Editor: Junyans
After that, everything went on normally.
Xia Tian and Bai Jingan didn’t have any less work on their schedules. They did a few interviews, and went on to take two sets of promotional photos.
In the middle, their assistant sent over a script, which was scheduled to start filming next month. It was about what had happened to Xia Tian in the Lower City, but they had found various reasons to make him related to Bai Lin. They were really obsessed with the Zone N incident.
Huitian followed behind them as usual, wearing a cold expression on her face. Her makeup was glamorous as always, and she touched-up whenever needed; she had returned to her bright and beautiful appearance. She ignored the moldy looking hospital mark on her wrist. Many people had it on their hands and nobody cared.
The studio was as bright as day, and everyone was busy as hell. The photographer praised Xia Tian as star material.
“Just like I said, there are good seedlings in the trash below,” he said to one of his assistants while laughing. “Train him a bit and put him under the lights, and he looks fucking mesmerizing! Look at his prideful look, like everything is beneath him.”
They obviously didn’t think it was a big deal. Xia Tian was also used to it. He looked down at his phone to check the information related to the Guest Show.
The information on the Internet was creepy as hell. Although there was no clear evidence to prove the existence of the show, all sorts of details pointed to its existence—like the fact that almost every year a popular contestant went missing, sometimes even an entire team. These people weren’t just some stray animals for them to disappear so suddenly and without causing any commotion.
The Guest Show was like a black hole in the core of this pompous world, and all that flowed out of it were rumors or scalp-tingling vague images, but you knew it existed. The opening of the show was slow like a shadow infiltrating into ordinary life, and the whole world was its stage.
A moment ago, the road under your feet was smooth and clean, but the next second you made a misstep, and you’d be swallowed by the darkness, never to be seen again.
Eric came over silently, dragged him to the corner, and said, “Is something wrong?”
Xia Tian said without raising his head, “It depends on how you define ‘something wrong.’”
Eric stared at him.
Xia Tian sighed. Sometimes one really had to admire the intuition of a Killing Show player.
“Well, something happened,” he said, smiling at Eric, “but this place is just like that. I can take care of myself.”
Eric raised an eyebrow, clearly not having any confidence in the other person. Xia Tian smiled at him as confidently as he could.
“And I’ve got Little Bai,” he said.
“Come on,” Eric said, “you two can stir the whole Upper City together.”
Xia Tian laughed.
Eric still looked at him, and Xia Tian sighed.
“We’re in trouble, and you’re not going to be any better, Eric,” he said, “Look after Wei Xi. We don’t want to participate in the lottery of choosing new teammates in the next round.”
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.
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And there was no end to entertainment.
Xia Tian’s new villa was located on the hillside of the Stratus Cloud District.
He looked up and saw the mansion lit up like daylight, glowing like a sanctuary in the darkness of the mountain. The price here was as high as heaven. This was the residential area for the top stars and Killing Show players in the main city, so one could imagine how high the turnover rate of homeowners here was.
They walked through the cameras and found that everything here was brand new like a sample apartment. The company had emptied Xia Tian’s personal belongings which had been left in Bai Jingan’s house, saying they would be auctioned off or put in the memorial hall. Xia Tian tried not to think about their fate.
The program group came in and introduced every inch of the floor of the house. After that, they finally left temporarily to give them a break.
As soon as they left, Bai Jingan went to dispose of the cameras in the house.
They knew that they couldn’t completely get rid of the cameras, because they didn’t have the authority to destroy some of them during the Guest Show. But at least they could deal with the ones that the TV stations and private people had stuffed in.
Dee Dee was silent the whole way.
It was well past her bedtime and she was so sleepy that she couldn’t even open her eyes, but she still followed Xia Tian and refused to go to bed. He had to take her back to her room himself.
The room was also brand new, with cold moonlight pouring in, like a stage with no lights on.
Dee Dee walked to the door, lowered her head, and firmly grasped Xia Tian’s cuffs.
He squatted down and looked at her. She had her teeth clenched, and her face was covered in tears.
“They’re going to kill you,” she said.
Xia Tian couldn’t speak for a moment. She was clutching his sleeve for dear life. She was out of breath from crying. “This is not like the Lower City. Here, you’ve nowhere to hide…” she said.
“They asked me… what I would do if you died… I said you won’t die. They smiled at me. I know that expression…”
“I’ll hold on a little longer,” Xia Tian said.
“You can’t hold on at all!”
She burst into tears, the desperate bawling of a child. She hadn’t cried like that in a long time.
Xia Tian stroked her hair, at a loss of what to say.
She was wearing her sponsor’s expensive pajamas from the Cloudwalker collection, which were wide and soft, with birds on gold chains printed on the white fabric, making her look very small and fragile. He wondered what she had been through during the week he had been away—surely it hadn’t just been to show her the game. He thought, how could she possibly survive in this hellish place?
After checking the cameras, Bai Jingan watched the scene from a distance, not saying anything for a while.
Then the man came over and squatted down in front of Dee Dee.
“I’ll look after him,” he said, “If he screws up, he… won’t be alone.”
Dee Dee still kept crying, and after a while, she nodded.
She was only so old but she already knew what desperation meant, and that there was no alternative.
