Chapter 67: How Will Qi Si Die? |
The life-sized mirror that served as the instance portal stood to the left of the high-backed chair. As Qi Si gazed into it for a few moments, his reflection dissolved, replaced by lines of text:
[Please begin your next instance within 7 days. You will be forcibly teleported into an instance when the countdown ends.]
Full-fledged players could choose when to enter an instance. If Qi Si wished, he could even grind through one instance a day in a race to rack up a million points.
Of course, he had no intention of rushing things and burning himself out.
Directly in front of the high-backed chair rested a flat, black stone dais. Its edges were carved with bizarre, indecipherable patterns, but its surface was polished to a perfect smoothness. The moment his gaze fell upon it, a kaleidoscopic interface materialized on the dark gray stone.
The interface resembled the homepage of a streaming platform, a tight grid of small windows. Each window displayed a player currently exploring an instance.
[Welcome to the Weird Game's Streaming Hall! Be sure to follow your favorite streamers~]
This was the banner text at the top of the interface, exuding a particular brand of sick humor.
The Weird Game had already established a fully-developed streaming system.
After watching a stream for ten minutes, other players could spend points to make investment-style tips, with all the funds going into a prize pool.
If the streamer successfully cleared the instance, the prize pool would be multiplied by a factor between 1.01 and 10—depending on the number of investors—and distributed among the streamer and those who tipped. If the player failed, however, the invested points were essentially gone for good.
Many players had used this streaming system to build their initial nest egg of points, escaping the miserable fate of being hounded by the mandatory seven-day instance cycle. But just as many went bankrupt, losing everything to the gambling-like mechanism, their digital cries of despair echoing everywhere.
On the streams at that very moment, countless players were weeping hysterically. Some had even collapsed to the ground, begging for mercy from the ghosts and monsters closing in on them.
He had no idea how these stragglers had managed to survive the third instance, a trial with an eighty percent elimination rate.
Every so often, a window would go dark. Whether its owner had simply turned off the stream or had died was impossible to say, but a new window would instantly pop up to fill the empty space.
Qi Si watched with rapt attention for a while. The spectacular death scenes, the gushing waves of despair and agony, the terrified screams and wails of pure horror—all these elements served to delight him.
He casually followed a few streamers who clearly weren't long for this world, deciding that the next time he was in a bad mood, he'd pop into the game space to watch these poor souls meet their end.
Qi Si descended from the high-backed chair and paced around the base of the temple walls.
The walls were unnaturally smooth, without a single crack, let alone the sprawling branches of the giant golden tree.
He figured he would have to collect the souls of other players and hang them from the boughs before any clues revealed themselves.
The storm in his mind, stirred by his direct confrontation with a god, gradually subsided. Qi Si let out a long, slow breath.
As for the gods' wager, the deal with the malevolent deity, and the Soul Contract—all of it stirred a grim malice deep within him.
He preferred to be the one on the offensive, and he loathed being at the mercy of others.
The malevolent god was clearly aware of this, which was why it had dangled the grand promise of "you will become the master of all that is weird."
But that only put him on high alert.
He was in a position of weakness, lacking the power to cash in his chips or even protect himself.
The moment he was no longer of use, who knew if the god would spring a pre-laid trap and harvest him in one fell swoop.
When that time came, if he hadn't attained the status and power of a god himself, he would be utterly powerless to resist.
"But that's what makes it interesting, isn't it?"
In the silence, the young, dark-haired man chuckled softly.
The malevolent god was scheming against him, but he was scheming right back.
During their conversation, he had presented himself as credulous and greedy, the very picture of someone whose head had been turned by profit.
He had claimed the god's deception was what drew him into this game, but in truth, he had received a warning from an unknown entity long before—back in the Flesh Eating instance.
After scouring the forums and learning of the game's true, malevolent nature, Qi Si had realized one thing: from the moment he entered, he was nothing but a sacrificial offering on a banquet table, and everyone else was a diner.
To be harvested by the Weird Game, by the malevolent god, by the veteran players and established guilds that had already amassed their fortunes...
Countless eyes watched him like prey. He had to survive in the narrow space between the schemes of these rival powers, but that didn't mean he couldn't play both sides and turn a profit.
There was a type of scam that used petty profits to lure a mark into investing more and more, only to wipe them out at the last second.
But if you could find the right moment to cash out and walk away, it was a venture with no risk and all reward.
[Your single session in the game space is limited to 1 hour. More time can be purchased with points.]
[Spend 10 points to extend your stay by 1 hour?]
A pair of prompts appeared on the system interface.
Qi Si tossed the Fate Pocket Watch from his shirt pocket onto the dais and silently thought, "Exit game."
[Game space is on cooldown. You may enter again in 24 hours.]
...
The instant Qi Si opened his eyes, a flood of memories crashed into his mind. Everything his nine duplicates had experienced from a first-person perspective, right down to their final, gruesome deaths—all these foreign experiences felt utterly real, as if they had happened to him. They slammed into the ocean of his thoughts, raising a tidal wave before scattering like a swarm of insects to gnaw at his consciousness.
A cold sweat broke out across his skin, soaking his clothes through.
