The Trial Game of Life

After the violent living corpse ran away, Zone E of Yong Ye City fell into turmoil again. The unrest started with the smashing of Black Hat’s Miscellaneous Store, and with the interrogation of Tall Man and Pei Pei by Tang Cuo in the Ruby Bar as the breaking point, everything was completely set on fire due to the conflagration spread from Lawless’ new base.

No, more accurately, it was set on fire due to Tang Cuo’s intervention.

Lawless reacted extremely fast, and taking advantage of the moment the players’ eyes were all fixated on the fire, their evacuation was carried out swiftly. But, Tang Cuo had come and cut off the deal between Lawless and Scarlet, not to mention, he also leveraged other ordinary players to send several Lawless members to jail.

More and more people were getting involved, regardless of whether they were forced to or jumped in on their own volition. By the time they could react, no one was able to get out.

But were the people of Yong Ye City really united?

Of course not.

Were the people of Yong Ye City kind, upright and eager?

It seemed they preferred to send curses at each other.

So Forgettable Face really couldn’t understand. Even if Lawless did collude with Scarlet, how did Tang Cuo manipulate everyone to scream their hearts out and get into fights everywhere? Had Yong Ye City been unified???

During the huge siege a year ago, the ordinary players didn’t take any action at all. Everything was entirely led by the elites in Zone A!

“My f**king &*%￥#*%@*&%!” Forgettable Face spewed another string of popular curses. Because the sentence was too vulgar, it was automatically coded by Yong Ye City.

Since he couldn’t swear, he felt even more aggrieved, especially after he had learnt how the people he sent to Black Hat’s Miscellaneous Store had been wiped out. His hands were trembling with rage.

The moment they encountered Black Hat, he recognised them at once and decided to sell them out. 

At that time, Black Hat had just finished talking with Tang Cuo. Threatened by a newcomer and forced to submit, he certainly felt unhappy.

Then Lawless happened to poke his anger.

This was entirely a matter of (bad) luck, okay.

But Forgettable Face didn’t know the root cause of all this. “Black Hat must be on the same side as Jin Cheng. Apparently, those two are playing good cop – bad cop, even hanging some carrots on sticks. They are having the entire Yong Ye City spin round and round in the palms of their hands! I’m sure the 2nd Movement must be with them. They’ll first grab the opportunity to kill us all, then take out the movement and act like they are heroes. Those motherf**kers!” 

His teammate wholeheartedly agreed. Otherwise, how could they explain what was happening now?

This news had reached Scarlet’s ears, but Scarlet didn’t show any expression upon hearing the two men’s deductions. She only kept thinking about the name ‘Tang Cuo’, then looked back and asked Jiang He: “What do you think we should do now?”

Jiang He: “Retreat.” 

She immediately interjected: “What do you mean by ‘retreat’? You’ll let us lose so many people? Then simply admit that we’re scared of him?!” 

Jiang He glanced at her indifferently: “Seeing what’s happening, do you still want to play tactics with Tang Cuo?”

Forgettable Face: “How now then?”

Jiang He: “You might as well just kill yourself.”

Before Forgettable Face could bite back, the teammate quickly grabbed him, for fear that he might want to beat Jiang He but would end up being beaten instead. The teammate looked at Scarlet and Jiang He, sweating profusely as he said: “If we avoid him this time, will there be another time? Now that our relationship has been exposed, we were forced to retreat even after we’ve made such a big move. Will Jin Cheng still insist on finding the movement? Everyone will see us as a joke, and the panic caused by the living corpses will become useless.”

Thinking that this sounded rather interesting, Scarlet asked with a smile: “So?” 

The teammate took a deep breath and said with a low voice: “We may retreat, but before that, we have to kill Tang Cuo.”

According to the intel they obtained, the name Tang Cuo had been appearing more frequently than Jin Cheng, but they had no idea where Jin Cheng had vanished to. Since Lawless stood on the opposite side, obviously, Tang Cuo mustn’t be allowed to grow bigger.

Before he became the second Jin Cheng, they had to kill him in Zone E.

