As Shen Mu walked into the room, Du Xiulin continued to sit on the bed with a trace of a smile on his face. But he didn’t move an inch and he did not seem to have any desire to speak.
Right now, Du Xiulin seemed slightly different from before. Shen Mu’s eyes fell on Du Xiulin while he responded with a smile. Although his smile was like a spring breeze, he also remained silent.
Yan Yuze closed the door and a click came from the lock as it snapped shut. The subtle atmosphere was broken in an instant. Yan Yuze walked into the room and asked casually, “What’s wrong? Didn’t you want to talk about the rules of the game? Do neither of you want to speak?”
Having said so, he did not wait for a response, instead walking to the windowsill and picking up a glass of water. Yan Yuze casually looked out the window, long fingers clenching the cup as he drank.
Looking at both Du Xiulin who sat on the bed and Yan Yuze who was standing by the window, Shen Mu went straight to the point: “Did the two of you encounter other players on the way here? I mean, the other three players who were eliminated from the original fifteen.”
“I didn’t encounter them.” Yan Yuze drained the water and spun the glass on his fingers like he was spinning a pen.
“Neither did I.” Du Xiulin took off his glasses and shook them a few times as he spoke. At that moment, Du Xiulin seemed to revert back to the gentle and cultured man that existed in Shen Mu’s initial impression. For a second, Du Xiulin gave Shen Mu a faint feeling of something different, but the sensation disappeared as he started to speak.
“Don’t you think it’s strange?” Shen Mu focused on Du Xiulin’s movement as he shook his glasses again, and suddenly had a revelation. He abandoned the topic that he had originally wanted to speak about and focused on him. “Why didn’t your glasses disappear?”
The clothing in every round of the game was systematically configured. Except for the red bead, everything else on Shen Mu’s body was issued by the system, from his clothes to his mobile phone.
Yan Yuze also paused for a moment. His eyesight was 20/20*. He had seen many people wearing glasses in the outside world, so he had subconsciously felt that it was normal. He had been in the game for a while now and did not feel that there was anything wrong.
*T/N: 20/20, i.e. normal eyesight
Du Xiulin had considered this problem before, and he slowly placed the glasses onto the bridge of his nose: “I have noticed this irregularity before. You guys didn’t notice? Not only glasses, one’s hairstyle can also be kept.” Du Xiulin pushed his glasses up again, finally adjusting it to a comfortable position. He continued, “I’m not talking about No. 7’s lion hair, but little sister No. 9’s ponytail and No. 10’s ponytail. Their hair ties have remained in game just like my glasses, or else is their hair tied by air?”
“…” For a moment, Shen Mu was rendered speechless by the fact that he had failed to notice something so obvious.
“Actually, I researched a bit on this.” Du Xiulin suddenly said as he slowly spread his hands open. The room was small. Although Shen Mu was standing in the middle, he could clearly see a light-coloured scar on his palm.
“Self-harm is very suitable for you.” Yan Yuze had obviously noticed the scars on Du Xiulin’s palm, which were clearly cut with a blade.
Du Xiulin’s lips hooked upwards slightly, and instead of getting baited by Yan Yuze’s provocation as he had before the speeches, he went on to say: “This was a cut that I slashed before entering the game. One’s injured state is also brought to the game. Although the body itself doesn’t enter it, the state of the game body is completely ‘custom made’ based on the players’ current situation in reality. My understanding is that the scar was judged a kind of state; any sickness and drunkenness are also judged as a type of physical circumstance or setting.” Du Xiulin stopped speaking. At that moment, Shen Mu remembered what Xie You had told him before: Du Xiulin had arrived with Lin Huiru.
Sure enough, Du Xiulin went on to say: “On the way, I met No. 5 who was eliminated on the first night and she was very drunk at the time. Therefore, you can be sure that one’s state of being drunk, sick or injured will all be brought into the game.”
Shen Mu’s eyes flickered slightly. ‘Eliminated on the first night’… Du Xiulin was safe despite speaking about the contents of the game. Of course, No. 5 being eliminated on the first night was something that everyone already knew. Saying that was not considered as off-site cheating. No one responded to the sentence, so it also wasn’t classified as ‘discussing the contents of the game outside of discussion time’.
Shen Mu had kept particular rules of the game in mind:
‘No one is allowed to cheat, including but not limited to the exchange of identities and the discussion of game content outside of the discussion time.’
Watching Du Xiulin push his glasses up his nose habitually, what Shen Mu was concerned about was this: had Du Xiulin had possessed absolute confidence in his understanding of the game and purposefully controlled his speech to fall within the rules——or had he spoken without realising it?
Du Xiulin said: “So, I think that things like glasses and hairstyles, which are worn on the head, are also classified as physical conditions, the same as being sick, drunk, or injured.”
The head could be chopped off, the blood could flow, but the hairstyle must not be messed up. Shen Mu’s lips twitched slightly. He didn’t know whether the Suspended Life Game’s system was a living creature with the same intelligence as a human or a non-living creature like a computer program, but it didn’t really matter now.
“One more thing, did you guys notice?” Even as numerous thoughts swiftly circulated Shen Mu’s mind, he continued to talk calmly with Du Xiulin, “Based on the players in the Suspended Life Game that I have met so far, most of them were about 20 years old. Those younger than 10 years and older than 30 years appear to be few, and I haven’t encountered any older people at all. Of course, this is only the first round, so the amount of information I have still isn’t enough.”
