Free Web NovelChapter 205: Chapter 9: Death Puzzle Game
Everything went black, and Bai Wu, Lin Wurou, and Yin Shuang felt as if they were suddenly transported to a dark room.
The room was sparsely furnished, with only a large round table and seventeen corresponding chairs.
The round table was an ordinary stone table, seemingly made of the same material as the steles outside, and the chairs were the same.
Enhanced Vision allowed Bai Wu to clearly see every person seated there.
"So, the second game is the Death Puzzle?" said Evil Fallen, whose skin was filthy black, obviously not his first participation.
Bai Wu and his companions were all confused. Just as Bai Wu planned to use Prayle’s Eye to investigate, a strange electronic synthesized voice quickly announced the game rules—
"Fourteen dead, three alive, hello."
"There are quite a few familiar faces here, but as per tradition, I still need to explain the rules. As you’ve seen, there are living people participating in the second game for the first time in a while. Will you continue to dwell in the filth with vile creatures and endure the fear of death, or will you be one of the three to survive? The opportunity is in your own hands."
Bai Wu furrowed his brows; these words had almost instantly set him and his two companions against everyone else.
"You’ve just completed a running game of one hundred to seventeen, but now you must complete a survival game of seventeen to seven, and of course, the rewards will be substantial. The rules of the game are simple—your appearances and voices will all be standardized, and your positions shuffled. Also, you will play two roles, the judge and the defender."
"Each stage will give you two minutes, one minute for the defender’s stage, and one minute for the judge’s stage. During the defender’s stage, you need to recount ten events from the year you died, and all ten must be true. Make sure that by the time the ten events are recounted, everyone can clearly understand the cause of your death."
"During the judge’s stage, you need to guess the true cause of someone’s death before their ten events are finished. If you guess correctly, the person whose cause of death you’ve guessed will be eliminated."
"But if you guess wrong, the person who guessed incorrectly will be directly eliminated. The game ends when only seven people remain. Also, you can choose to remain silent during the defender’s stage."
The electronic synthesized voice in the darkness emitted a rhythmic and orderly strange laugh:
"Kekekekeke, you’ve noticed that there are also three living people here; they will tell the cause of their deaths as well, of course, everything they say is fabricated. The requirement for every event to be true does not apply to the three living people."
"As dead people, if you can correctly identify who among them lied, you can eliminate them. If you advance successfully and manage to eliminate a living person, congratulations, you will be reborn in a new body, and hopefully, you will never return to this place."
The Evil Fallen were instantly excited at the prospect of being reborn in the manner of living people and stealing human bodies, which was more tempting than obtaining a "new life" through all the games.
Each Evil Fallen looked greedily at Bai Wu, Yin Shuang, and Lin Wurou.
Bai Wu also confirmed his suspicion. The special physical rules of the island must be related to life and death.
Here, the boundary between life and death could be blurred, and the dead could survive in a special way—through the foul earth.
There were not many Evil Fallen alive here; most were beings that had been dead for a long time.
Their longing gaze seemed to seek the special reward given by the game to achieve resurrection. It was clear that the filth or evil spirits on this island suffered some kind of torment.
This torment was comparable to the passengers enveloped by Reincarnation; the difference lay in the hope given to them by the island’s master.
As for the rules of the game, Bai Wu and his two companions understood them well.
In short, one needed to deduce the true cause of an opponent’s death before they finished telling all their death information; if successful, one would eliminate the opponent.
At the same time, one had to fabricate one’s own death story, making the opponent believe they were dead. If the Evil Fallen saw through the lie, they would be directly eliminated.
He was familiar with these kinds of games, but the question remained—what about Lin Wurou and Yin Shuang?
"If there are no questions, the game will begin in ninety seconds, and you’ll speak in turn, clockwise, according to your randomly shuffled seating order. I wish you good luck."
"I have a question."
Bai Wu suddenly stood up.
Although Enhanced Vision could clearly see the details of the scene in the darkness, Bai Wu couldn’t see the source of the voice.
He was merely talking to the commentator of the game, and perhaps even the organizer, through the empty space.
It seemed that they hadn’t expected someone to question them, and after a few seconds of silence, they asked,
"What is your question?"
"The props of the people I’ve eliminated, do they belong to me?" Bai Wu asked. fгeewebnovёl.com
"Of course, just like what you experienced outside the house, everything that belonged to the eliminated is yours."
