Ordinary Chapter 87: Winner

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

“The bet?” Shen Si put his hands in his pockets, “There was an option for ‘sense of taste’ in there and it looked like the only option in there that wouldn’t be too much trouble, but I felt it wasn’t right, so I didn’t pick it.”

Jian Nian smiled and nodded, “My side had ‘smell’, so it looks like Shen Si and I had the same idea.”

“In other words, each of us had a choice that wasn’t life-threatening?” Shen Si murmured, “Is this a special case, or is this true for everyone?”

“Just go ask.” Jian Nian stopped in his tracks, turned to look behind him, then pointed to a man, “Hey, the guy who has been following me, come here, there is something I want to ask you.”

Behind him, as always, the people who were still in shock cowered in place, trying to find safety in the crowd.

“Don’t make me repeat myself.” Jian Nian spoke.

A man emerged from the crowd, his hands behind his back and head down, a look of having been caught doing something bad. The man moved over carefully, as if he was very worried about his stalking being discovered, afraid that Jian Nian’s displeasure would eat him alive.

“…Are you ready to accept my commission?”

Shen Si, who had watched the conversation earlier, understood what he meant. He gave Jian Nian a helpless look and then asked, “What’s your name?”

The man looked at Shen Si with some curiosity, and only after a moment did he cautiously open his mouth to introduce himself.

His name was Ding Zishi, a C-level Survivor, his family’s only son, the apple of their eye. After his disappearance, his parents had been trying to find him, and once the unlimited flow world collapsed he returned home as a lost and found baby. His family constantly protected him, and didn’t let him suffer any grievances.

Having such a life, Ding Zishi was of course cherishing it. He was a survivor, so he obviously knew what it meant to be in a playfield.

“What did you choose as a bet?”

“My bet was ‘sensing pain’.” Ding Zishi also looked a little puzzled, scratching his hair, “Although I don’t understand why ‘sense of pain’ was one of the options, it’s the most favorable choice no matter how you look at it, even if you lose in the end, it’s just a matter of losing your sense of pain.”

“Pain perception.” Shen Si and Jian Nian looked at each other, “Smell, taste plus pain, these seem like all human sensory aspects?”

Jian Nian nodded somewhat subtly, “If I really went through this playfield before, then if you also add temperature perception, it means that everyone’s bets will have a similar sensory aspect in it?”

“Because this is the benefit I have begged for you guys!”

A voice suddenly appeared behind him, and Ding Zishi was taken aback as he jerked his head around, then found that it was Cha Li who had introduced the rules earlier.

“Benefit?” Jian Nian looked at him suspiciously, “Aren’t you the administrator of the playfield?”

“I told you guys, I used to be a Survivor too, and because my body was lost as a bet, it caused me to be unable to leave, it’s been fused with the playfield all this time.” Cha Li said with his hands behind his back and a smile on his face, “I really expect you guys to leave alive and well, so I will help you as much as I can. One of the three wager options wasn’t life-threatening, and that’s what I came up with so that you guys could have two chances.”

Unfortunately, no one on the scene would think that this Cha Li had any good intentions, and had no idea what he was talking about, so with these kinds of rules there was no need to get to the bottom of it.

Whatever Cha Li was talking about, this kind of inexplicable and friendly conversation with them was strange.

Looking at Jian Nian they didn’t really care about his words, so Cha Li let out a bitter smile as he turned away, “Gee, it’s true that no matter who it is, they won’t believe me, but I think that if I came in myself I wouldn’t believe it either. Forget it… Then, now that the people are here!”

Cha Li quickly put away his bitter smile, he jumped up to the wall and opened his arms like a performing artist, “Fellow Survivors! Now that everyone present has chosen their bets, let’s start tonight’s game!” 

A large spinning wheel fell from the sky, and Shen Si couldn’t see what words were written on it, only the three colors of red, yellow and blue, tangled and rotating. Cha Li raised his hand, smiled and tapped on the wheel with his magic wand, and the next moment, the wheel stopped and there were three options on it.

“Red goes into the underground playfield, yellow goes into the upper playfield, and as for blue…” Cha Li retracted the magic wand, “The blue one will be ruled a direct failure.” Cha Li looked at the color he just turned to, “It’s yellow! Then I will go to the upper playfield later, that’s the rule, so it’s your turn to spin.”

“Huh? What? A direct failure?”

“Why?”

“What kind of game is this? It’s just luck.”

Cha Li nodded, “That’s right, the first item of this playfield is luck, but don’t worry, didn’t you guys choose a bet that won’t threaten your lives? It doesn’t matter even if you land on blue, what you lose is just something extra and unimportant.”

Survivors and ordinary people’s protests were of course useless, the playfield existed only to exterminate all the survivors, and as they protested, there were countless spinning wheels appearing around the humans.

