Players, Please Board the Train

These two people initially struggled on their chairs, but as time decreased, their expressions grew increasingly numb until they didn’t move at all.

”Will this work?” the old gentleman asked with reddened eyes.

Xu Huo stared intently at the two without blinking. When only three minutes remained, the server and old woman suddenly went mad, trying to ram forward while still tied to their chairs. He pressed them back into place, but at that moment the old woman actually extended her tongue and twisted it!

He violently kicked the chair away, and before the old woman even hit the ground, she exploded into a shower of blood!

Frowning deeply, Xu Huo simply covered the server’s mouth.

Yet at that exact moment, the server herself stopped counting. The corners of her mouth turned upward as if smiling, but then she too exploded on the spot.

Blood and flesh splattered across his face. Xu Huo stood still for two seconds before wiping his face, drawing his dagger and hurling it to nail into the ground. In the next instant, the black-and-white dividing line on the floor’s roulette wheel began to fluctuate, and he was pulled into a pure white space.

What met his eyes was a suspended black-and-white roulette wheel about over a meter in diameter. A large white pointer rested on one of the white squares, while at the center was a countdown timer. The moment he saw the dial, the numbers began counting down with incessant ticking.

Xu Huo looked down at himself - his body was intact, his limbs could move freely, and he had sensation and perception. Only the pure white space amplified all his senses, and the solitary ticking sound continuously stacked up, creating a subtle illusion of acceleration.

He checked his stopwatch for several seconds - time wasn’t actually speeding up.”I’m fine,” he spoke aloud, addressing Painting Woman outside. ”Pinch my hand.”

Soon pain registered on the back of his hand.

Confirming he had physical presence in both the pure white space and the outside world, Xu Huo vaguely guessed that this single-player life-or-death game had pulled him into an overlap between two spaces. He could see the game space while simultaneously perceiving the outside world, only his senses were being overlaid.

His consciousness and body weren’t separated - he was simply positioned at a peculiar spatial intersection, so items should function normally.

Walking back and forth before the roulette wheel a few times, Xu Huo moved closer to examine the twelve black and white squares.

After a full half-minute passed, he still felt no restraining force. Instead, after suppressing the illusion of time rapidly counting down, even that subtle impulse to move the pointer faded away - this life-or-death situation wasn’t compulsory.

In other words, as long as one maintained mental stability, there wouldn’t be incidents of people using their tongues or fingers to turn the pointer.

Actually, what the manager said earlier made some sense. Simply restraining people wouldn’t work, but what if someone was knocked unconscious? Would that be a viable method?

But after brief consideration, he dismissed this idea. They hadn’t reached that point yet.

Besides, there was no guarantee that not moving the pointer would ensure survival, and a fifty percent chance wasn’t exactly low odds for him.

Confirming he had the stopwatch dial on him, he successfully retrieved the Dual-color Magic Cube from his item slot. As the cube opened, he reached out to hook the pointer.

With five minutes remaining on the countdown, the pointer rapidly jumped between black and white squares. Seeing it about to stop, he suddenly reached toward the roulette wheel, but almost simultaneously, the wheel vanished from before him, reappearing three meters away.

Apparently forcibly fixing the pointer on a white square wouldn’t work.

He withdrew his hand, watching as the pointer’s speed gradually changed until it barely stopped at the edge of a white square.

The moment the pointer stopped, the roulette wheel disappeared again, replaced by a massive number ”1”.

Then the white in his vision rapidly receded, his sight restored, and he found himself standing back in the front hall, though his position had shifted somewhat.

Had he cleared it that easily?

Was it because of the Magic Cube’s power?

As his eyes regained focus, Xu Huo instinctively frowned, then saw Painting Woman blocking in front of him while facing off against the manager and several servers on the opposite side.

”They tried to steal your things!” Painting Woman exclaimed upon noticing he’d regained consciousness, immediately turning back to report while pointing at the Dual-color Magic Cube in his hand.

The manager and others hadn’t expected Xu Huo to survive, let alone emerge so quickly, leaving their greedy malice frozen on their faces.

But Xu Huo ignored them, putting away the magic cube as he told Painting Woman, ”I’m going to the back to wash my face.”

Painting Woman nodded, glaring viciously at the group before following him into the back kitchen.

”Splash splash!” Water ran in the kitchen as Xu Huo spent a minute washing the bloodstains from his face. After finishing, he noticed a white mark had appeared on the back of his hand that wouldn’t rub off.

”Is this survival count?” he paused.

The game rules announced by the player required accumulating at least two counts to escape the opportunity. If that person hadn’t lied, then winning one more life-or-death game would let him escape this game.

Although he’d relied on the Magic Cube to land on white this first time, this life-or-death situation still gave him a feeling of being almost too simple.

This black-and-white roulette game didn’t restrict players from using items. With items available, players could easily exploit loopholes. Would such an elaborate life-or-death setup really target ordinary people?

Additionally, excluding players, the mortality rate for ordinary people seemed excessively high. Theoretically with fifty-fifty odds, there shouldn’t have been zero survivors from the game until now.

Absentmindedly rubbing his palm, he suddenly recalled the female server’s smile before her death.

Painting Woman waved her hand questioningly before his eyes.

”Nothing,” he said, taking the employee uniform she offered. After changing clothes, he walked out.

The manager guarding the door hurried over to block his path, but Xu Huo wordlessly kicked him away. Without even glancing at the man who had crashed through tables and chairs while coughing up blood, he signaled Wang Chaoqing to leave.

Wang Chaoqing stood up with his computer tucked under his arm, sneering at the group. ”Morons.”

”Wait!” The old gentleman who had been mournfully holding his wife’s ring suddenly came to his senses and chased after Xu Huo’s group, cautiously asking, ”Could I come with you?”

”Sure,” Xu Huo nodded. ”We’re going to find somewhere to settle up ahead.”

The old gentleman nodded eagerly. ”I’ll follow you wherever you go.”

The square outside contained few people besides several bloodstains, with most gathered inside the shopping mall. When Xu Huo entered, people initially thought rescue teams had arrived and rushed forward, but upon learning they were just there to rest, retreated disappointedly.

Scanning everyone’s hands at a glance, he found no one with white marks on their hands.

Additionally, some corner shops were thoroughly stained with blood.

Apparently those who entered the life-or-death games had ultimately been pushed into these places.

Xu Huo fell briefly silent. Just as he prepared to leave the mall, three men in camouflage uniforms entered, two of whom had white marks on the backs of their hands.

The leader stood at the entrance and announced loudly, ”From now on, this mall is under our control! Go notify everyone nearby immediately - tell them all to gather here!”