Chapter 12 - Taking Advantage of the Rules
Translated by: Jayre & Fleur
The high school student, Gao Zhong, curled up motionlessly after hiding.
He was a little excited, and kept thinking of how to show off this experience with his roommates when he returned to reality after the mission was over.
When he thought of the reactions those fat pigs will have, he could not help but anticipate!
Until the closed lid of the cabinet suddenly made a squeaking noise, and then with a soft sound, the lid rested on the wall behind it.
The excited smile on Gao Zhong’s face completely froze at this moment, and his heart thumped wildly. But he did not move since there was stuff covering him. The ghost might have opened the cabinet, but it might not be able to find him at all.
But right then, a male adult’s voice came into his ears - “He hid right inside, if you take those stuff off you can see him!”
What… What is this person saying?!
Gao Zhong’s eyes widened in disbelief. Hearing the voice, he knew that the one who spoke was the male with glasses. But why is that man telling the ghost his position?
Before he could react, he felt his back becoming light.
The stuff covering his head and back were taken away!
Gao Zhong did not expect this to happen at all, and he looked up dumbly towards the top of the cabinet.
A little ghost baby was hanging on the edge of the cabinet, staring at him with white eyes, a strange smile hanging on the rotting face.
As it grinned, a large fat maggot fell from its mouth right onto the back of Gao Zhong’s hand.
Caught off guard, Gao Zhong yelled in horror.
The ghost baby tilted its head and grinned: “Caught you.”
Gao Zhong’s body weakened and trembled, leaning against the cabinet for support.
He overestimated his courage. Before he saw the ghost, he was so excited and eager, and could not wait for the game to start.
Until he saw the ghost with his own eyes at such a short distance, he did not know to be scared.
What a pity…. It was too late.
The ghost baby jumped from the edge of the cabinet, giggling, and started to look for other players. In this utility room, Gao Zhong and the glasses man were left.
Gao Zhong sat weakly in the cabinet for a while before he finally gained enough strength to stand up. In a single glance, he saw the glasses man sitting not far from him, leaning against a wall.
He exploded at that moment, furiously shouting as he lunged out of the cabinet and swung a fist towards the glasses male right in the face. At the same time, he raged: “Why the hell are you doing this? Laozi will kill you!”
(T/N: Laozi is a way of referring to oneself as the superior being)
“Bang!”. The glasses male’s head snapped to the side, the glasses on his face falling to the ground.
Yan Jing reached up a hand to touch the blood at the corner of his mouth, turned his head back to face Gao Zhong and calmly said: “This can only be considered as your bad luck, why did you let me see you when you were hiding?”
Gao Zhong was boiling in anger when he saw the calm appearance and words and with a roar, he punched again and again!
Only this time, his fist was easily caught by the other party.
Yan Jing used one hand to wrap around Gao Zhong’s wrist, bending down to fish up his glasses to wear and only then did he slowly say: “The punch just now was to express my regret, but don’t go overboard.”
“Go overboard?!” Gao Zhong glared at him. He was so angry the veins on his neck bulged out and gritting his teeth, managed to squeeze out a sentence: “You f*cker want to kill me, and you still have the guts to say I am going overboard?! You’re the murderer amongst us! I’m going to tell the rest immediately, we will all vote for you tomorrow!
Yan Jing passively looked at Gao Zhong through his cracked lens, and all of a sudden lowly chuckled. He calmly said: “Don’t be so hasty. If you don’t want to die, calm down immediately and listen to me carefully.”
“What do you have to say?”Gao Zhong’s fists clenched tightly. There was an urge to strangle Yan Jing immediately, but after hearing what the other party was saying, he calmed down slightly.
Seeing this, Yan Jin smiled and said: “It’s actually very simple……”
Two minutes later, the two people who came out of the utility room split up in two different directions, each walking to different rooms.
Yu Su had already relaxed then and was boredly lying on the top of the wardrobe. Hearing the sound of footsteps, she could not help but raise her vigilance again and stuck her body tightly to the wall.
At the same time she immediately noticed that there was something not right- the footsteps this time sounded different from the footsteps of the little ghost baby.
The previous footsteps were so weak that they were almost inaudible, but the footsteps now were not only much louder but also faster, sounding like an adult’s footsteps.
Yu Su remembered the shocked yell from the high school student and a foreboding feeling rose in her heart.
She pursed her lips and waited, breathless.
