Chapter 229 - Battle Royale: Survival of the Jedi (XIX)
Chapter 229 Battle Royale: Survival of the Jedi (XIX)
Wei Shiliu , name unknown.
He was arrested after being shot in the ribs with a rubber bullet during a shoplifting and his identity as a psychic was revealed.
All that was found was a bloody packet of cigarettes, a coloured plastic lighter, a bus pass, half a box of Milk Duds and a yellowed corner of a newspaper clipping from eight months ago, showing a large march by the Exalted that had led to a bloodbath.
He did not have any identity papers and identified himself as Wei Shiliu.
There is no information about him in the archives, whether he is the child of a stowaway, or a black family from some poor village.
Finally, his name was registered as Wei Shiliu.
After preliminary tests and his verbal description, his ability is to throw a dice to obtain a random power lasting up to five minutes, limited to ten times a day, and after the tenth time, only blank dice can be rolled.
The official staff of the institution, his “manager”, found him during an isolation test.
The “manager” takes out a photograph and places it in front of Wei Shiliu.
The photograph is of a shifter who died in her own home. She is a housewife, wearing a collar, her neck broken, leaning on her back on the living room sofa, eyes wide open, dying of breath.
The “manager” asked, “Do you know this man.”
Wei Shiliu took one look and said with a smile, “I don’t know, who is it?”
The “manager” turned the screen of his laptop towards him and pressed the play button for the video.
It was a section of home mounted surveillance, in four screens, installed in the doorway, living room, bedroom and kitchen, and the time showed that it was 3.30pm, not too early or too late in the day, a time that made you feel safe.
The woman who was lifeless in the photo a moment ago is alive at the moment.
Her home is a small, detached cottage.
She was dressed in her housecoat and went to the rubbish disposal station thirty or so steps from the door to throw out her rubbish.
She left the gate open because of the proximity of the road.
And Wei Shiliu, who had sneaked into her backyard at some point, slid silently through the open door like a snake against the outer wall.
His clothes, his skin, chameleon-like, blended in with the walls and the surrounding landscape in an unrecognisable way.
He crouched along into the living room, amidst a row of decorative bonsai placed on the living room balcony.
The woman finished taking out the rubbish, turned her head back and closed the door, unaware that she was in the same room as an intruder.
Wei Shiliu doesn’t do it right away, but crouches among the greenery, craning his head and watching quietly, watching her wipe the table, mop the floor and hum.
…… until the five-minute limit of ability has passed.
By the time she realised that there was a man in her home, before she could even activate her powers, her neck had been snapped suddenly.
After watching the video, Wei Shiliu let out an “ahhh”, slightly regretting: “I can’t believe you’re installing surveillance in your own home.”
”It is recorded that her ability is ‘displacement’, which means that she can geographically exchange with an object or person up to a hundred kilometres away, but the exact location of the object and person must be determined before the exchange can take place.”
With that, the Master turned one side of the collected dice in his hand to him, “Now, please explain what the word ‘replacement’ means on your dice. Where exactly did the 16 existing abilities on your dice come from?”
”The Mastermind” came closer to him: “…… And why are you called ‘Wei Shiliu’?”
Confined in a capsule and injected with an A-globulin inhibitor, Wei Shiliu is by definition unable to activate his powers and, with no dice in his hands, appears to be in no danger.
But there was a cold, dark fire in his eyes that was about to burn into the other person’s heart as soon as his eyes met theirs.
The “manager” met his dark eyes for a moment without any emotion, and his palms became moist.
Just as the hairs on his body stood on end, Wei Shiliu suddenly burst out laughing, his eyebrows arched together and he smiled as if from the bottom of his heart, “Guess.”
The “mastermind” tries to force himself to remain calm.
”Your ability, I guess, is to absorb the abilities of others.” He held up the dice, “This dice is your medium.”
Now that he’s been exposed, Wei Shiliu isn’t playing dumb: “Before I evolved, yes.”
The “manager’s” heart sank even deeper, but he was not surprised.
If he had really killed 16 shifters, there was no way he wouldn’t have noticed that the killing of shifters would have evolved his powers.
”What about after the evolution.”
Wei Shiliu : “I can absorb their lives.”
With that, he actually smiled to himself, “So, if you are going to execute me, it might be a waste of effort oh.”
”And you know that you are guilty of a capital crime?”
”I’m just trying to fill this dice. If you owned such a dice, wouldn’t you think it would be a real crime if you didn’t fill it up?”
”Do you know you’re killing people?”
”…… You guys actually treat Alterans as people?” Wei Shiliu looked as if he had heard some big joke, “This society doesn’t even treat psychics as human beings, I’ll kill one or two, what’s the big deal. To use an analogy, if you kill a chicken or a pig, do you consider their feelings?”
