Chapter 32: The First Day·Election

The three of them had once again inspected the entire game building before they were satisfied that they had thoroughly understood the structure of the building. Xie You had learned that Lin Huiru and Du Xiulin had encountered each other coincidentally along their way to the game site. To be more precise, Du Xiulin was the one who had met Lin Huiru on the way. Once they had ascertained that there was nothing fishy about the building, Du Xiulin had expressed his tiredness. Even faced with Lin Huiru’s urging as she encouraged him to stay, he’d still resolutely returned to his room to rest.

After Du Xiulin had left, Lin Huiru had appeared even more anxious. Her beautiful face had become abnormally red, her eyes slightly unfocused, and her slender frame even more prominent.

“It’s okay, relax a little, you can win.” Seeing her in this state, Xie You felt the need to try comforting her..

“En.” For some reason, Lin Huiru’s reaction was slightly delayed, only squeezing out a smile after an indefinite amount of time, “Thank you.”

Xie You looked at her crimson cheeks, focusing her gaze on her: “Did you drink?”

“En,” Lin Huiru’s response was slightly strange, “Is it difficult to tell?”

Xie You shook her head and expressed that she rarely drank alcohol. Seeing that Lin Huiru was in a somewhat fragile state of mind, she comforted her by saying, “It’s okay, the others aren’t here yet. Go and rest for a while!”

Lin Huiru nodded somewhat gratefully. As the two walked down the stairs leading from the second floor, Lin Huiru spoke, “Oh right, I haven’t asked for your name yet. My name is Lin Huiru, what’s yours?”

At that time, Xie You was walking down the stairs and didn’t think too much about the potential consequences of revealing her name, so she automatically told the truth: “My name is Xie You.”

Who could have predicted that Lin Huiru’s complexion would suddenly change. Staring at Xie You, her gaze seemed to be about to drill a hole in her face. Seeing how pretty she was, her complexion became even worse, she softly murmured: “Xie You… “

“Are you a student of Baiyan University? A freshman right?” Lin Huiru’s eyes, in contrast to the previous blurred state they were in just moments ago, were scarily bright.

Xie You was startled for a moment, and admitted to it in a state of bewilderment.

Then, young miss Lin gave her a round of roasting, and abruptly stopped being friendly at all. While dumbfounded, Xie You abruptly remembered a particular scene in the uploaded video of Shen Mu and An Yu on the forum…? At that time, a girl had been seated on a stool, appearing somewhat mentally unstable. From Lin Huiru’s somewhat disordered venting, coupled with other various scenarios that she had seen on the forum previously, Xie You roughly understood the situation.

Then… Xie You withdrew her train of thought, leaning somewhat helplessly against the wall.

Young miss Lin returned angrily alone, and whether she’d fallen asleep or for some unknown reason, even until it was very late, Lin Huiru didn’t emerge again.

Later, when Su Yingxing had appeared within the game building, Xie You hadn’t felt at all surprised——after all, she and him had been teammates in the preliminaries. Lin Huiru had also claimed that Su Yingxing liked her, and Xie You could feel that it was probably true. But there were many ways in which someone could like another. Xie You believed that Su Yingxing had a good impression of her——a beautiful and cute girl who would be together with him while facing life and death. They had worked together, identifying hidden hidden enemies in order to achieve victory and were schoolmates in the real world. It would be strange if they hadn’t left a favourable impression upon each other. Xie You also thought highly of him, but her affection wasn’t much stronger than friendship and couldn’t really be considered as her liking him.

And this idiot named Lin Huiru was actually looking for romance within the Suspended Life Game when the two could become enemies at any time!

Thinking of this, Xie You’s expression darkened. What she pondered was a mystery known only to her,, but after a moment, her expression became firm again.

Don’t worry, there’s still me, I will also win.

……

Only when it was 8:50 in the morning did Shen Mu leave his room, entering the game lobby on the first floor. Most players had already arrived by then.

Shen Mu first noticed that the table on the first floor had changed. The originally empty table now contained twelve numbered lights. The small and exquisite lights seemed to be fixed upon its surface, while the table itself was dilapidated and crude, completely incompatible. The lights and the mobile phones appeared to be a set of exquisite products in comparison.

After a quick glance, Shen Mu saw his younger sister, Shen Xin, sitting on a stool and trying to shrink herself as small as possible. Then shifting his gaze, Xie You, Tang Youchen, Du Xiulin, and Bai Lin were all present. There was also No. 6, the purple-haired man, No. 7 the red maned lion and No.10, the woman with the ponytail, all whom he had yet to meet. The short-haired teenage girl, No. 1, and Su Yingxing were still missing.

Shen Mu noticed that the atmosphere appeared to be slightly off. The purpled haired man, No. 6, was currently protecting Bai Lin behind him, and there was an unpleasant expression on his face. Standing in front of him was the bespectacled No. 4, Du Xiulin. Shen Mu could already smell the gunpowder* between the two men from the bottom of the stairs.

*T/N: To smell gunpowder — to sense an upcoming fight.

The atmosphere, which was originally tense, finally eased slightly after they saw that someone was coming. Du Xiulin passed by No. 6, nonchalantly sitting on his own seat. This seemed to anger No. 6, and his complexion worsened for a moment, but it couldn’t hinder his good looks and he remained as handsome as ever. No. 6 smirked as he walked over to Du Xiulin, spitting out the words, “Scum man” and giving Du Xiulin a belittling smile, strong provocation written all over his face.

“Hey, you’re not going to fight, right? Violence is forbidden here.” The person who spoke was the young man with the red lion mane. Contrary to his image, his expression was quite gentle and contradicted the personality that Shen Mu had originally expected him to have.

