Chapter 29: Lottery Game (17)

Five days later.

[Game Over!]

[Game Failure!]

Splash—

The whole cruise ship lurched and broke apart before finally sinking. Chi Wei dropped into the dark depths of the sea. Bubbles surged over her eyes, and her body went weightless, as if she were plunging into the gaping mouth of an endless abyss.

Glug, glug.

Bubbles rose and burst beside her ears. A boulder seemed to press against her chest, and the pressure inside her rib cage made her head throb.

As she choked on seawater and struggled to breathe, scenes from the last five days flashed through her mind.

Am I about to die? Is this the part where my life flashes before my eyes?

On the first day, Team One entered the Lottery Room and chose “Cooperate.” The third round’s prize pool grew by one million yuan for the first time.

At noon, Hearts Girl’s team entered the Lottery Room. They’d made good on what they’d said: they didn’t choose either “Cooperate” or “Betray.” As for “Prediction,” no one knew what Team Two had done.

Damn it!

For once, Chi Wei felt a pang of regret.

That caution, that hesitation—that was where the cruise ship’s sinking had begun!

Team Three chose “Cooperate” that day, too.

On the second day, Chi Wei returned to the Lottery Room. Sure enough, the third round’s accumulated prize money had reached 2.5 million yuan.

She, Ink in Water, and the rest of their teammates all chose “Cooperate.” That went without saying.

Only the woman in the green dress hesitated. Before making her choice, she asked, “The other teams really won’t ‘Betray’ us again? Should we ‘Predict’ them?”

Chi Wei hadn’t thought much of it at the time. Looking back now, she could see the signs.

The woman in the green dress had already been trying to drag things out.

The pressure of the seawater flooded Chi Wei’s ears. She squeezed her eyes shut and kept sinking, deeper and deeper, her fingers clenched into fists.

Other players thrashed nearby, splashing in the water.

Where was the woman in the green dress? Had everything gone just the way she wanted?

On the third day, Team Two still made no choice that would change the prize total.

That evening, after Silver-Masked Woman came out, the prize money in the Lottery Room had accumulated to 6.5 million yuan.

That’s good, too, Chi Wei had thought at the time.

In the final round, everyone was cooperating in their own way. The game’s outcome would decide the fate of every team aboard the ship. Their fortunes were tied together.

If they just made it through another three days, the prize money would reach 12.5 million yuan without a problem.

She hadn’t sensed any trace of betrayal from Silver-Masked Woman.

Maybe Silver-Masked Woman had already gotten everything she wanted.

Chi Wei had let her guard down, too.

On the fourth day, at six in the evening, Team Three came out of the Lottery Room. Silver-Masked Woman stood in front of the door and didn’t leave for a long time.

At seven thirty, Chi Wei emerged from the art room nearby. She tilted her head at Silver-Masked Woman, then walked over and saw that she was staring at the door.

But it was already shut, and no team’s scheduled time to enter.

Even eight the next morning was a full twelve hours away.

Chi Wei didn’t know what Silver-Masked Woman was looking at. She followed her gaze.

Silver-Masked Woman was looking at the image of the Heka God on the door.

It was a black animal’s head, something between a cat and a leopard, its eyes glowing green.

Chi Wei hadn’t recognized the head at first. But during the previous game, she’d heard the host call it the Heka God.

Heka…

“In ancient Egyptian belief, Heka was a god whose name symbolized divine power,” she explained to Silver-Masked Woman, who was gazing at the image as if entranced.

Silver-Masked Woman didn’t reply, sticking to her usual habit of ignoring Chi Wei.

She kept staring at the Heka God on the door. After a long while, she reached out and touched the flat image.

Chi Wei’s attention was drawn to her hand. Silver-Masked Woman’s fingers were long and slender, her pale fingertips almost translucent. They were beautiful.

But Chi Wei was looking at the spot where those fingertips had come to rest.

After Silver-Masked Woman left, Chi Wei gradually began to sense that something was wrong with that part of the image.

She couldn’t say what. She only felt a nameless unease rising in her chest.

Chi Wei reached out to touch it. The Heka God’s image felt slightly sticky.

Her sense of foreboding grew stronger, but she still couldn’t put a finger on what was wrong.

Was there another mechanism hidden in the game?

Chi Wei hoped she was mistaken.

On the fifth day, at two in the afternoon, Chi Wei noticed a paint stain on the cuff of her coat.

She must’ve gotten it on there while fooling around in the art room the day before. She bent her head and sniffed it. The chemical smell had faded, leaving only the faintest trace.

Ah, this is going to be impossible to wash out.

She was thinking about nothing in particular when she lowered her arm and suddenly froze.

She burst out of her room, hurried to the elevator, and rushed to the Lottery Room.

Chi Wei bent down and put her nose close to the image of the Heka God.

A chuckle drifted down the corridor as she sniffed at it.

