Chapter 26-Game Descent: I Am the Sole Player

Chapter 26

The two of them made their way with heavy hearts to the Qianxi Town Senior Activity Centre — only to find it nothing like the grey, dispiriting place they had imagined.

Red banners celebrating the Lunar New Year were strung across the entrance. Out in the small courtyard, a number of elderly residents sat sunning themselves, stretching their limbs like wrinkled old trees. From the mahjong room came the clatter clatter of tiles and the murmur of local dialects. In the main hall, an old film was playing on DVD, the crisp enunciation of its actors carrying a warm, nostalgic weight.

"Those who have forgotten their names, please follow me~ Now let us worship happiness~"

A cheerful dance tune played from the speakers. Bai Shan had the disorienting feeling she had wandered into a parallel world — no game, no apocalypse, just an ordinary afternoon.

In the main hall, a white-haired old woman was pushing a wheelchair. Seated in it was an elderly woman so ancient she had lost all her teeth. The sounds she made no longer formed complete syllables, yet the woman pushing her chatted with her as though there were no barrier at all.

"Mother, you really are something — you've lived to see it all!"

They were mother and daughter.

The ancient woman — who looked at least ninety — worked her toothless mouth, making soft, babbling sounds like a small child. Whatever she was saying, her seventy-year-old daughter was thoroughly exasperated: "Your dying won't make things easy for me either. The world has changed — I've told you how many times now, and it never sticks!"

The old woman suddenly stretched out a trembling hand, mouth opening and closing with great agitation, pointing toward Bai Shan and Lin Huijun as they came through the door. Her daughter reached out and gently pressed the hand back down.

"Your eldest daughter is the one pushing your chair right now. The other one's in the city. Those two are not your daughters. Your youngest is sixty-six years old!"

The old woman kept on babbling insistently. Lin Huijun stepped forward and greeted her sweetly: "Hello, Grandma."

"You two are the ones the mayor sent? So young."

The woman pushing the wheelchair looked them up and down. Her hair was white, but she had an alert, energetic air about her — grey knit cardigan over a red volunteer's vest, clearly one of the staff here.

Lin Huijun said: "Are you the person in charge here? My classmate and I have come to keep this place safe. If there's any danger, please alert us — don't treat us like children who need looking after."

"Children who need looking after? At your age I was already doing every kind of work there was, and doing it well. When this game thing started, I hit level 5 on the very first day — faster than any of you young people, I'd say."

Su Cuifang wheeled her elderly mother off to join the other residents watching the old film, then led Bai Shan and Lin Huijun on a tour of the premises.

It turned out that before the game descended, Su Cuifang had bought a fat, sturdy pig to slaughter for the New Year.

On the day the game arrived, the pig went berserk and started mauling her neighbour. In a panic, Su Cuifang was already calculating how much she'd owe in compensation — her entire savings, probably — and in a surge of fury, she picked up a spade and killed the pig on the spot.

It was only afterward, when the town staff came around to explain, that she learned what the game was. The pig she had killed was no ordinary pig — it was a mutated one.

And the spade she had grabbed without thinking — that wasn't an ordinary spade either. It turned out to be her ability: she could conjure a spade out of thin air.

"After that I helped people kill a few more of those animals. They told me I'd reached level 5 — meaning I could keep living."

"As for my mum — there's nothing to be done. Her eyes are gone, her legs are gone, her teeth are gone, her mind is going. None of my brothers or sisters came back. In the end it's just me with her for these last few days."

"My mum had a watchdog. When I got here, it had grown two heads! It was chewing on something in its mouth — I thought she was certainly done for, but as it turned out the dog hadn't touched her. It was still guarding the door."

"I wanted my mum to kill the dog — kill it to level up, level up to survive. My mum either didn't want to or didn't understand. Refused to pick up the knife no matter what."

"So I gave up. At her age she really shouldn't be put through all that. Tomorrow she can go in peace, and I can carry on with life a little lighter."

Su Cuifang went on and on, grumbling about her mother — the picky eating, always treating her like a stranger. Bai Shan had expected to feel irritated by this kind of roundabout domestic chatter, but she surprised herself with her patience. She didn't interrupt. She didn't reach for her earphones.

Perhaps it was that ordinary worries like these were too precious in this era — and would only grow rarer.

"Cuifang, are you holding these two kids hostage again? If you're so capable, why aren't you out there helping!"

Another old woman of about the same age as Su Cuifang passed by, cracking open peanuts and tossing the shells out the window without a second thought.

"Wu Sanmei, I've only got a C-rank ability and I'm already level 5. You're only in your sixties — young, with a higher-rank ability than mine — and you're just sitting here waiting to die. Aren't you ashamed?"

