Chapter 151: Grand Performance (XIV) “Macbeth”

Qi Si had actually considered the minimum death count mechanism.

In the third round of blackjack, after receiving the “10” and “A” cards, he seriously pondered whether to equally undermine the other players’ hands.

But in the end, he abandoned the idea.

After dreaming of Hansen, he had been plagued by a strange feeling—so strange that he suspected that if he caused all the other players to die, things might become even more troublesome.

The most important point was that this instance still hadn’t refreshed the main quest; however, all players subconsciously assumed the main quest was to survive for three days or finish performing three acts.

It wasn’t that the players were gullible; it was because Charlie had said, “Wait until the third day and everything will be over.” This sentence was highly suggestive, and with the instance named “Grand Performance,” it was hard not to associate the quest with the play.

When Qi Si asked Charlie, “When will the performance end,” he had also intended to mislead the other players. He hadn’t expected the fog he wove to last so long.

Under the influence of some force, almost all players had pushed the main quest to the back of their minds, treating the performance script and participating in the games as their top priority.

One day for one act, three days in total, three acts in total… Through conceptual equivocation and psychological suggestion, the players gradually blurred the boundary between the script and the instance, equating the two.

On the system interface, the space where the main quest should have been written was blank. Qi Si couldn’t help but think of the situation in “Dialectical Game” and couldn’t stop himself from wondering: was he within the scheme of some being?

When first entering the instance, he had made no effort to hide his indifference and egoism; in fact, he was signaling a desire to cooperate with Cynthia.

If one person needed to die per act, he hoped to work with Cynthia to eliminate the other two first—rationalists might not be suitable as friends, but they colluded easily.

But immediately after, Cynthia chose Room 1 and naturally encountered his sin. The hope for cooperation became slim, and he had to abandon his original plan, allowing He Hui and Dong Xiwen to luckily escape a disaster.

At the time, Qi Si only thought everything was a logical coincidence. Cynthia believed her own sin was the greatest, which was why she mistakenly chose the room where his sin resided.

But was all of this really accidental?

He Hui’s sin was in Room 3, and Charlie’s sin was in Room 6, which basically proved that the distribution of sins was not strictly determined by their magnitude.

All rooms were blind boxes; until the moment a door was opened, the sin inside was uncertain… “Another pseudo-randomness trap, I see,” Qi Si chuckled silently in his mind.

He suddenly recalled a sentence from a script fragment—

【The King only wants the people to know what they should know.】

This sentence was equally applicable to this play—

【The Playwright only wants the people in the play to know what they should know.】

Everything those in the play see and hear is the expression and design of the Playwright; how could they believe it all?

After all, the Playwright on the surface, Charlie, was a Puppet and was already dead; yet the Playwright who truly wrote this drama had never appeared from beginning to end.

Qi Si’s gaze had already transcended the game with the players, shifting toward a contest against the Playwright.

Before that, he needed to disrupt the other party’s script design, gain as much trust from the players as possible, and reduce resistance during the contest.

Based on this, dying once in front of Dong Xiwen was a price well worth paying.

Stakes that ordinary people dare not put up are more likely to win considerable profits. Even if he lost the bet, it was just dying once.

Anyway, he had died more than once; the first time was strange, but the second time was familiar.

Inside Room 6, Qi Si watched as his body flattened, and his colors gradually disintegrated from white into a combination of primary colors.

He was dissipating, scattering. The pain wasn’t distinct; it was more a sense of void, of being unable to grasp a focal point.

He seemed to have an out-of-body experience in an instant, flying beyond the boundless universe, only to become thin at the moment he reached the extreme, his consciousness and thoughts drifting into a flocculent ocean.

His vision gradually fell into darkness. For a moment, he saw a bright red page appear against the pitch-black background, then slowly turn over to reveal gold-stamped characters—

【End of Act II】

…In Room 1, Cynthia struggled to stay awake but eventually lost consciousness amidst a bone-deep exhaustion.

When she opened her eyes again, she found herself trapped in a sea of blood and flesh. Within the mountain of corpses and sea of blood rolled a massive sarcoma, covered in mouths painted with lipstick.

