Chapter 221 - Battle Royale: Survival of the Jedi (XI)
Chapter 221 Battle Royale: Survival of the Jedi (XI)
Zone A6.
The man with the dirty braid removes the flesh from his hair and flips it around, droplets of blood flinging out along his hair and landing on the plaster, making three or four deep auburn craters.
A short distance in front of him, a girl was lying on her back.
She is seventeen or eighteen years old, at the age of the first flowers, but now she is covered in dust and bruises, a painful, tiny whimper escaping her throat as she crawls forward with her hands gripping the mortar, her fingertips ploughing deep furrows in the ground.
…… her right leg with numerous sesame seed-sized penetrating wounds from the dirty dreadlocked man’s bloody bullets.
The man with the dirty dreadlocks follows the crawling girl unhurriedly, scraping his middle finger through his blood-stained hair and looking down at the girl in front of him with a distressed expression, as if he were contemplating some difficult decision.
At the end, he raised his wrist flat and said to the screen, “Tell me, how do you want me to kill.”
A feverish frenzy is taking place in the pop-ups.
”That one just died too fast, didn’t it? I didn’t even get a good look.”
”I didn’t see it clearly either.”
”I saw it, tsk tsk, so much for honeycomb coal.”
”Potential offenders, who deserve to die, should just wear a collar and be done with it.”
”Hey, did anyone say what district you’re in?”
”A7A7, come on A7.”
”A-7, A-6, coordinates (24, 71), hurry up, if you’re late, you might not see anything.”
”No way? It’s her? I even put three bets on this woman. Can’t she tell the future?”
”I’m betting on it too, it’s fucking bad luck.”
”Whoever bets on it is stupid. It’s no use only foreseeing the future for three minutes.”
”Then let her anticipate whether she’ll die or not.”
”Yes, let her anticipate it.”
The dirty braided man put down his wristwatch and said to the girl, “They’ve asked you to foresee your future yet.”
The girl didn’t care, she just arched her back and crawled forward with gritted teeth.
The corners of the dirty braided man’s mouth twitched as he stomped on the girl’s injury, “…… I’ll give you foreknowledge.”
After a hoarse, feeble roar of pain, the girl curled up in a shrimp-like ball, her bloodied and bruised eyes no longer seeing much white, blood bursting out and staring at him with hatred.
The dirty braided man shook his head, “Don’t you look at me like that.”
The girl’s eyes were almost bleeding.
The dirty braided man raised his slap nervously and slapped it down hard against her face, suppressing, “Don’t you look at me like that. …… You’re not allowed to look at me like that!”
He rode on top of the girl, grabbed her short hair and pleaded quickly in her ear, “Just behave, behave, okay? All these people have bought into my bet, and if I do well and am strong enough, I will definitely be taken seriously. There can only be three survivors, and I will definitely be one third of them. When the time comes, I’ll survive with your share, OK? Hmm? Okay?”
The girl, Zhao Rou, has a wooden face.
Zhao Rou has seen too many disgusting things in the past day.
Such words fell on her ears and could no longer even stir up much emotional turmoil in her.
She had known another girl of her age, surnamed Cao, since she entered the institution.
Unlike Zhao Rou, who had several heated confrontations with the agency’s “manager” at the beginning, Cao was a firm believer in the agency’s rules and was so well liked by the “manager” that she was chosen to be the head of her team, responsible for helping the “manager” manage pricks like Zhao Rou.
Xiao Cao kept advising her to bear it and get out.
Zhao Rou wiped tears from his eyes: “I was wronged. I’m so wronged. I didn’t even know I had awakened my powers, so why did they say I was hiding it? If I really wanted to hide it, why did I take the school physical? I’m stupid.”
Cao said patiently, “But that’s not right either. The rules are such that if you make a mistake, you should be punished. Besides, dare you say you didn’t notice it at all? Your body should have appeared wrong before, right?”
Zhao Rou shook his head, “No, I really don’t.”
She put her hand on Zhao Rou’s and said softly, “It’s not good to lie to people. There’s nothing wrong with telling me.”
