Infinite spooky game

Chapter 446 Gods (Seventeen) Hostages and Accomplices

In just three days, the previously chaotic situation quickly stabilized, and reality once again confirmed the conclusions drawn from history: although dictatorial behavior is widely criticized, it is the most effective way to reach a consensus among a loosely organized group of people in a short period of time.

On the third day, Jiangcheng lifted its lockdown. Although the rose monsters within the city had not been completely eradicated, they were successfully contained to a few specific areas thanks to the intervention of Lin Jue and his team of investigators. The main roads were reopened to traffic, and some skilled and daring individuals gradually returned to the city.

On May 16, the SUV drove to a workshop converted from an abandoned warehouse in the suburbs of Jiangcheng.

Siqi got out of the car first, opened the dilapidated door, and, smelling the strong formalin odor, slightly curved his lips into a smile.

This is where it all began. I still remember that evening two months ago when Liu Ajiu was controlled by the puppet threads and brought to this studio. She used her own death to grant him the qualification to enter the bizarre game, as part of the deal between Lin Jue and Qi.

In just two months, he went from being clueless but enthusiastic at the beginning, unleashing the malice he had suppressed and hidden for the past twenty-two years in the dungeon; to now stirring up trouble, no longer confined to the realm of bizarre games, but preparing to plan a crazy curtain call in reality... It was like a dream, as if he had been transported to another world.

Since creating a specimen covered with frogs after finishing "Frog Hospital," Siqi hasn't been here for a long time, whether due to a lack of inspiration or time constraints.

Fortunately, apart from the old house in Jinjiang Community, this studio was the place where he spent the most time in the past six years, and the time he spent away from it was not enough to diminish his familiarity with the place.

He picked up a towel from the shelf with practiced ease, wiped the dust off the workbench and chair, rummaged through the pile of clutter in the corner and found an old-fashioned record player, plugged in the power cord, randomly grabbed a record and put it on, and then placed the stylus on the vinyl record.

The low, soothing music lingered in the small, dimly lit space.

"I watched the world I knew unwind..."

“A sculpture shaped within my mind…”

"And in the silence, I stand alone..."

"A king upon a shattered throne..."

Siqi strolled leisurely through the corridor, methodically checking every corner to make sure no one else had been there since he left, his eyes gradually narrowing into slits.

As a puppeteer who had once sent puppets to the door, Lin Jue knew the location of this studio. He could have easily set up an ambush here with just one command, so why didn't he do it?
Siqi absolutely did not believe that Lin Jue was trying to establish a fair game with him out of mutual respect. With Lin Jue's intelligence, he could also deduce Siqi's suspicions at this moment.

The intention behind Wuhan's recent lifting of lockdown is quite clear.

"Are you trying to tell me that Jiangcheng has laid a trap, just waiting for me to walk right into it and be caught like a turtle in a jar, and that once I enter Jiangcheng, your chances of winning will be more than double what they were when I was outside the city..." Qi Si stared at the hands-free phone on the worktable, his expression a half-smile, "Are you putting all this out in the open to bluff and bet that I won't enter Jiangcheng?"

“Although I don’t know the reason, I think you must have a reason to return to Jiangcheng. So no matter what information I present, it will not affect your next actions, so I don’t need to waste manpower and resources to make additional arrangements.” Lin Jue’s voice, amplified by the phone, sounded even more inorganic and calm, as if he were just an objective data analysis machine.

He paused, then asked, "But I still want to know, did I bet right?"

Siqi laughed out loud: "In this situation, no matter what I say, I doubt you'll believe it, so I don't think I need to waste my time. But I'm very curious—"

"You kept saying you would stay in Shangri-La, so why did you suddenly return to Jiangcheng before me, who openly declared I was going back?"

"You can interpret it as me deliberately releasing false information to avoid being intercepted en route; or you can interpret it as me having a sure way to deal with you, afraid that you wouldn't dare come after knowing I'm in Jiangcheng." Lin Jue's voice carried a long-lost smile. "Si Qi, what do you think?"

"You said I had reasons to return to Jiangcheng. So whatever I think won't affect the future developments, right?" Si Qi asked with a smile before hanging up the phone.

