Chapter 38 - Analysis
translator: xiin
editors: apricot & juurensha
Inside the Crosson Show studio, the two instructors were focusing on the camera that showed Azure People’s Entertainment’s trainees, and the scrolling comments were full of laughter.
The person responsible for monitoring all the cameras in the background was suddenly caught by surprise, “How did the camera in coordinate area (4, 6) break?”
Someone else immediately pressed the system self-diagnosis button, “It was shot. Based on the caliber it should be from a strengthened Bartley sniper rifle. Most likely a moth flew towards the camera, and the contestant didn’t notice the camera while shooting. Did you buy insurance for the cameras?”
The little stage manager replied immediately, “Yes! It’s just... quite a few cameras got burned in the last round, and it might be more troublesome to claim the settlement this time... and the contestant recordings are lost...”
The leader of the production team waved nonchalantly, “It’s fine if it’s lost. Focus on filming the people of Azure People’s Entertainment properly. They gave us money before coming in this time, and we have to give them at least half an hour of screen time!!”
“Oh, yes!” The little stage manager responded quickly and stopped looking into the matter of the camera that had been shot down.
Coordinate area (4, 6).
Wu Jin looked down foolishly at the heavy sniper rifle in his arms that obviously wasn’t his, his memories full of confusing scenes.
First, there was the colorful butterfly, then Thin Fire with the selfie stick, and then he’d obediently followed the big boss and even praised him for being beautiful...
The heavy sniper rifle dropped to the ground with a crash.
Wu Jin froze, then hurriedly picked up the gun again, wiping it clean and returning it to the big boss in a trance... he was just like a rabbit spirit who’d been caught stealing a carrot.
In the dimly lit forest, the man accepted the gun with practiced ease. The emotions in his narrowed eyes were impossible to see clearly.
Wu Jin quickly tried to explain, “Big brother! I, I, there seemed to be a problem with me just now!”
Wu Jin’s brain was a complete mess. If he was a wind-up machine, at the moment, he’d be twisted up so much that nothing could move, all his parts squeezed together pitifully.
The big boss had brought him here, and then that happened... what happened... Wu Jin’s expression was blank, and it was obvious that he hadn’t yet recovered from the aftereffects.
There wasn’t much space behind the bunker. Wu Jin was caged under Wei Shi’s shadow, as he tried hard to explain things clearly, “It was the butterfly! The prompt for the instance indicated hallucinogens! I didn’t notice at first...”
Wei Shi raised his eyebrows and spoke slowly, “Do you remember what you did just now?”
Wu Jin shook his head in a daze.
Wei Shi: “Look down.”
Wu Jin’s amber eyes slowly, slowly crept down until he saw the arena map on his knee in its entirety––the back of it was scribbled full of lyrics.
Gunpoint butterflies, red tomatoes.
Wu Jin: “!!!”
It was clearly his own handwriting on the paper, but the lyrics were so horrible that he could barely stand to look at them. However, the most frightening thing for him was that he’d almost blurted out the tune when he saw the lyrics, just like he’d already sung it many times before.
Wu Jin: “I, I, I, didn’t––I haven’t––”
Wei Shi grunted an affirmation.
Just when Wu Jin had relaxed slightly in relief, the big boss suddenly opened his mouth and glanced over his anti-tank gun.
“Decent guitar playing.”
Wu Jin: “!!!”
At this moment, the ‘ding dong’ prompt sound rang out, and the four doors leading out of the instance opened at the same time. A cold, damp breeze swept in from the corridor.
Wu Jin suddenly came to his senses and stood up straight.
He was still in the second elimination round of the competition.
The room he was in now was one of the grid coordinates in the arena, he only had a map with &#k2018;state 14’ on hand, and he still didn’t have enough information to crack the rules of the game.
Caesar was still locked in an instance a few squares away, and he had to make the best use of the free travel time his teammate had sacrificed himself for––
The watch display showed that only 166 people remained. The live broadcast would end in ten plus hours, which was definitely related to the final survival rules for the match.
The cold breeze finally woke up all the nerves that had been paralyzed by the toxin. Wu Jin could feel a headache cracking his skull, and he couldn’t help but tremble uncontrollably as he stood there––
His shoulder was suddenly grasped by a calloused hand.
The man’s strong, aggressive aura swept over him in an instant. The body temperature emanating from the arm revealed by the rolled-up sleeves was blazing hot as he firmly held onto Wu Jin, who had been about to topple toward the ground. A flash of light crossed his eyes as he looked down.