Thinking of this, the teammate added: “If we can’t kill him off for good and send him to Zone G, let’s turn him into a living corpse. Let’s take the upper hand by ourselves.”

Scarlet looked at Jiang He again: “What do you say?”

Jiang He shook his head.

Scarlet: “Why?”

Jiang He: “Since our goal is the 2nd movement, nothing else matters. You basically don’t want to let Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo have the movement, right? You only want to lure the one who really has the movement to the surface. But if you kill Tang Cuo, Jin Cheng certainly will hunt you down till you’re dead. In that case, the one who actually holds the movement will have the last laugh.” 

As soon as the words came out, both Forgettable Face and the teammate were stunned. For a moment, they couldn’t say anything to refute.

Scarlet smirked, her eyes tinged with both scrutiny and suspicion. What Jiang He said made sense, but Scarlet still wasn’t sure which side he was on. Was it really for her sake, or did he use this pretext to keep Tang Cuo alive?

At this point, Forgettable Face slapped his head, as though he just remembered something: “There’s another piece of intel. It’s about the phylactery.” 

Scarlet’s eyes sharpened at once: “What did you just say?”

“Phy… phylactery.”

“Tell me.” 

The sudden pressure had Forgettable Face shaken to the core. He hurriedly told her about the card, but didn’t have the nerve to look directly into Scarlet’s eyes. Scarlet sneered coldly: “Are you really just remembering it now?”

Forgettable Face: “Really! There was so much intel, I really didn’t remember it for a while —” 

His unfinished words shattered inside Scarlet’s palm, for her red nails was pricking Forgettable Face’s neck, extremely close to piercing his skin and flesh and turning him into a mindless living corpse.

“You’d better not lie to me.” Scarlet said, and in Forgettable Face’s horrified eyes, she had thrown him aside like trash.

Immediately afterwards, she said: “I think I know where the phylactery is. The card is ‘Greed’, one of the card in the [Seven Deadly Sins] series.”

Forgettable Face and his teammate looked at each other. They clearly told Scarlet that it was a card in the [Four Laws of Thermodynamics] series, but how come from Scarlet’s lips, it now became [Seven Deadly Sins]?

Jiang He’s heart sank.

He obtained this [Seven Deadly Sins] card when he joined a dungeon with Scarlet. And since Scarlet knew him so well, it wasn’t surprising that she could figure the truth so quickly and guess the correct card.

But this card was really not with Jiang He.

“You were about to tell me that the card isn’t with you, right?” Scarlet said precisely.

“I destroyed it.” Jiang He said.

“That’s such a good card, what a shame it has been destroyed.” Scarlet smiled, but her tone was icy cold. She tilted her head slightly to look at Forgettable Face and the teammate: “Go. Everyone must get on it. In two hours, I want that little girl to appear in front of me.”

Jiang He had destroyed the card?

Scarlet didn’t believe it. They had already parted ways by that point, so if Jiang He had such a good bargaining chip, would a man like him, always so thoughtful and cautious, destroy it? It wasn’t like he was so madly in love with her that he couldn’t control himself.

He would definitely hold onto it. Even if he wanted to transfer it, he would only do it once he was worried that she would come to find him.

Jiang He remained calm, his expression unreadable.

Scarlet looked at Forgettable Face with numb eyes: “Why haven’t you left? If you bring me the little girl, I’ll immediately kill Tang Cuo.”

Hearing this, Forgettable Face glanced at his teammate. He had no idea how the card had anything to do with the little girl, but now that Scarlet had said this, they felt immensely relieved.

It was just dealing with a little girl. This would be much easier than dealing with Tang Cuo.

The two quickly took their leave. Jiang He looked deeply at Scarlet, foreseeing that things would soon be out of control.

On the other side, Tang Cuo and Qian Wei finally arrived at Lawless’ new base, but everyone had already headed out. The only thing left for Tang Cuo was Meng Yufei’s body.

“Hiss.” Qian Wei couldn’t help inhaling exaggeratedly when he saw Meng Yufei’s miserable state.

