The Trial Game of Life

What was the criteria to judge that a soul was still ‘alive’?

Tang Cuo carefully looked through Pao Pao Qi’s Moment and found that it was nothing more than ‘chicken soup for the soul’ articles and pictures of her elegant life. 

Her beautiful day started in the morning, accompanied by coffee and light meals that looked all pretty, then followed by exquisite dinners and occasional bits of exciting nightlife.

This person seemed to live a very fulfilling life. Of course, Tang Cuo couldn’t be sure whether it was true, or whether she actually enjoyed it.

Tang Cuo directly walked to the front, starting from the first tombstone.

The first one was probably an office worker whose cell phone display was an unfinished PowerPoint deck. It was about the future development of a P2P networkShort for ‘person-to-person network’, a micro-lending model via the Internet where small amounts of funds are gathered from different people to lend to people who are in need of funds.. The first few pages were still very carefully analysed, where the tables were clear and the texts were concise. But from the seventh page, the person who made the deck started to become irritable, with scribbles of ‘go to hell’ filling up all the pages.

[Go to hell go to hell go to hell go to hell go to hell…] The small red letters were densely packed, easily sending chills down anyone’s spine.

The second one was a takeaway staff. The phone showed a delivery interface. The takeaway should have been delivered at 12:30, yet the phone already showed 12:47. There were six missed calls.

“Ting ting —” The phone rang.

Tang Cuo slid to answer, and the call actually got through. On the other end was a man with a slightly grumpy voice: “Hey? Why don’t you answer all my calls? Are you delivering the food or not? It’s already past the time, don’t you know?!”

Tang Cuo: “I’m sorry, there’s a jam on the road.”

Man: “Even if it’s jammed, you still have to deliver my food. I’ve been hungry for a long time! I wouldn’t have ordered takeaway if it wasn’t raining outside. You bring it to me quickly, or I’ll file a complaint! My time is precious. I won’t have time to eat if you don’t bring it now!” 

As his voice fell, the phone was immediately hung up.

Tang Cuo pondered the words ‘raining’ and ‘won’t have time to eat’, but he couldn’t yet make any deduction for the time being, so he looked at the next one.

The next phone screen was dark. Tang Cuo found a button on the side to light it up and the battery showed 26%. The time was 13:30 pm on Tuesday, 25th June, and the lock screen was a couple’s selfie.

The photo had been edited and a line of words was added at the bottom right — ‘12th June 2019, the 100th day of our relationship!’

Without facial recognition and fingerprints, passwords were the only way. Tracing back from 12th June, the first day they met should be 5th March.

So the password should be: 190305.

Tang Cuo got through.

The interface that popped up was a chat history, where the girl and her boyfriend had started breaking up. The boy sent her countless messages to try to keep them together, each of his sentences laced with sincere words. He spoke so very carefully.

But his words also revealed a fact — he cheated on her.

A boringly common topic.

The girl couldn’t bother to drag the conversion any further. Although she seemed to still harbour feelings for the boy, she put up a firm attitude, determined to never look back. The last chat between the two of them ended at 11:59, when the girl uttered only two words — “No way.”

The boy didn’t say anything else. Had he given up? Or had he not seen the message?

Tang Cuo went on to look at a few more. Their identities and genders were all different. They were people from all walks of life, from takeaway staff, express delivery man, student to white-collar executive. All that could be found from their phones were trivial matters of life, and nothing seemed too special at a glance.

There were 99 cell phone tombstones. It seemed that this battle would last quite a while.

At the same time, the solitary road that Jin Cheng and the others were walking on finally showed some changes. A group of monsters suddenly appeared in the middle of the road, blocking everyone’s path.

They were oddly shaped, with saw-teeth lacing their bodies and horns protruding out of their heads. Some were standing while some were walking on all fours, their sizes a mix of big and small. 

Leng Miao felt that they looked familiar and his eyebrows creased a little.

Jin Cheng also noticed it.

The monsters snarled at them, making a “ho ho” sound in their throats, as if something was stuck in there, making them unable to let out the words even though they wanted to say something. Although they had different looks, pain and despair could clearly be seen on their faces, while those crimson pairs of eyes were exuding so much fury, so much resentment.

The most important thing was that in those eyes, a hint of consciousness occasionally flashed amidst the chaos.

“Karma serving process, special dungeon.” Jin Cheng came to a conclusion.

The others, except Leng Miao, were all stunned. What special dungeon? What karma serving process?  There was a significant difference between the dungeons triggered in Zone E prison and other zones, that was, the players from all zones were mixed together and no division was required. Here, there were Leng Miao from Zoe A, Jin Cheng from Zone E and newcomers from Zone F. They might not even know what the karma-serving process was.

