Chapter 72.1 Crazy Love Season
In a city with only a few living people left, the wind that used to freely move around had stopped. Meeting the host’s smiling eyes, Wen Shi tossed the dice high into the air with a flick of his wrist.
“No!” Zhou Lulu shouted, her eyes filling with intense anger.
There wasn’t much distance left, but if anyone rolled a number two or more, there would be serious outcomes.
Everyone, including the crew, had been focused on the players before. No one saw the mini scarecrow flying up just above the dice.
A strange liquid dripped onto the surface of the dice silently, lacking clear tears, with a slightly dark hue… it was a type of contaminant.
After the tea party, Jian Qingrong used blood exchanged with A’Sang to bring about a new phase of evolution for the contaminant inside him. Previously, he could only manage creatures that carried the contaminant. Now, he could slightly control non-living things too.
Jian Qingrong took out an eye to keep Wen Shi company, while his main form underwent continual upgrades in the sanatorium. His near-term goal was to use the contaminant to control things on a larger scale.
Earlier, at the tall building, Wen Shi’s task concerned this matter. He had to control the dice’s outcome as he reached the final part of the journey, aiming for the lowest number possible.
A soft rumble echoed.
The dice landed with a responding thud, spinning more frequently than before, rolling for several rounds before coming to a stop.
At that moment, players’ heartbeats almost seemed to pause.
“It’s a one.” The host leaned over to take a look. Unlike the players’ relief, he expressed regret, “Such a shame. If only there were two more points, everyone could have left Mirage Landscape.”
He had waited a long time for this segment, even when he was blown into the sky, he had been anticipating it. Now, he was eager to interview Wen Shi, “Mr. Aaron, what made you choose to roll the dice at this moment? Are you sticking to your principles even in death?”
Wen Shi’s recounting of the frustrating rewind journey, which he shared with the crew and audience, had left them all shaken.
“Call me darling.”
The host was taken aback.
Surprisingly, Wen Shi managed to smile at this moment, his voice both sinister and soft, “As a human, your darling also has a principle, and dislikes being forced to make choices.”
Paying no further attention to the host’s probing questions, he turned and boarded the hearse without saying a word.
The car was filled with suffocating silence.
No one questioned Wen Shi, as it was pointless. No one asked him if he had a solution. Every move they made was being watched by the audience. Even if there was a solution, they couldn’t reveal it.
The only thing they could do was use this time to desperately brainstorm strategies.
However, as the distance closed in, countless possibilities they had conceived in their minds were overturned. No matter from which angle they looked, it was a deadlock.
The host excitedly spoke into the drone camera that was descending, “Which side will stop first, I wonder? Dear viewers, you can continue to participate in the guessing game through the official website!”
The players’ expressions of despair had subsided, but the tension in their muscles betrayed their anxious feelings.
Apart from the middle-aged woman guarding the door, a well-dressed elite man sat in the front row near the driver’s seat. His posture was proper, and the temples of his hair were slightly gray. He didn’t look at the water curtain, probably avoiding eye contact to not add psychological pressure to the other side.
Just like him, Ji Yuanzhi also refrained from looking at the water curtain at the moment.
A’Sang was the youngest, followed by a girl around the same age as Liu Yuan. The girl gazed at the black cloth on Tian Wanling’s head with a mix of surprise and concern. When their eyes met, she suppressed her unease and mouthed the words “it’s okay.”
Tian Wanling lost her birth mother early, and her relationship with her family was strained. She only had one friend she grew up with.
The other side was still so young, with a happy family. If there were any unexpected accidents, how could parents bear the pain of losing a child? Not to mention, this accident happened because of their own actions.
The host was keen on stirring up the situation, “The family members listed in the guest’s profile haven’t shown up. Is the one who arrived your friend?”
Tian Wanling’s fingers tightly clenched.
The host’s words felt like a knife stabbing into her heart. She was like a student in an examination hall who knew she shouldn’t pay attention to the invigilator’s movements, yet couldn’t completely ignore them.
For a while, she nervously muttered, “I can’t…”
Her gaze briefly brushed over the dice placed aside by the production team. Her eyes flickered, and her breath grew heavier, as if she had finally made a decision.
Empowered by a speed-boosting item, she suddenly darted forward!
Quicker than her was a long, slender tail. The cat’s tail tightly coiled around Tian Wanling’s wrist. Wen Shi had transformed back into his altered form, towering half a head above her. From his elevated position, the cold gleam in his feline pupils seemed particularly harsh, “What are you trying to do?”
Tian Wanling didn’t speak. What she intended was clear to everyone: to destroy the dice.
To trap their hearse forever in the Mirage Landscape.
“Since we entered, it’s been a deadlock,” Tian Wanling’s voice was hoarse, “Don’t you ever think about the little child? He watched you move forward without any hesitation. Won’t he feel sad?”
