Infinite spooky game

Chapter 445 Gods (Sixteen) The Madman's Game

In this strangely polluted land, there is no longer any distinction between day and night. Bizarre and terrifying creatures roam the streets and alleys day and night, searching for creatures that have not yet been transformed into the bizarre.

Unarmed civilians were the first to be devoured, followed by federal troops who were on the front lines but had no experience in dealing with the bizarre situation; the beneficiaries at the top of the food chain fled early with their wealth, leaving behind the urban worker ants who created value but could not enjoy it, struggling to survive.

Soon, these people were also killed in various places. Those who usually mingled in the gray areas were brought to the forefront, relying on certain unorthodox methods they had learned in the underworld to eke out a living under the claws of the monsters.

The bizarre invasion was like a colossal beast opening its jaws at the base of the population pyramid, devouring the lives of each social stratum inch by inch from the bottom up, and wiping out all the differences overnight.

Whether homeless or middle-class, they all share one common identity after death: a corrupted, restless, and eerie being.

5:00 AM, May 12th, Jiangcheng.

Covered in the stench of rotting blood and rose sap, Li Yan held his breath and carefully bypassed the rose monsters lurking in the street before slipping into the shopping mall at the crossroads.

As a player of the eerie game, he was one of the first to know that disaster was coming. He prepared plenty of drinking water, salt and dry food at home in advance. After seeing the news of "mutant roses appearing" in the local group and learning that Jiangcheng was under lockdown, he hid at home and stayed indoors.

For a week, he stood by the window overlooking the community and saw rose vines encircling the reinforced concrete buildings like a swarm of snakes, devouring one terrified and desperate life after another. The corpses of men, women, and children were hung high up to dry in the wind. He felt a sense of horror, but also a sense of relief at being able to survive in such a precarious situation.

It wasn't that vines, following the scent of the living, climbed up the high-rise building and crawled into Li Yan's room. Fortunately, the experience he gained from fighting the supernatural in the eerie game came in handy. He poured the pre-prepared spoiled blood plasma on himself, disguising himself as a long-dead corpse, and then seized every opportunity to collect rose juice, smearing it on his skin to pretend to be one of the monsters.

The situation has improved slightly. People on the forums are saying that the final instance is over, so it's unlikely that any new anomalies will appear. The existing anomalies will be cleared and purified; it's just a matter of time.

Li Yan knew that the most deadly thing in the later stages of the apocalypse was often not natural disasters but man-made ones. At that time, there would definitely be criminals forming gangs to plunder all kinds of resources. He needed to take advantage of the eerie atmosphere before it subsided to gather as much food as possible, preferably enough to sustain him in seclusion for another six months.

The closer one gets to the mall, the denser the vines on the ground and building surfaces become. The thick, pungent smell of blood in the air is almost tangible, and a sickening rustling sound echoes from the darkness. A freshly dead corpse hangs from the center of the mall's entrance. It looks familiar; it's a player who chatted with Li Yan briefly in Sunset Ruins.

Li Yan had a bad feeling. He instinctively turned and retreated step by step, following the footprints he had come from, but it was too late. The vines in this area of ​​the shopping mall were more intelligent than those in other places. They silently approached Li Yan from behind and strangled his neck.

A feeling of suffocation suddenly descended upon Li Yan, who rolled his eyes. All the things that had happened in his life flashed through his mind, including pouring chalk dust into his homeroom teacher's water cup in elementary school and watering his boss's money tree with boiling water after starting work...

"Bang!" The sound of a gunshot interrupted the revolving lantern, as the vines that were wrapped around Li Yan were severed by a small bullet.

Li Yan fell to the ground, panting heavily. When he looked up, he saw a dazzling golden light emanating from the dimly lit shopping mall. A huge, four-sided die was suspended in the air, spinning at high speed without any pattern or order, as if it were at the beginning of the universe, before the rules were formed.

A man in a black suit and frameless glasses dragged out a corpse covered in roses. The corpse had swollen to the size of a giant, twice the size of the man, yet the man lifted it up with ease.

Li Yan recognized the man's face. He had once mingled among the crowd in Sunset Ruins, struggling forward like all the players who were fanatically chasing their savior, standing on tiptoe to look at the figure surrounded by the people of Tingfeng and Jiuzhou.

In the past few days, public opinion on the game forums has taken a sharp turn for the worse. The person in front of him is no longer seen as his savior, but as a stubborn madman. Just before leaving, Li Yan had started a thread on the forum to criticize him.

"Master Fu...." After catching his breath, Li Yan finally uttered the honorific title.

