Chapter 8: Five Million in Prize Money (8)

Chi Wei rolled up her sleeve.

She pressed the shard of broken porcelain in her right hand to her left arm and slowly drew it down. A thin line appeared across her pale skin, then beads of blood welled up.

A few seconds later, blood poured from the wound, flooding it crimson.

It was sticky, warm, and painfully real.

Chi Wei swallowed. Sweat trickled from her cheek down her chin.

Some of the toxins that had built up in her body seemed to leave with the blood. She dropped the shard, her mind suddenly clear. “Thank you.”

That searing pain had jolted her nerves. At last, she could see the so-called “luck” hidden in this room!

The college girl outside stared, dumbstruck. Even the rainbow-haired guy’s teeth chattered. “Damn, she really is one tough woman.”

Seeing how potent the poison gas was, the players outside had thought those two were about to drop dead in the game. They hadn’t expected them to hang on.

That was one hell of a gash. Chi Wei was ruthless with herself!

Well, when your life was on the line, nothing mattered more than staying alive.

Chi Wei grabbed a row of candles from the supply rack.

Something was off about this room. The candles burned far too quickly. She had already needed to light two more just to keep the place illuminated.

But the rack held dozens of spare candles. There were more than enough to keep the room lit for now, so she hadn’t given it much thought before. She’d assumed they were made from some unusual material.

But if she had to guess now, the candles had “luck” mixed into them!

Chi Wei picked up a pair of scissors and quickly snipped through the unused candles.

Halfway through, she found a gold bead hidden inside one of them!

She took a deep breath. Sweat slicked her palm as she clasped the bead, and for no reason she could explain, a wave of gratitude and relief washed over her.

The Silver-Masked Woman watched her. Then, as if struck by an idea, she spun around and hurried to the corner.

She grabbed a hammer from the toolbox, went to the window, and swung hard.

The room rang with a deafening clatter.

The wooden bars over the window splintered apart, but there was still no light outside. A cord hung straight down beyond the window, with a gold bead tied to it, swaying gently.

“That’s enough. Let’s go.”

She caught Chi Wei by the arm and dropped the last two gold beads into the dragon’s mouth.

Click. The lever on the dragon’s head sank all the way down with a faint mechanical sound.

“So it was gravity-operated…” Chi Wei murmured, leaning against the wall.

At the same time, the glowing wall before her changed. Rules she hadn’t seen before now surfaced one by one:

“Game Name: Secret Ballot

“Game Content 2: Room No. 2 contains three bottles: Player A’s Bottle, Player B’s Bottle, and the Saint’s Bottle. The two players will take turns entering Room No. 2. Each time a player enters, they must secretly toss a gold bead. On each turn, a player may place either one ‘Self-Owned Gold Bead’ in their own bottle or one ‘Shared Gold Bead’ in the Saint’s Bottle. Only the player making the toss can see where the bead goes.

“During the game, each player has one ‘Inspection Right’ and may inspect the current information for any one bottle during their turn.

“Victory Condition: When the number of ‘Shared Gold Beads’ in the Saint’s Bottle reaches ten, the players’ ‘Self-Owned Gold Beads’ are compared. If the two Player Bottles contain equal numbers, both players win. If they are unequal, the player with more ‘Self-Owned Gold Beads’ wins and inherits all of the losing player’s individual prize money.

“Failure Condition 2: Before the ‘Victory Condition’ is met, if the total number of ‘Self-Owned Gold Beads’ in the two Player Bottles reaches ten first, the enraged Saint will release all the poison gas in the room, sending the two greedy, selfish players to repent in heaven.”

Beneath the rules was a miniature image of Room No. 2. A canister of green poison gas sat conspicuously against the wall.

Great. Another betrayal game.

Chi Wei furrowed her brow and studied the Silver-Masked Woman without letting it show.

The two players had just faced danger together. Now they were about to start suspecting each other. This game changed its tune faster than a page turned.

She didn’t want things to come to this, but her mind was already working through the possibilities.

Thinking harder only made her body demand more oxygen. Her ragged breaths drowned out the silence.

“Listen… You don’t want to die either, do you?” Chi Wei coughed and pointed at “Failure Condition 2.” The rules were clear: if both of them only cared about scheming against each other, they’d both lose.

“Will you cooperate?” she asked the Silver-Masked Woman.

The woman turned and suddenly pinched Chi Wei’s chin with a bloodstained finger.

Chi Wei tipped her head back, too tired to swat her away. She saved her strength and continued, “We both put everything into the Saint’s Bottle. Five rounds, and the game ends. How about it? This room is full of poison gas. How much longer can you last?”

The Silver-Masked Woman looked at her. “Then I’ll do as you suggest.”

“Make sure you follow through. Don’t try anything clever unless you’re prepared to pay the price.”

“Of course.”

There was no point saying something like “A Chinese person never lies to another Chinese person.” They hadn’t even crossed the inner door yet. Who knew what their promises would mean once they did?

Still, at least they had reached a verbal agreement.

“In that case, you go in first.” The Silver-Masked Woman glanced toward the inner door and motioned her inside.

Chi Wei was startled.

Just like that?

This kind of “trust” came so easily that it only made her suspicious.

Because in this game of Secret Ballot, the player who went in first could not possibly lose!

