Global Collapse

Upon hearing that familiar name, Mr. Green's eyes welled up with tears.

Li San, sitting opposite, didn't notice Mr. Green's expression. He paused slightly, "I remember, wasn't that unfortunate host taken outside by Gu... by that person?"

It's clear he originally meant to say "Gu Mian," but probably changed it halfway through to "that person" instead.

Now it was Gu Mian's turn to choke. Had she become some indescribable thing in the lower-dimensional world? Even mentioning her name required caution.

He thought this to himself, but his face showed a pained expression: "Yes, I used to be a support staff member for the 'Crazy Word Guessing' game. I had a stable job, but I never expected that damned person would be matched into our instance one day and take the host out with him. The 'Crazy Word Guessing' instance went out of business, so I wandered around and ended up here..."

Mr. Green, standing nearby, looked at Gu Mian as if she were a ghost, seemingly shocked by Gu Mian's shamelessness. He didn't know why Gu Mian would impersonate his instance's logistics officer, but wisely chose to remain silent and not expose Gu Mian.

Gu Mian had already planned out the plot: after the word-guessing game shut down, he came to this world. Because he was unfamiliar with the place, he not only failed to find the NPC gathering place, but was also treated as an inferior person and thrown into the inferior person's residential area.

But before he could continue with the rest of the story, Li San spoke up first: "I know, you're one of the helpers he found, right?"

"who is he?
"Yes." Although she didn't know who "he" Li San was referring to was, Gu Mian still agreed decisively.

What a superb performance, Mr. Green thought to himself, silently criticizing Gu Mian.

“I see. He made me pretend to be a staff member and do his work. He made you pretend to be a low-class contestant so that you could liven up the atmosphere, right? I saw the voting rankings for the first stage, and you were in first place by a wide margin. At the time, I was thinking that your actions in the first stage were really shocking, not something a low-class person would do. I didn’t expect that you really are not a low-class person. He planted you in the variety show.”

Meeting another NPC in this place gave Li San a feeling of meeting a fellow countryman, and he found himself becoming more talkative.

As he spoke, he cautiously glanced around a few times, afraid that others might witness the amazing scene of the upper and lower classes communicating peacefully.

Fortunately, everyone's attention was drawn to the Ferris wheel, and even the contestants' eyes were firmly fixed on it, so they didn't notice this side.

I never expected Li San to have such a vivid imagination, and his imagination was even quite logical and well-founded. Judging from his account, it seems that the person who appointed him as a staff member wielded considerable power.

Gu Mian didn't dare ask who "he" was, and focused on the most important thing at hand.

"Do you know what the third stage is?" As a staff member here, Li San should know the next steps.

"He didn't tell you?" Li San asked, somewhat surprised.

"They didn't tell me to ensure I had a more realistic reaction," Gu Mianhu said. "Can you tell me what the third stage is?"

Listening to Gu Mian's words, Li San thought of what he knew about the third stage. He took a deep breath: "The third stage is very simple. The person being judged goes up on stage, and then the top ten, in order of their ranking, come forward one by one with an axe to behead the person..."

Beheading? So bloody? Mr. Green pricked up his ears to listen.

Gu Mian touched her chin.

The contestants were all lower-class people who were usually hungry and cold, and they were too weak to even kill a chicken. Asking them to behead people? That was ridiculous. They probably couldn't even lift an axe to behead someone.

The human neck bone is very strong and difficult to cut.

Even ancient executioners sometimes made mistakes; if a beheading didn't go through in one stroke, several more blows were needed. This was even more true for the malnourished lower classes.

“The person being judged was tied to a wooden stake in the middle with a rope, and the contestants took turns chopping at it with blunt axes,” Li San added. “These lower-class people certainly didn’t have the strength to cut a person’s neck in one stroke, and they were using blunt axes. The upper-class people designed it this way simply to make the person being judged suffer as much torment as possible before they died.”

It's truly a great torment to be stabbed repeatedly in the neck yet still not die.

"Whoever is the last one among the ten lowest-ranking men to cut off the neck of the person being judged will be the champion." Li San's voice lowered even further, as if he also found the show too perverse. "Then comes the making of the crown, which involves sewing the severed head onto the champion's head..."

At this point, Li San's expression twisted uncomfortably, and he couldn't continue: "That's basically it." Mr. Green's expression also twisted, and his impression of the upper class dropped even further.

Gu Mian remembered that when the show was being promoted, the prize for the champion was "to become a superior person," which meant sewing the head of a superior person onto the head of an inferior person, and that would truly make one a superior person.

Gu Mian pondered for a few seconds: "Is the venue for the third stage also here?"

Li San nodded: "Yes, right here on this platform. The person to be judged was brought down from this platform this morning. In the third phase, he will be lifted up by a lift, directly to the top of the pyramid, which is where the host is standing now."

"Oh—" Gu Mian drawled out. It turned out that Louis was right below them on the platform.

But we can't take this person's words at face value; we still need to see for ourselves whether Louis is there or not.

Li San felt that the person in front of him had suddenly become strange; both his expression and tone of voice had changed abruptly.

He felt a little strange, but then thought he might be overthinking it.

"Eleven minutes have passed, and the cabin carrying 1003 is about to emerge from the water. It's truly something to watch! I wonder if 1003 can successfully pass the Ferris wheel test..." Teacher Killer's voice came from above. He had been counting the cabins that emerged from the water, and when the cabin carrying 1003 was about to appear, he immediately reminded the audience to watch.

Li San was also drawn by the voice of the teacher who had killed someone, and turned to look in the direction of the Ferris wheel.

The Ferris wheel was indeed the most likely of these attractions to survive. He looked at the slowly turning wheel with mixed feelings, and also hoped that 1003 would survive.

Finally, the cockpit of 1003 appeared.

The cabin was filled with water, and as soon as it emerged, the water gushed out from the wire mesh at the window.

As the cabin ascended higher and higher, the audience was able to see what was inside more clearly—

1003 floats in the water with its eyes wide open, its two hands tightly gripping the barbed wire fence on one side.

His face remained motionless, his eyes devoid of any expression, his body simply bobbing up and down in the cabin with the flowing water.

He is dead, without a doubt.

It's clear that as he was dying, he desperately tried to pry open the barbed wire and crawl out of the cockpit, but the wire was too strong and there was no way to break it.

As the water level continued to drop, his body slowly landed on the cabin floor, but his hands were still tightly gripping the barbed wire that couldn't be opened.

The staff below the stage remained motionless, and no one went forward to remove his body from the cockpit.

He lay on the cockpit floor with his already cloudy eyes open, waiting for another ten minutes before sinking back into the place that ended his life.

"Alas, what a pity..." Teacher Killer said with feigned regret, "1003 failed, but he brought a wonderful show to everyone, so he died a worthy death."

“Since 1003 failed, then Arbitrator 1766 will soon advance. But before we rush, I have to ask one more question—” Teacher Killer said, bending down slightly and facing the bottom of the pyramid so that he could see all the contestants. “The people in the lower group have a chance to take over. They can come up on stage to replace 1003 as the executor of this group. This is a great opportunity.”

Theoretically, people in the later groups have no chance to go on stage unless they voluntarily step forward to replace the deceased executor and become the new executor.

But only two groups have competed so far, and the remaining spots for advancement are not so tight. The participants in the later groups want to wait and see.

1766 understood this, so he wasn't nervous.

The teacher, who hadn't held out much hope, was just asking a routine question, but an unexpected turn of events occurred. (End of Chapter)