The heavy body jumped up,
The flying soul crashed to the ground.
——"Volume 1·Spirit and Flesh"
…
…
The smell of blood is exciting.
Zeiss pulled out the scalpel and took a deep breath, letting the rich and fresh smell of blood fill his lungs.
He pinched the handkerchief and gently wiped away the blood on the side of the blade. His eyes fell on the blood-stained corpse in front of him.
It had been a while since I'd killed anyone, so my hands were a little raw, and blood was everywhere, staining the studio floor.
Of course, that's okay. The security in areas under federal jurisdiction is deteriorating, and cleaning up the mess is not as difficult as imagined.
Zeiss walked to the sink and washed his bloody hands under the faucet.
Without warning, an emotionless electronic sound sounded at the bottom of my mind:
[If you kill the player "Liu Ajiu", you can choose whether to inherit his game qualifications]
Qisi shook his hand, and a few drops of light pink water splashed out.
…
Three hours ago, at six o'clock in the evening on March 9, 2035, Jiangcheng.
As usual, Ziss was sitting in his studio inspecting the collection.
The studio is located in an abandoned warehouse in a secluded suburb, a place that no one usually notices or visits.
If nothing else happens, he can fish out a beautiful corpse from the formalin, process it slowly by taxidermy or dipping, and enjoy this wonderful time to himself without any interruption.
But the accident still happened.
At about half past seven, someone kicked open the warehouse door and rushed in.
It was a dusty man who shouted "robbery", took out a gun from his trouser pocket, and ordered Zeiss to squat down in a bad tone.
Zeiss couldn't understand why someone would come to this barren suburb to rob someone out of their imagination, and why they would choose a warehouse that looked shabby and shabby.
The first choice for robbery where you are most likely to find change is usually small shops and grocery stores in urban villages and outer city streets. Even considering the risks and benefits, if you want to reduce the probability of getting into the sight of the Public Security Bureau, the best solution is to use a knife to block people at the entrance of the middle school.
This convinced Ziss that men were exactly what he hated—idiots who wasted natural resources and rational people's time and deserved to be chopped up and fed to pigs. 【Note】
However, after weighing the pros and cons, he still put on a panicked look, raised his hands high, and squatted to the wall consciously and quickly.
Zeis hates trouble more than he hates rude idiots.
Shortly after his birthday on January 1, he was diagnosed with a terminal disease called "soul weightlessness." The doctor said that he would have no more than three years left.
Compared with his peers who still have at least sixty years of good time to squander, his time has instantly increased in value twenty times, and he feels deeply saddened by every wasted second.
At that time, the doctor looked at Ziss with sympathetic eyes and said: "Your disease is an extremely rare case. There are no more than ten confirmed cases in the world. You can do whatever you want to do in your last days, or do something meaningful." thing."
Qiss asked: "For example?"
The doctor was persuasive: "You can cooperate with our treatment and research. If our research makes a breakthrough for you, your name will be recorded in history."
Chiss asked again: "Has anyone ever been cured?"
The doctor was honest: "Of course not, otherwise why would it be called a 'terminal disease'?"
"..."
Ziss refused the doctor's request to sign a body donation registration form. Rather than leaving his name in medical history, he would rather have his name appear on the list of criminals in large-scale vicious events.
He planned to use the last three years of his life to do whatever he wanted to do. These things could be making taxidermy, playing with people, or even killing people, but they would definitely not be confronting a stupid robber.
Therefore, at this moment, he just hoped that the man would take the money and get out quickly, so as not to waste the rest of his precious life.
The man put a gun against Zeiss's head and muttered like a psychopath: "Sorry, I have no other choice... tell me where the cash is!"
Ziss wanted to complain, why is it that in 2035, there are still people obsessed with robbing cash, as if electronic payment has not become popular yet.
But when he thought that he actually had banknotes reserved for underground transactions, he stopped laughing again.
With a vacant look, he pointed to the depths of the studio and said, "In the corner of Room 3, near the drainage outlet, there is a brown leather suitcase."
The man turned around and ran towards the room he pointed to.
Looking at his back, Zis belatedly remembered that there were some unusual collections in that room, the kind that would definitely scare people to the point of calling the police.
Human corpses, human specimens, some advanced grafting arts... Once a man sees those things and then leaves, it may make things more troublesome.
——Perhaps we should just kill him, forget about the luminol reagent and trace science, just chop him into pieces and send them to Bob’s pig farm...
——Maybe he shouldn’t go out today. The almanac clearly says “no traveling”, so he should believe it a little bit…
Qisi was caught in a tangle, and then he heard the sound of a man gasping for air from deep in the studio. One sound was louder than the other, like an old hair dryer that had been smashed and chipped.