Jin Cheng explained to them a little bit. In a nutshell — the monsters here were those who committed suicide in Yong Ye City before the suicide ban was lifted.

They were reduced to monsters and assigned to these special dungeons. They felt the pain of being killed over and over again while staying completely conscious, but they were unable to express this pain as a human.

They had only one choice — to kill the player in front of them.

Resentment?

Despair?

Once they were unable to break free and unable to escape, such resentment would turn into endless killing intent, dragging other players into the abyss of pain. Under such a circumstance, no one could remain sane.

A hint of helplessness brushed past the newcomers’ faces, but the monsters wouldn’t catch that at all. They rushed towards the players with their mouths open wide, and as the bloody stench from those mouths crashed into the players’ faces, those with keen eyes could even see flesh still stuck between the monsters’ teeth.

Everyone hurriedly pulled out their weapons, and at that very moment, a ray of characters flickered in mid-air — ‘The First Checkpoint: Birth’.

“Damn it! Childbirth complications?!”

“Even childbirth complications won’t result in so many monsters, right? Modern medicine is so advanced now!”

“F-off, can’t you see that this is about abortion?”

A girl with a long ponytail fired a shot, hitting the head of a monster from more than ten meters away, temporarily ending the topic. But soon, a boy who stood back to back with her gasped desperately for air: “So why do you ladies have so many abortions? Isn’t it bad karma?”

The two seemed to be companions, but as soon as she heard those words, the girl hit the gun against the back of the boy’s head: “F**k you, what ‘so many abortions’? If you’re in my belly, I’ll abort you first! Shut up or I’m really gonna beat you up!”

Perhaps those words had the boy so scared that he shut his mouth at once, and for a long time, no one uttered another word. In fact, none of them had time to talk, for more than 50 monsters were rushing over, keeping all 28 players on the scene busy with fighting them.

Jin Cheng and Leng Miao dealt with at least one third of those monsters.

After the first 99, the people who chose to commit suicide in Yong Ye City weren’t powerful players, but after becoming monsters, they had been ruined over and over again by the dungeons, so their strength no longer remained the same.

They were now strong, really strong.

The straight road had no obstructions and no terrain to take advantage of, so Jin Cheng gave up his bow and arrow and turned to his blades. The two scimitars were the most lethal weapons he had on hand.

The monsters had such distorted shapes that he might not be able to hit the heart with a single strike. 

Let’s then use two strikes. 

As his right hand pushed the blade in, his left hand immediately slashed down. Sometimes, he even needed to use the third stroke. This was the most straightforward, most painless way for them to die.

Jin Cheng moved like an electric flash, his figure flying through the air so fast that even the blood that was splashing everywhere couldn’t touch the corner of his clothes.

Leng Miao was even neater, because he was good at space magic. Conjuring an ‘Air Cage’, he smoothly trapped the monsters from afar, eternally scraping them off. A while later, no monster could manage to get close to him. His figure was like a ghost that could move ten meters away with just a single step, and it was an impossible task to lay even a finger on him.

Jin Cheng and Leng Miao hardly coordinated their moves and each played his own way, but it all ended really fast. Some 15 minutes later, the monsters were finally wiped out, but before everyone could even breathe, another batch turned up.

“How come there are more?!” Someone exclaimed.

“Abortion is only the first round. Modern medicine is so advanced now, but there’ll definitely be other sorts of complications during childbirth.” Jin Cheng flicked both his wrists and moved his joints. Without even waiting for the monsters to approach, he rushed to kill again.

Leng Miao didn’t waste time spewing nonsense either. He raised his hand and blew up the monsters surrounding him with an Air Bomb, causing them to fly back in waves.

The team continued to advance.

In addition to the two games that Jin Cheng and Tang Cuo were playing, there was also a Third Gate — ‘Mortal Realm’s Message Forwarding Company’.

In a huge room of pure white colour with neither exits nor doors nor windows, five-by-five rows of cubicles were neatly arranged. A total of 25 players were sitting in front of the computers, wearing headphones and typing on the keyboards frantically.

Looking closer, everyone’s computer screen was densely packed with chat boxes. The two sides of the conversation were divided into red and blue. The people sitting the left two rows were responsible for putting information into the blue box, and the ones on the right were responsible for the red box.

While they had the conversations, the system would send them prompts via the headphones.

The room was so quiet that there was only the tapping of fingers on keyboards, together with the sounds the players unconsciously made out of nervousness. After twenty minutes or so, sweat slipped down from their foreheads to their cheeks, blue veins began to pop up and even red veins started surfacing in their eyes.

No one knew what they were hearing from the earphones. Someone tried to take off the headphones, but they couldn’t. The more he struggled to pull those headphones out, the more anxious he became. His frantic looks seemed almost like a hilarious performance of a mime.