"We all have the same voice, the same appearance, but we are human, can the Evil Fallen perceive that?" Bai Wu was worried.
"You don’t need to question the fairness, if you think all this is unfair, it’s just because you are too weak." The voice from the darkness didn’t respond directly, but the disdain in their tone somewhat reassured Bai Wu.
Yin Shuang and Lin Wurou also suddenly realized they must not fear the gaze of these Evil Fallen. They had to calm down.
"If you don’t have any doubt..."
"I do." Bai Wu interrupted again.
"...Go ahead."
"Can we communicate freely after the game starts?"
"You cannot, everyone can only tell stories and question others, but you can also use your one minute to give hints to your partner, hehehe, if you do, you’d better think it through."
Bai Wu frowned; using the one-minute storytelling time to communicate with a partner would undoubtedly increase the likelihood of Yin Shuang and Lin Wurou dropping dead.
But that did not mean there was no room to maneuver.
"How specific does an event have to be?"
"The time, the place, what you or someone else is doing."
"What about the precision of time and place?"
"Time needs to be precise to the month, but the place just needs to mention the city."
Bai Wu understood; the limit was very vague, and he continued:
"Forgive my frankness, but the people who come here are all because of suicide, right? So what kind of details does the so-called ’method of death’ include?"
The voice in the darkness was slightly surprised; this was the first time someone had deduced that everyone on this island had died from suicide after just one round of the escape game.
"You need to figure out their reasons for seeking death."
The voice from the darkness was mechanical, yet exceptionally meticulous.
"Can’t I uniformly respond with ’life is not worth living’ or ’tired of living’?"
That remark somehow made Yin Shuang feel like breaking the tense atmosphere and laughing. Bai Wu was really someone... who could argue and had bizarre thoughts.
"You can try to do that, but the consequences will be severe; you have one last question!" The voice hidden in the dark was clearly a bit angry.
"During the ninety seconds of preparation time, can we freely communicate?"
"Yes."
"I have no more questions."
The others had no more questions either; most of them had participated in many games, and the cost of failure was extremely painful for them—it meant experiencing the fear and regret of death over and over for decades to come.
To excel in the game, they couldn’t be clearer about the rules.
The ninety-second countdown began, and Bai Wu recited in a voice that only Lin Wurou and Yin Shuang could hear, with an almost toneless voice, rapidly:
"Don’t interrupt me, I’ll say this only once. Among the items I exchanged for, there’s a card called the Global Perception Card, so I already know everyone’s cause of death. I’ll deal with the others, but what you need to do is to make the fabricated stories plausible enough."
"Listen, their way of clearing the game is to wait for others to make mistakes, that is, to tell their true reasons for seeking death. Most of these people are old hands at the game, and for the most part not playing for the first time. According to the rules, they will recount nine true events that have happened, but these nine events usually have nothing to do with death; logically, it’s impossible to guess the reasons they seek death from them. Only in the tenth event will they directly tell the truth behind their death wish."
Yin Shuang also had this thought, while Lin Wurou had an expression as if he finally understood, but in reality, he was still confused.
"The most advantageous point for us is that speaking incorrectly will lead directly to elimination. Hence, they dare not rashly question us; just follow along with the plan. Remember not to speak rashly."
"Don’t think about winning with special tricks; this game is actually a test of patience and storytelling ability. Lin Wurou, the card in your hand is called the Mute Card. When someone is in the middle of speaking, you can use this card to make them suddenly unable to continue, creating the illusion that ’they don’t know how to make up the story anymore.’"
"I will start with a cold laugh, Yin Shuang will start with a cough. If there are more than one who start that way, just avoid it, the card is best used after the fourth round. Remember, the year is fixed, the month can be varied."
Eliminating ten out of seventeen people, Lin Wurou only needs to make good use of his card to ensure one person is stably eliminated.
As for Bai Wu, he already knows everyone’s manner of death here.
The ninety seconds passed quickly.
The already dim room suddenly became pitch black, not a single ray of light to be seen.
Everyone began to feel dizzy, the world spinning around them. After an unknown duration, the sound of dripping water began to echo in the room, and people gradually regained consciousness, the room now lit with a dim yellow light.
The game had begun.
Seventeen people, in a clockwise direction, Bai Wu’s position was at the fifth spot clockwise.
Yin Shuang’s position was at the fourteenth spot clockwise. Lin Wurou was at risk, at the second spot clockwise.
As the darkness deepened, a voice signaled the start of the game, and the first "person" began their narrative.