The “manager” admitted that this was the hardest interrogation he had ever had to endure in his life.
After asking the last question, he closed his laptop.
Wei Shiliu asked, “Will you kill me?”
”Do you want to work for a special department of a government agency?” asked the “mastermind”.
In this way, Wei Shiliu became the “catfish”, whose task was to control the pace of the game, to blend in with the novice shifters and to move the “atmosphere” through the kills.
…… is indeed a perfect job for Wei Shiliu.
In the past, most of the people who got the last surviving spot were “catfish”. Most of the ordinary psychics either didn’t know how to kill, or their powers were not suitable for killing.
The “catfish” is basically a selection of psychics with aggressive powers who are willing to serve the institution, the equivalent of a built-in champion who eats bonuses.
Wei Shiliu holds a small iron plate representing the identity of the “catfish” in his hands before the game begins.
His ‘manager’ admonished him: “Keep this brand. You can use it to identify yourself with other ‘catfish’ and not kill each other. If you are in danger, all you have to do is hold the metal tag and mime the code to teleport back to the capsule, which will save your life. But don’t use this function late in the race, it will attract others’ attention; and you can only use it once. Remember?”
”I don’t need to contact.” Wei Shiliu puts on his watch and slips the iron tag into his pocket, “I’m not afraid to die. Cats have nine lives, I have sixteen.”
With that said, he volunteered to get into the capsule and put on his helmet.
When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting in a lurching car.
In the capsule directly opposite him sits a young man in gold-rimmed glasses, slender in the arms and legs, a very clean-cut and decent-looking man, who has also just woken up and is looking around.
Wei Shiliu looks at the name tag he has attached to the outside of the capsule.
Bai Anyi.
It’s so annoying that there is no indication of what the powers are.
Wei Shiliu just wants to add a few more powers to his dice. If he doesn’t find out what other people’s powers are and draws them in haphazardly, it’s not going to do anything but take up space.
So he inquired about Bai Anyi’s powers: “What are you, brother?”
Once the question was out of the mouth, it went to two entirely different strands.
In his last life, Bai Anyi, although confused about the current situation before him, still answered him with grace: “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
Wei Shiliu thought he was joking: “So mysterious, huh?”
Bai Anyi smiled bitterly and didn’t say anything.
This in turn aroused Wei Shiliu’s interest.
But after the match started, the dirty dreadlocked man blew Ye Huan’s head off and the crowd was in chaos. When he turned around, he found Bai Anyi had actually gotten under the car in his wretched panic and was confused for a moment, thinking, “He can’t really know what kind of powers he is, can he?
So Wei Shiliu had no more thoughts of going to him.
It was by chance that we met again with Bai Anyi.
Wei Shiliu killed two men in quick succession and found a small pool of water to wash his hands.
After he had washed his hands the colour of flesh, he turned his head and saw Bai Anyi, clad in a white coat, on the back of a man whose face he could not see because he was too far away.
The two walked forward together, looking intimate.
…… He’s actually still alive?
Wei Shiliu was curious and followed him.
He was not interested in Bai Anyi because he was basically sure that Bai Anyi was a waste of a snack.
But the one who is willing to carry him on his back might be interesting.
He follows Bai Anyi into a wooded area and bobs around for a while, intending to enter to say hello, when he sees Bai Anyi emerge from inside with his hands in his pockets.
With no intention of hiding himself, Wei Shiliu came face to face with him outside the forest.
Although we only met him once, Wei Shiliu thought there was something odd about him.
He was exactly the same shape and appearance as he had seen in the car, but his temperament was very different, and there was a sarcastic smile, if anything, at the corner of his mouth, “This gentleman, you’ve followed us all the way, what’s the matter?”
When Wei Shiliu, who is used to hiding, saw such a false smile, he naturally thought he had met his kind.
Of course, he doesn’t need kindred spirits.
He only needs the lives of his kind, and his powers.
The two men met in such a hurry that Wei Shiliu had no time to roll the dice, or to look at them if he did.
Luckily, he still had his weapon.
He held a sharp wooden pound in his hand and held it behind his back, but his face was like a spring breeze: “Mr. Bai, do you remember me?”
The man across the table raised an eyebrow, “Who are you?”
”You don’t remember me?” Wei Shiliu stepped forward, “In the car, I sat across from you, my name is Wei ……”
Before the words were out of his mouth, he took three steps forward and wielded the wooden pound, trying to thrust the tip into his chest.
In his experience, normal psychics, in times of crisis, would in turn forget to use their psychic powers.
After all, after being an ordinary person for so long, it is only instinctive to encounter a life or death situation and go blank in the mind.