Qisi stood up, smoothly pulled the warehouse door that had been kicked open, and spent a lot of effort to tighten the deformed lock.
He walked towards room 3 and saw the man lying on the ground twitching. He looked like he had an asthma attack and was about to die at any time.
This illness is perfectly timed, informed, and full of absurdism and humor.
Zeiss couldn't help laughing.
He tilted his head and thought for a while, then kindly picked up the man's legs, pushed him to the corner, and put him in a sitting position to avoid soiling a larger area of the floor.
"Medicine...medicine..." The other party stared, struggling like a fish out of water, and let out a breathless moan, "In his pocket..."
Qisi bent down, put his hand into the man's trouser pocket, and dug out the contents——
A white vial and a black metal card.
Zeiss raised the vial to his eyes and began... to look for the production date.
He looked at it for five minutes, looking at everything from the production date to the expiration date to the ingredient list. The man was still struggling tenaciously, and his moans were getting louder and louder, which made people feel irritable.
Qisi knew that this damn guy didn't want to die on his own.
He sighed, threw the medicine bottle into the trash can at the wall, turned and walked to the tool rack aside.
Disposal of corpses is becoming more and more troublesome these days. Quicklime, hydrogen peroxide and hydrofluoric acid are all difficult to deal with.
But if someone really wants to make it difficult for him, he is not without means. When he was twelve years old, he had nothing but killed someone and didn't even let his parents find out.
"If you die quickly, I might be able to throw you, whole body and tail, at the door of the Public Security Bureau..." Chiss lamented in a mournful tone, feeling sad that he had to waste the limited time he had to deal with the body.
In the man's frightened eyes, he picked a scalpel from the tool rack, walked back to the corner step by step, and said something with unknown meaning: "You forgot to put on your shoe covers after entering the door."
The next second, he stabbed the knife into the man's heart with his backhand.
…
[If you kill the player "Liu Ajiu", you can choose whether to inherit his game qualifications]
The cold electronic sound sounded again, with a faint hint of urging.
Qiss raised his eyebrows and moved his eyes to look around.
I saw the black metal card on the ground that was pulled out of the man's pocket, rolling with golden lines, and slowly floating to the level of his eyes.
Written on it are seven large silver-white characters——
[Weird Game Invitation].
Weird game? What's this?
Qisi's eyes lingered on the unfamiliar noun.
As if aware of his doubts, in the next second, countless non-narrative information poured into his mind, bypassing the cognitive process.
The weird game is created by a being called "Rule", who selects qualified players from all over the world and puts them into dungeons full of weird and weird stories to explore puzzles and complete tasks.
This is a deadly game full of ghosts. If you fail a mission or die in the instance, your existence in the real world will be wiped out.
But dangers and opportunities coexist. Players who successfully clear the dungeon can get a lot of points; as long as they have enough points, they can realize any wish.
[Are you willing to sign a contract, become a player, and enter the weird game? 】
The electronic voice asked coldly.
Qisi raised his eyelids and asked casually: "Can you cure my disease?"
In fact, he does not resist death. Although the taste of death is likely to be uncomfortable, it is still an interesting life experience.
But he didn't want to die from illness at all.
In contrast, he would rather die by a murder or an explosion, preferably in a dramatic way and create widespread panic.
But now, he seems to have another choice.
[In the weird game, you can get everything you want, wealth, power, health... everything]
[And all you need to face and overcome is the fear of weirdness]
The silver-white text is extremely tempting, like a devil on the trading table.
Qisi tsked lightly and asked nonchalantly: "How many points do I need to cure my disease? How many dungeons do I need to enter?"
[Sign the contract and you will know it when the time comes]
"I know very little about your so-called 'weird game'. Can I wait a few days before making a decision?"
[Please make a decision within five minutes, otherwise it will automatically be deemed as giving up the qualification; you will have all game-related memories erased and will never be selected as a player]
Emphasizing the uniqueness and timeliness of opportunities is a very typical pyramid scheme, which looks like a trap and a scam.
But Qisi felt that since he only had three years left to live, he would not lose anything.
Death without a complete body or life worse than death, any ending is better than a boring death like death from illness.
What's more, existences such as "survival games" and "horror copies" sound very interesting!
All the trade-offs ended in one second, and Ziss smiled and replied: "I do."
[The contract has been signed and player information has been loaded]
[The copy is loading...Loading completed]
………………
[Note] "Rational man" is a concept in economics, also known as "economic man". The basic characteristic is "self-interest", that is, trying to obtain the maximum economic benefit at the minimum economic cost. The term "rationalist" in this book has the same meaning, and may deviate from your conventional understanding. (The concept is quoted from "Game Theory". Because some book friends raised questions in the comment area, I will explain it here)