The little rabbit spirit stumbled into Wei Shi’s body and looked up in a daze.
Wu Jin’s eyes finally focused on Wei Shi’s face, his skull still throbbing slightly. The neurotoxins suppressed his otherwise active thinking and amplified his senses during this moment.
He and Wei Shi were incredibly close together. The man’s features were sharp enough to cut like a knife, mostly cast in shadow and appearing even more unpredictable. The closer he was, the more he could smell the scent of blood on Wei Shi. it wasn’t only from his prey, but also from deep within his bones––like a fierce beast locking its gaze on him in the dim light.
For a moment, Wu Jin even thought that he was a moth in the birch trees.
Prey that the big boss had locked in on.
His small animal intuition suddenly woke up. Wu Jin came to his senses at once and stood up properly, “Big brother––”
“Neurotoxin aftereffects.” Wei Shi’s face was expressionless as his arm flexed twice.
When he saw that the rabbit spirit was standing stably on his own, he continued, “The aftereffects last for three days. If you want to leave, there’s an instance two units to the south that will send you out.”
Wu Jin swiftly shook his head. “I... I want to continue.”
Wei Shi acknowledged his words and slowly said, “But I will not be with you.”
Wu Jin stilled abruptly.
In this match, only Caesar, Zoe, and Wen Lin were his teammates. Wei Shi was one of his opponents.
In the dim light, the youth who was obviously a little weak from the aftereffects nodded, then pulled himself away. He was afraid of causing the big boss any further trouble. “Alright. Thank you, big brother!”
Wei Shi raised his eyebrows and watched as Wu Jin bent over to quickly pack up his supplies, carefully putting away the only map he had.
The man’s left arm lowered, two fingers rubbing lightly against each other.
On the other side of the bunker were two sniper rifles, one machine gun, and a stack of maps marked with different numbers.
Wei Shi had no doubt that as long as Wu Jin could obtain one more map from him and was given enough time, he would be able to work out the rules for the entire competition arena.
However, Wu Jin only glanced at it before moving his gaze away in a panic.
This was a competition, and he had his own bottom line.
Wu Jin hoisted up his supplies, unable to refrain from panting due to the aftereffects of the toxins on his nerves. He waved to Wei Shi as he was leaving, “See you later, big brother!”
Wei Shi nodded, his gaze deep as he suddenly spoke up, “Come here.”
Wu Jin’s eyes brightened as he stood still in front of big brother. His eyes then opened wide in surprise––
His small curls... were being stroked.
It was the exact same move that big brother used to stroke the rabbit.
When Wu Jin stared at Wei Shi in confusion, the other party’s expression was the same as usual, as though what had happened just now was nothing but his own delusion.
Wei Shi’s face, which never showed any emotion, momentarily showed a trace of satisfaction that soon disappeared in the backlit shadows. “Your singing was pretty good. Keep it up.”
Wu Jin face turned red instantly, “I... I actually...”
Wei Shi waved, picked up his machine gun, and turned to leave.
Wu Jin stared in the direction he’d disappeared in for a while, then quickly picked up his own gun and stepped into the opposite corridor.
After the two left, the instance with the white birch forest quickly closed behind them and sank slowly along the tracks.
Wu Jin marked it on the map and then resolutely opened the door at the other end of the corridor.
Ten minutes later, he rolled out of the door covered in leaves. Fortunately, the neurotoxin had paralyzed his senses––the scene from that instance left his scalp numb whenever he recalled it.
At this time, he was only 7 units of distance away from the center square of the map. When he fumbled forward again, he had been barely lucky enough to encounter another safe zone. Even if he was exhausted, he didn’t immediately shut his eyes to try and get some rest, but instead quickly took out the map to start calculating.
The competition arena was changing, but the map was static––if there were rules, then each state must be the prerequisite for the next state.
He didn’t have many confirmed conditions at present. Wu Jin quickly drew out the derivative information on the sheet.
Each room moved vertically, and it could be inferred from the mechanical echoes that the tracks weren’t too deep––that meant that the key to controlling the changes was not related to height, and the entire maze only had X and Y dimensions.
Wu Jin endured the throbbing in his head. The tip of his pen quickly sectioned off the huge cube arena he’d seen for the elimination match, leaving only a single plane.