Wen Shi: “Will he?”
Tian Wanling instinctively looked at the water curtain. A’Sang was holding a bowl and had been quite happy since he spotted Wen Shi. He was still smiling stupidly now.
In the tense standoff, Sun Geng stepped in to ease the situation. He whispered very softly, “There might still be hope. For instance, that kid who can kill even ghosts, clearly isn’t a normal living person.”
“But he’s not a dead person either,” Tian Wanling responded coldly.
Tian Wanling had a powerful sense of perception regarding soul containers. She could detect that the scarecrow’s spirit and flesh didn’t match, and of course, she could sense that A’Sang’s soul was different from that of a ghost. There was no scent of decay associated with lifelessness.
Ji Yuanzhi had actually figured this out on the first day. He had shaken hands with A’Sang, and noticed that the latter’s pulse was unusually slow, but that was different from not having one at all.
Amid the incredibly tense atmosphere, Sun Geng clenched his teeth. “Let’s wait until the hearse stops and then assess the situation.”
Tian Wanling’s hand, which hung by her side, seemed to want to rise and provoke, but she abruptly turned around instead.
The host was disappointed that they surprisingly didn’t get into a fight.
While they hadn’t come to blows, the conflict had escalated. Tian Wanling went over to Liu Yun, “He doesn’t care about the child. But you can’t not care about your sister, right?”
Clearly, she was trying to rally supporters to join in on destroying the dice.
Liu Yun furrowed his brow, and before he could say anything, she saw a tiny cloth doll appear from inside Tian Wanling’s collar. It mouthed, “Do you have a cat?”
The conversation topic changed too quickly, leaving Liu Yun utterly stunned. After a moment, she nodded.
The cloth doll’s mouth continued to open and close, “When do cats raise their tails?”
“……” There were quite a few reasons–feeling secure, liking someone, marking their territory, etc. Liu Yun subconsciously looked at Wen Shi. He noticed that the young man’s tail was upright and even moved slightly in a certain direction. Liu Yun’s throat twitched, and she shook her head at Tian Wanling, indicating that none of the mentioned scenarios applied.
So, why did the other person raise his tail out of nowhere?
Lost in her own thoughts, they stopped conversing.
The hearse wasn’t moving particularly fast now, but it felt as if they teleported. Just like that, without a more intense clash erupting in the hearse, they quickly reached the next station.
Just as the host had mentioned, illusion and reality intertwined. The feeling of wind and motion sickness during the speed race was genuine, but in reality, a journey of several hours could be condensed into a few minutes. It was fantastical indeed.
Nobody could confirm the authenticity of friends and family in the water curtain, and there was no way for them to verify.
The real challenge lay in gambling with their own lives and gambling when others’ lives were at stake. Making such a decision wasn’t something one could impulsively decide by slapping their thigh.
The 6720 mark was a safe zone.
This time, Wen Shi didn’t fully step out of the carriage. With one foot still on the step, he directly threw the dice outside.
The people behind barely had time to react. The dice had already landed on one.
The hearse seamlessly started again, maintaining a slow pace, deliberately giving the players time to intensify their conflicts.
The host sat diagonally amidst broken glass fragments, his hand resting on the back of the chair, wearing a smile that wasn’t a smile.
“In reality, all of you are pretending to be good people, making Mr. Aaron the villain, right? If you truly wanted the hearse to stop, things wouldn’t be so calm now.”
He was right. The players could definitely resort to more violent measures.
Most of them hadn’t acted yet because they were still holding onto a thin strand of reason, believing Pei Wenwei had another motive.
However, that thin strand wouldn’t hold for much longer. If the dice were thrown again, no matter what number it landed on, the hearse would return to the starting point where the gate opened. No one spoke, but everyone’s peripheral vision was locked onto the dice. They couldn’t allow the dice to be thrown again.
Ten minutes later, the hearse gradually came to a stop.
Everyone held their breath, and the moment Wen Shi stood up, tension was on the verge of eruption!
The host, looking at the soaring viewership rates, smiled uncontrollably.
However, this time, Wen Shi didn’t reach out to grab the dice. He fixed his gaze downward, and by the roadside was the familiar skull pattern.
After a brief pause of two seconds, Wen Shi croaked, “There’s a task.”
The slightly relaxed tone made people suddenly realize that this young man wasn’t as carefree as he appeared.
Wen Shi was the first to disembark. His slightly slender shoulders seemed to carry a heavy burden, countless pressures rushing down like a mountain torrent.
His fair fingers grabbed one end of the ribbon. This time, the skull pattern appeared in the form of a gift box. With a little pull, the moment the bow came undone, the box automatically popped open.
“Hehehe!”
A comically eerie clown popped out, emitting a series of grating laughter, startling everyone.
Tian Wanling gazed at Wen Shi standing at the forefront. She lowered her eyes, a deeper conflict passing through her gaze compared to before.
