Chapter 28: Social Darwinism

It was midnight when Qi Si returned to his residential complex.

The dilapidated complex was a festering sore on the city, rotten from the inside out. The earliest residents had moved away one by one, leaving behind a wake of trash, including the poor and the elderly. When the poor became even poorer, they were replaced by new poor; when the elderly died, new elderly moved in to wait for their own demise.

Ever since the nations of the world were downgraded to counties and unified under federal rule, poverty had spread globally like a plague. Apart from a few key regions, most places had truly achieved an equality of destitution.

Water and electricity were cut off every ten days or so. The ground was coated with long-neglected phlegm and bird droppings, and foul, stagnant water overflowed from the cracks in the trash cans. There was no need to worry about population mobility, as ninety-nine percent of the world was just as wretched.

Qi Si had no concept of external labels like wealth or poverty. Ugly entrepreneurs could not escape the fate of being sent to pig farms, while good-looking paupers might find a place in a collector’s private room. Yet, he still loathed these impoverished cities, simply because he hated the rainy days here.

Industrial zones, having bled the city dry, loomed like clouds, and the rain that fell was saturated with heavy metal dust and particles of unknown composition. After the rain stopped, it left behind pools of water filled with floating pollutants, reflecting suspicious light spots under the streetlamps and bubbling with herpes-like blisters, reminiscent of the poisons brewed by witches in fairy tales. No matter where one stood or at what angle one looked, there was barely a clean spot to set a foot down—a sparrow hopping on one leg would likely sigh in disappointment at the sight.

When Qi Si reached the entrance of his building, his pant legs were soaked through. He pushed the door open, stepped into the elevator, and pressed "11."

With a creak that felt like a metaphor for impending disaster, the elevator reached the eleventh floor; it then descended toward the ground floor, trembling and groaning in a new, unbearable way.

Qi Si stood outside room 1101 and punched the code into the electronic lock. His parents had bought this apartment. After they died in a car accident when he was sixteen, he had used some rather complex and not-entirely-legal means to become the sole owner of the property. He had lived here for six years, though he could not say if it was out of nostalgia or mere habit.

The spring festival couplets on the door had faded until the characters were illegible, peeling away like the scabs of a wounded man. Inside, however, the two-bedroom apartment was impeccably tidy; the snow-white walls and polished floors made one wonder if a single speck of dust could even be found. The master bedroom had been locked for years, so the space he actually utilized—the guest room, kitchen, and bathroom—was not a heavy burden to clean.

Qi Si tossed the suitcase containing the corpse into the bathroom and rinsed his hands under the faucet at full blast. Even now, there were things he hadn't quite figured out—like why "Liu Ajiu" had chosen to rob his studio, why the timing of his seizure had been so impeccable, and what that phrase, "Sorry, I had no other choice," actually meant.

However, these things were not important.

He scrubbed every gap between his fingers with soap until his hands were bright red before he finally stopped. He walked to the kitchen, cooked a packet of instant noodles, and slurped them down slowly, which served as a long-overdue dinner.

At 1:30 AM, after a shower, he pulled on a clean white shirt from his uniform wardrobe and felt a wave of drowsiness. Although the instances of the "Weird Game" did not consume real-world time, his consciousness had been stretched to its limit for days. That final curtain call had been a one-man show where he had done everything himself, including witnessing the collapse of a high-rise building up close.

The lead actor, exhausted from his performance, let out a yawn and pulled out his phone to search for "Weird Game Forum."

Earlier, Chang Xu had told him that he could find information about the "Sariel Guild" on the "forum." From this, he deduced that there existed a forum specifically for Weird Game players to communicate. Furthermore, the threshold for this forum was extremely low, the kind that a player entering the game for the second time would naturally stumble upon. Given the average information-gathering capabilities of humans, Qi Si leaned toward the idea that this forum existed on the public web and was accessible via standard search engines.

As it turned out, his guess was correct.

The page loaded. Aside from a few unrelated novels and comics, Qi Si quickly found a website with a black background and silver text.

#Selling a prop that might be related to the Main God, PM me#
#High school girl here, I have my own team-up props, looking for a veteran to carry me#
#"Abandoned Ghost Building" TE route cleared, 30,000-word analysis guide#

The homepage of this peculiar forum was, like any other, filled with a mix of quality and garbage. Naturally, for Qi Si at his current stage, ninety percent of the information was useless.