Zhao Rou didn’t like the way Cao put it, as if she had already predetermined a position and made a presumption of guilt, assuming that she was lying.
She topped her off with, “If lying is bad, then why are you here?”
Xiao Cao lowered his head, his expression a little sad: “It’s not my fault. After I woke up, my mum stopped me from saying anything, saying that I have one more year before my college entrance exams …… I can’t make her sad.”
Zhao Rou has never liked Cao very much, feeling that she is always generous with her time and that she is sometimes pathetic.
…… She may have been genuinely kind and tried to persuade her to bow down to the institution and admit her mistake and suffer less punishment.
This is why she chose to drag Cao along with her to escape when she entered the game.
Xiao Cao’s ability is not quite as defensive as hers. After concentrating her mind, she can harden a certain part of her skin, and although the area she can harden is only a foot square, she can at least protect her heart, head, throat and other parts of her body in critical moments and save a life.
Zhao Rou took Cao’s hand, which was trembling with fear, and held it tightly so that his trembling looked less pronounced: “Don’t …… be afraid. The two of us together, we’ll survive. I’ll go out and continue my schooling; you go out and take the entrance exams.”
Cao: “…… hmmm.”
Last night, crouched by the river drawing water, Zhao Rou was bored and concentrated on trying to see the limits of his powers again.
And in the three minutes of the future she saw, Cao approached quietly from behind her, took the sharp wooden stick Zhao Rou had found for her defence, pierced Zhao Rou’s heart, and with another release, her body plunged into the stream and went with it.
Zhao Rou stares blankly at the water.
She didn’t let it really happen.
As Xiao Cao approached her with a wooden stick, Zhao Rou spun around and stabbed her in the throat with a blunt wooden spike that was at hand.
Cao didn’t even have time to harden her body before she collapsed covering her throat that couldn’t stop spilling blood.
Before Cao died, Zhao Rou crouched by the river and did not go over to check on her body or ask her why she had done so.
She just watched and watched Cao struggle to her death.
Before he died, blood bubbled from Cao’s throat and a ho-ho sound came from his windpipe: “Why did you kill me …… I didn’t do anything ……”
Zhao Rou does not answer.
In those three minutes of the future, she had gotten her answer and there was no need to ask again.
…… After killing Zhao Rou, Xiao Cao touched his wristwatch and asked the viewers who were watching the live broadcast, trying to talk to them, “I killed her. Is there any reward?”
But she quickly showed a look of disappointment.
No one there was listening to her, no one even noticed the sudden jab.
She couldn’t help but mutter regretfully, “…… is so useless.”
As far as Cao was concerned, Zhao Rou had no offensive powers and was a useless teammate, so it was better to kill her early before she noticed, both as a gesture of good faith to the agency and to help free Zhao Rou and, perhaps, as a reward of some kind.
As for how the sacrificed Zhao Rou feels, she does not care.
Just as she appeals to the establishment, she doesn’t care if Zhao Rou has been wronged, she just wants to prove her loyalty so that she can get more out of her “manager”.
Such “kindness” at the expense of others is nothing more than hypocritical and disgusting selfishness.
Zhao Rou sat facing the corpse for a long time, until his legs went numb, before he got up woodenly and left the stream.
It was a kilometre out before the urge to vomit came over her and she held on to a tree and threw up.
…… is disgusting.
After a short walk, just as it was getting dark, Zhao Rou met a strange young man.
After exchanging information with each other, the young man pulled her into the group.
I don’t know if it was a stimulus, but Zhao Rou found that his precognition time was extended by a full five minutes compared to the previous one.
But she did not tell the man about it, still saying that she could foresee the future in three minutes.
Probably because he hadn’t yet experienced his teammates killing each other, the man trusted her and looked somewhat kind to her, picking non-poisonous fruit for her to eat and saying that he was a student of biology, trying to teach her to tell if the fruit was poisonous or not, and showing her his psychic ability to manipulate plants.