【Ghost Name: The Speaker】

【Corresponding Player: Cynthia】

【Description: A massive sarcoma composed of countless corpses. Every mouth is delivering a speech with righteous indignation. If you believe her words, you will soon become a part of her; if you do not believe, she will find a way to make you believe.】

【…】

Cynthia was well aware of her own sins and did not feel ashamed of them.

Few people who reached her position were clean; lies had become the norm, and slaughter was an inevitability.

The most she could do was avoid committing evil out of her own greed beyond necessary limits. Compared to her colleagues, she was clean and public-spirited, impartial and selfless. The blood on her hands was merely the result of drifting with the tide and following the trend.

Cynthia walked calmly toward the sarcoma and watched as the gargantuan thing began to seep blood without warning.

She froze, then saw a youth dressed in red walk out from behind the sarcoma, standing loosely before her.

“If I’m not mistaken, you must be the ‘Supporting Role’.” The youth looked at her with a half-smile, his gaze full of mockery.

Cynthia wanted to retreat, but she felt as if she were pinned by a force, unable to move.

She asked coldly, “Why do you say that?”

“Because you are going to die.” The youth walked toward her step by step, extending nails that had grown into blades and stabbing them toward her forehead.

Cynthia felt a pain between her brows, and immediately after, a scalding liquid flowed down like lava.

She knew clearly that it was her blood. Her skin and flesh were being split in two and peeled away.

She wanted to struggle, to scream, but she couldn’t make even the slightest sound.

Knowing she was doomed to die, her heart was gradually filled with an intense sense of indignation.

Why was she a Supporting Role?

She had worked so hard to climb to this position; why should she die in this place?

Her consciousness began to scatter, and Cynthia’s thoughts drifted away, as if returning to over sixty years ago when she was still in school.

At that time, she wanted to run for student council president, and those people sneered at her: “You’re poor and ugly, how could you ever become the president?”

That was the first failure of her life. She kept it in her heart and, through her own efforts, made it her last.

She climbed up step by step. The higher she stood, the more she could see, and the more she felt how those figures above her—who could crush her with a single finger—were layered and blotting out the sun, almost pressing the breath out of her.

Therefore, she had to climb even higher. Simply becoming the Governor of Silesia was not enough; she had to climb further… Then, the Eerie Game appeared… 【Character Card – Villain – “I will definitely be back” effect activated】

Silver-white text cut through the darkness, and Qi Si opened his eyes in Room 4.

The sensation of death just now was not pleasant. He felt like a pile of scattered building blocks, dismantled and then reassembled by a force. To call it “death” wasn’t accurate; perhaps “extinction” would be a better term.

As if he had never existed, with even his traces becoming untraceable, as if there were no person named “Qi Si” in the world at all, and there would be no more memories related to this person… This feeling was terrible.

Qi Si savored it for a long while and felt that the root of the problem probably lay in the lack of pain.

A vivid death is often accompanied by intense pain; only that can make a person truly feel that they were once alive.

Well, although Qi Si was afraid of pain, he still felt that something like death—just like the process of making a wish before eating a birthday cake—had to be a little painful to be interesting.

Qi Si lingered in bed for a while longer. Estimating it was about time, he got up and pushed the door open.

The lights on the stage were still brilliant. The five doors besides his own were all quietly closed, revealing no clues.

Qi Si went straight to Room 1 and tentatively pushed the door, but it wouldn’t budge.

He politely knocked three times, but there was no answer.

He couldn’t say if it was unexpected or as predicted, but in any case, things looked grim for Cynthia.

Qi Si felt a second of sympathy for a fellow victim before turning to enter Room 2.

In the center of the originally empty room, a small mountain of performance props and Puppets had suddenly appeared, identical to the scene Qi Si saw when he entered Room 4 the previous night. Something was visibly buried underneath.

Qi Si strolled over and moved the piled objects aside one by one, exposing the blood-colored sarcoma beneath.

The sarcoma was half a person tall, its surface adorned with crimson lips. At this moment, every mouth was vomiting large amounts of fresh blood, which had congealed into a thin, pale red film of blood.

Qi Si waited patiently for a while. Wisps of smoke rose and condensed into a black card before his eyes—

【Character Card – Supporting Role (Invalidated)】

The ghost corresponding to Cynthia was in Room 2. She had also entered Room 2 last night but hadn’t obtained her Character Card to trigger the corresponding effect.