The pinned post was a beginner’s guide. Qi Si spent half an hour reading it from start to finish, and he managed to clarify a few facts:

First, the Weird Game first appeared on January 1, 1999, and had been active for thirty-six years. As of today, at least 400,000 people had been pulled into the game. Players had various theories about the game's origin and how to solve it, and the theoreticians had yet to reach a consensus. But one thing was certain: "Rules cannot be defied." As for what exactly these rules were, the threads were filled with heated arguments—some claimed they were rule-based horror, some said they were natural laws, and others insisted they were the governing principles of all things.

Second, players not selected by the game could not perceive its existence, while those who knew of it were inevitably drawn in. As for innocent passersby, even if one were to talk about the Weird Game in their ears constantly, they would automatically filter the information; they either wouldn't hear it or would assume it was the plot of a novel. Even if they saw the Weird Game forum, they would skip over it as if it were invisible.

Third, players formed various guilds based on different ideologies. Although most guilds oppressed newcomers and exploited their points and props, newcomers without a guild often died faster. The more famous guilds included "Kyushu," "Listening to the Wind," and "Sariel." There was another called "The Scale," which shared its name with a real-world cult, though it was unclear if that was a coincidence.

"We are all humans, our fates are intertwined, our emotions are connected, and we share a common stand and goal. In our struggle against the weirdness, only by working together and watching over each other can we achieve final victory!"

This was the manifesto of the Kyushu Guild. Qi Si had been hit with this nauseating rhetoric as soon as he entered the forum, and he found it repeated in every thread introducing the guild. Combined with his experience in "Rose Manor," he almost laughed out loud.

Fourth, players who had cleared three instances or fewer were considered newcomers. Only after clearing the third instance could one be promoted to an official player, unlocking full features including the game space and the shop. Newcomer instances came from the "Newbie Pool," while official instances came from the "Official Pool." In terms of average difficulty, the Official Pool was higher, but this was not absolute for any single instance. The Newbie Pool had death traps, and the Official Pool had "freebie" instances. It was widely acknowledged that the third instance was a hurdle; many players died inexplicably before becoming official players, and their deaths were completely illogical. "The strong die, the weak live" was a common occurrence.

Fifth, it was rumored that there existed a "Final Instance." The trigger conditions and content were unknown, but if a player could clear it, they could grant any wish, including rewriting the rules of the Weird Game or even shutting it down forever. Currently, the frontrunner rumored to be capable of clearing the final instance was a player named "Fu Jue," known on the forums as the "Chief." He had countless followers and seemed poised to be placed on the throne of a savior.

"The Final Instance? What a hole-ridden fantasy... Would the person who wrote the rules really leave behind a backdoor that could be used against them? Interesting."

Qi Si shook his head. He felt that the Weird Game, from its mechanics to its players, was a mess, as if it had been passed between several production teams and planners who each had their own ideas, resulting in a Frankenstein's monster of a game.

He set aside these messy thoughts and searched for the word "Sariel" on the forum. There were many results, and the level of discussion was high. Most of the posts were condemnatory, as if it were a target that could do no wrong—the black sheep in the flock of lambs.

Qi Si learned that Sariel was one of the earliest guilds established in the Weird Game. It was led by a person with the codename "Puppeteer," whose true identity was unknown and who remained elusive. The entire guild claimed to practice Social Darwinism, advocating for the mass killing of weak players to counter the bizarre "survival of the weak" law of the Weird Game, while funneling resources to elite players to trigger and clear the Final Instance.

What concerned Qi Si most was that the official account of Sariel had declared that if anyone killed a member of their guild and they found out, they would pursue the matter to the end.

"I thought they were all about Social Darwinism, so why this?" Qi Si clicked his tongue, his eyes narrowing in disdain. "Are they not even going to pretend? They’re huddled together for warmth, yet they keep their 'ism' on their lips—is it to satisfy the guild leader’s middle-schooler fantasies?"

Being targeted by a group of unreasonable lunatics was certainly not a good thing; it would be very troublesome. Although Qi Si knew he wasn't a reasonable, normal person either, he still felt that the guild targeting him, a mere newcomer, was unsportsmanlike.