Lin Jue had already walked some distance when he heard the sound, so he stopped, turned his head slightly, and his silvery-white eyes fell on Li Yan, waiting for him to continue.

Li Yan felt as if those eyes could see through everything, and for a moment he even suspected that the other person already knew what he had done. But it didn't matter; Fu Jue had been criticized for so many years, he probably wouldn't care about his momentary grumbling, right?
Li Yan swallowed hard, took several deep breaths, and said in a hoarse voice, "Thank you for saving me..." He thought for a moment, then murmured, "Jiangcheng is full of strange things now, what should we do in the future?"

The dice of fate continued to spin tirelessly overhead, like the sun, moon, and stars, their radiance illuminating the entire world and draping everything in a hazy cloak of light. Lin Jue lowered his eyes and said, word by word, "I will end all of this."

Li Yan watched Lin Jue's figure disappear into the distance, vanishing along with the light. He remained stunned for a long time before snapping out of his daze and hurriedly ran home.

Before he could even sit down, Li Yan pulled out his phone, went to the game forum, and started typing rapidly.

Ten minutes later, all the players who followed the game forums knew: Fu Jue had returned to Jiangcheng.

……

At 7:00 AM, on the fifth basement floor of the Jiangcheng branch of the Bureau of Mystery Investigation.

The rose-shaped monster captured by Fu Jue was sent to the research lab. Although there were almost no means to remove contamination from human bodies, some attempts had to be made. Many other bizarre creatures of various forms were kept in the containment chamber. The investigators had worked tirelessly for the past seven days and had finally achieved some results.

When the eerie concentration reaches a certain level, it spontaneously generates a chilling aura, turning the entire five underground levels into a cold storage room. Part of the area was converted into a morgue for collecting and observing the bodies of investigators.

Mu Dongxu sat on the edge of an iron bed covered with a white cloth, placed a box of chewing gum on the bedside table, stared at it for a long time, and then took out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and put it on the bed.

"Old Liao also sacrificed himself." Hearing the sound of a door opening and steady footsteps behind him, Mu Dongxu said inexplicably, "Back in March, he and Ning Xu were investigating the Xila Guild together, it feels like it happened just yesterday."

"He did this to cover my retreat. When he ran out of props, he set his clothes on fire to block the vines. I was wondering why this old guy still carried a lighter with him. Turns out he'd never quit smoking in his whole life..."

"Please accept my condolences." The person who entered was Lin Jue, who said something he hadn't said in the past twenty-two years.

Mu Dongxu raised his head, his weary eyes fixed on Lin Jue. He remained silent for a long time, lost in thought. Finally, he asked the question: "Can they really all be resurrected?"

Lin Jue said, "If I achieve final victory after the game ends, I will revive everyone."

"The final instance is over, so why is the world still like this?" "Because the game continues."

Then, another period of silence ensued.

After a long while, Mu Dongxu stood up and walked towards the depths of the morgue: "Chief, let me take you to retrieve that bronze sword."

Lin Jue nodded slightly and silently followed Mu Dongxu, step by step into the cold darkness where one could not see their own hand in front of their face, and through the long, narrow corridor with no end in sight.

In a fleeting moment, light appeared before my eyes. It was a dim, dull bronze light, exuding an ancient aura as if it came from a time before history existed. It was heavy yet warm, making one inexplicably abandon all their chaotic thoughts.

The rusty bronze sword floated in the darkness, silently awaiting sacrifice, awaiting to be picked up.

Lin Jue walked straight over, raised his hand and grasped the sword hilt, instantly learning all the information about the sword.

【Name: Godslayer Sword】

[Type: props]

【Effects: ① Slaying a god; ② At the place where a god falls, all the strange, mysterious, and bizarre things of the past and future will perish】

[Note: The rule that "gods cannot be killed" is nothing more than a fallacy left behind after countless failed attempts by lower life forms. Over billions of years, there have been countless grand ceremonies that used the death of gods as a sacrifice, with all living beings on earth falling silent alongside the dead, offering mourning for the fall of such immense life forms. Afterward, the eeriness, mystery, and grotesqueness that accompanied the gods became history as sacrifices, and the world was reborn.]

“I think,” Lin Jue said, “I know the winning strategy for this round of the game.”

……

At exactly 12:00 noon on May 12, everyone sitting in front of their televisions, regardless of which channel they were watching, had their screens switched to the same image at that very moment.

The pristine white room contained only one chair, upon which sat a man in a suit. The white light reflected from his glasses blurred the emotions in his eyes, or perhaps those silvery-white eyes remained utterly unmoved.

