Chapter 10 : Four People Remain

Mo Qian asked somewhat cautiously, “Lawyer Chen… among the lawyers surnamed Chen whom I’ve dealt with, I don’t think there was anyone like you. What is Chen Yan to you?”

“Stop guessing blindly. No one in my family works in this industry.”

Fox said calmly, “Unlike you, someone paved the road for you, and your life has been smooth sailing.”

“Heh. So you’re just some small fry.”

Fish sneered. “No one in your family, and you still want to make it in a law firm? Do you have connections? And you call yourself a lawyer… a salaried lawyer, right?

“You heard some half-true, half-false gossip from who-knows-where and thought you’d gotten hold of leverage?”

A so-called salaried lawyer was a working lawyer who had no stable source of cases and could only take commissioned cases from other lawyers. Because they had no connections, no case sources, and no team, it was very hard for them to receive any big cases if they worked as independent lawyers.

If one could not become a partner in a law firm, then in the end, one was still just an employee. They had no influence to speak of, and it was even more impossible for them to obtain any key information sufficient to threaten him.

Mo Qian had a rather strong sense of superiority toward people like this… after all, he had plenty of employees working under him.

“Not necessarily.”

Fox smiled. “Something like stealing personal information may not count as huge, but it’s not small either. The key point is that quite a few people actually know about this, President Mo.”

Glancing at Rabbit and Raccoon, Fox continued, “That big data algorithm from your company… it’s actually nothing but a shell, isn’t it?

“That so-called big data algorithm that ‘accurately analyzes interest demands based on user profiles’ is actually fake. The truth is that your company’s input method itself is a Trojan program—it monitors users’ input and browsing records in the background, and on the mobile side, it even monitors the microphone and the usage records of other software. It relies on that information to analyze user profiles.

“At first, Goule Group wanted to buy your algorithm. Later, they bought your entire company because they knew you didn’t have any real algorithm at all. So what do you think? If this matter is exposed, will Goule Group cut off its tail like a gecko, or will it protect you to the death?

“This already counts as illegally obtaining citizens’ personal information, and it absolutely falls under the category of ‘especially serious circumstances.’ If it causes major economic losses or a severe negative social impact, then at minimum, you’re looking at five years. If it draws intense public attention, it will only be more, not less.”

At this point, Fox looked toward Raccoon and Rabbit, then issued a simple, concise, and powerful question. “Can you trust the words of someone like this?”

“If I hadn’t changed my vote, the ones dead would have been you!”

Fish cursed angrily. “What are you acting for? Acting like some pure white lotus! You make it sound like you people don’t want to kill anyone else!”

He completely stopped pretending and straightened up.

Under everyone’s gaze, he even grabbed his mask and took it off!

That fat face like a zongzi, along with those dark little eyes flashing with cunning light, were now streaked with bloodshot veins, making him look full of viciousness.

“Come on, I’ve taken off the mask! Is that against the rules? Kill me then?!”

Mo Qian roared at the host.

His face was flushed red, and blue veins bulged on his forehead.

…Mania?

Rabbit stared blankly at him and felt a chill in her heart.

Seeing that he received no response from the host, Mo Qian cursed under his breath and flung the mask in his hand onto the table.

“I’d like to see how you people plan to vote me to death.”

Mo Qian chuckled coldly. “Competing with hand speed, is that it? Then let’s see whether Wolf dies or I die!”

He had already made up his mind to change his vote.

Even if those three cooperated, it did not matter… no matter how they voted, Mo Qian would follow their vote.

He knew that when Raccoon refused to cooperate with him… or rather, when he could no longer trick Raccoon’s vote, he basically had no way to get through his own round anymore.

The greater the advantage of an early narrator, the greater the disadvantage of a later narrator

This damn game was not fair at all!

But fortunately, as long as he could kill Wolf and Fox, the two intelligent ones, he would still have a sliver of hope!

Those two girls, Rabbit and Raccoon, both looked young and were far from that determined.

As long as Fox and Wolf were not there to interfere, he was still confident he could persuade them!

Children of this age were just at the stage where they began to realize the importance of money. A senior executive position at a listed company, a few million in hush money, and that would probably be enough.

On this point, he had no intention of regretting it or going back on his word—even if everything the host said was true, he did not plan to participate in the next game.

He still had his own career, his own company… and his own wealth and glory waiting for him to enjoy!

Mo Qian had a full eight chips. Even without counting the clear reward, that was enough!