Therefore, she died, died without any power to fight back.

If Hansen’s death could be explained by him not living long enough to reach the room-selection phase, then Cynthia’s death manifested the Playwright’s deep malice.

No matter how hard she worked, she couldn’t escape the predetermined ending, simply because she was a Supporting Role, a “small character” in the Playwright’s eyes.

“Looking at it this way, I am still favored by that Playwright I’ve never met,” Qi Si remarked with a smile, though his eyes were cold.

This instance was far too influenced by the Playwright’s subjective will, having already departed from the realm of “fairness”… Identity Cards were distorted into Character Cards, the main quest had yet to refresh, and everything experienced didn’t feel like an Eerie Game instance at all… but rather, a performance directed by the Playwright… In Room 6, Dong Xiwen had long since woken up.

He listened to Qi Si’s footsteps receding outside the door and fell into deep thought.

“Zhou Ke” was still alive; the probability of him being the “Protagonist” had increased a bit… He Hui was indeed very suspicious; maybe she really was the “Villain”… Could this get any more ridiculous? What kind of mess is this?

After hesitating for a long while, Dong Xiwen also went out and walked toward the first few rooms.

Qi Si hadn’t closed the door when he entered Room 2. Dong Xiwen plunged in and, in the next second, saw the hideous-looking meatball.

He blurted out, “What the hell is this? Don’t tell me it’s a new character…”

Qi Si tossed the Supporting Role Card to Dong Xiwen: “If I’m not mistaken, this is the ghost corresponding to Cynthia’s sin. Because Cynthia is dead, it is also dead.”

Cynthia had lost all favor over the past few days; the casual news of her death didn’t evoke any sorrow.

Dong Xiwen toyed with the Supporting Role Card, realizing something was wrong: “If the ghost corresponding to Cynthia was in Room 2, and she entered Room 2 yesterday, why didn’t she get her Character Card?”

Qi Si lowered his eyes and sighed: “It seems my inference was wrong; there might be another explanation for how to obtain a Character Card. What I told you yesterday might not be accurate; He Hui’s sin might not be in Room 3.”

Appropriate self-negation actually made the rest of his words more credible. Dong Xiwen continued to ask: “That’s still not right… Didn’t we already vote Charlie to death yesterday? How can people still die?”

Qi Si shot a glance at Dong Xiwen, who had turned into a question box, and countered: “The reason sins didn’t kill on the first night was because they ‘filled their stomachs’. Do you think a Charlie made of wood could fill the stomachs of those ghosts?”

Dong Xiwen: “…I actually can’t argue with that.”

He Hui arrived late, walking into Room 2 with her head down.

Upon seeing the sarcoma on the floor, she was also startled, covering her mouth to suppress a scream back into her throat.

Dong Xiwen conveniently handed over the Supporting Role Card.

After being incited by Qi Si yesterday, he no longer trusted He Hui as before, but thinking carefully, he felt that being assigned the identity of “Villain” was also beyond her control; there was no need to treat her entirely as an enemy.

In any case, the best outcome would be for everyone to survive together.

When He Hui saw the words “Supporting Role,” her face paled slightly, and she murmured softly, “I’m sorry, I lied to you all yesterday. I’m actually not a Supporting Role, I am…”

“No need to apologize.” Qi Si interrupted her, turning his head with a gentle smile. “If I were you, facing this situation, I would also choose to deceive. Identity is ultimately something this instance bestowed upon us out of thin air; if you want to disclose it, do so, and if you don’t, no one will force you.”

He Hui was choked by his words, but Dong Xiwen thought of something and said, “I am the Audience. I have an identity effect that allows me to see the script’s progress bar. I see that this progress bar is very long; it seems we’ve only performed half of it…”

“Audience, is it?” Qi Si narrowed his eyes.

A flash of inspiration seemed to cross his mind, and the vague premonition he’d had all along finally clicked into place. He curled his lips into an understanding smile beneath the mask.

At the same time, new text refreshed on the system interface.

【Act III Begins】

【This act is a Battle Royale segment】

…【Note】 “Macbeth” is a play written by the British playwright William Shakespeare, telling the story of a power-hungry King and Queen and their eventual overthrow.