Chapter 20

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Chapter 20: Star Death Reality Show (III)

“You’re insane!” Janet said in front of everyone in the room.

Annie looked at her pityingly. “With your knowledge, I’m sure you haven’t heard of the mass extinction hundreds of years ago, have you?”

Janet huffed through her nose to cover up her embarrassment at that moment—she really didn’t know.

Xue Jiahui, the newscaster, made a guess: “Do you mean the mass extinction caused by space alien contact?”

Annie lifted her eyelids and glanced at her. Xue Jiahui looked her in the eye calmly and smiled: “I happened to do a program about amphioctopuses, so I know a little about them. They’re a heterogeneous species with intelligence, which breeds in humans in a parasitic way. At that time, they lacked vigilance against this creature, and the parasitized humans rarely showed differences. Even the people closest to them could hardly find abnormalities, making it difficult to realize. A large number of amphioctopuses bred and all humans on the whole planet became infected and parasitized in a very short time, so the amphioctopuses are also called civilization killers.”

“Why haven’t we heard of this powerful creature?” Mark, the black man, wondered.

“Later, they discovered an instrument that could test whether one was infected by an amphioctopus, and with the special weapons against amphioctopuses, they gradually eliminated them. Deep Sea Religion developed and expanded in that special era, and their belief in Leviathan came from the ampiooctopus, whose practitioners believed that Leviathan would eventually rule the universe. That is to say, amphioctopuses would eventually rule the universe. And we humans are just containers for octopus reproduction,” Xue Jiahui said slowly and stared at Annie. “Am I right, Annie?”

“Cults,” Janet muttered, looking at Annie’s eyes like she was a crazy believer.

Annie curved her mouth and said nothing.

After this episode, the people continued to discuss their plans for the next few days.

First of all, there were the various necessities for life; because they were hidden in different places in this village by the program company, everyone had to actively look for them. The morning of the first day was designated as the search time, and the thirteen people would be free to form teams to look for them. They would wait until lunchtime then gather in this church, where they would discuss what was collected and exchange materials with each other. In the afternoon, they would leave it to everyone to make their own arrangements. They could continue to look for materials, tidy up their room, or have contact with other contestants.

In his memories, Qi Leren searched for materials together with Dr. Lu and Du Yue. One morning; this time was neither short nor long. The three people were lucky enough to find enough food and water for three people for two days and were quite happy with these materials.

When they returned to the central church, Qi Leren’s group saw many people gathered around a big round table having a heated discussion.

“This is a stone? But why is it shining?” Jing Siyu poked the fist-sized stone with her finger curiously, but the stone made no response.

“Could it be a special ore?” Xue Jiahui reasonably speculated. “There are indeed some ores in the universe with fluorescence, it’s very common.”

“Aragonite, selenite, or baryte?” He Yi reported the names of several common glowing ores out of at least ten or twenty kinds. No one would bother to remember such things unless they were workers engaged in related professions.

“Never mind what it is. Oh for god’s sake, I want to eat something first.” Janet made an exaggerated appearance of hunger.

“Where did you find it?” Mark asked.

Lara pursed her lips: “Francis and I were in a cave to the west of the village. It was quite hidden. If I hadn’t just tripped over some rocks, I probably wouldn’t have found that there was a cave there at all.”

Francis added: “There are white vines outside the cave.”

Janet suddenly laughed with a sloped voice. “You don’t have to go into so much detail, or I’ll think you were looking for a place where there was no one so you could do something.”

Lara frowned and stared at Janet, but she obviously didn’t want to quarrel with this woman: “It was dark in the cave. Fortunately I found a flashlight before, so we searched inside. Unfortunately, there was no material, but I found this shining stone covered by a pile of other stones.”

They discussed it for a while and finally felt that it wasn’t important, so they threw it aside and began to exchange materials.

Watching this memory, Qi Leren’s heart was broken—handsome guys, beautiful women, haven’t you seen horror movies? Such an obvious death flag has been raised! With his hands on his thighs, he thought about what was going to happen next: an “alien” would come out of the stone, and then all of you would die.

This was really a routine among routines. All the horror films had been used up.

After the exchange ended, everyone was ready to clean their rooms. Qi Leren’s trio left last, followed by He Yi who looked thoughtful.

“What’s the matter?” From this first person perspective, Qi Leren saw He Yi suddenly stop and look back at the glowing stone that was shelved in the corner.

“…I feel that it’s a bit strange,” He Yi murmured.

“What’s strange?” Qi Leren wondered.

“The program organizers said that this was an abandoned village where no corpses were found, so at first I thought that the villagers had left this inconvenient village one after another and went to a more suitable city, so it was naturally abandoned. But this morning, I went into several houses to search and there were even cooked meals on their dining tables that were left frozen in ice. Obviously when they left they had already prepared to eat. And suddenly, I found some residents’ necessities, even family photos, which they should have taken with them when they moved. What caused them to leave the place where they lived in such a hurry and never come back? This is too strange and completely unreasonable.” He Yi looked back at the glowing stone again and murmured, “This is really strange…”

As Qi Leren watched this, he burst into tears. Big brother, I vote for you as the best today. You are the only one in the whole team who’s not blind and clueless!

There was nothing worth noting in the memories of the afternoon, as Qi Leren in the memory tidied up his own house. His house wasn’t too remote, but he wasn’t in the central area but in the northeast corner of the village. The nearest contestants were Lara and Annie. To say nothing of Annie, among the NPCs this time, Lara seemed to have the aura of a movie heroine, while Francis, who had worked with her before, was the most like a movie hero.