One chip would be used for resurrection, and the rest could be kept as trump cards.

He had wondered… why some companies could rise so rapidly. Either they suddenly produced some inexplicably advanced technology, or they had an investment eye so brilliant it made no sense.

So it turned out they were all a bunch of cheaters!

Pah!

But now, he was going to become one of those cheaters too!

Long live!

As long as he could buy off these two girls, then he would have a chance to obtain the chips in their hands.

Buying them, stealing them, whatever. They probably had a dozen or so chips between them.

Those foolish mortals had no idea of the value of Time Chips at all!

Using them to kill people, relying on them to learn skills… such savage and primitive behavior was completely useless.

They had no idea how to use them!

Finance. Finance was the true king of this world!

If he could accurately return to a certain hour in the past, he would practically be a stock god!

No, not practically—if a person could foresee the future and also return to the past, then he was a stock god!

A dozen or so modifications to history… his wealth could easily swell dozens, even hundreds of times over!

What did Goule Group count for?

He could directly turn around and acquire them instead!

Just fantasizing about these things already made Mo Qian tremble with excitement.

Sure enough, satisfaction and confidence echoed through Mo Qian’s heart.

In this world, vision determined everything!

And what Mo Qian said had clearly stumped Raccoon and Rabbit.

They truly did not know how they could vote a designated target out when there was no team voice chat, not even pen and paper, and the other party was dead set on following their vote.

But clearly, peace was already impossible.

“How about we… write a blood note?”

Glancing at the mask Mo Qian had taken off, Raccoon hesitated. “We can use my mask. Dip it in the blood on the ground?”

“That’s a good idea.”

White Rabbit agreed.

“The only problem is, if we do that…”

Fox looked toward Ming Po. “‘Wolf’ may also be voted out. Even if the three of us vote for the same side and no one changes votes, President Mo still has a fifty percent chance of dying.”

As for the other fifty percent

That would mean Mo Qian happened to guess correctly.

In that case, Ming Po, as the narrator, would be eliminated.

“Ha, I don’t mind on my end.”

Ming Po smiled. There was not the slightest tremor in his voice. Instead, it carried a faint trace of excitement. “Or rather, that’s exactly what we should do.”

Only now did he finally feel a sense of stimulation.

It was as if his skin had become abnormally sensitive. Even the trembling of each individual hair became incomparably clear. Tiny currents of electricity crawled along his spine like insects and ants, and even his teeth felt faintly numb.

What Ming Po had said earlier had not been a bluff.

He truly was willing to gamble his life against Mo Qian—not “would rather,” but “wanted to.”

Compared with the more complicated random voting from before, this duel, where the result depended solely on Mo Qian and directly decided the life and death of two people, made Ming Po feel far more stimulated!

At that moment, a fragment of memory suddenly flashed before Ming Po’s eyes—

He was wearing a wingsuit, standing atop a snowy mountain peak.

Like someone leaping off a cliff, he threw himself forward!

He was not jumping out of a helicopter, but directly skimming the cliffside, leaping down from high above just like that!

His head was pointed downward. Countless jagged stones and towering mountain rocks brushed past him.

With both arms spread, he flew from the snowy mountain peak past rugged shattered rocks, past cliffs and forests… until he saw a village, then abruptly deployed his parachute.

The memory fragment ended there.

But Ming Po remembered with incomparable clarity—at that time, his heart had been beating so violently, and his emotions had been so excited.

“…So that’s how it is.”

Even Ming Po himself felt somewhat enlightened. It was not that he had no sense of fear.

Perhaps his fear was simply much lighter than ordinary people’s.

The emotional threshold required to make him feel stimulated was higher than that of ordinary people… probably something like being able to finish a haunted house or horror game with a completely calm heart and peaceful mind throughout the entire process.

Only more thrilling, more dangerous games could make him feel a sense of existence.

And he had indeed been pursuing that kind of stimulation.

Could it be that I died from some kind of extreme sport in the end?

This thought appeared in Ming Po’s mind.

Seeing Ming Po agree, Raccoon removed her own mask and began preparing to make the “blood note.”

Looking at the delicate and pretty face beneath Raccoon’s mask, Rabbit froze for a moment, then suddenly widened her eyes. “Wait, Raccoon… are you that… Jasmine-chan from Yinfu?”

Rabbit remembered now. She had once swiped onto the other party’s short video late at night!