Exhausted after a long day, Xia Tian and Bai Jingan packed up and went to bed. It was a time when they needed plenty of energy.
At three o’clock in the morning, Xia Tian’s eyes snapped open when he heard the short notification sound of a text message.
It was an eerie electronic tone, suitable to be used for the opening of a horror movie, and it was coming from his phone. The moment he heard it, he realized that those people had remotely changed his phone’s notification sound.
The moment the notification sound resonated through the confines of his room, he felt as if he had heard a bloody chain being tightened violently.
When Xia Tian opened it, it showed that the text message was from Fan Ning—the bald man from Zone K that he had met in the last round.
After the fourth round, those people portrayed Fan Ning as his accomplice, an important figure in the resistance to the planning team, and Xia Tian had also spoken a few words to him at the banquet today.
The text message wrote the room number of a hotel and asked him and Bai Jingan to go there immediately.
Xia Tian got up from the bed in the dark. Bai Jingan was woken up by his movements and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Fan Ning’s text message is not quite right,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan leaned over to have a look—considering they were in the middle of a show, it was better not to separate, so they had decided to sleep together. Anyway, the bed was big. Also, sleep was indispensable; they needed plenty of physical strength.
The man scratched his hair that was messed up from sleeping. He looked at his terminal and said, “They didn’t notify me, but it says that we should go together.”
“The person who sent the message knows that we are together,” Xia Tian said.
Bai Jingan jumped out of bed, made his hair, and put on his clothes. Xia Tian remembered the cold-faced tactical planner who had just entered the Killing Show. He used to look distant and detached, like he was standing outside the world. But at this moment, he looked so real. He was sleepy, yet ready for a fight. He was a perfectly ordinary young man.
A few locks of his hair were sticking up again. Xia Tian controlled the urge to stretch out his hand and smooth them out. They were currently in the Guest Show, and he didn’t want to make any intimate moves in front of the camera.
Xia Tian grabbed the clothes next to him and put them on. He looked at the Marshmallow and the God of War Scepter—they’d forbidden him to name the latter “Chocolate”—with their main screen display disabled and only the cold weapon function enabled. It really was no surprise.
He didn’t take them, but took his gun from the table and stuffed it in his pocket. The Upper City was never short of weapons.
He tied his hair. Neither of them looked good. They looked dazed, unkempt, and disheveled, as if they’d gotten out of bed in the middle of the night, which was indeed the case. As Killing Show players, they never had specific working hours.
Xia Tian sent a text message to Huitian, asking her to take care of Dee Dee. She replied “Ok” immediately; it seemed that she hadn’t slept yet and had been up all night.
Then he left the house with Bai Jingan, heading towards the room on the address.
The address was Sky City Hotel.
When Xia Tian and Bai Jingan arrived, the place was brightly lit and the party had reached a new climax. Everyone was laughing. The air was filled with the smell of wine, snacks, and psychedelic drugs. The floor was littered with trampled food and spilled liquor. The corners were crammed with people making out or having sex.
As soon as Xia Tian entered the banquet hall, a reporter was on him. The guy was so drunk that he just pounced on him with glowing eyes. Startled, Xia Tian swiftly drew his gun and put the barrel against the reporter’s head.
The man finally stopped throwing himself at him, but he didn’t seem to have sobered up even a bit.
“I knew it, I knew it all along,” the reporter screamed at him, “You won’t die! You’re different—it must mean something!”
Xia Tian pushed him aside and turned to go upstairs.
When he reached the second floor, he turned to look at the reporter. The man hadn’t followed him again, but he was simply staring up at him. The light bounced off his face, which was so full of fervor and desire that he did not know what to do.
Xia Tian didn’t know what thing he desired, but he knew that this person wanted that thing like crazy.
He ignored him, went upstairs, and quickly found the door on the address. Bai Jingan followed.
Compared to the bright lights outside, the light was dim inside the semi-shut door.
Before they could enter, they heard a song by the Apocalypse band playing inside, a male voice repeatedly singing “The nobodies are screaming, but the destruction is coming”.
Xia Tian walked in and saw the body right away.
Fan Ning was dressed in a metallic gray suit. When he had been interviewed in this suit just now, a group of reporters had been crowding around him, saying how optimistic they were about him, with his assistant following behind him, saying what other activities were coming up.
Now that he was dead, those people especially posed him facing the door, so that Xia Tian and Bai Jingan could see him at a glance when they went in.
They had nailed Fan Ning to a mural on the wall that had a burning effect. The light of the flames shone from behind him, giving the room a red glare. His whole figure was burning, and his body was a black charcoal-like shadow.
His mouth was wide open. Someone had put something inside, which was dripping with blood. Xia Tian walked over, stretched out his hand, and moved as gently as possible to remove the contents.
It was Fan Ning’s heart.
His mouth cavity was empty. His tongue had been removed.
Xia Tian stared at the body.
He was sure that Fan Ning had fought before he’d died; he was the kind of person who would fight to the last moment. He was also sure that Fan Ning had still been alive when they had cut off his tongue.
Fan Ning’s phone was placed on a table. The screen showed the interface for sending messages. There was a picture of a cartoon smiley face, its mouth grinning to its ears in an unusually joyful manner.
Underneath the picture, it read: Hi!