Du Xiulin sat on the stool, motionless. His eyes were obscured by his glass lenses and a slight smile hovered at the corner of his mouth. Seeing the situation, No. 6 chose to give up on pursuing the matter. Sneering, he pulled out a stool and sat, reassuming his own position.

Since No. 5 was the first player to be eliminated, No. 4 and No. 6 were separated only by an empty stool. The situation was slightly awkward. Bai Lin sat silently in her spot. Gradually, everyone else also sat down one after the other.

Shen Mu had only just seated himself when Su Yingxing arrived. Although his bedroom was on the second floor, he had emerged from the corridor that led from the first floor.

Had he gone to visit Lin Huiru because she died last night? Shen Mu was unable to resist speculating…

Immediately after the thought occurred to Shen Mu, someone asked the question for him: “No. 11, why did you come from the first floor? Did you go to see the deceased from last night?” It was No. 10, the woman with a ponytail. Her voice was slightly hoarse, creating an abrasive sound. Now that he was seeing her in close quarters for the first time, Shen Mu felt that she was relatively young, about… 25 years old?

Su Yingxing didn’t attempt to avoid the matter, simply glancing at her and nodding.

No. 10 immediately asked: “What is the point of seeing the dead? I was waiting here since half past eight and didn’t see you come down from the second floor once. Were you already on the first floor? Did you know her from before?” No. 10’s tone was arguably rather aggressive. For a moment, no one spoke. Everyone was watching Su Yingxing and waiting for his response.

Even when faced with such an aggressive question, Su Yingxing still wasn’t angered: “I wanted to study an eliminated player of the official game and determine if they were different to the preliminaries.”

“Brother, you looked for a really long time!” Tang Youchen said quickly, and then appeared to have come to a realisation. “However, No. 5 is really beautiful, I’d also like to look at her for a while in your position.”

“Then why don’t you go and have a look?” No. 10 immediately questioned.

“I already went to look at her very early this morning!” Tang Youchen wasn’t affected by her in the slightest, saying with a smile, “I also encountered No. 4 there, right?”

Seeing that everyone was watching, Du Xiulin nodded and didn’t say anything else.

“No. 1 still isn’t here yet?” Bai Lin spoke hesitantly.

Everyone noticed that it was already 8:58 a.m.

Shen Mu shifted his gaze, unintentionally meeting Xie You’s eyes. The time, displayed on the mobile phone, continued to slip away. Shen Mu thought about No. 1’s peculiar behaviour yesterday, and felt slightly uneasy in his heart, standing up to say: “I’ll go find her.”

“Yi, wait a minute… forget it, I’ll go with you!” Tang Youchen also stood up.

At that moment, a slight sound came from the bottom of the stairs, and a short-haired girl —— No. 1, beneath everyone’s astonished eyes, materialised as though she was a ghost and quickly sat in her spot. She glanced at no one and said nothing.

“You…” Tang Youchen was about to say something, but suddenly, the digits hovering before them suddenly lit up, and then went out, like some kind of signal.

At 9:00, the game began.

Everyone tapped on their phone screens——no matter whether they were a candidate for the election or not, they were at least able to look at the new ‘participate’ button. For now, it was impossible to tell who the candidates were.

A minute passed in the blink of an eye.

At 9:01, a few yellow lights suddenly lit up.

2, 3, 4, 6, 10, 12.

Six people were running for Sheriff? Shen Mu narrowed his eyes. It was neither too many, nor too few… What made Shen Mu more concerned was that No. 3, Xie You, one of the lovers, had also chosen to participate. Was she afraid that no one else in the third party would nominate themselves to be Sheriff, or was she the Werewolves’ representative?

At that moment, the yellow light in front of No. 3 Xie You turned green.

Shen Mu’s eyes flashed. From what he could tell, it looked like his junior sister would be the first to speak, and he would be the last, which was fairly good. Let’s listen to what my junior sister says first.

Seeing that the light in front of her had turned green, Xie You didn’t panic: “I am not the Seer, I am a God card and can prove my own identity. Of course, all the God cards, aside from the Seer, have ways to prove their identities. I won’t announce my role today, but I’ll reveal it within three days! If I haven’t announced it by the third day, you can all vote me out immediately! But before that, let me tell you that I definitely am one of the Gods. Civilians don’t need to worry that I’m here to confuse the situation. If someone else claims that they hold my role, I will naturally PK* with them until death!”

*T/N: PK: the gamer’s abbreviation for Player Kill

“Since I’m here running for the position of Sheriff, I naturally want the Sheriff badge. Although theoretically speaking, the badge will have the greatest effect in the hands of the Seer, this game is different from normal and such a situation is unlikely to present itself. We need to ensure that the badge is in the hands of the town side. The Seer is unable to prove their identity, so as soon as two players claim to be the Seer, although one is bound to be a Wolf and can be supported by their Wolf teammates, the true Seer doesn’t have teammates*, and mightn’t get the badge. Even if only a single player claims to be the Seer, since the Robber could have buried the Seer in this round of the game, we still can’t trust that this lone seer isn’t the Robber taking advantage of the fact that the role of the Seer has already been removed. I don’t believe that in the Suspended Life Game, the Wolves would give up the election by choosing not to send one of their own to claim to be the Seer. Therefore the only reason that only one player would claim to be the Seer is that the Robber became a wolf and the role of the Seer was discarded!” Having spoken for such a long period of time, Xie You paused to take a breath.

*T/N: The Seer would not have teammates since no one knows the identity of the Seer. In the meantime, the wolf team would all recognise each other

“So, instead of giving the badge to someone who may be a wolf, it would be better for me to lead the team! I’m a card that can prove my identity. If I don’t announce my role on the third day, you can immediately vote me out!”

No. 3, Xie You, ended her speech. The next to speak would be No. 4, Du Xiulin.

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