What he did not expect, however, was that Bai Anyi would not allow him to finish his sentence.
He was two steps away from Bai Anyi when he couldn’t make another inch.
Wei Shiliu raised his hand, somewhat incredulously, to his forehead.
In the middle of his forehead is nailed a flinging knife.
The blade is so far into the brain that only the hilt remains.
Bai Anyi said in a cold voice, “…… I’m not interested in what you call yourself.”
In excruciating pain, Wei Shiliu fell backwards with his face full of amazement and was cut off.
Bai Anyi leaned down, tested his breath, felt his heartbeat and pulse, made sure there was no problem, then reached down and pulled the knife from his forehead, pulled his lapel, wiped the red and white off, found the iron tag hanging from his waist, frowned, pulled it off with his hand, intending to go back and study it again, finally put the knife away in his sleeve and turned to leave.
Bai Anyi is indeed a cautious man who can guard against everything but a dead man.
So when a sharp wooden pound pierced his heart from behind, Bai Anyi only had time to look down at the tip of the wood piercing his forehead before a small pink hand covered his mouth and nose as if the skin had been melted.
Wei Shiliu pushed his knee against the tip of the pound that had penetrated Bai Anyi’s back and poked the spiked wood completely into his body, little by little.
A shrill sound came out of his mouth, “…… It hurts.”
Wei Shiliu killed eighteen people and drew eighteen lives, the first time he had ever been killed.
Death did not feel good, and now his body was on fire, as if he was covered in leeches, the skin on the surface cracking open, the white skin crumbling into flakes and streaking down.
Soon, he shed a layer of skin, leaving only pink flesh before the surface re-solidified.
Having lost his life, Wei Shiliu’s mood was no better.
To add to his annoyance, he found that he had not sucked the life out of the person in front of him, but the word “doppelganger” had been added to the blank side of the dice he was holding.
…… What’s going on here?
Wei Shiliu has been experimenting with this for a long time.
He had no idea what this ” Bai Anyi ” in front of him actually was.
Because he has no dual personality, this ability is of no use to him.
Wei Shiliu quickly gathered himself and hit on the idea of a fellow traveller with Bai Anyi.
Bai Anyi held the iron plate belonging to the catfish between his left palms, but Wei Shiliu, fearing that the blood on his hands would be sticky and that the forest people would escape, dropped the plate for the moment and walked deeper into the forest with his hand still dripping blood.
It’s not too late to recover it when you’ve disposed of the man.
The forest is quiet and it is not difficult to identify which hole in the tree is hiding by the sound of breathing.
Wei Shiliu, with a face like frozen pork, glances around the hole in the tree and then sits down, not eager to do anything.
Having suffered one loss, he wanted to wait for the turtle in the jar to poke its head out on its own.
Unexpectedly, while he was waiting, a huddled, transparent Bai Anyi suddenly appeared in the air, like a lens projection from a junior high school physics experiment.
The big face, full of panic and confusion, startled Wei Shiliu.
He took a few steps after it, and when he confirmed that the thing was a phantom, he guessed who was up to no good.
Earlier, he had been afraid to confirm what the hideout in the hole in the tree was capable of, but now that he had guessed, he no longer had to be afraid.
”I thought it was some kind of powerful psychic power, but it’s a barrier?”
He lost his patience and poked his face into the hole in the tree and smiled at the man hidden in the shadows, “…… You’re really here.”
What happened next was beyond Wei Shiliu’s comprehension.
The man, not knowing whether he was desperate or not, dragged him hard into the hole in the tree and wrapped something like a silk thread around his neck.
Unable to breathe and in pain, Wei Shiliu was caught off guard and struggled desperately, but his opponent was pushed to the limit and used his deadly strength.
Wei Shiliu’s eyes bulged, and the world in his eyes seemed to fill with blood.
In a world covered in miserable sunset light, he saw, by the faint light filtering in from outside the hole in the tree, a scene that nearly made his heart stop.
The one who strangled him was also Bai Anyi.
Wei Shiliu had just been Wei Shiliu for half an hour when he was killed once by a ” Bai Anyi ” outside and strangled once by a Bai Anyi in a tree hole with a vector line.
He had just regained some breath when he was wiped on the neck by a returning Bai Anyi, who stabbed him in the head and heart, costing him another life.
…… He actually died three full times at the hands of Bai Anyi.
When he had recovered his strength and climbed out of the hole, he stroked his cheek, which was still tense and not yet fully skinned, and then his empty waist, and stumbled out of the woods to find that the “Bai Anyi” he had killed was nowhere to be found, leaving only a puddle of half-dried, dirty blood.
…… is nowhere to be found, along with his iron plate.