"I am Fu Jue, also known as Lin Jue. I was the president of the Ark Guild and now the Kyushu Guild, as well as the director of the Bureau of Mysterious Investigations." He introduced himself calmly and continued calmly, "In the past thirty-six years, four million people around the world have been swept into a catastrophe called the 'Mysterious Game,' enduring fear and pressure that others cannot know, fighting against the supernatural in the dark, and losing their lives."

The projector off-camera turned on, projecting a dense list of names and forum usernames onto the white wall behind Lin Jue and onto his body, scrolling rapidly. He continued, "Unfortunately, we failed. Those terrifying anomalies crossed the barrier of the anomaly game and rampaged into reality, causing irreversible destruction around the world in the past week, with tens of thousands of people losing their lives in the disaster."

"Fortunately, I have found the source of the disaster and know how to deal with it. I will execute my plan as quickly as possible and restore the collapsed order in the shortest time. Before I win the final victory, those monsters will fight back in an even more frenzied manner, but I guarantee that after my victory, all the dead will be resurrected."

At this point, Lin Jue paused for a moment, seemingly waiting for the audience to process the information.

Half a minute later, he continued, "You might think of me as another madman competing to kill someone with a madman who is trying to destroy the world. The difference is that the world will be reborn after I win this game."

"I might lose, but I'm willing to gamble on the possibility of winning."

The people in front of the television saw the man on the screen tilt his head slightly, and under the changing light, his eyes behind his glasses intently observed everyone, a hesitant smile slowly curving his lips: "What do you think?"

Meanwhile, the official account of the Kyushu Guild, which had been dormant for several days on the eerie gaming forum, released a video.

In the video, Fu Jue's expression was colder than usual, even displaying a kind of condescending and aggressive air. He announced clearly and concisely: "I am Lin Jue, also the Puppet Master, the holder of the two identity cards [Fallen Savior] and [Closed-Eye Dictator]. All players who have had direct or indirect contact with me have been parasitized by my puppet silk."

"Over the past twenty-two years, I have handled a total of 39 Class A incidents, 237 Class B incidents, 1826 Class C incidents, and over ten thousand other incidents related to my puppets. These bizarre incidents are scattered all over the world and will spiral out of control after my heart stops beating."

“The promises made by the Ark Guild and the Kyushu Guild still stand. I will revive everyone after winning the game. So,” he revealed a smile that never appeared on “Fu Jue”’s face but was often on “Lin Jue’s” lips, “you’d better pray that I win.”

There was an uproar.

The two videos were quickly translated into various languages ​​and spread around the world.

After the cognitive distortion effect of the bizarre game was removed, ordinary people who had not been selected for the game flocked to the game forum. With the help of other players, they quickly learned about the game's history and mechanics, and gained a more thorough understanding of Lin Jue's intentions.

Since Siqi is using the bizarre as leverage to coerce the players into attacking Lin Jue, Lin Jue is retaliating in kind, using even more concrete bizarre events as a threat. The players can either choose to stand by and watch, or choose the lesser of two evils and turn their attention to Siqi.

For players, the fact that Lin Jue, Fu Jue, and the Puppet Master are all the same person is shocking enough.

Many players who once admired Lin Jue or Fu Jue felt deceived and hurled insults at the Kyushu Guild's official account, but so what?
Lin Jue chose to reveal his full identity at this moment to convince the players that he would keep his word.

With the reputation of "Lin Jue," he tells everyone that his ultimate goal is always to save humanity; with the infamy of "Puppet Master," he tells those players who bully the weak and fear the strong that he can choose to be as crazy as Siqi, binding the fate of all mankind to a ship in a storm as a bargaining chip against the gods.

In the suburbs of Jiangcheng, Siqi sat in his SUV, laughing so hard he could barely breathe as he held his phone: "Hahahaha! Lin Jue, you've finally taken off that saintly mask and stepped out of that pristine throne into the mud! The savior who claims to be dedicated to saving all of humanity is actually using this bizarre outburst as leverage. How interesting!"

"No matter how much you try to gain fame and fortune, you still ended up on this path, resorting to any means to achieve your ideal of saving the world. Should I say that you and I have always been the same kind of people? It's just that what we seek is different. I want fun, while you want a vague and beautiful ending."

“Yes, you’re right. We’re both egoists who will stop at nothing to achieve our goals.” Lin Jue’s voice on the other end of the phone was as calm as ever. “Then let’s continue this crazy game between the two of us egoists.”

(End of this chapter)