Chapter 14-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player
Chapter 14
The first night after Tomorrow's Dominator descended.
Tian Hui's family suddenly heard a gurgling sound from the living room. The three of them didn't dare make any rash moves. Soon came another frightening commotion—it sounded like a water pipe bursting. Massive amounts of water gushed out of the bathroom, and a catfish at least two meters long smashed through the bathroom door and swam out with the flood.
"My dad's body suddenly started convulsing and he collapsed. My mom tried to grab him, but I pulled her back."
"My Talent ability is electricity-related. I instinctively knew the water on the floor was electrified. My dad had stepped in it and gotten shocked. You can't grab someone in that situation."
"But we couldn't save him in time. The catfish swallowed him..."
Tian Hui's ability also happened to be electrical. If she'd used it, it would only have made things worse. Her mother's ability was to produce a small ball with a strange effect.
Both of them had been frozen by the scene, staring blankly. Screams suddenly erupted throughout the building. Tian Hui immediately grabbed her mother and ran. They fled from the 20th floor down to the ground-floor lobby.
They weren't the only ones struck by disaster. Over a hundred people were crammed shoulder to shoulder in the lobby, crying and shouting.
The electrified water had flooded the apartment floors. The moment someone's feet touched the water, their legs would seize up. Once they lost their balance and fell in, they'd never get up again.
Someone suggested leaving the building. Although the first-floor lobby's ceiling was thicker and sturdier than the upper floors, the electrified water could flow down through the stairwell and seep through the sealed fire doors. With this many people packed so tightly, it could easily trigger a catastrophic stampede.
"I thought the same, but my mom held me down. She said don't draw attention to yourself."
Tian Hui recalled with lingering fear.
The person who'd made the suggestion was goaded by others into going outside to check the situation. She never came back.
Those hiding in the lobby heard terrifying roars and human screams from outside. Some enormous dark shape flashed past the iron doors. The howling night wind beyond sounded like some dreadful warning.
The fear of darkness was etched into human DNA. Everyone unanimously decided to stay in the lobby for now. Old Li the security guard organized a few people to guard the iron doors and fire doors, and they'd reassess when morning came.
Hearing this, Bai Shan thought of the electric catfish she'd seen at the riverside yesterday. How had those things ended up in a perfectly normal building's water pipes?
It quickly came to her—two months ago, someone had dumped catfish into a clogged toilet drain to clear the blockage. The catfish had thrashed around in the pipes, and the noise had made several households think the building was haunted.
Bai Shan pressed her palm to her forehead in exasperation. How many catfish had that idiot dumped in? Or had they actually managed to breed in those conditions?
Moreover, these catfish could use the building's water system to freely invade the city's sewer network. That meant they could appear anywhere in the city!
But now wasn't the time to think about that. Seeing the girl fall silent again, Bai Shan couldn't help asking:
"You were just hiding. Why did it turn into... that?"
Tian Hui sat crouched on the floor, face buried in her hands, her voice muffled.
"The power went out. The lobby lights had been on, then suddenly everything went dark."
Bai Shan frowned in confusion. In that situation, a blackout should have actually been a good thing—electrified water would be even more dangerous with power running, and light sources could attract nocturnal creatures.
But as Tian Hui recounted bit by bit, Bai Shan gradually understood. The blackout truly had been terrifying.
"It was so dark. Everyone was experiencing something like this for the first time. They were already scared."
"Scared that monsters from outside would break in. Scared the fish from upstairs would come down and eat people. Everyone was sitting crammed together on the floor. Some were crying. One man was saying his lame father hadn't made it down in time. A couple was arguing—they'd both forgotten about their child..."
Despair spread among the two hundred-plus people.
"I was crying. My mom seemed to be crying too. Then suddenly, someone stood up."
Bai Shan said, "That security guard old man?"
Tian Hui answered, "No. It was an old woman holding a baby."
Liu Chaoyun? Bai Shan wasn't surprised. She even guessed what the woman had done.
"She used the opportunity to preach to you all, right?" Bai Shan said.
"She said a lot of strange things. Something about great mercy, trials and tribulations, the true god... We were all stunned by her."
Tian Hui still remembered. Moonlight filtered through the ornamental cutouts in the iron door, casting a hazy glow on the old woman. The small, hunched figure stood ramrod straight amid the despairing crowd. Her face showed not a trace of fear or confusion. The mad ravings pouring from her lips—such absurd fervor—somehow brought a bizarre sense of calm to that terrified night.
"We listened to her quietly, until someone suddenly jumped up to argue with her."
"He said the game wasn't here to select believers. Paying money and working for free for some cult wouldn't keep anyone alive. The only way to survive was to kill—"
"He said that he and Old Li's group had gone to kill the banyan tree on the rooftop that evening and gotten zero experience. Only humans counted as players. Only killing players could keep you alive!"
Tian Hui gritted her teeth. The grief in her bloodshot eyes was overtaken by seething rage. A vicious hatred appeared on her still-childish face.