Wei Shiliu licked the corner of his mouth, which still smelt of blood, and sat on the floor, thinking that he had lost a lot of money on this deal.
With Bai Anyi gone from the tree cave, he is naturally on the lookout for new prey.
And the best way to confuse your prey is to bring people into the fold.
It is easier to kill a teammate than to kill an enemy.
A few days later, he picked up a corpse, carried it on his back and then ran into a girl in the desert who could manage fire.
He told the girl that the body on his back was that of his teammate, who had died of serious wounds, and he promised to find a place with good water and grass and bury him, not to let him die in the desert.
It turns out that women are indeed sensual creatures.
With his new quarry in tow and his props on his back, he was ready to find a good place and leave the woman to die in style.
Even he did not expect to meet Bai Anyi again in the sand dunes.
Bai Anyi stood still at a distance from him, clearly wary but seemingly with little hostility towards him.
It is also true that the last time he hid in a hole in the tree, he was still a molted face and it was normal that he could not recognise himself.
”We’ve just lost a teammate on our side.” After exchanging greetings, Wei Shiliu offered an invitation, “What are your abilities? Do you want to join? Have some company too?”
Not surprisingly, Bai Anyi turned him down.
Wei Shiliu was also not invited again.
He hadn’t figured out Bai Anyi until now, and taking him on the road with him would be enough for him to drink in case he and this woman joined forces when the time came to strike.
No knife greed, take your time.
Kill the woman first, then find Bai Anyi and get the iron plate back.
In fact, he wasn’t very keen on the iron.
He was just trying to get back at Bai Anyi.
He quickly disposed of the stupid woman.
After that, Wei Shiliu took her body on his back and set off in the direction he remembered Bai Anyi leaving.
He had already made up his mind that once someone asked where the body came from, he would tell them that this was my girlfriend and that I was looking for a burial place for her.
Unexpectedly, he had an unexpected pleasure this time.
He caught a “catfish”.
This “catfish” has the power to cause hallucinations.
Identifying her teammates was not difficult. After inadvertently catching a glimpse of her new teammate’s iron tag, Wei Shiliu takes it upon herself to reveal her identity, saying that her iron tag has been taken away and asking for her help to retrieve it in order to avoid killing each other.
As for Bai Anyi’s head, it is counted as the hallucinogenic woman’s.
Although they come from different organizations, Wei Shiliu knows the secret of the iron plate and the “catfish”, so the hallucinogenic girl chooses to trust him and sets out with him to find Bai Anyi.
They killed three more shifter before finding Bai Anyi.
Two nights later.
Wei Shiliu killed another man.
When he dies, a layer of skin melts off his body, and the pain is unbearable, his muscles shrink and he is covered in pink skin, looking hideous, like a rat that has just been born, and he speaks in a shrill voice, like a rat’s cry, but soon, he grows new skin and regains his original appearance.
And when he kills, the skin on his body undergoes the same mutation, only not as painful as when he dies.
This is an important ritual for the increase or decrease in the number of his lives.
He was regurgitating when suddenly the hallucinogenic woman touched his elbow.
”Wears glasses, is tall and thin. Is …… the guy?”
It took no effort to get Bai Anyi to die in the water, it was all the work of the women.
Wei Shiliu stood at the water’s edge, looking at the large bubbles of water that continued to rise, and said with interest, “I wonder what he saw.”
The hallucinogenic woman said confidently, “Whatever he wants to see, I can give him. Are you sure the sign is still on him?”
Bai Anyi said, “We’ll find out later when we fish him out.”
With that, he crouched down and pressed the top of Bai Anyi’s hair as he tried to rise to the surface and pushed him down hard –
The favour of killing Bai Anyi, he gave to the hallucinogenic woman.
He therefore regretted that until the end he did not know exactly what Bai Anyi’s psychic powers were.
……
The second line is much simpler.
”What are you, brother?”
When Wei Shiliu, in his car, asked the same question to Bai Anyi across the street, the man across the street raised his eyebrows slightly and asked in return, “How about you tell me first, what are you?”
Wei Shiliu realised that this was a man with a heart.
The psychic powers of such people are often dangerous and interesting.
So Wei Shiliu was disappointed for a moment after noticing the Bai Anyi, who had instantly disappeared without a trace, when the man with the dirty braids blew off Ye Huan’s head.
Teleportation?
Is …… just a transient?
But even so, he could not resist the urge to follow.
He killed the last woman, taking advantage of her “object displacement” skill, which is similar to “teleportation”, but not as quick and easy.
…… taking an instantaneous one doesn’t seem too bad.
He observed the pop-ups that kept flashing on his wristwatch and, amidst the flurry of chatter, picked up two valid messages.
”Someone’s teleported to D20 eh.”
