Chapter 212 - Battle Royale: Survival of the Jedi (II)

Bai Anyi, the original host, has a very uneventful experience and personality compared to the other hosts Chi Xiaochi has taken.

He was a quiet and gentle man, not very sociable, with a white coat that was always clean and a square gold-rimmed spectacle, a young man of talent in the usual sense of the word, a master of archaeology at the age of 20, a worshipper of megafauna, his favourite being the Jurassic, his second favourite being the Yongchuanosaurus, and his third favourite being the herbaceous amniotes.

Since talking about boyfriends, the sheep’s tooth plant has taken over.

His boyfriend, Jiao Qingguang, is also a scientist, specialising in drugs that inhibit class A globulin, and is a senior in pharmaceutical engineering next door.

The two met at an internal academic conference, where Bai Anyi and Jiao Qingguang spoke as representatives of their respective departments, each with a newly published paper.

Jiao Qingguang presented “Experimental Study of Targeted Therapeutic Class A Globulin-Secreting Nanodrugs” and Bai Anyi presented “On the Recovery of Peaceful Yongchuanlong”.

After a brief summary of Bai Anyi’s talk on Wen, it was time for the usual question-and-answer session.

Jiao Qingguang raises his hand.

Bai Anyi was a little curious, wondering what he could ask himself, so he nodded him up, “Senior Jiao.”

Jiao Qingguang stood up and pointedly said, “I would like to ask, what is the relevance of your essay Wen? Who cares about the Jurassic when the realities have not been solved?”

In the face of such a sharp question, Bai Anyi just froze for a second and then smiled gently: “There are people like Mr. Jiao who do things on the ground. It’s because of people like Jiao that we can look up to the stars a million years ago with confidence.”

After the meeting, Jiao Qingguang apologised to Bai Anyi.

He scratched the back of his head, “My bad, I was too impulsive. I shouldn’t have embarrassed you in public.”

Bai Anyi knew that Jiao Qingguang was a staunch anti-pagan, and that he was the only one at the conference whose topic had nothing to do with the current reality, so it was no surprise that he was disgruntled and was a little more pointed in his attitude towards himself.

He gave a polite bow, “It’s fine, it’s just an academic discussion. Our profession often gets questioned about the relevance, I wouldn’t mind.”

Bai Anyi’s good temper made Jiao Qingguang even more nervous: “Let me treat you to ice.”

Bai Anyi looked at her watch and said seriously, “My tutor told me to come to her office as soon as I finish my presentation. We’ll meet at the East Gate at 4.30pm, okay.”

Later, Bai Anyi and Jiao Qingguang fall in love, as in a clichéd school story.

Jiao Qingguang came out to her family in high school, and Bai Anyi grew up in an orphanage, so there was little to stop them from falling in love.

In terms of their three outlooks, there is nothing particularly different between the two, apart from their different attitudes towards the Inhumans.

Bai Anyi was so reserved and tolerant that she was shy even to hold hands and was so focused on her research that the most romantic thing Jiao Qingguang did with him in their two-year relationship was to walk hand in hand in the playground at night.

As an undergraduate, Bai Anyi, who did a double degree in astronomy and archaeology, would tell Jiao Qingguang the story of the starlight that was transmitted from thousands of years ago and may now be extinct.

Bai Anyi’s world and social circle are simple, so when he awakens to such an odd ability, his first thought is to tell Jiao Qingguang.

When Jiao Qingguang first heard it, he thought he was joking.

But seeing Bai Anyi’s expression, which did not look fake, Jiao Qingguang panicked and tried his best to calm down before persuading him, “You’d better go and register!”

Bai Anyi’s face went white: “I don’t want to. …… I’ll just tell you, will you help me and keep this a secret?”

He had the common problem of people who read too much and admired freedom, not to mention that he looked to the stars and to the ancient centuries like that, and thought that he loved freedom.

He has always had a tolerant attitude towards the Alter Ego and the sentiment that things hurt.

Jiao Qingguang was furious, he put his hand in his coat pocket and looked straight at Bai Anyi: “It’s not a matter of what you want or don’t want! Do you want to do something with your powers?”

Bai Anyi is so stubborn that he cannot be pulled by nine oxen.

He said negatively, “Yeah, I want to do something, I want to take myself and do research! I want to try and see if my powers can help me with my research! OK?”

Bai Anyi and Jiao Qingguang have their first argument since they met.

The end result was an unhappy split.

