Chapter 137: The Self-Proving Trap |
With that slap, a miraculous silence fell over the table for a few seconds.
Ming Po, who had been waiting for Gao Fan's answer, suddenly grew solemn.
He knew Gao Fan was not the type to abandon all hope just because he couldn't guess an answer, nor was he mentally fragile enough to lose his mind under pressure.
In the previous Games of Deception that Little Fan had experienced, he had brushed shoulders with death countless times. Although he chose to flee every single time, for someone like him who lacked combat power, was that not a correct and rational choice?
He would never freeze in fear; instead, he would actively seek out the only possible path to survival amidst despair.
How could someone with such experience lose his mind before truly facing a dead end?
Unless—
Ming Po's gaze sharpened.
That was not a mad fit of self-harm. He was trying to force himself awake!
"I do!"
Hearing Ming Po's words, Gao Fan looked as though he had just been saved.
His eyes instantly lit up, and his slightly hunched back straightened.
He trusted Ming Po completely, both in character and ability. If even Ming Po felt something was off, then it meant it definitely wasn't just his imagination!
"I feel like... I've overlooked something vital." Gao Fan earnestly described the sensation. "It's like brain fog—I feel like there's a gray mist inside my head that suddenly thickens at certain moments. During the first few rounds, I could still think properly, but the closer I get to the answer, the more things I feel like I've forgotten.
"It feels just like being in an exam. I clearly know how to solve the problem—I even saw the exact same question right beforehand and knew the answer—but my mind just goes blank and I can't recall it!"
"A cognitive block, is it..." Ming Po murmured under his breath.
His fingers instinctively tapped against the table.
He had actually experienced a similar situation just a moment ago.
Right when Gao Song's defenses had been broken, only for him to inexplicably calm down—in that exact instant, Ming Po felt like he was overlooking something vital.
Ming Po was well aware that Gao Song had activated a Title ability, but he had completely failed to figure out what the specific ability of this Title actually was!
Now that Gao Fan had mentioned it, Ming Po finally realized a crucial fact:
The moment he realized the opponent had definitely activated an ability, yet didn't know what it specifically did, in the very next instant...
He actually hadn't continued to think about it.
Instead, he had just dropped it completely!
He had skipped over thinking about it.
It was like finding a question a bit too difficult and skipping it to do the later ones first. In itself, this wasn't an issue; for an ordinary person, it was the most efficient way to think and effectively prevented one from getting stuck in a rut.
But for Ming Po, this was entirely abnormal.
Meanwhile, Gao Fan was still doing his best to describe what he felt. "The answer I know... should be one of those three. Since Gao Song has a rather detached personality, he rarely cares about anything in particular, let alone a 'toy'..."
Hearing this, Ming Po suddenly spoke up.
But this time, he didn't make a guess. "Does it hold significant meaning to the creator of the answer?"
As Ming Po's words fell, the three cards lit up simultaneously, turning white.
This meant that everyone's answer was very important to themselves.
It directly ruled out the possibility of randomly choosing something trivial.
Logically, Ming Po should have used his guesses as much as possible here, and then used a question to reset his guess attempts.
However, the moment Gao Fan spoke those words, Ming Po—for some unknown reason—felt a powerful, hair-raising sense of tension and crisis.
It was the Madman Title warning him.
The power of the Domain of Slaughter enhanced Ming Po's instincts and intuition.
Ming Po realized with absolute clarity that if he continued to guess, the next round would spell his doom!
Almost in the next split second, Ming Po understood the source of this sense of crisis.
Gao Song had very likely already found the most important question and only needed one final inquiry to lock down the true answer.
He was deliberately seizing this moment to exert extreme pressure on them!
Presumably, players who had previously participated in this game had also thought of a similar strategy. The rhythm of guessing twice and asking once was not hard to figure out. As long as one carefully read the game rules, it was easy to discover this trick to stall for rounds.
If that was the case...
Then Gao Song had intentionally left this flaw!
After both Ming Po and Gao Song had made two guesses, he would use some method to exert extreme pressure—either by asking a highly precise question or by directly claiming that he had already seen through their answers.
If they had already guessed for two consecutive rounds, they would have to face a trolley problem: either guess wrong and strike out, or collectively pass a round.
Choosing the former meant death if they guessed wrong;
Choosing the latter meant one of their teammates would be sentenced to death.
It was a strategy completely opposite to the previous option of surviving by betraying a teammate.
If the "betrayal" of revealing a teammate's card was a tactic that could only succeed when the team dynamics were poor...
Then this strategy was a trap that only worked when the relationship between teammates was exceptionally good!
Should one risk death to make a desperate gamble?
Or simply stand by and watch a teammate die?
The tougher the individual and the truer the brotherhood, the more likely they were to impulsively choose the former.
"Hedging your bets..." Ming Po said slowly, a trace of genuine killing intent flashing deep in his eyes. "As expected of a businessman. What you originally intended to do... wouldn't happen to be announcing both your riddle and mine at the same time, right?"
"I'll take that as a compliment." Gao Song smiled calmly, returning the praise to Ming Po. "Haven't you already figured it out? I shouldn't have leaked my tactical intent yet, right? My wisdom is likely far inferior to yours."
"That's a pitfall you deliberately dug into the rules," Ming Po said slowly. "Only after Little Fan and I both guessed twice in a row would your true killing move strike.
"By that time, the challengers would know that their teammates had no more question attempts left. And you..."
Ming Po paused and said with absolute certainty, "You would directly guess one person's riddle and announce your own 'riddle'."
"Are you saying," Gao Fan asked, somewhat confused, "that he already knows our riddles?"
"No, how could that be?" Ming Po narrowed his eyes, laying bare Gao Song's true killing move. "If that were the case, he would have just guessed it himself. He's just uncertain—or rather, he can't guarantee that his Luck is always active. After all, he is only a Zhou's Azure Lead Deceiver.
"But he doesn't need to guess the correct answer at all.
"Because if the bond between the challengers is genuine enough, then any refusal, denial, cursing, or analysis from the one whose riddle was guessed will merely look like an excuse to stop their teammates from risking their lives to test if Gao Song told the truth!"
This was a self-proving trap.
If Gao Song announced his own riddle and also stated the riddle of one of the challengers...
Then both of these riddles could be true, or they could be false.
Even if a teammate claimed it was false to protect his brothers and told them not to believe it, would the others dare to gamble?
Or would they just let Gao Song calmly kill one of their teammates in the next round while they could only watch silently from the side, and then try to use that riddle to 'safely' kill Gao Song in the following round?
If they really chose to do that, could they still absolutely trust each other?
By then...
Would someone turn around and choose betrayal instead?