Chi Wei had noticed that the instant she’d finished reading the rules. The crucial point was so obvious that she couldn’t believe the other woman was too foolish to see it.

Chi Wei didn’t make a show of refusing. She went through the inner door first, but the uneasy feeling in her gut wouldn’t go away.

The game’s rules were simple: the players won when the Saint’s Bottle held ten gold beads, and lost if the Player Bottles held ten gold beads first.

If the two players agreed to cooperate from the start and put every bead into the Saint’s Bottle, then under normal circumstances, the game would end after the fifth round.

But if it didn’t end by then, it meant at least one of them had broken their agreement and put a bead somewhere else.

Chi Wei had the first move, which gave her every advantage. The reason was simple:

She could stick to their agreement and put every bead into the Saint’s Bottle to win.

If the other woman gave in to greed and put even one bead into her own bottle, Chi Wei would know the game had reached a sixth round. From then on, she only needed to put her beads into her own bottle too.

Once Chi Wei made that choice clear, the other woman would have only one way to win: she would have to change course and put her beads into the Saint’s Bottle, making up for all the beads she’d failed to put there earlier.

During the rounds when the other woman made up the difference, Chi Wei could bring the number of beads in their Player Bottles back to a tie.

If the other woman refused to make up the difference, the answer was simple. Faced with an opponent determined to kill her, Chi Wei wouldn’t choose to lose alone. “Failure Condition 2” would be met before the “Victory Condition,” and they’d both die.

So it wasn’t that the first player couldn’t lose. It was that the second player had no way to win alone.

Then why had the other woman willingly given her the first move? Was she trying to prove she meant to cooperate?

That can’t be it… Something still feels wrong.

The first player could use deception to win alone. Did the Silver-Masked Woman really trust Chi Wei so much that she would casually hand over an advantage that could decide whether she lived or died?

Chi Wei hadn’t forgotten that, during the scar-faced man’s game, this woman had cast the “Give Up” vote. Could someone who’d done that really be so pure of heart?

She reached the voting station. The room looked exactly like the miniature image on the screen.

A table stood in the center, with three opaque cylindrical bottles arranged on top. The Saint’s Bottle was in the middle, the Silver-Masked Woman’s on the left, and Chi Wei’s on the right. Their portraits marked which bottle belonged to whom.

A mechanism ran beneath each bottle on the tabletop. The line from the Saint’s Bottle led to a door marked “Victory.” The lines from the two Player Bottles took separate paths but ended at the canister of poison gas against the wall.

The canister was taller than Chi Wei. She had no doubt that if its contents were released, she’d die like a lab mouse in a failed experiment: X_X!

The prompt in the middle told her how to toss a gold bead. All she had to do was press the round button in front of the bottle she wanted.

Chi Wei still had doubts about the Silver-Masked Woman’s behavior, but she kept her word and dropped the first gold bead into the Saint’s Bottle.

She had the first move and no intention of hurting anyone. There was no reason for her not to.

When she came out, the Silver-Masked Woman entered the voting room.

As Chi Wei stepped outside, she happened to see the Silver-Masked Woman letting blood from her bruised, purplish fingertips. Chi Wei apologized. “I’ll be quicker next time. I put mine in the Saint’s Bottle.”

The woman murmured, “Mm,” and went through the inner door.

Chi Wei didn’t want to hurt anyone, but she couldn’t afford to let her guard down either. Did the other woman’s actions really mean she trusted Chi Wei completely?

But thinking too hard only wore her down further. She was breathing in more and more poison gas, and the discomfort in her body was becoming unbearable.

Bracing herself against the wall, she coughed violently, wiping her nose and tears. Then a new message appeared on the screen:

“Player ‘Deathweed’ has used their ‘Inspection Right.'”

Why? An inspection in the very first round?!

The players outside were watching too, but this time, even they weren’t allowed to see what happened inside the voting room. They had no idea where either woman had placed her bead.

The programmer gaped. “She’s going second and still used her inspection in the first round? What an idiot!”

If he’d been the one playing, he never would have done that!

No—he would have grabbed the first move. In a game like this, the player who went second was obviously just a fish on the chopping board.

Was the woman in the silver mask really that stupid? She’d made two fatal mistakes in a row.

The one-eyed man said, “I agree. Isn’t it too soon to use her inspection? She should’ve saved it for later. Sigh…”

He didn’t understand the game all that well, but his gut told him that using her one and only inspection at the very start was a waste. It wouldn’t do much good, either.

The programmer sneered. “Hmph. If I were the other woman, I’d be taking her prize money.”

The player who’d wasted her Inspection Right on the first round would be easy to lead around by the nose after that.

Chi Wei watched the Silver-Masked Woman come out, her tear-blurred eyes full of confusion.

If the woman trusted her, why inspect in the very first round? That clearly meant she didn’t trust Chi Wei. But if she didn’t trust her, why had she handed over the first move so easily?

A host of doubts swirled through Chi Wei’s mind until they seemed to form a single answer: the poison gas was affecting the other woman too much. She’d lost the ability to think and hadn’t figured out how to play the game.

That made sense. Chi Wei’s own thoughts were growing more and more muddled. Every time she tried to think, it took more effort.

Damn it. I just want to end this game and get out of the poison gas.

Chi Wei plunged through the inner door and quickly pressed the voting button in front of the Saint’s Bottle for the second time.