The footsteps stopped by the bed first, and a rustling sound was made. The sound of footsteps came again, walking directly to the wardrobe.
The door of the wardrobe squeaked open. The person seemed to rummage through for a while but found no one and seemingly left the place.
Yu Su heard the footsteps going away and secretly prayed in her heart for the twenty minutes to quickly pass.
The more one hoped for time to pass quicker, the slower the time felt.
This type of feeling was like taking a complicated and difficult class where a second felt like a year.
Finally, cheerful music that almost penetrated the eardrums sounded, and with it came the countdown to the end of the game.
From ten to zero, when the countdown was over, everything returned to silence.
Yu Su did not dare to move for a while, fearing that this was an illusion created by the ghost to catch people.
She continued to wait for a while up until she heard sounds of a quarrel from outside and it was only then she moved her stiff body and jumped carefully from the wardrobe.
The quarrel outside became fiercer and fiercer. Before Yu Su walked out of the room, it sounded as the quarrel was about to develop into a fist fight.
When she went out to take a look, it was to see the young man pulling his fist back to hit the high school student, and the rich lady screaming at the glasses man.
The short-haired woman also stood angrily beside, while the little boy squatted at a side to watch the chaos.
Seeing Yu Su appear, the little boy waved towards her, beckoning her to come.
As Yu Su walked nearer, she got the gist of what happened from the rich lady’s rant.
It turned out that the high school student and glasses man roamed everywhere to find the rest, and finally found the rich lady and the young man in a room on the second floor. They called the ghost baby over to catch the two.
After the rich lady and the young man were found, there were no other places to hide in that moment and they could only be caught.
Yu Su thought, the guess she made was correct.
According to the rules of the games, players would conduct a voting the next morning to choose the one considered to be a murderer. If the choice is correct, the mission this time will be directly completed.
But it was the first time playing the game, to accurately choose the murderer would be too difficult. Once the wrong choice is made, the player who lost in the hide-and-seek game would die.
If there was only one player who failed, then the probability of the player dying after the voting was over would be extremely high.
But the rule of the game was that if there were multiple players who lost, one of them would randomly die. If the player who was found first helped the ghost baby to find the other players before the game ended, then the number of players who failed would increase.
As a result, the probability of death for the first player would be greatly reduced.
This was obviously the case now. Compared to using the rules of the game to reduce the probability of your own death, would losing a little of your morals even matter?
At this time, the remaining artist-looking man slowly walked out of the stairwell.
The eight people gathered again, but they were no longer as peaceful as before.
After an angry bout, the rich lady and the young man finally calmed down a little.
It was only then that Gao Zhong who was beaten until his whole face was bruised, indignantly shouted: “The reason why we did this was for our self protection! If it was you, you would do the same!”
The young man shouted: “The ones who committed this type of moral-less actions are you, stop talking about f*cking bullshit!”
Yan Jing sneered: “So what? It already happened, you have yelled and you have punched, this should be enough? The one who died tomorrow may not necessarily be you.”
Gao Zhong glanced at Yan Jing and did not speak again.
In fact he was still angry deep down, and he wished to kill the man who had caused him to fall into this dangerous crisis. But like what Yan Jing said, this was already the case. No matter how angry he got, it would not help.
Now, he could only pray that he would not be the unlucky one out of the four.
At this time, the rich lady was much calmer. After taking a deep breath, she looked at the crowd and said: “According to what the two said, the first to be found was the one with glasses. Everyone should have heard the high school student’s shout, but before him, why didn’t the glasses man make any noise?
I suspect that he was actually not the first to be found but actually the murderer hiding amongst us! He just assumed the identity of a player to find the high school student and then tricked the players into finding the others with him!”
This was indeed a possibility, but Yu Su felt that the probability is very low.
After all, this was the first game.
If the murderer was exposed so quickly, then this task was way too easy?
Others obviously had the same idea as Yu Su. The rich lady who spoke saw that everyone did not have any reaction, and so she cleared her throat and continued on: “I know this probability is not high, but if you have nothing else, when tomorrow comes there is no one else but him to vote for?”
The short-haired woman nodded and said: “Indeed, today is only the first day and we have nothing discovered. We can only vote for the biggest suspect. Anyway, even if we vote wrongly, the one with the largest amount of votes will not die.”
The rule of the game was that if the players voted incorrectly, the player who lost the hide-and-seek game would be killed, instead of the player with the highest vote dying.
The little boy yawned and stood up. “I want to sleep, I’ll just do as you say.”