A grand enough stage will inevitably be bathed in tens of thousands of spotlights, with dazzling light filling every corner, leaving no room for conspiracies and tricks, and only open and aboveboard schemes can be brought to the table.

The room for choice had long been exhausted at countless crossroads in the past. Everyone was pushed by fate onto a track that led directly to the final destination. They either remained in place and hesitated, or walked along the only road toward the predetermined ending.

Siqi needs to return to Jiangcheng to retrieve Qisi's body; otherwise, he will always remain an incomplete ghost. The authority of the ancestral god will not condescend to reside in a flawed vessel, and he is destined to lose the right to compete for ultimate victory.

Therefore, even knowing it was a trap, he still stepped into it, betting that Lin Jue's preparations were not as thorough as he thought.

"If Qi Si were here, what would he choose?" A thought suddenly popped into Si Qi's mind, and he chuckled.

There is a fundamental difference between a calm con artist and a crazy gambler. Rather than going into a roulette game with an unknown chance of winning alone, a con artist would probably plan and scheme from multiple angles, increase their chances of winning over a long period of time, and then strike with all their might to win.

Perhaps this is indeed the most rational choice, but Siqi dislikes meticulously planning every step and then reaping a predetermined victory or defeat; that would be far too boring, and he would rather die immediately.

Another half hour passed before Siqi finally finished tidying up the studio and issued new instructions through the soul contract.

Yu Jinsheng, Shuo Meng, and Jiang Junjue got out of the car one after another, and their condition was visibly terrible.

Shuo Meng and Jiang Junjue each lit a cigarette and smoked, their pale complexions from the long journey improving slightly.

Yu Jinsheng, leaning against the car door, vomited violently. After entering the studio, he casually lay down on the workbench, half-dead and like a corpse. Si Qi looked at him for a while, resting his chin on his hand, and said expressionlessly, "Before you, there were fifty-nine corpses lying on that table. Their final fate was basically that I emptied their internal organs and preserved them with formaldehyde."

"Old Qi, don't forget that at least half of those fifty-nine corpses were obtained by me. Do you think I'd care about that?" Yu Jinsheng turned his back to Si Qi, looking completely unconcerned. "Speaking of which, can you give me a straight answer? You've led us on this long journey, only to end up the same place as Old Lin. What exactly are you trying to do? I've been living in fear every day. I can't take any more frights. You might as well just give me a quick death..."

Siqi silently picked up a scalpel, a gentle smile on his face: "I can grant your request. Do you want it dissected alive or dead?"

Yu Jinsheng: "I was just kidding, please don't take it seriously! I'm my dad's only son, can you bear to let him outlive his son? By the way, do you remember my dad? Six years ago, when you lived with us, your favorite dish was his mango stewed pork ribs..."

Shuo Meng and Jiang Junjue: "..."

During the few days on the bus, the two members of the Listening Wind Guild witnessed a side of their temporary guild leader that no one else knew. By now, they had become numb to it and had become accustomed to his shamelessness and lack of moral boundaries.

Whether it was because he had worn the mask for too long and couldn't take it off, or because Yu Jinsheng was naturally accustomed to showing the face most conducive to his survival, even though his identity had been exposed, he still acted like Jin Yusheng in front of Si Qi, as if all the discord had never happened and they were still treacherous friends.

Si Qi was already aware of Yu Jinsheng's shamelessness, and let him deceive himself. After slightly frightening him and satisfying a certain perverse pleasure, he opened his phone's memo app and quickly typed out line after line of entries.

He wrote more than twenty lines, exported the file and sent it to an encrypted account, then dialed a number: "Bob, I need you to prepare everything mentioned in the file I sent you within 24 hours. Name your price, and I'll pay you after the situation stabilizes."

