. When people saw the lush trees, statues, or flowers which had turned into charred remains, it elicited a cold and cruel excitement. In the Killing Show arena, everyone could feel the desire for destruction under such extreme pressure. Everything here tempted people to unleash the craziness in their hearts.
Only this time, that desire was directed towards the arena itself.
A group of people met and discussed tactics in a cryptic manner. Those who had made it this far were masters of their craft so there was hardly any need to speak; their intentions were perfectly clear.
Then everyone traversed through the ruins, heading towards the direction of the transmission tower.
The surrounding scenery soon became lush again. The players had tended to their injuries and changed into new, expensive clothes, but each of them had a murderous look on their faces, dragging long shadows of destruction they had brought out from the battlefield.
Not far from the arena, the banquet had already begun. In this short period of time, they had managed to arrange wine and snacks, presenting a luxurious appearance. The advertisements needed were all there without a single omission.
Looking out of the window, Bai Jingan could see a scene which had been ravaged by fire, which was too over the top to be convincing. Seeing this, he felt that the lavishness inside the banquet hall and the dramatic destruction outside in the garden matched each other very well. After all, everything here was built upon destruction.
He kept an eye on the banquet hall through his contact lens. The cameras in the arena were new and equipped with an audio recording program to make it easier for the contestants to get information, so even if they weren’t physically there, they could still hear what was happening from a distance.
He could see Angus scanning the crowd, trying to find Xia Tian, as if he was the point of this gathering.
And that was indeed the truth. Things were no longer going by the book. They were turning into what resembled a personal vendetta, where no one was above the law, and it was a matter of kill or be killed.
Angus announced to the players in front of him, “Yesterday at 7 o’clock in the afternoon, some bones were fished out from the experimental pool at the Third Science and Technology Center of Mr. Shi’s Empire. Due to severe corrosion, the exact number of individuals haven’t been determined yet. It can only be said that there were at least three. However, the preliminary DNA identification results have been obtained, and each of them has the genetic markers left by Mr. Shi years ago.”
He scanned everyone.
“Do you know what this means?” He said, “It means that recently, some people brutally killed Mr. Shi’s heirs, robbed their genetic markers, and infiltrated the battle for the inheritance. I’m pretty sure they’re still alive and definitely not here to greet everyone and have a party together.”
In the banquet hall, a group of disheveled and sleep-deprived contestants started whispering among themselves. Some looked left and right, trying to analyze the situation, while others were still trying to figure out what was going on.
Mr. Angus continued, “Everyone, we all know what they’re here for. Mr. Shi was a great man, and greatness always comes with a price. These lowly Avengers think they can change fate and overturn order, which is absolutely unacceptable. Now is the time for all of you to prove your strength.”
“Wait a minute, there’s a Joker card setting in this round?” A player asked.
“I remember someone saying that there were random Joker cards before, to make everything more exciting.”
“Now the plot is already like this, and they still want to fucking add the Avengers?”
“It was announced earlier, and it can’t be changed.”
“This cannot possibly turn any worse.”
The NPC lawyer in charge continued, “Because the arena is in isolation, we are currently unable to get in touch with the outside world. But once the latest genetic test results are obtained, the airship will arrive at the earliest opportunity—”
He spoke without looking at the people around him but stared at a certain camera behind him. This gave a clue that the focus of the plot wasn’t on any of the players present.
The story line, planning, and development were all directed towards one person.
“If you can find the mole and kill him before the airship arrives,” Angus said, “you can be directly promoted to be the heir and end the fight.”
He looked around with satisfaction at the players who were finally focused.
“Motivation always reflects in one’s behavior, so their actions are different from yours. Enough videos, guesses and inferences will lead to the correct results,” he said, wishing to say the name of the mole directly.
“You better hurry up,” he continued, “White specters are fast in evolving towards both light resistance and reproduction.”
Listening to the meeting on the other side, Bai Jingan thought their team were indeed the lowly Avengers Angus had spoken of.
It was just that the confrontation has entered another level. Beyond the rules and terms, behind the clouds, the gruesome body of the organizer had faintly appeared.
