Chapter Fifty: Carnivory (Part 22) - Murder
Inside the ancestral hall, Zhang Licai quickly snapped out of his fright, wailing as he flung himself against the closed heavy doors and shoved hard against them.
The doors groaned under his push, yet not even a sliver of a gap appeared, as if some invisible force were barricading them from the outside.
He wore a weeping expression, muttering frantically under his breath: "We're done for, the doors are sealed tight, they won't budge..."
[Rules have been refreshed.]
[3. The spirits of the ancestral hall are perpetually hungry. It is best to prepare ample meat before coming to worship, amounting precisely to the flesh of one adult—no more, no less.]
Two lines of system prompts popped up, visible and audible to every player.
As if to corroborate this rule, human faces materialized from all directions, opening their mouths simultaneously and shouting in discordant tones:
"Choose someone... give us their meat..."
"One person... just one person..."
The sinister voices brushed against their spines and crept into their marrow, chilling them to the bone.
Zhao Feng gripped a crucifix in one hand and a razor blade in the other, not forgetting to shift his gaze to scrutinize the few people around him.
The choice of who should die was already settled in his mind. Jiuzhou and Sheol had always been at odds; he intended to kill Yang Yundong as a token of allegiance to the Sheol Guild.
Yet offending Jiuzhou was hardly wise, so he needed to strike without a sound...
Zhu Ling drew the dagger from her waist and offered a timely, bitter smile: "The system prompt is crystal clear. We've triggered a critical plot point, and someone has to die, or else this is completely deadlocked.
"Let's discuss this. Shall we vote, or what? Dying one is better than wiping out the entire party..."
Her gaze landed on Yang Yundong, seemingly waiting for his tacit approval.
Should they sacrifice one person to spare the majority, or should everyone band together to fight this sudden crisis?
If the former, who ought to be sacrificed?
Yang Yundong reversed his broadsword, holding it horizontally across his chest as he stared gloomily at the faces on the ceiling, uttering not a word.
Qi Si's words echoed in the depths of his mind, reverberating across time and space with a series of interrogations:
*'Brother Yang, survival and the pursuit of profit are the laws most aligned with biological instinct. Under the laws of nature, how can justice and morality be judged? Look around, everyone is eating human flesh. Some are served on the dinner table, others pick up the knife and fork—who can remain aloof from it all?'*
The bloody choice was laid bare by the bizarre game, yet Yang Yundong knew deep down that no one deserved to be sacrificed.
—Even if circumstances forced men to devour men, he refused to become the one who ate.
"Meat... meat... give us meat..."
In the void overhead, the ugly human faces dissolved into swirling black smoke, circling the four trapped individuals. Within the gathered wisps of vapor seemed to dwell countless eyes—painful, greedy, resentful, and sorrowful, layered like fish scales.
Zhao Feng and Yang Yundong each held their respective weapons—one with a crucifix, one with a broadsword—just barely defending two directions.
Zhu Ling fished a tattered strip of yellow talisman paper from her bosom, scattering a circle of it on the ground to form a makeshift defense of questionable worth.
Zhang Licai was the largest among them, and after having his arm brushed against several times by the faces, his voice began to tremble: "Hurry up and think of a way, someone isn't really going to die, right? I have elderly parents and young children at home, I can't die..."
He shrieked in terror, and instead of squeezing into the defensive circle of the three, he scurried straight into a corner.
He knew his strength was the lowest; anyone present could slaughter him with a single stroke to break the current deadlock...
"Let's vote." Zhu Ling stepped past Yang Yundong and finalized, "With three days left, if we want as many people to survive as possible, we must avoid meaningless attrition. I hope we can get through this death point peacefully."
Hearing Zhu Ling's subtext, Zhang Licai realized that her phrase "avoid meaningless attrition" was clearly a thinly veiled incitement for the players to vote out someone who was already injured.
He looked at Yang Yundong, then at Zhao Feng, shuffled step by step behind Zhu Ling, and raised his right hand: "Makes sense. Let's have a peaceful vote, don't... don't let those ghosts reap the fisherman's profit!"
Thick black smoke permeated every corner of the ancestral hall, and wrinkled human faces vied with one another to lick the players' arms.
Zhao Feng held the crucifix high against his chest. Under the impact of the black smoke, the radiating white light grew dimmer and dimmer, visibly failing to hold out much longer.
He inched imperceptibly closer to Yang Yundong, heard Zhang Licai's movement, and upon catching Zhu Ling's burning gaze, quickly figured out the crux of the matter.
Qi Si had told him long ago that as long as they eliminated the strongest individuals and secured an absolute numerical majority, they could dictate anyone's life or death.
He was not the only one harboring this thought, and the only name Qi Si had ever placed on the opposing side in his words was—
Yang Yundong.
"Hurry... hurry give us meat..."
The faces crowded closer, letting out shrill wails for food like insatiable beggars pestering an unsuspecting traveler, refusing to quit until they achieved their goal.
Yang Yundong gripped his broadsword tightly, sweeping it across his front to scatter the faces in the black smoke, the veins on his overexerted hand bulging prominently.
Zhu Ling surveyed the crowd and said coolly, "The Jiuzhou Guild has stated that sacrifices along the path to victory are necessary.
"Every single one of us who survives is willing to swear that we will remember the deceased, and once we clear the final instance, we will demand that the bizarre game resurrect all the victims.