Bai Anyi went back to the laboratory and immersed himself in his experiments in an attempt to relieve his worries.

A shade of grey clouded my eyes, and as far as the eye could see, there were fluttering particles of dust, dust that was so colourful and varied that it looked like a virus under a microscope.

And he was so heavy that the air, which to a normal person is like nothing, suddenly seemed to have weight and resistance, and every time he moved, he felt like he was in water, and in no time he was breaking out in a cold sweat.

With a sigh, he put down the test tube, which seemed to him to be covered in germs, and tried to rest on the table for a while.

An hour later, however, a team of heavily armed experimenters burst into the house.

Bai Anyi was charged with attempting to conceal his competence, as evidenced by a recording submitted by the informant Jiao Qingguang.

”…… I want to take myself and do research! I want to try and see if my powers can help me with my research!”

As he was being forced into his isolation suit and escorted into the isolation van, Jiao Qingguang, who had been waiting quietly for him, approached at a fast pace.

Meeting Bai Anyi’s desperate gaze, Jiao Qingguang settled down and said compassionately, “…… I am doing this for the safety of all mankind.”

…… Bai Anyi but smelled the strong smell of disinfectant on him.

After being separated from himself, he washed himself with disinfectant water.

His eyes closed slightly behind the lenses and he ignored Jiao Qingguang for another minute.

At first, Bai Anyi thought that the worst that could happen to her would be to be expelled from school and, after a three-month-long closed education in the code of the alien, to be forced to wear a collar and be reduced to a free slave under the social machine.

But he thought wrong.

This country has an extraordinary hatred for shifter’s who try to conceal their identity.

To many people, the concealment of an ability by an alien is a criminal intent.

The society has even set up its own watchdogs and rewards for reporting to sanction these “omissions” by detaining those who conceal their powers and handing them over to the watchdogs for “re-education”.

Of course, on the surface, the state still calls for equality for all, but in secret, any action taken by these “watchdogs” is a legitimate act that is authorised and supported.

On his first day in, Bai Anyi confessed all his powers to the staff and argued that he could only see some substances suspended in the air and felt the heaviness of the air, so he did not feel the need to report it and did not want to lose his freedom for such a frivolous power.

The man in the navy blue overalls didn’t look him in the eye the whole time, smiling softly as he made a horizontal stroke on the electronic record belonging to Bai Anyi.

Bai Anyi does not know what this stroke means.

It was only when he was dragged into the shock room that he learned that putting pen to paper on the electronic record meant that the “prisoner” had made a mistake today and had “disobeyed”.

Draw on a stroke and electrocute once, three stops at a time.

A full “positive” is drawn and the shock level is raised to five.

This is both a punishment and an experiment, testing the physical limits of the alien.

For Bai Anyi, third gear is torture and fifth gear is death.

During their confinement, they had to get up every morning at five o’clock and recite the Law on the Regulation of Abnormal Human Beings, and in the morning they were tested on what they had recited yesterday, making sure that they got every word right; in the afternoon they had to study all the other laws, and in the evening they had to submit a 1,000-word chapter on self-reflection, which could not be repeated or similar, and they were not allowed to go to bed until after midnight.

When they sleep, they are not allowed to lie down, but have to sleep in a transparent “cold capsule”, with various instruments built in to monitor their movements in real time.

The capsules, however, are made of a special material that will artificially balance and inhibit the Class A globulin in their bodies and are exceptionally strong, not to be broken by ordinary force.

They eat with folded hands and give thanks to humanity, and before going to bed they recite the “Alien Safety Code” in unison. Blood sampling and human experimentation became a blessing, as it meant that they could have half a day to a day off.

People with psychic abilities who are imprisoned in the watchdog institutions become prisoners who cannot even defecate on their own.

Bai Anyi is a man who calls for freedom and has the stubbornness of a scholar, so he is considered a “restless person” and is often subjected to electric shocks.

He often passes out from the immense pain just as the electric shock begins and wakes up having been put back into the capsule.

Once he woke up to find his arms all burnt to a crisp.

The pain is no longer felt, all that remains is paralysis and burning.

He was wearing a bondage suit and could not move his upper body, so he could only close his eyes and slowly stamp his feet on the ground.

Next door to him was a young man with an aeroplane perm who had been given special permission to come back for a half-day break because 500 cc’s of blood had been drawn.

When he woke up, Airplane Head accosted him, “Man, you’re so tough, aren’t you? That was awesome!”