Su Cuifang shot back without ceremony. The two traded barbs with the easy familiarity of people who had known each other a very long time.

"Young — where do you get 'young' from? I don't understand all your fancy words. You're the one who's ancient and still won't accept fate. Die is die. I'm not going to drag it out the way you are!" The peanut-cracking woman retorted.

Su Cuifang gave a snort. "Better to live badly than die well. You'd best not come crying to me tomorrow noon, saying you don't want to die…"

The Senior Activity Centre had taken in over a hundred elderly residents. Some were simply too old, their minds too far gone to participate in the game at all. Others were sharp and still mobile, but unwilling to enter this new era — rejecting the brutal changes with quiet, stubborn refusal.

For rural elderly people, death had always been an ordinary thing. A man who fell in the fields, an old woman who passed away in her own home — these were the stuff of casual conversation over tea, spoken of lightly. Death was easier to accept than struggling for survival in an unknown world.

"Cuifang, not everyone is like you. Me — my greatest wish is for those unfilial children to come back and see me one last time. Just one more look…"

The peanut woman muttered as she shuffled away. Su Cuifang glanced back after her, then led Bai Shan and Lin Huijun onward.

"Her children are all in the city. The drive is barely an hour. If they were going to come back, they'd have come already. If they turn up today or tomorrow — I honestly don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing."

Su Cuifang said it with a low, heavy sigh.

Back in the supply room, she handed the two of them each a red volunteer's vest. Even in winter, Bai Shan stuck to her casual, simple sportswear — paired with the white wired earphones she always wore, it gave her a kind of effortless, offhand cool.

That cool was promptly ruined by a vest printed with "Qianxi Town Volunteer."

Bai Shan raked a hand through her fluffy hair. Faced with Su Cuifang's stream of "good, good," "very smart," and other compliments, she ultimately failed to refuse the vest.

"…Fine," Bai Shan conceded. "Lin Huijun, you watch inside. I'll take the roof."

Within the Activity Centre, some elderly residents were still able to move around on their own. Bai Shan was well-practised in assuming the worst of human nature — they needed to guard against threats both outside and within.

She leaned close to Lin Huijun's ear. "Don't let your guard down. Plenty of bad people get old."

"I understand. I won't go easy on anyone who means harm."

Hearing Lin Huijun's answer, Bai Shan actually felt a flicker of worry. The distinction between good and evil was a very complicated proposition. People who clung to it too rigidly tended to lead very exhausting lives.

Lin Huijun — Mayor Zhong Xile too — they were both people driven by a deep sense of mission. If Tomorrow's Dominator had invaded their computers back in the day, they would surely have played like saviours.

Being a saviour was too exhausting. Bai Shan had no desire to live for some grand cause — even if, objectively speaking, a certain heavy mission had already attached itself to her whether she liked it or not.

But Bai Shan still held to her position: I don't live for everyone, and everyone need not live for me.

Perhaps she would survive to the end of the game. Perhaps she would die along the way. This was her own game, and she would see it through with a player's mentality. Victory needed no gratitude; dying midway required no apology to the world.

Bai Shan pulled on the large padded coat Su Cuifang had force-fed her — sportswear, red vest, flower-print padded coat — she was beyond commenting on the outfit at this point. She picked up a stool and climbed the stairwell to the roof.

The Senior Activity Centre was not small. The buildings formed a concave shape, wrapping around a small courtyard in the centre.

Bai Shan kept watch from the fourth-floor roof. The wind was cold. She reluctantly admitted that the flower-print coat did have its uses.

She chose the best vantage point and set down her stool. From here she could see the stretch of concrete road approaching from the other side, and anyone — vehicle or person — drawing near would be spotted immediately.

Looking further still, she could even make out the basketball court.

The sun inched westward. Down on the basketball court, a car that had been parked there for three days finally started its engine.

The man driving had sunken cheeks, like a refugee who hadn't eaten in days. His lips were moving, his mind clearly no longer lucid.

Shen Yang watched yet another car drive away into the sun. She climbed into a nearby vehicle and put her arms around her friend's shoulders. "Xiao Shu, if you don't go now it'll be dark. It's more dangerous in the dark!"

Xiao Shu, glassy-eyed, shoved Shen Yang away and broke down: "I don't want to walk into my own death! I'd rather be erased by the game than end up like Teacher Song — pecked to death by chickens…"

"Shen Yang, please — you've already reached level 5. Stop hovering in front of me. When I look at you, I feel… you understand, don't you?"

Faced with the resentful look in the eyes of a friend she'd had for four years of university, Shen Yang froze. She climbed out of the car in a daze and stood there numbly, keeping vigil over the car from which the sound of weeping came.

Up on the fourth-floor roof, Bai Shan was adjusting the handgun she'd obtained from the mayor when her ear twitched — she caught the sound of an engine roaring in from a distance.

