Chapter 154: Grand Performance (XVII) – The Trial

Half an hour ago, at the moment He Hui’s dagger pierced through his lower back, Dong Xiwen truly realized for the first time the cruel nature of this game.

There was no kindness in any real sense; there was only bloody slaughter. Everyone wore a mask, ready at any moment to reveal the hideous face beneath… The Role Card in his pocket burst with a blinding light.

【”Otherworldly Realm”: You are not in the same dimension as the actors and cannot receive physical damage from them.】

Dong Xiwen found that the wound on his waist closed at a speed visible to the naked eye, with only a brief, lingering sensation of pain.

But soon, even the pain was stripped away. His body felt as if it had split into two parts—soul and flesh—and the sensations belonging to his physical form drifted further and further away.

He suddenly seemed to gain a God’s-eye view, watching the entire play from a bird’s-eye perspective. He and He Hui were nothing more than shadows projected onto a two-dimensional plane by the off-stage audience, thin script characters.

He instinctively went to seize the dagger from He Hui’s hand, gripping the sharp blade.

Crimson blood flowed down from the silver-white metal, the wound constantly repeating the process of healing and reopening.

He snatched the dagger away with great ease, reversed its direction, and gripped the handle.

Then, out of a kind of inertia, he thrust it back into the girl’s heart.

【You have killed the Protagonist “He Hui”】

【The Protagonist “He Hui” has died】

【Congratulations on standing until the end on stage and becoming the winner of this Battle Royale】

Lines of cold text refreshed on the system interface, accompanied by an equally cold system voice.

Dong Xiwen’s perspective finally poured back into the plane where the play was staged, regaining the immersive sense of reality.

He stared fixedly at the first two lines of subtitles, completely dazed.

Was He Hui actually the Protagonist? And if she was the Protagonist, how did she die so easily?

“Could it be… there’s no such thing as the ‘Protagonist’s Law of Immortality’ at all?”

Dong Xiwen couldn’t understand what had happened.

He turned his head to look back. The mirror behind him, due to the death of the corresponding player, shattered into pieces, which then dissolved into silver powder within seconds, looking like fine sand spread across the floor.

And in front of him, a black card floated up from the girl’s corpse, suspended in mid-air.

【Role Card – Protagonist】

【Effect: 1. “Protagonist’s Law of Immortality”…】

…Before reuniting with Dong Xiwen, He Hui had already died once.

Shortly after the Battle Royale began, He Hui, like Dong Xiwen, chose a route and dashed through the maze-like corridors.

Due to her childhood experiences, her physical stamina had always been worse than others. To her, surviving the first three instances was incredible.

Her stockpile of items was already small, and none of them were specific items that could directly counter ghosts. She had run for less than ten minutes before being caught by Balance Guild.

A massive shadow loomed overhead, and a solemn voice questioned with unquestionable authority: “If you could do it all over again, would you choose to take revenge on your adoptive father in that way?”

He Hui felt herself beginning to fall. The surrounding scenery collapsed and then reorganized, and she suddenly appeared in a dark alleyway.

She began to tremble because she saw, at the end of the alley, a girl with a face similar to hers holding a man covered in tattoos, crying as she said: “I’ll sleep with you, I can even go out and sell myself to make money for you… as long as you help me kill that man…”

He Hui didn’t remember what she had answered at the time, only that the second after she gave her answer, a weight fell from the sky.

She was crushed to the ground by the heavy object, clearly hearing the sound of her own bones shattering.

Her consciousness quickly sank into darkness. On the pitch-black background, the bright red pages of the script slowly turned.

The description of the Role Card flashed before her eyes again: 【Future in the Sunlight】, 【Bright and Dazzling】—how much it resembled an unrealistic dream.

He Hui felt herself split in two. Half of her was clamoring that she had already endured so much pain and must do everything possible to survive.

The other half whispered: You should have died long ago. For someone as filthy as you, what necessity is there to live in this world?

…【End of Act Three】

Dong Xiwen held the dagger, staring blankly at He Hui’s corpse.

He wasn’t sure if it was his imagination, but he always felt that a faint smile lingered on the girl’s lips, as if she had been looking forward to death for a long time.

Just as he intended to look closer, the corpse exploded without warning. Fresh blood scattered across the ground like flower petals, slowly connecting and flowing in all directions to outline the image of a door.

The blood-red doorframe and the golden portal merged strangely, inviting one to enter with an air that was both evil and holy.

“It’s finally over…” Dong Xiwen let out a soft sigh, and the questions that had just arisen were immediately tossed to the back of his mind.