Thinking he was talking about his negotiations with the ‘manager’ – as the staff in the navy blue overalls are called here – Bai Anyi said politely, “No.”

The plane head looked at his feet slowly moving on the ground and asked, “What are you doing?”

Bai Anyi closed his eyes and said, “I am now stepping on Jupiter.”

Aeroplane Head: “Huh?”

Bai Anyi Shifting his feet, with a whole map of the stars in his mind, he said to himself: “…… I jumped over a few comets and came to Titan XV …… Saturn is like a jewel, I uncovered Saturn’s storm- -Red and black Saturn’s storm, as a shawl, draped over me ……”

Such imagery would ease his pain.

Seeing that he was muttering something incomprehensible, the plane head summed it up in a nutshell by saying, “Nuts.”

There are a number of insane alters in the watchdogs, and these often end up being shipped off to isolation rooms, unaccounted for.

Bai Anyi has asked the ‘manager’ about their whereabouts and the answer is another mark in the record books.

Perhaps because Bai Anyi was so difficult, his “master” was particularly disgusted with him and even targeted him, extending his prison sentence on the grounds that he was “not sincere in his rehabilitation”.

In the later stages, Bai Anyi also became more honest, learning to treat people with silence and to resist only with his heart.

Time, even if it is hard to pass, is at least passing by minute by minute.

His period of captivity is finally coming to an end.

Seeing that it was all coming to an end, Bai Anyi was no longer looking forward to the rest of his life, and only hoped that his supervisor would intercede to allow him to continue his research in the laboratory, even if only as a junior.

Mentors are open-minded enough in their treatment of the alien that they shouldn’t ……

This reverie before he fell asleep was interrupted by a sudden spray of hypnotic gas into the capsule.

Without thinking about it, he fell into a deep sleep, and before he drifted off, his lingering consciousness could only catch a hint of a vibration.

…… The “capsule” they used to sleep in was shipped away.

He had no idea that he was in the middle of another complete nightmare.

……

Chi Xiaochi’s reading of the world line was mercilessly interrupted.

The truck carrying them rolled onto the rock and took a long jump upwards.

”The capsule is held in place by a steel headband that, at the slightest movement, sends electrical pulses to the temples, causing numbness in the eye sockets, headaches and a surge in saliva production that spills out of the corners of the mouth.

A painful intake of breath rises and falls in the midst of the upheaval.

In another ‘capsule’, a thin girl is very light and therefore vibrates more than the others.

Her headache was unbearable and she cursed, “FUCK! FUCK!!!”

After the upheaval, everything returns to silence.

Across the way Wei Shiliu is still waiting for an answer from ” Bai Anyi “.

By ‘what are you’, he means ‘what are your abilities’.

Although he didn’t yet know where they would be transported, Chi Xiaochi was already quick to take heart: “Why don’t you tell me first, what are you?”

In Bai Anyi’s memory, it was strictly forbidden to exchange more than five sentences between members of the watchdog, and there were “good prisoners” among the imprisoned aliens who, after suffering a few times, had cleaned up their act and were eager to “make a mark” by working as spies for the watchdog.

As a result, there is a perennial silence in the institution. It is possible to spend months together and not know what each other’s abilities are.

What’s more, Chi Xiaochi searched Bai Anyi’s memory and found no one called “Wei Shiliu” in it.

There were only two familiar faces to him in this caravan.

One was the young girl who had just cursed madly and the other was a rather stoic looking older man.

Wei Shiliu smiled, “So alert, little glasses.”

With that, he stopped sucking on the “candy” and bit the “hard candy” between his teeth, revealing its true nature.

…… That’s a strange 24-sided die.

Wei Shiliu took the dice back into his mouth again, making a crunching sound like a candy bite, and slurred, “Here, I’ve shown my sincerity. It’s up to you ……”

Chi Xiaochi smiled and raised his finger to point at his glasses.

Wei Shiliu was stunned: “Glasses? What are they for?”

Chi Xiaochi calmly and comfortably played with him, “It’s the same use as your dice.”

Wei Shiliu laughed: “Have a heart, I like you.”

The young girl who broke into a tirade just now was called Ye Huan, and she was obviously not very good-tempered, so when she heard the duo jabbering, she said impatiently, “Can you shut up?”

Wei Shiliu : “I can’t. I’ve been in that bullshit institution for six more months to not shut up. That’s a very valuable quality that you can’t take away.”

Teenage girls: “……”

As the two of them tussle, Chi Xiaochi once again opens up the reception of the world line.