Looking at the wheel that appeared in front of him, Shen Si casually turned it, and soon the carousel stopped at yellow. Shen Si looked at the Jian Nian next to him, the needle was pointing between red and blue, a little bit closer to the blue.

“I seem to remember something.” Jian Nian suddenly spoke, “I’ve done this before, and I got blue.”

Shen Si was silent for a few seconds, “Blue?”

“So the bet was taken away directly.” A vague memory drilled into Jian Nian’s mind, and he frowned slightly, “Every game you win in this playfield will get some reward, but the reward will not include what you lost in the bet, which means that the bet is no longer there.”

“Are you telling me you can’t get your temperature perception back?” Shen Si looked at him, “One more thing, I remember when that guy introduced the rules just now, he said it was a one-on-one game and you could bet on your life in addition to your own bet, so how are we going to leave this playfield?”

Jian Nian turned his head to look at Shen Si, locking his eyes with his, but after a moment he frowned slightly, as if he wanted to say something and had some difficulty in saying it. 

“Jian Nian?”

Jian Nian didn’t say anything, he turned away and walked into the lower playfield, Shen Si stood at the same spot looking at Jian Nian’s back, not quite understanding why he had that expression.

There was something else wrong with this playfield.

“Oh? I said he looked very familiar, so he is a previous winner of the playfield!” Cha Li appeared behind Shen Si at some point. He stared at Jian Nian’s back with an exclamation in his voice, “It’s amazing that he made it here for the second time!”

Shen Si turned his head to look at him, “What is the way to leave this playfield?”

“It’s simple, just keep winning.” Cha Li easily explained, “The people in this playfield are always odd, and everyone is guaranteed to have an opponent after a Chosen One is chosen. Do you understand what this means?” Cha Li smiled, “There is only one winner of this playfield.”

After saying that Cha Li bowed towards Shen Si and the person disappeared into thin air, leaving only Shen Si standing in the same place.

Only one winner of the playfield, meaning that the rule of this playfield was that only one person could leave alive? The number of people in the playfield was always an odd number, that’s why the man who lost his arm before was thrown out because he was the extra one.

Shen Si turned around and walked towards the upper playfield, with no emotion in his dark eyes, as if he had changed back to his previous self in an instant.

It turned out that there really was this kind of playfield where you needed to kill each other until only one person was left.

…… 

The wheel divided people into two groups, the upper playfield where Shen Si was and the underground playfield where Jian Nian was now standing, but both places were pretty much the same. The walls around were rainbow colored dots of light, the floor was pitch black, and the space was so large that even with so many people standing around it didn’t feel crowded.

Just then, a playing card appeared in front of them. Shen Si caught the card and found that the card showed the 5 of hearts. Turning the card over, Shen Si saw the handwriting written on the back of the playing card, which had only two sentences.

【Snatch the playing card with the same suit number from another person’s hand, the winner goes to the next level.】

Shen Si put away his playing card and turned his head to look around, the whole space fell into a dead silence that was very difficult to explain. The air filled with an indescribable burning smell, they looked at each other, keeping a close watch on each other. Shen Si moved back two steps to try to get away from this little spark that would blow up the environment.

Everyone knew they would die in the playfield, the spinning had just cost some of them their bets, and they could no longer afford to fail, the desire to survive overriding the rest.

“AHHHH!!!” A man let out a roar as he rushed towards the person next to him, his fist hitting the face of the person next to him so hard that the scene was instantly chaotic as the sound of the man hitting the ground rang out.

Shen Si kept backing up, he backed away from the fight that looked like a lot of trouble with a frown. There were a few people who clearly didn’t want to get involved. They ran out in fear, some of them were dragged in again; the playing cards that fell to the ground were stained with blood and looked extraordinarily bleak.

This was the first time Shen Si saw countless people abandon common sense and attack each other with his own eyes, this picture was simply shocking.

“It’s scary, isn’t it?”

Shen Si turned his head to the side, Cha Li sat on the wall looking at the fighting crowd with despondency in his eyes, “Everyone will use all means to stay alive, the rules are such that if you want to stay alive, you have to grab the stakes in the hands of others.”

“Is there no better way?”

“There is.” Cha Li laughed a little, “Do you remember what I said before? Everyone will have a chance to choose a bet, and those bets hold a second chance that won’t be life-threatening, and as long as they can trust each other, they can rely on that to survive in the early stages.”

Shen Si looked at him, “Would you be willing to give up the second chance to survive to others?”

“I…” Cha Li blinked, “If I say I am willing would you believe me?”

“I’d believe it, but it’s not something you can change if others don’t trust you.” Shen Si looked at him, “Take a good look at reality before you ask others to trust each other.”

Most people who don’t know each other gather together and ask them to trust each other in a few minutes? Isn’t that a fool’s errand?