”Haha, instantaneous movement, rubbish skill.”
Wei Shiliu threw the dice twice.
He had rolled the dice countless times and was more obedient than his son, the skills were all fixed, but the second time he rolled it, he got the “Displacement” skill, he used the five minutes to activate the skill and displace it with objects in his line of sight, and within five minutes he had made a hundred long jumps to reach the D20 area.
Wei Shiliu was in no hurry to get closer, settling down in D19, wanting to come back to D20 the next day and create a chance encounter.
Unexpectedly, the chance of a chance encounter did not wait, but instead waited for two inexplicable people to chase after them.
Wei Shiliu killed one of them with a random grenade, randomized his Chameleon skill, and quickly regurgitated the last man’s Iron Fist skill and his life in the five minutes it took him to take on the only one left, when he lost his aim and shook out a blank side as he ran.
The good news is that the sky is not the limit.
When Wei Shiliu thought his life was over, Bai Anyi and his teammates appeared and not only helped him kill his pursuers, but also invited him to join the team.
Naturally, Wei Shiliu was all for it, lying about being a “programmer” and offering to explain his skills.
”The duration of each ability is five minutes, and you can only roll it 10 times a day.” Wei Shiliu says, “The next day the powers displayed on each side of the dice are updated and there are usually three to five blank sides.”
In fact, with the one he had just absorbed, he had 17 skill sides and 7 white sides to his dice.
The reason for the half-sentence was that he felt that if Bai Anyi and Chi Jiangyu were killed to fill the two gaps, would there not be only “three to five blank sides” left?
As for the fact that the skills would be updated the next day, he was even more credulous.
For he had no intention of letting these two live to see the second day.
But going forward, the situation was completely beyond his control.
Chi Jiangyu linked up with Bai Anyi to kill the Dirty Dreadlock Man, who currently has the best odds.
Chi Jiangyu has the ability to fetch objects from other dimensions.
Chi Jiangyu is also a hallucinogen, allowing two psychics to burn themselves alive.
Not only that, but they even claimed to be escaping with all the aliens.
The plain, unassuming Bai Anyi could no longer hold any interest for Wei Shiliu.
Chi Jiangyu, the “multi-personalist”, has taken all his attention.
He alone is a mountain of treasure and a gold mine.
If only Chi Jiangyu’s powers could be absorbed …… If only ……
Wei Shiliu was so excited that when he slept in his tent, injected with venom, molting and in pain, he was filled with such joy that it was hard to describe.
Oh my God, the agency wants to kill “catfish” to protect Chi Jiangyu’s safety?
In the agency’s view, they would not hesitate to sacrifice three “catfish” if there was even the slightest possibility that Chi Jiangyu was a polymath!
He really has such value like this and deserves the institution!
There was only one poison needle planted in the watch, so the agency only took his life.
The reason for this is not difficult to deduce: the existence of the multi-powered people is still a secret and will not be delegated to the sub-agencies that look after their bodies, but at most a top secret order to “kill” them.
His ‘principal managers’, as well as his superiors in the sub-agency who knew of his abilities, had absolute confidence in him winning and quietly invested a lot of money in him.
No surprises, they would not spare themselves to die.
And the institution really didn’t drive him out of business.
The only thing that sucks is that Bai Anyi is a smart guy.
Wei Shiliu could sense his wariness of him, and in order not to arouse suspicion, he swallowed the iron plate straight into his belly, so that he would not find out the end and be unable to explain it.
He tries his best to stay away from Bai Anyi and instead does his best to get close to Chi Jiangyu, eager to get more information from him.
But what Wei Shiliu didn’t expect was that Chi Jiangyu wasn’t an easy character either.
After gathering the other alters in the name of the multi alters and greeting everyone with lunch, Chi Jiangyu found him and sat down next to him.
Wei Shiliu was delighted that Chi Jiangyu had come uninvited and was just about to pry some information when he heard Chi Jiangyu say gently, “Can I borrow your dice?”
In the face of the sudden questioning, Wei Shiliu was calm, his demeanour unchanged as he handed over the dice: “Brother Chi, we’re on the same page, it’s too much to say ‘borrow’.”
Chi Jiangyu smiled and took the 24-sided dice, turning them over in his hands for a while: “I remember you saying that the powers on the dice change every day.”
Wei Shiliu : “Yeah.”
Chi Jiangyu turned one of the sides towards him, “So why is the ‘chameleon’ from yesterday still there?”
Wei Shiliu : “……”
”I took a glance from afar when you were playing dice just now.” Chi Jiangyu’s voice was gentle, as if he was really just asking a casual question, “I was a bit surprised to see those three words, so I thought I’d ask you about it.”