He was an easygoing person. He Hui wanted to kill him, so he killed her back. Although the beginning and end of the matter seemed too absurd and sudden, it wasn’t worth spending too much effort thinking about.

In any case, he had long seen through the pursuit of interests in human society, so how could he expect people in an even more cruel game to help each other?

Dong Xiwen stepped into the door, as if falling into an intangible realm.

During the long process of falling, he never did receive the expected 【Successful Clearance】 notification. Instead, he fell straight into a birdcage, and it hurt quite a bit… At this moment, in the space burning with flames, five birdcages were arranged in a circle. Two were empty, and three contained people.

After Dong Xiwen finished recounting his experience in the third act, Cynthia also gave a simplified description of what happened after she fell into the birdcage.

She didn’t mention Hansen’s existence at all, as if she had never met the man.

Dong Xiwen didn’t suspect anything either. After all, Hansen had been voted to death. Unlike Qi Si and Cynthia, who were killed by ghosts, it was perfectly reasonable for him to be gone.

As the discussion came to a pause, Qi Si roughly understood. In this instance, players who died from the instance’s own mechanics would not truly die; they would only be thrown into birdcages to cool off.

The only ones who could kill players were other players.

Therefore, Hansen was dead, and He Hui was dead too.

“What is this? A grand test of humanity?” Qi Si rubbed his chin, a faint, ominous premonition growing.

The minimum death count mechanism still existed, which meant that one only needed to kill all the other players to guarantee clearance.

And when a melee broke out, given his combat stats, he would definitely be the first to die.

Well, it was a good thing the birdcages separated them, a good thing… Cynthia only had one bullet.

Qi Si imperceptibly shrank toward the center of the birdcage, and then he heard Dong Xiwen speak in a raspy voice: “Zhou Ke, why did you lie to me last night? He Hui was the ‘Protagonist,’ and you’re the ‘Villain,’ right?”

Qi Si turned his face to look at him, narrowing his eyes with a smile: “So what? Among the people present, no one can guarantee that everything they say is the absolute truth, right?”

Just as Dong Xiwen was about to retort, Qi Si stared into his eyes and asked with a half-smile: “Then let me ask you, after killing those people, how did you manage to avoid being caught by the Federation for two years?”

The answer was that shortly after the incident, he was approached by “That Organization” and hidden in a lawless zone deep in the mountains.

This, of course, could not be said. After all, in his own eyes, That Organization was a cult that deserved to be executed for five minutes… Seeing that Dong Xiwen was stumped, Qi Si calmly continued: “Regardless of what happened in the play before, at least for now, our interests are aligned. I hope you won’t dwell on irrelevant questions and waste everyone’s time.”

“I have some thoughts on the current situation. You should have noticed that nearly three days have passed, and none of us have eaten, yet we don’t feel hungry. I suspect we are likely in something like a mental space. What we need to consider is how to ‘wake up’ from here…”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” An enthusiastic, almost hypocritical voice rang out overhead, cutting off Qi Si’s words. “I am your friend, the Puppeteer and playwright Charlie. Welcome to my final performance!”

The voice was exceptionally familiar, identical in both tone and pitch to the Puppet Charlie who had just died not long ago.

Dong Xiwen couldn’t help but complain: “Hey, hey, hey? Haven’t we heard these lines once before? Is it really okay for you not to change a single word?”

The voice did not respond and continued on its own: “I want to explore a new form of art, to let everyone who loves art participate…”

As the words continued, the flames spreading throughout the theater died down at a visible rate. A familiar round table rose from beneath the floor, with five high-backed chairs steadily placed at the five equidistant points.

Everyone’s expression became solemn.

The scene before them was undoubtedly moving toward the setup in the play. Except for having two fewer people, everything seemed to have returned to its initial state.

Having just experienced three acts of a blood-filled performance, even though they knew they wouldn’t truly die no matter how miserably they died in the script, the pain during the process was enough to make anyone afraid.

And the current state of affairs told them clearly that the play was endless. Infinite time and space, infinite puzzles—the game of death and suspicion would continue to be staged… Cynthia subconsciously touched the item in her pocket. If it really came down to it, she could only choose to kill “Zhou Ke” and Dong Xiwen to trigger the minimum death count mechanism.

If she stayed in this instance much longer, she was afraid she would be lost here forever… “Ms. Cynthia,” Qi Si spoke up suddenly, “as an ally, I think there’s something I should tell you. The formal name of that contract I signed with you in the second act is a ‘Soul Contract.’ The moment you signed your name, you mortgaged your soul to me. If I die, you will die too.”