Bob's voice on the other end of the phone was somber: "Qi, I've heard about what's been happening all this time, even from as far away in North America. I might be able to help you with minor troubles normally, but do you know how serious this is?"
“The entire federal county has issued the highest level of arrest warrants for you. Any agency that has your whereabouts will do whatever it takes to kill you on the spot, and no one connected to you will be spared... I'm not young anymore, and I've made enough money. I just want to retire early, find a secluded place, and spend my old age in peace with a bunch of bikini-clad beauties…”

“If I remember correctly, you’re only forty years old this year.” Siqi casually grabbed a knife from the tool rack and toyed with it in his hand. “Of course, I have no interest in interfering with your life choices, but since the Federation hasn’t found you yet, it’s enough to show that our transaction method is secretive enough. Don’t you plan to make one last big score before you retire?”

“Friend, this is the last time I’ll call you that. Putting aside whether I’ll live to spend this money, I only know that not all money in this world can be earned.” Bob’s tone turned cold and hard. “You are now at odds with all of humanity, doing something more terrible than all the terrorists of all time combined. I used to think you were just like those bloodthirsty guys, just with some weird hobbies, but I never imagined you were this crazy, that you really wanted to destroy all of humanity.”

"so?"

"I am, after all, a human being with a heart, with family and friends. I have indeed done many immoral things for money in the past, but if one day humanity faces the crisis of destruction, I will definitely stand in front without hesitation. I also advise you to stop now. What good do you do by doing things that harm others and yourself? We are, after all, living among people. If humanity is destroyed, where will we go?"

Bob patiently and persistently tried to persuade him, and it was clear that he truly regarded Chester, or rather, his old customer, as a "friend." Therefore, instead of reporting him directly to the Bureau of Investigation and Statistics, he futilely tried to persuade him to turn back from his misguided ways.

If it were Qi Si, he might use persuasive tactics to induce Bob to believe his fallacies and offer help, but for Si Si, there are simpler and more direct methods.

“Bob, listen to me. I’ve always been curious. You know my character so well, so why do you trust me so much and work with me so confidently for so many years?” The young man sighed dramatically, but a strange smile spread across his lips, as if he couldn’t help but chuckle at what he was about to say.

He smiled, then adopted a storytelling tone: "I remember, three years ago you adopted a girl, the granddaughter of the master who brought you into this profession. Your master was attacked and chopped into eight pieces by his enemies, and you arrived at the last moment to save the girl. You were still too late, but thankfully not too late to save her. You felt deep remorse and guilt, and transformed that into meticulous protection for the girl... She's on a small island in Hawaii now, right?"

“Qise, what do you mean?” Bob’s voice rose in agitation. “You bastard! You shouldn’t have used her to threaten me…”

“Sorry, then I’ll use a different threat.” Siqi put down the knife in his hand, leaned back in his chair and adjusted to a more comfortable position. “Remember the vial of medicine I asked you to take to North America and pour into the Mississippi River? Why were you so naive as to think you weren’t infected with the insomnia germ? By the way, I have to thank you, my accomplice, Mr. Bob, for the spread of this kind of bizarre ‘insomnia germ’ in North America.”

“Bastard…bastard…” the man growled angrily into the phone.

Siqi ignored him, his smile as mask-like as a mask: "I did consider the possibility that you're not afraid of death. But think about it, a little girl all alone, her grandfather is involved in a business of making enemies, and now she only has 'Uncle Bob' to rely on. If you were to die unexpectedly, how helpless she would be?"

"You will be punished..."

“Alright, I won’t waste your precious ‘retirement time’.” Siqi glanced at the time on his phone. “I hope to see what I need outside my studio by noon tomorrow. I’ll transfer the money to you as promised.”

He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and tapped the music rhythm on the handlebars.

The index and middle fingers flew back and forth, dancing wildly and erratically on the platform carved from redwood, making a frantic "clattering" noise.

The song on the record had been played countless times, and the latest version was just coming to an end.

"A world remade by my own hand..."

"But no one left to understand..."

“The final move is on the board…

"Just me and the storm I adored."

Amidst the repetitive music, the young man suddenly chuckled very softly: "Clearly disregarding the law and leaving a trail of infamy in the shadows, yet still insisting on upholding the moral principles of humanity; with the opportunity to perform on the world's stage right before your eyes, you still need external force to coerce you onto the stage to dance. I didn't expect you to be such a boring fellow..."

(End of this chapter)