“This has something to do with the fundamental rules of the game.” Yan Yuze said indifferently. “If you lose, you will be in a coma for a few years, and if you lose again, you will be in a coma for a few decades. Elderly people cannot afford to fall into a coma, and they also do not know how to play Werewolf. Isn’t this pretty similar to a college exam? The Suspended Life Game is like a university. In addition to the Suspended Life Game, there may be a Betting Life Game, a Desperate Life Game… like a workplace or a primary school. The rules for being selected into each game is different.”
Shen Mu nodded slightly. Yan Yuze’s metaphor was vivid, and despite its speculative nature, it genuinely made sense.
Yan Yuze then continued, “Moreover, this doesn’t matter. It has already confirmed your fate, ‘what it is’ is no longer important!”
“What’s important is ‘how to pass’ then?” Du Xiulin chuckled. “The Suspended Life Game is unfair in some senses, such as retaining the sickness and injury of the weak. However”, Du Xiulin’s eyes flashed, his smiling eyes containing hidden meaning behind the lenses of his glasses, “How can there be absolute fairness? Besides, isn’t it possible to achieve your wish in the end? All challenges are opportunities, and the Suspended Life Game has forbidden cheating to the greatest possible extent. To ensure the fun in the game itself, and… fairness.” Towards the end, Du Xiulin’s smile became even more ambiguous: “The so-called weak people are weak people regardless of where they are.”
“Yo! Is Mr. Du no longer pretending to be a good person?”
Appearing as though he hadn’t heard the irony in Yan Yuze’s words, Du Xiulin chuckled: “I have always been like this.” No longer responding to Yan Yuze’s words, he spoke to Shen Mu instead: “If my guess is right, No. 2, on your way here… You met one of the eliminated players, correct?”
“I met one.” Dragging the topic back to the original issue that he wanted to discuss, Shen Mu asked perplexedly, “Don’t you find it strange? Although 15 players were prepared, if more than 3 players get stuck on the road, then 12 players wouldn’t be enough for the game, right?” Although he had his own speculations, Shen Mu still posed the issue.
“Since the game does not stipulate how long one can take to arrive at the meeting place, there can be three possibilities.” Du Xiulin spoke, deep in thought. “One is where a number of players are late, but still alive. In this situation, the system will either let us wait until 12 people have gathered… or wait for someone to die. In the second, there is a hidden time limit. After reaching a certain point, players who have not yet arrived are directly eliminated. As for what happens if there are too few players left, that brings us to the third scenario.”
“The third scenario occurs when four or more players die before the necessary number has been gathered at the game meeting point. Of course, it would then be impossible to assemble 12 people. In this case, I think the system will assign new players to come in. Although players in a coma have to be unconscious for a certain number of years to participate in the next game, I believe that if the sentenced years are in single digits, the system will allow the player to enter the game in advance, and slight differences in the number of days can be ignored.”
Du Xiulin’s analysis was reasonable and clear, but Shen Mu thought of another question: “What was the date when you entered the game? Do you remember the specifics?”
“0:00 on November 10, 2019.”
“Same here.”
“Me too.” Shen Mu nodded and continued to ask, “What about the preliminaries? Mine was two days ago, on the 8th.”
Yan Yuze: “Five days ago.”
Du Xiulin: “Thirteen days ago.”
As soon as this remark was made, all three were a little surprised. The preliminaries were at different times, but the time of the notification for the official match was the same.
“Our group of players… I don’t know how many there are, but we will probably be bound together.” Shen Mu said somewhat dazedly, looking at the sunlight outside the window.
‘Player Shen Mu’s first round of the game will start at 00:00 on November 10, 2019, in the real world. The second round of games will start about a week after the first round ends, and the third round of games will start about two weeks after the end of the second round, and so on. The ratio for the flow of time in the game world and the flow of time in the real world is 100:1.’
Based on the fundamental rules of the Suspended Life Game, all players that began the first round about the same time would also enter the game at approximately the same time in each subsequent round. Hence you could conclude that in a certain time frame, the players participating in the preliminaries are the same group of players, or in other words, they are the exam candidates for this session. Although the reporting time was different and the test room allocation might be random on each occasion, the test time was still the same.
This seemed to be the case after the discussion. However, Shen Mu had other thoughts and speculations about the distribution of players in each round, but he did not mention them. Although they hadn’t discussed it specifically, Shen Mu was certain that An Yu must know about it, and also know about more issues that had not been brought up just yet.
Shen Mu was not particularly anxious to know the answer to these issues. As Yan Yuze said, ‘what it is’ had already been nailed down, and even if the ‘why’ was impossible to change, the consideration now should be ‘how’, and not ‘why’.
The scene became silent. Looking at Du Xiulin, who wasn’t speaking, Shen Mu once again felt the weirdness from when he’d first entered the room. He had exchanged a lot of information and had no intention of staying for a long time. As a “Seer”, he should visit the other players now. For example, he ought to “go take a look at little sister No. 9, who seemed like a Wolf, but might simply be someone who was bad at speeches”.
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Translator’s corner:
- Kitty: Sorry guys! This release was late because of some technical issues on my end.
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