She looked up. The staff member in the gatehouse had already raised their megaphone and was shouting: "Stop the vehicle! Stop the vehicle! Or you will be shot on sight!"

The yellow car accelerated, tearing down the newly paved village road as if it had nothing to lose.

Bai Shan put the gun away and picked up a compound bow from the ground.

She had found this compound bow in the corner of the RV. She had no training with archery and no natural accuracy — but with [Tyrannical Command]'s telekinetic force behind it, she could become a dead-eye archer, and any arrow she loosed would be driven by greatly amplified force. Firearms worked on the same principle.

She also had [Inextinguishable Sun Flame], a level-50 unlocked item similar in nature to Lin Huijun's ability — a flame that could incinerate anything, attachable to any object.

[Inextinguishable Sun Flame] loaded onto an arrow would give excellent power and mobility.

Bai Shan decided to try the compound bow first.

Left hand gripping the bow, right hand drawing the string to full draw, Bai Shan narrowed her eyes. The arrow was on the string, she was about to release — and then something unexpected happened.

"That's my son's car! Don't shoot! That's my son!"

An elderly woman burst out from inside. Bai Shan recognised her from her clothing — it was the woman who had been bickering with Su Cuifang just now.

The staff member on duty ran out of the safety of the gatehouse to grab her. The old woman erupted with a sudden burst of strength, shoved the staff member aside, and ran toward the car.

Downstairs, Lin Huijun burst out too. She was fast — she went to intercept the old woman — but the man had already gotten out of the car, and the two were running toward each other and throwing their arms around one another.

Seeing that, Lin Huijun's forward steps faltered.

A yellow car. Bai Shan remembered this one — it had arrived at the basketball court before they did, which meant this "devoted son" had been back in his hometown for three days already. And he was only coming to "visit" his mother now?

Bai Shan released.

The arrow cut the air with a sharp crack and flew straight down toward the man below.

The cold arrowhead struck him dead between the eyes. He collapsed with his eyes wide open, taking his mother down with him.

A small, cold knife had been slipped into the old woman's chest the moment they embraced. Blood from the man's brow ran down and mingled with the old woman's warm blood, and the two of them lay together on the ground.

Bai Shan looked down from her high vantage point. The sunlight was brilliant — bright enough to sting the eyes. Wu Sanmei's back had been to her the whole time. She couldn't know — what expression had been on Wu Sanmei's face in that last moment? Was it the quiet satisfaction of seeing her child one final time? Or did she feel, in those last seconds, that a life like this had perhaps not been worth it?

Bai Shan didn't know. Lin Huijun didn't know.

Even Su Cuifang, who had bickered with Wu Sanmei her entire life, didn't know. She stood at the entrance, thinking back to a time long past — the two of them wading through the paddies together, catching fish and shrimp — unable to reconcile that memory with the figure lying not far away.

"Take that body — the one with the arrow — and put it at the road entrance."

The people below were gathered around the two bodies, seemingly unsure what to do, perhaps still not recovered from what they had just witnessed. The voice from above drew every gaze upward.

Everyone looked up without thinking.

Bai Shan slung the compound bow back over her shoulder. Sunlight lay across the tips of her fluffy hair. Her expression was unmoved — steady as a banner planted in the ground, giving everyone a direction to face.

"Use that body to show certain people what happens when they come here."

Her words were cold, and in a moment like this they carried an odd, grounding sense of safety.

The red-vest staff below immediately grabbed the man's body by the feet and began dragging it toward the road entrance, just as Bai Shan had said.

Lin Huijun and Su Cuifang, side by side, their expressions complicated, carried Wu Sanmei's body away.

On the roof, Bai Shan sat back down on her stool. She held the compound bow against her chest, her gaze empty.

She was waiting for dark.

The night breeds fear — and it breeds malice. This was the final night of the game's first phase.

Past this night, at noon tomorrow, the mechanical voice would announce the end of Phase One of Tomorrow's Dominator — and the beginning of Phase Two.

The leaderboard would open seven days into Phase Two. The top 100 players would receive SS-rank item rewards. Bai Shan was confident she'd be on the leaderboard — she just wasn't sure of her placing. Somewhere in the middle would be ideal. She didn't want to draw too much attention.

She opened her game panel. The real-time player count in the upper right corner read: 626,374,829.

In a blink — 626,369,273.

Nearly five thousand people gone in one second.

Bai Shan guessed the real-time death toll over the seven days would follow a U-shaped curve — the first two days and the last two would be where the numbers peaked.

The night was here. Let the revelry begin.

Bai Shan nocked another arrow, aiming at the creature that had appeared at the far end of the road.

*

← Previous Chapter Next Chapter →