Qi Si's breathing came in ragged gasps, yet a perverse sense of pleasure and satisfaction incongruously flooded his mind, making him tremble with excitement.
It was a kind of malfunctioning emotional response—in short, a mental illness—and he was long accustomed to it.
He sat up, feeling strangely light-headed, as if he were drifting.
He looked down and, just as he suspected, his physical body, clad in a white shirt, was lying peacefully on the bed. The figure now sitting on the edge was his soul, draped in red.
Without a doubt, he was having an episode. The clinical term was "soul weightlessness," but it was more commonly known as an out-of-body experience.
The night was deep. In his spectral state, Qi Si could once again see a world teeming with ghosts. Some were clutching their own severed heads, others had their tongues lolling out, and still others sported deep, dark circles under their eyes. They were packed shoulder to shoulder—a truly bustling scene.
They were all unfamiliar faces, drifting back and forth in twos and threes, with no intention of paying any mind to the only human in the room.
Feeling a bit bored, Qi Si casually grabbed a passing ghost. "I heard a joke a while ago," he said. "There was a ghost who died in a fire. So it wouldn't truly disappear, it kept setting more fires, creating more and more ghosts who died in fires."
"..."
The ghost did not find this joke amusing. In fact, it thought Qi Si was insane.
And just like that, Qi Si no longer found the joke funny either.
He sat in utter boredom for a long while until the episode finally passed. His soul poured back into his body, and his sense of touch returned.
In that instant, his vision cleared, and all trace of the ghosts vanished.
The horizon was already turning pale. The bright sky and dark earth created a stark contrast, like an overexposed photograph. Rows of boxy, single-story houses stood packed together like scales, while the dim, yellow streetlights, not yet extinguished, cast an eerie glow upon the sleeping city.
Qi Si got out of bed, sat down at his desk, and pulled a yellowed notebook from the drawer.
The notebook was unadorned, with a simple kraft paper cover. On the title page, written in a slightly childish hand, was the question:
[How will Qi Si die?]
The first entry was dated March 12, 2029.
[1. Car crash? Too messy. The scattered pieces would be a pain to clean up. X]
A few pages later was an entry from January 3, 2035:
[127. Dying from illness. No suspense. Boring and uninteresting. X]
Qi Si turned to the latest page, picked up a ballpoint pen, and noted down the eight new ways to die offered by the "Dialectic Game" instance. He then added a note beside it: [Very painful. Not under consideration for now. X]
He was a boring person, but he had the good habit of jotting down his every inspiration, a practice that propped up his utterly talentless sense of humor.
Besides this encyclopedia of death—which no sane person could comprehend—he also kept other journals titled *Such a Tragic Death* and *Such a Humorous Life*. In them, he chronicled the deeds of people like Chang Xu and NPCs like Miss Anna, which was more than enough to amuse him whenever boredom set in.
He reviewed his old entries for a bit, refreshing his memory of the faded amusement, then put the notebook away and yawned.
After the grand ballet's final curtain call comes a desolate silence, the excitement spent, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion. After everything he'd been through, his body was utterly devoid of sleepiness.
Qi Si sat in the chair at his desk, picked up his phone, and went to the game forums. He searched for the keyword "Dialectic Game" and clicked on the top result.
#Has anyone cleared the "Dialectic Game" instance? This instance feels so weird to me#
[1F (OP): I'm a first-year Chinese literature major, and "Dialectic Game" was my third instance. After I went in, I realized how strange it was. It banned all my items, and there was no system interface!]
[2F: And then?]
[3F: Okay, we get it, you're a college student. Now spill the rest of the story.]
[4F (OP): Sorry, my head's still a mess. Give me a minute.]
[5F (OP): It's a Q&A instance where you move to the next room after answering a question correctly. Didn't I mention I'm a Chinese lit major? The questions were so weird, all related to my field of study—stuff about literary history periods, phonetic categories... If this weren't the Weird Game, I would've thought I was taking my final exams!]
[6F: Thanks for sharing, OP. Fellow college student here. I'm never skipping class again!]
[7F (OP): The weirdest part came later. In the second-to-last room, I saw eight corpses that looked exactly like me. There was a line of text on the wall telling me to find a key on one of the bodies and take it to the final room.]
[8F: And then?]
[9F (OP): I was terrified, but I did it. In the last room, I met someone who looked exactly like me, and she tried to kill me! We got into a fight—no weapons, just the most primitive methods: pulling hair, tearing clothes, biting...]
[10F (OP): Maybe the danger unlocked my potential or something, because I felt like I had endless stamina. In the end, she couldn't hold on any longer. I couldn't stop myself... I just followed my instincts and smashed her head with my hands... I killed her...]
[11F: What ending and achievements did you get? Tell us!~]
[12F (OP): Hold on, guys, my takeout just arrived, gotta go downstairs and get it. I get hungry when I'm scared, haha.]
After that, the original poster never replied again.
The thread's last activity was on May 27, 2031.
Thanks to Chenyue Huansheng and Guying Kong 9527 for the monthly tickets! (I'll probably edit the previous chapters tonight, I feel like this instance can still be salvaged)
(End of this chapter)
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