She seemed to have understood the meaning behind his raised tail, but she was unsure whether she should gamble with the safety of her loved one. Currently, the probability of success with that method was less than twenty percent.
While taking a step back, she bumped into Liu Yun. She spoke in a calm voice, “Haven’t you noticed that every time a box is opened, it’s Pei Wenwei who does it?”
Opening a gift box was risky. Who knew what was inside, even if it seemed harmless, like the seemingly innocuous heart-shaped box at the front.
When no one was paying attention, someone had already shouldered a lot.
“What if, after doing that, it fails?” Tian Wanling asked in a hushed voice.
“Then blame him,” Liu Yun added sarcastically. “At least you’re not only alive, but also have someone to blame.”
Tian Wanling fell silent.
The host added dramatic flair to every sentence, except for one where he didn’t use that sharp, mocking tone.
He ridiculed the players for pretending to be good, making Pei Wenwei the bad guy.
Subconsciously, no one could say that they hadn’t harbored a selfish thought. When making a move through someone else’s hands, the worst outcome would be losing the game, but they could at least still walk out alive. Then, they would angrily accuse the one who made the move of selfishly rolling the dice to save their own life.
The clown opened its bright red mouth, replacing the system notification sound with a task announcement: “Have you heard of the tit-for-tat story? After discovering the conspiracy among the candidates, your relationships have been severely strained, perhaps even to the point of despair. Feel free to exact revenge now! Within twenty minutes, go kill all the candidates. After the time is up, for every surviving candidate, you’ll have to retreat by a hundred square kilometers! Hint: candidates may appear at Yoyo Café, Shining Gold Department Store, and Xiao Hua Music Store.”
The host chimed in, “It may sound like it could prolong the time for everyone to make a decision, but isn’t this delay also adding more suffering?”
Wen Shi ignored his snide remarks and analyzed the task seriously, “The candidates are scattered in different places, but we shouldn’t rule out the possibility that they might band together to ambush us. Yoyo Café is closest to us. Let’s not split up for now and go check it out.”
This was the safest way to approach the task, and no one objected.
Yoyo Café was situated along the route the players had passed before. Although they were on a quest, everyone’s minds were somewhat distracted. They seemed to be caught in a swirling vortex of choosing between life and death. Drones captured close-up shots of the players’ pained expressions.
The camera was damaged by the bombardment, so this part didn’t offer much excitement. Just like before, the crew stayed beside the hearse.
When there were only two hundred meters left to reach the café, the candidate inside seemed to sense something. Suddenly, they darted out and ran across the road.
Wen Shi and the others quickly chased after.
Both sides were moving fast. The candidate calmly led them towards the area where the department store was located, like a bait. An ambush had long been set up there, complete with several large traps dug into the ground.
As they were about to approach the trap zone, the candidate made a final sprint, seemingly invigorated. They had no clue that the footsteps behind them were slowing down.
“Now’s the time!”
Wen Shi abruptly halted.
Someone was even quicker. A silver whip, accompanied by a gust of wind, swiftly soared into the sky. The whip’s tail entwined with the drone’s wings. Liu Yun exerted force and pulled downward. At the same time, Tian Wanling released a cloth doll, clamping onto the wildly tumbling drone.
Earlier, Wen Shi’s tail was held high, with the tip slightly curved, pointing in the direction of the drone.
Liu Yun decided to take a gamble—she would shoot in the direction the tail pointed.
Their priority was to bring down the drone!
Wen Shi’s cat tail also ensnared a drone, which attempted to flee. The process resulted in blood splattering due to the propeller’s motion. But he showed no sign of letting go. The mini scarecrow plummeted downward, a drop of contaminant falling from his large eye. Using the contaminant as a link, his eye attempted to forcefully slow down the drone’s speed. However, his control over objects was still limited, and he could only bear a portion of the pressure.
Even without knowledge of their plan, Sun Geng and Zhou Lulu instinctively joined in to intercept the last remaining drone, determined to destroy it at any cost.
The fleeing candidate was momentarily stunned, then turned around to see chaos behind.
What’s happening? They are not trying to kill me?
Wen Shi shivered in pain. From the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the host rushing toward them.
The Wandering Corpse’s heavenly melody was an indiscriminate attack. Wen Shi didn’t dare to use it for slowing down the drone. That task fell on Ji Yuanzhi.
Seeing them attempting to destroy the drone, the host’s expression changed in an instant, and his speed surged once more.
As he approached the players, the world before the host’s eyes turned upside down. Suddenly, dozens of identical people appeared from all directions, the surroundings filled with mirrors. It was a dizzying sight, impossible to distinguish real from illusion.
Ji Yuanzhi’s voice grew sharp, “Quick!”
The【Hallucination】skill could only affect special NPCs for a maximum of fifteen seconds.
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