"Apocalypse descended, June of 2127, I was driving on the streets of Baichuan City."
The person in the first spot spoke in a very steady voice and, after finishing, with tens of seconds of the minute still remaining, resolutely refrained from adding another word, silently waiting for the time to end.
And during the judging segment, they also chose to remain silent.
Before long, it was the second person’s turn to speak.
Lin Wurou was still a bit nervous; this was a matter of life and death. Fortunately, as a member of the Investigation Corps Vanguard Group, he was no stranger to life-and-death moments.
He just had to mimic the previous person’s sentence structure. Unusually, Lin Wurou began to make his brain work.
"May of 2126, my sister was waiting for me outside a manor in Food City."
Even though it was just making up a lie, Lin Wurou felt that it was harder than killing a level five Evil Fallen.
As Number Five, Bai Wu exhaled in relief, but Lin Wurou -- did she really hope for a sister? That truly was a protagonist’s template of thought.
A minute passed, and when the time came for the judges to speak, Lin Wurou also chose not to say anything.
The game continued.
Bai Wu had thought that what followed would be everyone speaking some meaningless words, but Number Three was different:
"The most important thing in this game is to prove that you’re not a living person, right? No living person could survive seven hundred years, so why don’t we talk about the year we died, the significant events that happened? Let me tell you, on August 11, 2128, the Ninth Psychiatric Hospital in Baichuan City was isolated by a certain special force."
This person actually lived until 2128?
August 11, 2128...
Bai Wu remembered, Hong Yin wrote in her diary: The doctors were calling for help incessantly, and the outside of the hospital was extraordinarily noisy. But the people outside couldn’t come in, and the people inside wouldn’t go out.
What this person said was true, he died in the year 2128, which meant that in 2128, he came to this island.
[Before the Seven-Day Catastrophe arrived, Baichuan City was rampant with chaos, hospitals filled with monsters, campuses rife with ghost stories, and zoos brimming with mechanical creatures... You’ve lived through all these, but what you can’t imagine is that at the time, most of the members of Baichuan City, who didn’t board the ships or enter the High Tower, had already begun to deteriorate, while a small part -- the dead ones before you, were still enforcing justice. Its reason for suicide was because the city was beyond saving. So does the Seven-Day Catastrophe that brought disaster throughout the entire city count as redemption for it, or punishment?]
Number Three’s words were merely a suggestion. Whether to respond was up to the thoughts of those fallen to evil, Evil Fallen.
Even though Number Three must have been a righteous security member before death, deserving of redemption, Bai Wu had to admit that this was a mentally aggressive Evil Fallen.
During the judges’ session, Number Three did not speak.
Number Four responded to Number Three, speaking about a major event.
"In July of 2126, the commercial streets of Shudu were flooded with fliers dropped from airplanes, and many bustling places in the entire city had advertisements for this island. I was reading the information on it at the time. This was considered a major event in Shudu."
The content of Number Four’s story piqued Bai Wu’s interest; this island had been active for at least two years.
Since 2123, cities around the world began to experience various anomalies, and with each passing year, the severity of those anomalies rapidly escalated.
Come 2128...
The streets of Food City were filled with monsters.
Baichuan went through the Seven-Day Catastrophe.
Denglin City’s Well Four created a black zone.
In 2128, the High Tower closed, and all cities experienced an extinction-level blow.
Yet this island was still active in 2128. Does that mean the island might have belonged to a place with special rules from an early time?
The next to speak was Bai Wu.
To mention a major event was not difficult for Bai Wu, but it would be more difficult for Yin Shuang and Lin Wurou in the next round, so Bai Wu first countered Number Three: freёwebnovel.com
"Huh, to tell of a big event from that time? This indeed could prove we have lived, but what if I deliberately don’t tell, can you determine that I’m human? If I’m not human, but I deliberately keep silent, aiming to tempt you to speak during the judges’ session? A wrong judgment means elimination, Number Three, your intentions are quite malicious... However, I’ll respond to you anyway -- in June 2128, in Denglin City, I and a group of people delivered stolen food to the doorstep of the Technology Building. That building housed scientists who were still willing to retain people for this world. I believe everyone in Denglin City knew about this."
The defenders’ session ended swiftly, and the judges’ session arrived. At least in everyone’s view, no one would be foolish enough to speak in the first five rounds, and Bai Wu indeed did not speak in the first round.
But the arrival of judgment was much sooner than these Evil Fallen had imagined.