"A woman stood up to argue with him. She said she'd killed a catfish and gotten experience. The man and Old Li's group refused to believe her, called her a liar. The woman's family stood up too. The argument escalated... and then someone threw the first punch!"
Over two hundred people packed into the lobby, practically shoulder to shoulder, foot against foot. Everyone could hear each other breathing. The slightest movement risked hitting an innocent bystander.
And these two hundred-plus people were far from unarmed—every single one had been granted a special ability that day.
In the dim, cramped space, it was impossible to see who was attacking. A blade flew from somewhere. Someone shoved from the side. Some people panicked and instinctively activated the abilities the game had given them. Others drew self-defense weapons they'd been carrying all along.
Screams and roars drowned out reason. In the darkness, there was clearly no enemy—yet every person nearby was lethal, transformed into faceless demons!
"When those people started arguing, my mom was already pulling me toward the fire door. When the fighting broke out, she tried to push the door open and get us upstairs."
"The door wouldn't open! It was like something had locked it. Several of us were pushing together. It wouldn't budge!"
"Not just the fire door—the front door never opened either! Every single one of us was trapped in the lobby!"
"I don't know what hit my mom's shoulder. It kept bleeding... The people behind us kept pushing forward. I was crushed against the door. My mom braced herself to shield me..."
In her desperation, Tian Hui's consciousness blurred. She activated her ability. Her fingers found the gap between the two fire doors, and a bolt of electricity split through the crack!
Finally, the fire door gave slightly—but it only opened a sliver, a crack too narrow for even the thinnest child to squeeze through.
The two doors seemed to be held shut by some force. Tian Hui had no strength left to use her ability again. She peered through the gap and thought she saw thin, elongated shadows on the other side, but her unfocused eyes couldn't make out what they were.
At this point, Tian Hui was sobbing too hard to speak.
The other three remained silent. Any words of comfort would have been hollow. Bai Shan's chest felt so tight she couldn't speak either.
Tian Hui steadied her ragged breathing before continuing: "I thought I was going to die."
"My mom used her ability."
"Her ability is a small ball. She can shrink any person or object and put them inside. It lasts up to 10 minutes."
The woman spent the last of her strength moving her fingers. The small ball was silently tossed through the narrow gap in the door, into the pitch-black, empty stairwell beyond.
"Run! Run!"
Amid the wailing, Tian Hui thought she heard her mother's shout—or perhaps it was only a hallucination.
The ball released upon landing. Tian Hui didn't dare look back. She ran upstairs—into the black, endless upward darkness!
She was afraid that if she turned around, she'd see the dead, staring eyes behind the door crack—the face crushed and twisted beyond recognition, a face that would never laugh or scold or nag at her again.
"I ran to the 15th floor and found a room that wasn't flooded to hide in. Then Grandma Wu upstairs heard me moving around. She had Mochi dangle its tail out the window, and I grabbed it and got pulled up to the 16th floor."
Tian Hui finished recounting everything she'd experienced that night. It was as if all her strength had drained away. She seemed to want to say something more, but her throat could only produce voiceless, broken syllables.
"We understand now. Thank you, Tian Hui. You were truly incredibly brave."
Lin Huijun said with reddened eyes. The hellish scene was agonizing enough just to imagine.
Bai Shan stood nearby, pinching the bridge of her nose. The whole affair was too bizarre, too absurd. For a moment, even she had lost the will to ask more questions.
Too many factors had converged to create this chaotic tragedy. Bai Shan tried to sort through them the way she would a mystery game.
The sudden electric catfish disaster. The crowd packed into the lobby. The scout who never returned. The preaching cultist. The people who started the argument. Whoever threw the first punch. The doors that wouldn't open.
The fuse was the group that had gone to kill the mutated banyan tree.
The most lethal factor was the doors that wouldn't open.
If any single door in the lobby could have been opened, the trapped crowd would have dispersed, and the lobby wouldn't have become a meat grinder.
Who had locked the doors?
Bai Shan suddenly took a deep breath and opened her half-lidded eyes. There was one more thing—the most important, most suspicious detail: where had all the bodies in the lobby gone?
She said slowly, "Tian Hui, you said that group claimed they killed the mutated banyan tree but didn't level up. Right?"
Tian Hui nodded blankly.
"Assuming they weren't lying..."
"Then the only explanation is—they never actually killed that banyan tree!"
Bai Shan swore under her breath, her expression turning ice-cold.
"It played every single one of them!"
The words had barely left her lips, sharp with fury, when the sound of something heavy tumbling echoed from the far end of the corridor. It seemed to come from the stairwell.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Dull impacts rolling down the steps, landing heavy on their taut nerves.
Everyone in the corridor tensed. Bai Shan, standing closest to the outside, made a silent gesture for them to stay quiet. She walked toward the sound alone.
Bai Shan reached the closed fire door. She and Lin Huijun had come up through here just moments ago.
She was genuinely angry now.
The red dart spun in her hand. Bai Shan stared at the fire door, expressionless.
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