Hmm, he strongly condemned this double standard.

Feeling bored, Qi Si searched for the keyword "Rose Manor" and pulled up a mountain of guide posts. It seemed this instance had been studied to death. Interestingly, dozens of walkthroughs all resulted in [Normal End - "Bloody Bond"], where the clearance method was simply to follow the rules and ensure one stayed alive until the end.

One player wrote in a post with lingering fear:

[This was my second instance. Including me, there were three players, but there were eight whole rules to follow! To put it bluntly, you have to test the rules with human lives to see which are real and which are fake. The other two were on their third time, and I really didn't expect to survive!]

[The first two days, I followed the rules cautiously. They broke more rules than I did and died one after another in the night. Honestly, I didn't believe in the 'minimum death count' mechanism at all. They died, and I hadn't found any way to clear it. Was I supposed to go to the third floor?]

[On the third night, Miss Anna broke down the door, carrying a two-meter-long scythe to chop me! Just when I thought I was a goner, a red dress flew out from under the mattress and disappeared before my eyes. I realized that time had actually rewound to five minutes ago!]

[I thought that instead of waiting to die in the room, I should see if I could run out of the manor, so I went downstairs immediately. I walked out of the castle, and to my surprise, Miss Anna was waiting in the garden, wielding her blade to chase me! I ran for my life, and an old woman in red appeared from nowhere, entangled Miss Anna, and told me to get out quickly...]

[The butler also showed up. I thought he would help Miss Anna deal with me, but to my surprise, he led me to the door and let me go. That’s how I cleared the instance in a daze. After I got out, I developed a high fever, and I nearly lost half my life...]

Judging from the posts on the forum, previous players who matched into the "Rose Manor" instance had all cleared it by triggering the "minimum death count" mechanism, and they were also clueless about the triggers for the time-rewind mechanism.

However, this post answered some of Qi Si's questions: the red dress he had found under the mattress was not just a clue, but a one-time life-saving prop. After a player encountered a death trigger, the red dress would automatically be consumed to rewind time for a short period. If one took the TE (True End) route, they would do as Qi Si and Chang Xu did: use the red dress in the first room on the third floor to calmly obtain clues about Miss Anna’s parents. If one took the NE (Normal End) route, they would, like the author of the post, survive by pure luck during the escape segment on the third night.

Reviewing this, Qi Si couldn't help but let out a scoff: "Could I be the first one to achieve the TE? No way, really?"

In the related recommendations, a recruitment post from the Kyushu Guild popped up. Qi Si clicked on it out of habit. It was an old post with tens of thousands of replies, calling on all players to record their instance experiences and the ways they achieved various endings.

[We are like lone boats in a sea of people. Those not chosen by the game don't know what we are going through, and we cannot expect them to understand.]

[Leave your records here. Point the way for those who come after, or simply as proof that you were here. Let us all remember your existence.]

[One day, we will clear the Final Instance and shut down the Weird Game. The sealed past will see the light of day, contributions and sacrifices will not be buried, memories will remain, souls will be immortal, and we will look out together at a future without weirdness!]

Qi Si stared at the motivational essay in the main post for two seconds, felt genuinely disgusted, and immediately looked for the "block" option. He couldn't find it after searching for a while, so he could only close the chicken-soup-filled post with a belly full of annoyance and exit the game forum.

Regardless, he had no intention of being a "good guy" and sharing his clearance insights. Who knew what forces were behind the forum? If he posted, his address might be leaked the next second.

All that talk about remembering or not was even faker than the "Final Instance" pie-in-the-sky promise the game dangled. It offered no practical benefits; it was just a fancy way of saying "get something for nothing"...

After cursing the Kyushu Guild from head to toe in his mind, Qi Si reached under his bed sheet and pulled out the giant rubbing of the paper, holding it up to his eyes. The paper was printed with words like "Go to hell" and "Beast," looking so vicious that it seemed ready to break through the surface and slap him across the face.

Qi Si admired it with fascination for a while, finally shaking off the harmonious atmosphere created by the Kyushu Guild and returning to the malice of reality. Only then did he yawn in satisfaction, turn off the lights, wrap himself in his quilt, and fall into a deep sleep.