“Stop scolding! Stop scolding!” He finally began to collapse, as if his brain was under a strong mental attack.

The next second, his head suddenly exploded, turning into a mixture of crimson blood and yellow plasma that scattered all over the cubicle he sat in and even splashed onto the face of a nearby player.

The player’s eyes widened in horror as he looked at the scene in utter disbelief. A few seconds later, he suddenly snapped out of it, shook his fingers and turned his head back to continue typing.

Quick!

Quicker!

After he typed into the chat box, a coloured ribbon imprinted with the word “boo!” instantly appeared on the screen, which then turned into a cruel thorn that pierced his mind.

“Everyone, be careful, this gate is about mental attack! Every sentence is trying to wreck your mental state! If your Intelligence points are not enough, please pay special attention!” A loud reminder came from a player sitting near the corner. Not paying any mind to whether the other players could hear him through the headphones, he continued shouting — 

“If you can’t hold it, drink the potion immediately. Inside your mind, visualise your own martial arts skills and transform them into attacks to resist the sound in the headphones!”

And from the headphones that fell into a pool of plasma because the player wearing those had had his head blown up, a sound was still coming out at this moment. It was full of pure malice and curses, sometimes ridden with wicked laughs over someone else’s suffering, tinged also with smug intent that was as sharp as a knife.

“Go f**k yourself.”

“Weren’t you trying to seduce men with those clothes? What kind of decent girl would wear like that? You deserve it.”

“What a slut, gross.”

“If you want to die, go ahead, why are you still here being all hypocritical? If you have the guts, go to hell! Why are you still alive and kicking? Complain for what?!”

“The most disgusting thing is really sasaeng fans脑残粉 [nao can fen], is lit. translated as ‘damaged brain fan’. In Asian and specifically South Korean culture, a sasaeng fan is an obsessive fan who stalks or engages in other behaviour constituting an invasion of the privacy of idols or public figures. like you. Your mother didn’t give you a brain when she gave birth to you, did she? Whatever your mouth spews is so filthy. Does your idol know that you’re barking here? What a whore.”

“…”

Different voices and different tones, from men, women and even children, no one holding themselves back.

In addition to the Third Gate, there was a Fourth Gate — ‘This World Is An Asylum’.

The little girl in the red cloak was sitting on the red cross hanging outside the hospital, swinging her two slender legs while humming an unfamiliar, dissonant folk song. She looked down at the restless crowd in the hospital’s backyard and muttered to herself: “I’m back here again…” 

The system announcement came.

“We welcome players to stay in this asylum. All players, please immediately head back to your respective wards and wait for the doctors to check on you. During this time, please don’t walk around. Offenders will be severely punished.”

The players gaped at each other. How did they get trapped in an asylum? According to this game rule, there would be doctors checking on their wards later and punishment for not staying in the wards. Neither of those sounded like it would end nicely, no?

“What should we do?”

“Should we head back to the wards?”

“How on earth did we trigger the mission, shouldn’t we figure this out first???”

Amidst differing opinions, across the corridors, someone caught sight of several figures walking past the window on the second floor. He immediately raised his finger and exclaimed: “Are they the doctors?!” 

The others also looked at the direction he was pointing and saw the monsters that were exactly the same as those Jin Cheng had encountered. It was just that these monsters here were wearing white coats, with stethoscopes hanging around their necks, their hands clutching syringes that were as huge as firecrackers.

The syringes gleamed with a cold light, making everyone shudder and feel that the afternoon sun had suddenly become much colder.

Whether to go back or not to go back, this was the question.

Zheng Yingying stood up atop the red cross. The wind blew her red cloak, revealing her eye that had been covered by a black eye patch. Slowly, she raised one hand to caress the black patch, while her intact eye emanated a hint of pity and sadness, but it was overwhelmed by her firm resolution just a split second later.

A crow stood on the opposite roof and peeked into the distance. Putting its wings behind its back and holding its head up proudly, the crow couldn’t hide its fondness and admiration for its current target.

“Kill, kill as much as you want. Throw away all your mercy, just kill…” It whispered.

The four gates had different contents, but they shared the same conditions for clearance. 96 players, either they survived for six hours, or only six people remained alive.

Current death toll: 1

Tang Cuo were totally clueless about the other gates. He was still walking alone in the empty cemetery, doing his tombstone investigation. As the “ding dong, ding dong” prompts came at him one after another, 77 out of 99 cell phone tombstones lit up.

One phone had shut down by itself due to insufficient battery.

“Bang —” The moment the battery was exhausted, the tombstone exploded. The rocks and dust heavily smacked Tang Cuo’s body. If it weren’t for his always-on vigilance and his dexterous movement, he might have been buried right here.

His HP now dropped to 44. A really unlucky number.