Zhao Rou was still wary of him, and after a few perfunctory words, he pretended to go to bed with his clothes on, but in fact he stayed up all night, keeping his guard up.
And now the man was turned into a bloodied mess of broken pieces by another man with a dirty braid.
Mixed in with the broken pieces were a few red fruits that he had hidden in his arms and intended to give her.
Zhao Rou thought of the man intact, and then looked at the mess in front of him, and a wave of nausea pushed against his chest like sludge, and an inexplicable urge to weep.
He died trying to protect himself.
What’s more, man himself has an endless desire to live.
So Zhao Rou doesn’t want to die.
Even if her opponent had overwhelming strength, she wanted to see if she had any chance of surviving.
She forced herself to concentrate and soon images of the next eight minutes flashed before her eyes at a rapid pace.
There was even a phantom sound in her ears that resembled an old-fashioned film reel spinning in a roller.
Zhao Rou’s eyes grew wide and his nostrils became heavier and heavier.
Suddenly, she muttered, “Kill me ……”
By the time the scene snapped in front of his eyes, Zhao Rou was in a frenzy, waving his arms in the face of the man with the dirty braids, trying to provoke him: “Kill me! Kill me-”
But the man with the dirty braids, who had received a few slaps, was still afraid to trespass.
He has to do his best to please these audience lords, and the better he behaves, the better he might be treated when he gets out.
Without even using his powers, the man with the dirty dreadlocks easily relied on his male strength advantage and grabbed the injured Zhao Rou’s wrist like a chicken, pressing one arm against her neck to make sure he had her restrained before looking down at his watch.
There are more and more people noticing the buzz in the A6 section, and the discussion in the pop-up section is getting more and more heated.
”New here. What’s the situation now?”
”What about discussing how she died.”
”Yeah. Dog eat dog.”
”Holy shit, you can specify the method of death? Playing this big? It’s the first time I’ve seen something this exciting!”
”Up there, you’re new, right? That’s how the last first place finisher played, with extra energy.”
Out of a pile of replies that were either confused, gloating, or making suggestions, three words popped up out of nowhere.
”Get on her!”
Zhao Rou opened his mouth and let out a hiss of despair.
The pop-up section was quiet for a second or two, then exploded.
”Fuck me, what a great idea.”
”She doesn’t look too old, so she’s probably still a chick. She’s going to die soon, but I’m afraid she hasn’t had the chance to be a woman yet, what a pity. It’s a good deed to have a good time before you die.”
”There’s something wrong up there. Killing a man’s head ……”
”Wait, where’s the holy mother up there, fork out.”
”Alters shouldn’t exist in the first place.”
”My dad was killed by a robber who hid his psychic powers… Death to all psychics ！！！！！！”
”Management, get to work and next time don’t let such brainy people in.”
The bettors who came to this game, basically for various reasons, hated the shifter extremely much and soon the bogey ID code disappeared from the room.
The group continued to discuss how to let the girl die “without regret”.
”Strip her first!”
”What’s a better position to be in.”
”Ask her what position she wants. How can you not consult the person in question about such things?”
The man with the dirty dreadlocks looked at the screen, unprepared for the heated discussion.
He’s not an animal that looks at a female and wants to jump on her ……
But, seeing his wildly rising bets, the dirty dreadlocked man faltered a little again.
Himself is by far the highest payout in the entire game with five kills, and this is the sixth.
He’s doing so well that more and more people are buying his win, which should count towards his personal achievement.
After all this, the dirty dreadlocked man no longer expects to return to normal human society.
If he wants to stay and play for the institution he will need to perform better and try to outperform everyone else in the odds.
Even if he is to be a pawn, he has to be the most valuable one.
He’s already killed a lot of people, so to talk about the bottom line would be ridiculous.
Was he going to lose all his work to preserve the dignity of this strange woman?
The man with the dirty braid lowered his head and glanced at Zhao Rou, who was silently lost in tears, and his originally calm blood gradually turned up.
It’s not too bad looking …….
Just then, in the midst of thousands of frantic swipes, two comments suddenly swiped up.