When she saw that figure wearing a white helmet, a white dress, and riding a white motorcycle, Rabbit really did think for an instant, “Wow, she’s so cool.”

But after scrolling through a few of her videos, Rabbit’s thoughts had become, “Her underwear is showing. Isn’t this a little suggestive?”

“Isn’t she cold wearing so little? I feel cold riding an electric scooter in this weather.”

“Isn’t wearing a skirt while riding a motorcycle unsafe?” and so on.

But after scrolling through several more videos, Rabbit’s thoughts changed again to, “I keep feeling like something will go wrong sooner or later.”

Thinking up to this point, Rabbit looked at Raccoon.

…As expected, something did go wrong.

She thought.

“You know me?”

Raccoon was somewhat stunned, and also somewhat pleasantly surprised. “Are you my fan?”

“Uh… kind of.”

Rabbit answered vaguely. “I remember you had about a hundred thousand followers.”

“Not quite. Seventy or eighty thousand…”

Raccoon said somewhat shyly, and her goodwill toward Rabbit rose quite a bit.

“Then this is interesting.”

Fox suddenly spoke. “In that case, among all of us remaining, aside from Wolf… aren’t we all, in some sense, ‘internet celebrities’?

Could the selection of players be related to this? Or is it just a coincidence?”

“It might also be that in the modern internet society, it’s really easy to become famous…”

Rabbit did not respond properly, merely saying this vaguely.

“Hmph.”

Mo Qian sneered, then directly pressed both armrests with both hands, casting his vote cleanly and decisively.

He took a deep breath, trying hard to calm the anxiety in his heart, then raised his head and looked toward Fox. “I really don’t quite understand… those two aside, what were you thinking?”

Fox’s voice was low and calm. “What do you mean, what was I thinking…?”

“The vote in the previous round.”

Mo Qian grinned, his mood becoming somewhat calmer and no longer as manic as before. “Bear and Butterfly, as returnees, saw at a glance that ‘Wolf’ was the most dangerous guy. In the previous round, they deliberately wanted to vote him to death… How did you know I would jump ship? Or were you randomly voting too? I don’t believe a cunning guy like you would trust luck.”

According to normal logic, an old fox like him should have prioritized getting rid of Wolf.

At that time, he did not know that Mo Qian would change his vote, nor did he know that Bear and Butterfly were experienced returnees. At the time, the most dangerous one was clearly Wolf, whose behavior was unpredictable. A person as rational as Fox should hate uncontrollable factors the most.

Fox merely laughed, but he did not respond to him directly.

Only after the three of them had read the “blood note” Raccoon wrote with her mask did they brush both hands over the armrests and press slightly harder with their left hands, casting the same vote.

“Fish” had already finished voting earlier, and the remaining three voted very quickly. They did not need the full five minutes at all before the result was ready.

“—Third round over.”

The host announced the result.

In that instant, Mo Qian subconsciously clenched his hands.

…Who will it be?

Him, or Wolf? Or perhaps… someone changed their vote, and this round passed safely?

No matter what he had thought earlier, at this moment, Mo Qian truly felt his heart leap into his throat.

He even felt his thighs trembling uncontrollably

Those brief few seconds waiting for the result to be announced were even harder to endure than execution!

Finally, the host announced the answer:

“The minority is: Fish.

“—[Execution] is about to be carried out.”

“I knew it! I fucking knew I couldn’t win!”

Fish instantly lost all dignity. While hammering the armrest with all his strength, his body directly went limp in the chair.

His voice cracked, but it grew even louder. “You’re all in this together! No one can gamble and win against you… A black box, it’s a black box!”

“We do not use such methods.”

The host was somewhat displeased. “The game is absolutely fair… do not assume that because you have used cheating methods, everyone else uses them too.”

“Liar! I don’t believe you! I can’t die, I have money!”

Fish shouted incoherently.

He lost control of his bladder.

Fish thought of the nimble movement Dog had used when dodging the Sword of Damocles back then, but he simply could not do it… because his legs had gone completely weak and numb. He could not even stand.

“I don’t believe—”

His heart-rending scream was drowned out by the giant sword that descended in an instant.

Along with the tremor of the ground

In that instant, the noisy voice vanished without a trace. The room became silent once more.

One giant sword after another was either embedded in the middle of the table or had fallen onto a seat. They looked like gravestones.

Only four people remained around the round table.

The game was not yet over.

(End of Chapter)