It was so miserable that Qian Wei’s conscience couldn’t bear to beat him up anymore. But he thought carefully again: if all the living corpses lying on the ground were rescued, wouldn’t Meng Yufei come back from the dead later?

If he rose from the dead, Qian Wei would have to kill him again next time. That would be bad. 

So an idea flashed by Qian Wei’s mind. He tied Meng Yufei up with a rope, then pulled off the curtains and wrapped it around him. Finally, thinking that it still wasn’t enough, he stuffed this ‘mummy’ into the closet of an empty room then blocked the closet’s door with a table.

Seeing Tang Cuo look over, Qian Wei scratched his head in embarrassment and explained: “When he’s resurrected, maybe he’ll think that he has been buried and will lay still for good.”

Tang Cuo declined to comment, but he now roughly understood why they kept crossing paths with Qian Wei again and again, because this was an issue of matching aura — this looked like something Jin Cheng would do too.

The building had been emptied since long, but Tang Cuo didn’t rush to the next location, rather, he started searching around as quickly as possible. At first, Qian Wei didn’t understand what he was doing, but very soon, Tang Cuo found a mark left by Wen Xiaoming in a room on the third floor.

“There really is something.” Qian Wei was astounded.

Tang Cuo’s flow of thoughts was very simple. Since Wen Xiaoming disappeared, if he wasn’t in Zone G, he could only be trapped somewhere. They wouldn’t go wrong by searching around a little.

The mark left by Wen Xiaoming was also very simple — his pink hair.

Lawless was running away in a hurry and wouldn’t pay attention to a small amount of hair falling on the ground. Apart from Wen Xiaoming in Yong Ye City, no one would ever dye his hair with such a bright, flamboyant hair colour.

But after they left, where was Wen Xiaoming taken to?

And where did that little girl go?

Tang Cuo didn’t hesitate. He guessed that Lawless should have dispersed now and wouldn’t head to the same place together, so he decided to follow the direction that showed the biggest movement.

As he and Qian Wei left the base, Scarlet and Jiang He appeared on the roof and watched them leave.

“Is that him?” Scarlet whispered.

“Yes.” Jiang He’s tone was calm.

Eventually, Scarlet suddenly thought of something and smiled: “So that’s Jin Cheng’s cat.”

Jiang He was confused, but Scarlet didn’t explain herself either. She simply found it intriguing.

“It’s not good to lose the cat. Let’s do Jin Cheng a favour and watch it for him.”

Tang Cuo didn’t know that he had been spotted. After walking for a long time, he still didn’t find Wen Xiaoming and Zheng Yingying, but found some living corpses emerge on the street again.

“How can this be? Did Scarlet appear again?!” Qian Wei felt himself shaking like a leaf once more.

“Not necessarily.” Tang Cuo frowned and quickly went in the direction of the corpses.

The more he walked forward, the more living corpses there were. In the beginning, there were only one or two sporadic occurrences, but as he moved to the front, there were three or four gathering together. Tang Cuo neatly dealt with them, but he felt more and more certain that this wasn’t Scarlet’s doing.

When he rescued an innocent player and heard the specific circumstance from the man’s mouth, his speculation turned out to be correct.

“I’m sure it’s Scarlet! Just now that person was wearing a red cloak, and as soon as she made a move, the people around her turned into living corpses. It must be Scarlet!” 

The player said it with so much conviction, and his eyes also revealed so much fear. But Tang Cuo knew that the one wearing the red cloak wasn’t Scarlet, but the little girl.

He wondered what method she used to obtain Scarlet’s skill. Glancing at the remnants of the living corpses on the ground, Tang Cuo spotted the face of a Lawless member.

“Was there anyone else?” Tang Cuo asked.

“Yes, there’s was someone with pink hair. They both ran away!” The man replied.

Upon hearing this, Tang Cuo and Qian Wei immediately chased in the direction pointed by the player. Meanwhile, Scarlet and Jiang He, who were a distance behind, were each caught in their own thoughts.

Scarlet wasn’t in a hurry to catch up. She smiled and turned around to ask Jiang He: “Don’t you think that we’ve searched for so long, only to find what we want at the least expected moment?”