”…… Huh?”
”What’s that?”
However, these two hints were quickly submerged into a sea of information and disappeared.
After a couple of tugs, he found that he couldn’t pull it off, so he simply made up his mind and, with a snort, got down on his knees and ripped the front of Zhao Rou’s dress open.
…… After making that move, he couldn’t inch forward any further.
His right leg was grabbed from behind and lifted upwards like a dog in a grip.
The man’s hands and feet were sharp, and with two flat thrusts of his palm and wrist, he removed the joints in his ankle and knee.
He rolled off Zhao Rou’s body and without looking, dipped his palm in the blood that was still on the ground and swung it at the man’s face!
He had killed so many people that he was certainly aware that he was evolving.
Previously, he could only use his own blood as a bullet.
Now, he can use other people’s blood.
However, when the twenty or so drops of blood were directed at the three figures that had suddenly appeared, the three men were expecting it and disappeared into thin air in unison, the blood bullets all falling short.
After consuming two Advanced Teleportation cards, Chi Xiaochi pressed his wrist and threw the third one out.
This third one, however, is for Lou Ying alone.
After a moment’s hesitation, Lou Ying appeared like a ghost right behind his body, coiled one knee around his neck and struck his back with another knee as fast as a thunderbolt, knocking him off balance.
Before the crunching sound of a dislocated bone had died down, Lou Ying was tracing his large arm upwards, all the way to his elbow, thwarting it with precision and extending it downwards to grip his bloodied fingers.
He just wrecked it all the way down.
Lou Ying had already removed 34 joints from his arms to his fingertips when the dreadlocked man’s body flopped forward like a sack to the ground.
Lou Ying didn’t stop when the dirty braided man hit the ground, but returned to his palm and chopped him in the back with three clicks, knocking three joints evenly out of place.
As he left the mud-like body of the dreadlocked man, Lou Ying finished the job by removing all the joints from his left leg as well.
The so-called Butcher’s solution is no better in terms of accuracy.
The man with the dirty braid only heard the sound of bones inside his body for a moment, but he was unable to move and was completely unconscious due to the excessive shock.
It was only when he tried to get up that a sharp pain, which nearly made him bite his tongue off, came through his limbs, causing him to let out a long, wailing cry as if he had been strangled.
He was like a snake whose tail had been taken by the hand and whose bones had been shaken apart, paralysed with fear, but unable to move a single toe.
When she was done, Lou Ying walked up to Chi Xiaochi and said curtly, “It’s all yours.”
Chi Xiaochi holds his palm gently and finds it warm, soft and dry, with no sweat at all.
Ignoring Wei Shiliu, who was already staring in disbelief, Chi Xiaochi stepped out, but as he redirected his eyes to the man with the dirty braids on the floor, he jolted and tried to stop him, “No! I have something to say-”
However, it was already too late.
In those eight minutes of precognitive footage, Zhao Rou did not see the person who came to her rescue.
That is why she is desperate to die in order to avoid humiliation.
But now, she is in no hurry.
Zhao Rou lying down, not far from where the dirty dreadlocked man had fallen.
Dragging her wounded leg, she lifted a rock the size of a man’s face with both hands and, expressionless, slammed it down hard on the back of the dirty braided man’s head.
With a snap, the head blossomed white down the middle.
Zhao Rou, seemingly unaware, re-cupped the stone and brought it down again on the same spot.
She repeats this movement five or six times in a rigid manner until her arms are stripped of their strength and she can no longer lift the stone.
…… the stone, originally stained with the blood of her temporary travel companion.
Now, she avenges him.
It was not a disappointment that they had known each other for eleven whole hours.
It all happened so quickly that the audience in the live room was dumbfounded.
In no time at all, pop-ups that were a hundred times faster than the speed of the screen just now came flooding in, even causing the live screen to lag at one point.
”FUCK! Fuck me!!! I just put in ten bets!!!”
”Fifty bets are fucking down the drain!”
”Where did these three men come from?”
”Get them!!!”