Wei Shiliu doesn’t believe that anyone in the world can have dynamic eyesight as strong as this.
But his reflexes were by no means weak, and he immediately smiled, “Brother Chi, I only evolved those few skills, and it’s true that the supernatural side changes position every day, but the supernatural abilities are mostly repetitive.”
This explanation, he considered himself complete.
Chi Jiangyu Oh, “…… That’s pretty random.”
Wei Shiliu: “No.”
Chi Jiangyu : “…… So why is it still ‘Iron Fist’ next to ‘Chameleon’?”
Wei Shiliu : “Huh?”
Chi Jiangyu : “I didn’t look closely at your dice when I saw them yesterday. But I remember that on the southwest corner side of ‘Chameleon’, it was ‘Iron Fist’ all right. Is it such a coincidence that the positions haven’t changed either?”
Wei Shiliu slapped on the back with a slap on the back: “Brother Chi is awesome, he has a good memory and good eyes.”
Chi Jiangyu is not condescending: “I dare not.”
With this tone of voice, he was clearly waiting for an explanation.
Wei Shiliu didn’t take it seriously: “I don’t even remember, but you still remember, Brother Chi? I’ve only got a few powers, so I’ve been swapping them around.”
Chi Jiangyu looked him over from top to bottom, looking at his eyes as if he was scanning something.
Wei Shiliu’s heart is beating normally and she is smiling brightly, nothing unusual.
…… is just bent on gouging out his eyes.
After confirming that there was nothing out of the ordinary, Chi Jiangyu withdrew his gaze and exchanged a few pleasantries with him before going back to talking to the other psychics.
Wei Shiliu, however, could not be calmer.
…… Chi Jiangyu Found your ‘catfish’ status?
Did you disguise yourself well? Did you win his trust?
And what does Chi Jiangyu mean by “getting everyone out”?
Is he going to gather people together, gather and kill them, and suck the energy out of them?
Or does he really have some way of getting people out?
The more Wei Shiliu thought about it, the more uneasy he became, and as his mind wandered, he came up with the idea of replacing him with a peach.
…… Almost all the Exotics are there, except for one coward cowering in a cave somewhere in the H1 area.
Thanks to the pop-ups, Wei Shiliu knew exactly where the alien was and what his coordinates were.
The moment Chi Jiangyu stood up, Wei Shiliu tossed the dice and the ‘replacement’ ability was immediately in hand.
He swapped places with the man hiding in the cave in that H1 area.
In this way, he sort of escaped from that place of right and wrong.
Whether Chi Jiangyu is out to kill or to lead the Shifter escape while clearing his name as an undercover agent, Wei Shiliu gets away with it.
Wei Shiliu opened his watch, only to be dazzled by the overwhelming pop-ups of question marks.
It was so easy to piece together the truth from just a few words that Wei Shiliu broke out in a cold sweat.
…… All the shifter vanished out of thin air?
Fortunately, he had prepared a way out for himself in advance!
But at this point, he was vaguely resigned to it.
At this point, Chi Jiangyu thought he had killed all the men and was relaxed, so was this not the best opportunity to get his hands on them?
In a flash of lightning, Wei Shiliu made up his mind, and, after seizing the five-minute time limit for displacing his powers, focused his mind on a rock in the C3 campsite and, at the same time, threw up the dice in the air.
Just a few steps away from Chi Jiangyu, he took the place of a rock that had been lying still on the ground and, with a single step, drove his fist straight in, piercing Chi Jiangyu’s heart with precision.
He killed a man in D20, lost another life in C3 and now, Wei Shiliu has finally become Wei 17.
The expression on Bai Anyi’s face across the room was a delight to his eyes.
The young man’s face was pale and his knees shook slightly for a while, as if overwhelmed, bending inch by inch and finally landing on the mortar.
The blood flowing from Chi Jiangyu’s body was so thick that it spread all the way to the small nest of dirt pressed out from under his knees, forming a small pool of blood with tiny swirls.
Wei Shiliu smiles and shows a row of teeth as he slowly pulls his hand out of the bloody hole he has created with his own hands.
Chi Jiangyu’s body fell heavily to the ground, sending a river of painful, broken sweat crashing down on his forehead.
He could not say another word, and raised his arm in Bai Anyi’s direction, as if to detain or to prevent.
Bai Anyi didn’t even have time to get up, so he crawled forward, one bloody step at a time, on his lame knees, rushing to take his raised hand.
But he didn’t get around to it after all.
The hand, which only had time to brush against his outstretched fingertips, hung down in the blood-soaked mud.
Bai Anyi, or Chi Xiaochi, did not try to shake that hand again.
He knelt in place, his hands, which had not grasped anything, returned to his lap and sat upright, looking up at Wei Shiliu, who was close to him, with a gaze that could be described as calm.