“You look like a dog,” Silver-Masked Woman said as she happened to walk past.

“I don’t have the energy to argue with you.” Chi Wei straightened and pointed at the lifelike animal head, frowning. “You noticed it was strange, too. Someone painted it on. It wasn’t part of the game’s original design.”

Silver-Masked Woman touched it again. “Mm.”

So that was what had felt wrong about the Heka God’s head.

It hadn’t been part of the game’s original image at all. Someone had painted it on.

A fake god, nothing more.

Who would deliberately paint a fake god on this door?

Chi Wei didn’t have an answer. And she had an even more dangerous question.

Why had someone painted it there? Everything someone did had a reason, especially something this unusual.

Chi Wei thought it through. The messages displayed on this door had included the start and end of each round, the prize money each team had won, and the total prize pool.

In other words, this door to the Lottery Room displayed messages about the Lottery Game.

If the Heka God’s head wasn’t an original image of the game’s divine symbol, but something someone had added…

A chilling idea formed in Chi Wei’s mind.

Someone had deliberately painted the head there to cover up a message.

Silver-Masked Woman took out a miniature iron trowel she’d brought with her and began slowly scraping away the paint.

Sure enough, a game message lay hidden underneath. Tiny letters gradually appeared before them.

[Remaining…]

[Remaining Game…]

[Remaining Game Time…]

…

By the time they reached the fifth word, the boulder in Chi Wei’s chest had already dropped into place.

[Remaining Game Time: 6 hours]

The painted image of the Heka God had been scraped away, revealing the game message beneath it.

There were only six hours left!

Chi Wei’s heart lurched.

The first round had taken one day.

The second round had taken six days.

Now it was the fifth day of the third round. Altogether, that made twelve days.

What did twelve days mean?

For the ideal outcome, all three teams had to choose “Cooperate” three times a day. It would take four days to complete twelve choices.

Three rounds, with every “Cooperate” choice completed, would take exactly twelve days.

So from the start, the game hadn’t just tracked prize money. It had limited the amount of time, too.

Put another way, it hadn’t allowed the three teams to “Predict” one another endlessly just because they didn’t trust each other and kept dragging things out.

This was a game that required them—required them—to trust each other.

And yet their suspicions had all been focused on one another from the beginning. No one had noticed that someone had tampered with the door.

The image of the Heka God had been painted so convincingly that everyone had mistaken it for the real thing.

Even Chi Wei had missed it. She’d never imagined someone would tamper with the game in that way.

No one had ever seen the Lottery Room door as it had looked before the game began. So when Chi Wei first saw it, she’d assumed that was what the door had always looked like.

But that wasn’t true.

The player who had found the door first, before anyone else, had been the one to tamper with it.

That person had painted the Heka God’s image before any other player reached the door, fooling everyone who came after.

It was unbelievable.

Chi Wei felt as if a ghost had drifted up behind her and thrust its claws straight through her body.

Why would anyone do that?

“We’re too late,” Silver-Masked Woman said, looking at the number “6 hours.”

Chi Wei braced one fist against the wall. The realization seemed to pain her.

“I know.”

There were only six hours left.

The total prize money in the third round’s pool was now 9.5 million yuan. The first two rounds had accumulated 14 million yuan.

During those six hours, only Team Three would have a chance to enter the Lottery Room and make one final choice.

In that last choice, Team Three couldn’t “Betray.” Otherwise, the combined prize money from all three rounds wouldn’t reach 24 million yuan, and everyone would lose.

Team Three could only choose “Cooperate.”

That would protect Team One as well as themselves. Their combined prize money would reach 24.5 million yuan, and they’d win together.

But Team Two, which would receive only 3.5 million yuan in prize money, would fail as a team.

The consequence of Game Failure was… death.

Chi Wei suddenly saw a truth that had been right in front of her: there was no saving the four players on Team Two.

But some of them were innocent.

“If you join the game, no one’s innocent.” Silver-Masked Woman lifted Chi Wei’s chin and asked, suddenly intrigued, “Who are you grieving for?”

She seemed to have seen the softest part of Chi Wei’s heart, and she prodded it with her finger, mocking her.

Chi Wei was in no mood for it.

“Mind your own business.” She knocked Silver-Masked Woman’s hand away.

As Chi Wei turned to leave, Silver-Masked Woman’s voice came from behind her. The earlier mockery had vanished. Her question was serious now.

“Do you know who painted this ‘Heka’?”

“How would I know?” Chi Wei paused. She didn’t turn around, but after thinking it over, she added, “I have a suspicion.”

She remembered what had happened over the last few days. One person had seemed to be trying to drag the game out.

Could it have been her?

“Who?” Silver-Masked Woman asked.

“Why should I tell you?”

“Oh, you don’t have to.”

They stood back to back in the corridor as they spoke.

They probably both had the same person in mind. Whoever had done it might not only have wanted to die, but also wanted to drag everyone else on the ship down with them.