Cynthia heard the subtext and asked with a smile: “You’re afraid I’ll use an item to kill you, so you made up such a lie to threaten me?”

“So, do you believe it or not?” Qi Si showed an identical smile. “I just don’t want you to make a lose-lose choice out of stupidity. Of course—if you want to go down with me, there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Cynthia fell silent.

If Hansen had said those words, she would have likely laughed it off and forgotten it. But it was Qi Si speaking, so she couldn’t help but consider it carefully.

Given Qi Si’s personality, it was entirely possible for him to hide a vast amount of information, only revealing a little when necessary.

And the contract she had signed involved world rules. She didn’t believe it was as simple as the terms on the surface… She didn’t dare to gamble.

The pain of one miserable death hadn’t made her come to terms with it; instead, it made her more afraid of death than ever before. She didn’t want to die; she wanted to live… She wasn’t willing to vanish here; she wanted to live for a long, long time… “I understand.” The wrinkles on Cynthia’s face smoothed out. “It hasn’t reached the point where we must fight to the death. The benefits of cooperation far outweigh hostility.”

Dong Xiwen’s eyes widened: “Hey, hey, hey, is it really okay for you two to plot so loudly?”

Qi Si acted as if he hadn’t heard and followed up on Cynthia’s words: “Regarding the worldview of this instance, I already have some guesses…”

After realizing that the script might repeat infinitely, he had some vague ideas about Mr. Charlie’s purpose.

Just like the Eerie Game, designing instances to repeatedly stage the same evils in reality and the game; was this instance any different?

Inserting countless game theory matches with no winners, forcing players to attack each other in suspicion. Rich sin accumulated in match after match, gradually hardening into a deeper darkness.

As for not truly dying in the mini-games, that was definitely not due to the NPC’s conscience, but simply to extract sin more efficiently.

The ending of a miserable death gave players sufficient pressure. Left to linger on the brink of death, they had no choice but to throw themselves into the game theory again and again, as Charlie arranged, finding life worse than death.

In endless fear, the players would eventually turn into hideous ghouls, stabbing their fangs and claws into each other… “The performance has begun. From now on, let the revelry begin and play this grand song of the absurd!” The voice from above finished reciting all the lines that were more or less the same as the first act. A tall, thin figure wearing a white mask appeared out of thin air next to the round table—it was the Charlie from the play.

He seemed to have no memory of the unpleasantness of his miserable death in the previous round of the script. At this moment, he continued in a cheerful tone: “Every one of you is guilty, but one is most heinous. Please write down the name of the sinner you believe most deserves to be judged on the white paper. He will be executed in a unique way!”

The birdcages dissipated into a sky full of light spots. Qi Si felt his vision spin, and once it settled, he was sitting upright in seat number one.

Cynthia and Dong Xiwen also sat at the round table, at seats 4 and 5 respectively, identical to their original numbering.

Specks of light rose from under the table, condensing into white pages in front of the three of them. Black feather quills lay quietly slanted beside the paper.

Everything seemed to have returned to the very beginning of the instance.

Qi Si asked with a half-smile: “Mr. Charlie, are you guilty? Can we write your name on the paper?”

Charlie twisted his neck stiffly: “In this round of the game, you can’t do that yet. You must choose one sinner to execute from among the three of you!”

This was almost explicitly telling the players that they had to push a companion into a miserable death, just as they had at the start of the instance.

Qi Si pondered for a moment and asked again: “Only one person is most heinous. What if we choose wrong?”

Charlie said: “No matter what choice you make, you don’t have to directly bear the consequences, so don’t be stingy with your voting rights. The revelry is what’s most important!”

The same old lines, not a single word changed.

It was basically certain that the current situation was the same as the first act; they just needed to pick a scapegoat at random… Dong Xiwen looked at Qi Si, then at Cynthia, and complained with narrowed eyes: “This game isn’t fair at all… Once two people form an alliance, others can’t play at all. And the earlier you die, the more rest you get, and the easier it is to form an alliance early in a new play… You’re not going to say this is protection for the weak, are you?”

Hearing this, Charlie let out a “Heh-heh” laugh: “This is the charm of drama! Countless coincidences and a little bit of divine luck—that is reality!”

“This world is inherently unfair!”

…【Note】 “The Trial” is a novel by Austrian writer Franz Kafka. It tells the story of the Protagonist Josef K., who is suddenly arrested on his 30th birthday and tries his best to prove his innocence, but all efforts are in vain.