There was no hatred, no resentment, just a tilted head scrutinising him as if he were looking at an object of great novelty.
Wei Shiliu, who has killed countless people, has never seen such a person.
But it doesn’t matter.
He was immersed in the joy of gaining endless supernatural powers, and was overjoyed, unable to hide his smugness: “Xiao Bai, it’s not that your brother Wei wants to kill you, it’s really because the supernatural power of replacement is too bad to use. Please, cooperate a little, okay?”
Said Wei Shiliu, picking up the dice and scrutinizing them, “What exactly is the right psychic power for you, let me think about it …… just use Chi’s psychic power to kill you. Chi’s psychic power, the new psychic power ……”
However, he rummaged through the dice and couldn’t find a single added ability.
Wei Shiliu thought he had misread the situation.
Who wants to look again and still find nothing.
Wei Shiliu was in a state of disbelief when he suddenly heard the kneeling youth speak.
He asked, “My ability, I’ll give it to you, will you use it.”
He asked again, “My brother said that he could not detect that you had the iron plate on you. So where did you hide the iron plate?”
Chi Xiaochi lifts a hand to the neck and gives a light, strong tilt to the side with a crisp stretch of bone.
He then turned to Wei Shiliu, who was only three paces away, and extended his right hand, which was stained with Lou Ying’s blood, and raised it in the air: “…… Let me find out.”
Wei Shiliu, whose skin had just regained a bit of its normal form, was having difficulty breathing, as if all the oxygen around him had been lost and a vacuum had been created, and the only oxygen left in his lungs was being rapidly depleted.
He tried his best to breathe, but could not get even a little bit of oxygen.
Wei Shiliu panics now and leans down, painfully scratching his pink neck muscles with his bare fingertips, scratching a bloody trail, his eyes rapidly filling with blood and turning white, his head in severe pain, the dice he holds in his hands trying to throw them up, but all the peripheral nerves in his body have lost their faculties and he is left struggling as a dying fish.
White foam quickly gushed from his mouth, he vomited out his stomach juices and rolled to the ground, scratching and clawing at himself in a reckless manner.
Chi Xiaochi’s hand remains in mid-air.
He manipulates a cubic metre of particles visible to Bai Anyi, stripping the oxygen from Wei Shiliu’s surroundings.
All the live viewers were dumbfounded by this succession of shocking changes.
The pop-up section was silent.
The department dedicated to locking the betting board at the end forgot to even operate the lock.
The Minister of Emergency Management had barely recovered from the shock of Chi Jiangyu’s sudden death when he was shocked by the sight of Wei Shiliu, his eyes protruding from his bowels.
What’s going on at ……? What’s going on? Do I need to teleport immediately?
Or should we keep watching to see what Bai Anyi’s sudden burst of power is all about?
Chi Xiaochi’s ears were roaring with blood, like the rushing of a thousand rivers.
He vaguely heard a familiar voice echoing in his head, calling him “Xiaochi” and telling him “no”, but it was too weak to suppress or soothe his madness at the moment.
…… He wants Wei Shiliu dead.
In the absence of oxygen, Wei Shiliu, or Wei XVII’s body, finally came to a weakened end.
He kept shedding pink flakes of skin that looked like cake mix sprinkled on a poor quality cake, and he lay on his own shedding, powerless to struggle.
He had just earned a life and perished on the spot.
When he fell to the ground, his breath gone, Chi Xiaochi lowered his hand, his expression still unmistakably ruthless, only looking down at the man lying on the ground, as if waiting for something.
Soon, Wei Shiliu’s stopped heartbeat pulsed again.
After confirming that the pounding sound had become majestic and powerful, Chi Xiaochi raised his hand again.
The man on the floor soon curled up again in pain, choking, scratching his face and gouging his hands pointlessly in the air.
Chi Xiaochi remains seated demurely on his knees, his gaze cold.
He said, “I will find your cards myself, and I will peel you back layer by layer, so that you will go from Wei 17 to Wei 0.”
Chi Xiaochi is on schedule.
He knelt beside Chi Jiangyu’s body and watched with cold eyes as Wei Shiliu died and lived, and lived and died again.
” Wei Shiliu” is like a monster that eats its brains out, being dismantled layer by layer and melted back into itself minute by minute.
The particles of air that Chi Xiaochi can manipulate spread outwards geometrically, and while he can’t see or touch them, he can clearly sense the increase in power.
Chi Xiaochi, silent and obstinate in his energy, wondered how many times Wei Shiliu had died and lived under his hands until his mental body was embraced from behind by a sudden pair of arms.
The embrace was cold, a warmth that comes only after blood loss, but those arms, however, were doing their best to wrap around him and hold him tight.