When the instances rose up, they would connect to the corridors. When they sank, they would become a safe area, corresponding to the patterned or blank squares on the grid––this meant that each track only had two states.
Wu Jin stared fixedly at the map, the inexplicable ‘social psychology’ lecture echoing in his mind.
“We are born as individuals... Without friends, we will disappear into loneliness. If the space is too narrow, we will disappear into the crowd...”
His hand that was holding the tip of the pen to paper, suddenly trembled.
Countless information exploded in his mind, and his vision darkened slightly due to the influence of the toxins. The grid on the map seemed to come to life, swiftly converging, splitting, and multiplying in his vision––
Zoe had previously thought that ‘life’ in the prompt referred to the team members, but splitting the team hadn’t triggered any conditions.
If ‘life’ didn’t refer to the contestants––
Then there was only one other living thing left in the game.
The Lepidoptera!
‘Ding dong’ rang out in the silence, urging Wu Jin to move to the next instance. He held up the map, his amber eyes glowing in the darkness.
Then loneliness, crowding, reproduction, and death and their corresponding differences were––
The tip of the pen rustled, and Wu Jin practically used the speed he’d used to write his college entrance examination to scribble, quickly verifying his guesses to one side of the map.
Modelling––correct!
Parameters––
The known conditions were far from enough to infer the parameters. All he could solve for now was the state of the grid in two squares around him. Seeing that the corridor was about to close, Wu Jin didn’t hesitate to snatch up the map and rush outside.
At this time, he was already very close to the center of the arena, and the difficulty level of the instances had increased dramatically.
Out of the two directions he’d deduced, he was one hundred percent certain that one of them was a safe zone, but it would be unable to provide Wu Jin with more information.
Out of the other two unknown rooms, one might be an S-level instance, or a dead end that he couldn’t come back from––
Wu Jin opened his eyes. He’d already made his choice.
A man who heard the truth in the morning could die in the evening with no regret.
He picked up his gun and rushed out in the direction of the unknown.
The door panels at the end of the corridor sent out a strange, blue light. Wu Jin picked up the clue envelope.
“Clear and bright.”
His fingertips paused slightly on the opening to the door, then firmly pulled it apart––
Butterflies with wings so thin they were almost transparent hovered atop a glacier amidst the thin, cold air.
Wu Jin seemed to think of something and froze abruptly.
Transparent.
The grid in the middle of the map was filled with a pale, white-grey color. In industrial design, it represented a transparent layer––that was to say, the only special grid in the competition arena was likely to be transparent and offer a full view of the map.
Wu Jin almost jumped up in excitement, wanting to beat out a bloody path immediately so that he could charge to the center of the map and complete the final analysis of the model.
However, at this moment, the sound of gunfire burst out.
Wu Jin looked stunned as he hurriedly rolled to one side. He wasn’t alone in the current instance!
The red dot of a sniper’s laser was soon pointed at his neck. Wu Jin’s mind moved quickly. He had no chance of winning when it came to a gunfight, but if––
On one side of the glacier, Wu Jin quickly took out the map from his pocket and lifted it up.
The sound of gunshots from the other side paused, as though two people were discussing amongst themselves. Someone then spoke, “Leave, but the map stays.”
Wu Jin choked and looked up ahead.
Two tall trainees saw that he hadn’t taken out his gun and walked out of their bunker.
It was Dolma Entertainment, the wealthy and powerful entertainment giant that currently occupied three of the top 10 positions in the Crosson Show.
Wu Jin quickly flipped through his memories. They were also A-level trainees, and were nodding acquaintances in class––
Wu Jin’s voice was dry as he spoke, “The door is closed. There’s no way to leave.”
The two people on the other side discussed amongst themselves again and came to a conclusion after a while, “Then, put down the map, and we’ll execute you after?”
Wu Jin: “......”
One of the trainees who appeared more straightforward and honest, immediately apologized, “Sorry, ah, that, we’re not, it’s just that there’s no point in keeping you...”
The sniper rifle was lifted up again, and Wu Jin’s pupils contracted sharply.
The other party gave one last apologetic smile and unhesitatingly pulled the trigger. The bullet shot out in a blazing, murderous arc that was reflected in the dark shadows of the eyes of all three people present!
Juurensha: Aw, WS got to pet his rabbit spirit. And Little Witch has figured out most of the map on his own!
xiin: i love that Little Witch ignored the maps and decided to figure it out on his own. you can do it, little rabbit!
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