If this was a horror movie with romantic elements, then these two people should have mutual affection in a dangerous environment. Finally, the hero should die for the heroine, and the heroine should survive successfully. After all, the survival rate of heroines in these American horror movies was simply a routine!

If these two people were the leading roles, it seemed that Janet was the most vicious woman. This drama queen had been devoted to standing out, and she had an inexplicable envy and hate for Lara. She would toss out many roadblocks in the next six days.

Alex, on the other hand, could play the role of the vicious male partner. He obviously had a good impression on Janet and was simply a living candidate.

I’m afraid Annie was the most like a double crosser—a person adverse to the rest of the people who was very likely to play a key role, as was the same with religious elements, crazy believers, Leviathan worship, and the mysterious glowing stone… These disturbing messages could eventually be related to Annie. One more thing: when everyone gathered in the church to look at the stone, Annie didn’t show up. She only showed her face at dinner time, because she felt uncomfortable and had been resting in her room. When searching for materials in the morning, Mark, the black man, had acted with her, and he also confirmed this—Annie was in poor health.

Compared with the foreign group, the Chinese group had a peaceful atmosphere. The Jing sisters and Xue Jiahui weren’t troublemakers. They had been working with He Yi the whole time. They had not only found a lot of materials, but also suffered no injuries. He Yi took good care of all three girls.

At night, everyone rested in their own rooms. The night was extremely bright, but after closing the doors and windows, the room darkened. Qi Leren verbally turned off the invisible camera that followed him and fell asleep in bed until the next morning.

Early the next morning, the story memories instilled in his brain ended and Qi Leren was free to manipulate his body, which also meant that this round of the horror games had officially started.

Qi Leren carefully examined his skill cards. At present he had three card slots, but there were a lot of skill cards: [S/L Data], [Rain-Day Laundry], [Primary Fighting Skills], [Devil Etiquette], [Blood-Infused Dagger] and [Secretly Observing]. Items included [Prophet’s Heart] and [Favorable Rations], as well as some succubus crystals, holy water, three miniature bombs, a Smith Wesson 625 model, a player’s self-made charger, and a physical strength recovery medicine recommended by Chen Baiqi.

Worse, considering that the mission was broadcast on the cameras for most of the time, anything he took out would expose his abnormal identity. Once more than half of the audience were suspicious of his identity, it would lead to the reward being cleared and the survival days being reversed. Assuming that he couldn’t solve this problem, this game round almost bid farewell to skills and items.

It seemed that only [Secretly Observing] and [Rain-Day Laundry] could be equipped all the time, since even if they were used, the audience wouldn’t see the effect, while [Primary Fighting Skills] could, but because the effect was limited, it can only be said that it was better than nothing.

Qi Leren also imagined with bad taste about if he suddenly used [Prophet’s Heart] and instantly summoned an archangel to fight alongside himself. He was afraid the audience sitting in front of the screen would collectively combust… He didn’t know if doing so would lead to “the audience questioning the player’s identity”, so maybe he should pave the way for this identity, so as to avoid the audience’s worldviews breaking up at a critical moment.

At 7:40, after washing, Qi Leren walked out of his house and headed for the church because at eight o'clock, the speaker installed in the church would announce who was the best yesterday, and no one wanted to miss this answer.

The temperature in the polar region was extremely low, but Qi Leren didn’t feel cold. After Maria gave him the blessing of holy light, his resistance to cold had been greatly improved. Besides, there was this temperature-regulating suit created by the futuristic science here. Although it was only a thin layer, it kept his body from getting frostbite.

“Qi Leren, Qi Leren!” At the church doors, Dr. Lu and Du Yue waved at him from a distance. The houses they were assigned to were relatively close and they came together in the morning.

“Qianbei, did you sleep well last night?” Du Yue asked enthusiastically. The look in his eyes reminded Qi Leren of the big dog he had had when he was a child. So shiny!

“Not bad, good morning.” Because it was the task period, Qi Leren no longer used to getting up on time every day to buy breakfast for Chen Baiqi and Sissi.

“Hey, how are you feeling?” Dr. Lu winked at the Qi Leren.

Now they were being recorded by cameras all the time. According to the regulations, they couldn’t reveal their player identities, or at least they couldn’t be discovered by the audiences hundreds of millions of light-years away. Otherwise, this mission would be in vain and they would be deducted for 30 survival days, which could be described as heavy losses.

So they exchanged a look tacitly and prepared to exchange mission information after turning off the cameras at night and entering private time.

At 7:50, everyone gathered together, waiting for the little speaker to tell them who was yesterday’s “Best of the Day”.

“What about Jing Siyu and Jing Sixue?” He Yi looked at the crowd and thought of the sisters who hadn’t appeared yet.

“Did they oversleep?” Xue Jiahui said.

“It’s impossible that both of them overslept. Yesterday Sixue said that, after getting up in the morning, she would go to Siyu first and they would come together.” He Yi hesitated, “I’ll go and have a look.”

Going in, Qi Leren’s heart gave a “ba-dump” and he couldn’t help looking through the door into the depths of the church. Yesterday, they had just thrown the glowing stone into the inner room. He bet that, as the task background had stated, the stone must have been broken at this time and there was dried mucus inside…

There was something that, unnoticed by the program company’s life detectors, grew in this “stone” and then hatched.

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HELP, HELP HELP, MY SISTER!” There was a rush of running outside the church, and the sound of falling down. They ran to the door only to see Jing Sixue jump up in panic and grab He Yi’s hand like a lifeline. “My sister fell! In her house, there’s a basement… The door is stuck, I can’t open it, save her, go and save her!”

At 8 o'clock, a mechanical female voice came from the room behind them: “Now broadcasting the voting results. The winner for the first day’s Best of the Day is: He Yi.”

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