He heard a voice calling him “Xiaochi” over and over again, soothing the back of his neck and saying, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Don’t be sad, I’m not dead, I’m not going to die. I am 061 and I am …… system.
Chi Xiaochi was in a trance and thought, “Yes, Lou is a system now, even if he dies, it’s just a return to data.
…… He’s so stupid.
Chi Xiaochi closed his eyes and slowly fell into the man’s arms.
Somehow, it suddenly occurred to him that the third Chinese New Year after Lou Ying left, neighbours got together to play mahjong and chat and get high on melon seeds when a grandfather surnamed Zhang suddenly said, “I don’t know how, I dreamed of that kid from Lou’s house yesterday, hey, evil. …… Dongfeng.”
Chi Xiaochi, who was playing cards with the grandfather, froze for a long time after hearing this.
He played a card and was silent for a long time before he cautiously asked Master Zhang, “Did he have a good time?”
Chi Xiaochi rests his face on the warmth of his arm, lost in a dreamlike atmosphere.
He inquired dreamily, “Wouldn’t every undead, if they could go home, have something they would like to do?”
Lou Ying’s mental body is very weak because of the physical death in reality.
He hated himself for not having scanned Wei Shiliu’s body when he had clearly noticed something wrong with him, and for not having scanned Wei Shiliu’s body in detail when he had confirmed that he had collected 75 spirit-locked bottles, thinking that even if there was something wrong with Wei Shiliu, he would not be able to make any waves when he entered the bottle.
He was so wrong.
Lou Ying believes that it really doesn’t matter if he dies or not, he is the system and even if he is shredded, he will not die as long as he backs up and rewrites his data in time.
But he couldn’t see Chi Xiaochi like this.
Lou Ying used to think that heartache was an exaggerated depiction and expression, but it is only today that he realises that heartache is a tangible physical experience, where the heart shrinks into a ball and faintly emits a real, tingling pain.
Chi Xiaochi leaned against Lou Ying’s mental body and whispered, “Do you remember when I said earlier that I had an idea.”
Lou Ying smoothed his back down and down, coaxing the child, “Don’t think about it, don’t think about anything, okay.”
”It wouldn’t have been possible to achieve, not with Bai Anyi’s original ability.” Chi Xiaochi insisted on going on, “But after killing him so many times, I found out that it can be done ……”
He said slowly, “Are you sure you’ve bought all the hundred bets I asked you to buy on Bai Anyi’s win?”
Lou Ying responded: “Yes, it’s bought. After Chi Jiangyu …… passed, they immediately locked the market to prevent sudden changes, and now Bai Anyi’s odds are one to eight. I opened a fake account and as soon as I get out, this large sum of money will go to Bai Anyi.”
”The video, it’s all recorded?”
”Yes, the video recording software, which records everything that happens in Battle Royale and the comments drummed up in the pop-up section, has also been edited …… but I will delete the last bit. The video material is all available for immediate publication.”
”The historical IDs of all Battle Royale gamblers, all recorded as well?”
”…… recorded it. They used all sorts of extranets and codes, but I can decipher their exact location and know who they all are and where they live.”
At this point, Lou Ying has a vague idea of what Chi Xiaochi wants to do.
Chi Xiaochi said, “I want to send the dead here away. They have the right to go for revenge and to …… see their families one last time.”
It wasn’t until his senses and manipulation abilities were greatly enhanced that Chi Xiaochi realised that there were still remnants of the Shifter’s conscious energy floating around in the air, perhaps because they were Shifter’s, most of whom still carried more complete memories.
This place is itself a slaughterhouse of conscious bodies, where in the infinite void the souls of the unjust cry silently and the departed cry out in grief.
Lou Ying didn’t expect Chi Xiaochi to have the energy to think about mission-related matters at this point in time, or even …… to look after the souls of those who died in vain in the past.
He forced his heart to ache and asked, “Even if they were taken out and allowed to leave the world, the energy they had gathered would quickly dissipate, at most enough for them to do one thing ……”
Chi Xiaochi closes his eyes: “…… That’s enough.”
Lou Ying raised a more important question, “Is there any way we can take these scattered ‘undead’ …… out? Even a low-level spirit-locking vial can only capture intact souls, right?”
”There is.” Chi Xiaochi nodded once, “Maybe we can use the formula …… Bai Anyi’s ability to try and make a capture.”
Chi Xiaochi pulls open the collar of her dress and the inside is covered with the formulae Lou Ying has been working on overnight.
He reacted for a moment before closing and hiding his collar again, “I forgot, that formula was something I read in another book. Because of its alias, I remember it well ……”
”…… It’s called ‘Ghosts of Fading Quantities’.”