"You are all people who consider the bigger picture; surely you won't turn cowards in the face of danger. Time is running out. On the count of three, let's all point at the person we wish to cast out. Whatever the outcome, I hope everyone treats it with equanimity."
The yellow talismans scattered on the ground neatly formed a boundary line, isolating Yang Yundong on the outside as if heaven had made the decision on behalf of the players.
Yang Yundong gave them a long, deep look, and Qi Si's cold murmur echoed in his ears once more:
*'Those who follow the rules starve to death after paying their grain tribute. Opportunistic egoists sit by the granary lording over others, dividing the collective into fragments using artificial standards like class, stance, and ideology, inciting one group to exercise tyranny over another—this is the essence of what humans call public order and good morals.'*
*'Brother Yang, it's clear you still cannot accept this set of rules, and the contradiction between truth and experience causes your heart intense agony. Since that is the case, why continue to torture yourself? Rather than employing moral blackmail against others, why not martyr yourself to that outdated, obsolete morality...'*
Zhao Feng had already stepped behind Yang Yundong. With a mere lift of his hand, the razor blade clamped between his fingers could slice open the latter's throat.
Yet Yang Yundong, from start to finish, never once looked back...
...
[Rules have been refreshed.]
[3. The spirits of the ancestral hall are perpetually hungry. It is best to prepare ample meat before coming to worship, amounting precisely to the flesh of one adult—no more, no less.]
Seeing the fresh text update on the system interface, Qi Si let out a bright, radiant smile.
Zhou Yilin beside him immediately squatted down, hugging her knees as she wept and trembled like a sieve.
Qi Si glanced sideways at her: "Always putting on this cowardly and timid act—is this some sort of peculiar fetish of yours?"
Zhou Yilin sniffled and nodded: "Mhm, it's very interesting."
"..."
One minute later, the doors of the ancestral hall were pushed open from the inside, and Zhao Feng and Zhu Ling walked out side by side.
As for Zhang Licai, he sat paralyzed beside a skeleton, looking utterly terrified out of his wits.
The skeleton's frame was rather tall, and from torso to limbs, it had been gnawed completely clean without a single scrap of meat left behind; a dark, heavy broadsword was clutched in the skeletal hand, resting quietly across the neck.
What had transpired inside the ancestral hall was blatantly obvious—Yang Yundong was dead, having served as the meat to fill the bellies of the spirits.
In a zero-sum game, anyone who excelled others in prestige and strength yet lacked absolute dominance was bound to be jointly squeezed out and eliminated.
What Qi Si had done was nothing more than use his words to push Yang Yundong into the crosshairs, backing him into a corner of isolation and helplessness.
That way, when Zhao Feng dealt the fatal blow, the others would tacitly allow each other to turn a blind eye to the murder, or even fan the flames.
"Now you know, good people don't live long."
Qi Si lowered his gaze to the skeleton on the ground and sighed.
Things could have taken a turn. Once he realized Zhou Yilin was suspicious, he had considered cooperating with Yang Yundong.
And had Yang Yundong agreed to cooperate, Qi Si could have preemptively controlled Zhou Yilin and Zhu Ling, tossing either of their lives in to fill the quota at this fatal juncture.
Even if they missed that opportunity, it didn't matter. Inside the ancestral hall, Yang Yundong could easily have killed someone at random to serve as a substitute sacrifice for this death point.
Regrettably, Yang Yundong chose a third path—dying himself, leaving the remaining two-person alliance in a state of stalemate.
Not only that, judging from the condition of the three surviving players, the man hadn't even struggled before he died, nor had he tried to take someone like Zhu Ling down with him in a mutual destruction—he had most likely acquiesced to being killed out of some self-sacrificial complex.
"To possess the power to break the rules, only to be shackled by invisible chains and foolishly surrender one's life... Does such a creature truly exist in this world? How fascinating."
Qi Si tapped his chin with his finger, genuinely tempted to slice open Yang Yundong's brain to examine its structure. Alas... the spirits in the ancestral hall had faithfully practiced a clean-plate policy.
He squatted beside the corpse, gazed quietly at it for a moment, and suddenly broke into a bizarre smile: "Yet what made you think that a scumbag like me would spill everything to you?
"I suddenly remembered I forgot to mention something: Zhou Yilin and Zhu Ling most likely hold a deep grudge against each other..."
The identity card in the upper right corner of his vision rolled amidst gray mist; the red-eyed evil entity extended black tentacles and slowly cracked a smile revealing eight teeth—both compassionate and mocking.
"Self-righteous self-sacrifice, which instead drives the situation toward an uncontrollable direction and drags even more people into the vortex of death—quite a humorous joke, isn't it?"
The sun had sunk to the horizon, cutting obliquely through the gap in the ancestral hall doors to cast pale light and shadow onto the ground. A few beams sprinkled onto the skeleton, devoid of all warmth, cold as ice.
The newly dead corpse lay flat on its back, its white, hollow eye sockets staring blankly at the sky as if attempting to catch one last glimpse of daylight while its breath still lingered.
After a long silence, Zhu Ling wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes and said with sorrow: "The death point has passed. Let's go back into the ancestral hall to pay our respects and wash away our sins... Let's not let Brother Yang's sacrifice go to waste."
No one raised an objection.
The players returned to the ancestral hall in silence, taking turns picking up incense from the offering table to kneel and worship, devout as true believers.