Just at the same time, the vehicle carrying them came to a slow stop.

With a snort, the capsule inside the car opened automatically and the restraint suit automatically popped open its clasp, with a large rush of fresh air coming in from outside, washing away the smell of motor oil circulating inside the capsule.

Of course, for Chi Xiaochi, the world is an unbearably dirty place, inside and out.

…… they are free?

A young man with dirty dreadlocks climbed down from the “capsule” nearest the truck door, wiped his face, gathered his courage and pushed open the back door.

The golden sunlight instantly killed the car, replacing the small light bulbs in the compartment. The wheat-like pinprick of the sun made everyone in the car close their eyes, and for those with sensitive eyes, there were tears.

But the young man rolled out of the car with tears streaming down his face and joy.

It’s free air, free ……

He lay on his back on the hot earth, breathing in the earthy smell of the sun-turned roast greedily, tears falling like rain: “I’m free, I-”

He didn’t have time to finish his exclamation before he heard an audible voice overhead, “Cough, cough. Can you hear me.”

Chi Xiaochi peeks out of the truck and notices ten other identical trucks, eleven in total, parked in the middle of a wilderness.

Above the moor, the grass is smoky, but from afar the loud sound of waves lapping at the shore can be heard.

Chi Xiaochi frowned, “Brother, is this normal?”

Lou Ying stared in the same way, “Not normal.”

The world line in Chi Xiaochi’s head rolls with the sound of the broadcast almost exactly like the one outside.

”Fellow Exalted Ones, congratulations on having completed your initial trials. But unfortunately, humans still cannot trust you with the abilities you possess.”

On hearing this, people jumped out of the next vehicle and went to check the cab.

However pulling open the driver’s door, he saw an unmanned automatic setup.

”Rest assured that everything you see now is false.” There was no trace of emotion in that broadcast voice, “including the fact that you have stepped out of the hatch and come outside, it is also a false illusion. In reality, you are still lying asleep in the pod, just plugged into a special device.”

Chi Xiaochi reacts quickly.

Is …… a function of that helmet?

The announcing voice said, “You can think of this world, as a holographic game. This is a test for one hundred and one of your graduates. There are one hundred and one participants, all in place, with normal vitals, ready for use.”

Chi Xiaochi’s ears are ringing with sound effects synchronised with the real world.

And the air in front of him was still murky and heavy.

He checked his card compartment and the cards inside were in working order.

”Please don’t worry.” The announcing voice seemed to understand their concerns well, “All of your abilities are able to be used here without hindrance. The limitations of your abilities themselves are, of course, present.”

Wei Shiliu, who had climbed out of the car, looked up to the sky and shouted, “What do you want to do?”

You are the sinners of your country, the attempted criminals,” said the announcer. Do you now yearn for a life of freedom, the embrace of your family, a comfortable bed? Live up to your full potential and fight to stay alive.”

…… live?

What does …… mean?

”This ‘game’ is about your lives.” The announcing voice said, “If you die in this world, your bodies sitting in the ‘capsule’ in the real world, will also die completely.”

There was silence in all directions, then it was replaced by angry cries.

Some people shouted abuse, others ran to dismantle the “capsule”, and in the face of all this, the broadcast was unresponsive and cold-eyed.

It was not until the crowd had been frenzied for five minutes and had gradually quieted down that the announcer sounded again, “No act of sabotage, other than the completion of the test, will allow you to be removed from this world. This ‘game’ can only be terminated by us after the winner has been confirmed.”

”Please raise your hands and stroke your necks.” The announcing voice assiduously said, “There is a collar on it. Don’t worry, this collar will only monitor your vital signs, as well as locate you. It is made of a special material that will contract inwards and strangle you alive once it is forcibly removed, so please use caution.”

”On your right arm …… pairs, please roll up your sleeves. There is a dial that acts as a clock and compass, and also shows detailed data on each of your bodies, so that you can check it whenever you need to. Of course, you can also press the button on the side. It will show you the percentage of your buy bets in real time.”

Someone asked incredulously, “Buy a bet? Buy what bets?”

”Sorry. It’s a way for us to operate externally for profit.” The announcing voice explained, “It takes a lot of money to imprison and study the shifter. And some, in turn, have the need to want to watch the shifter fight. So, we will broadcast your ‘games’ live in their entirety and there will be people who will place money on the bets. This is also a way to generate income, so please understand.”

Chi Xiaochi frowned slightly and spoke up, “Why did you tell us about this?”

The announcing voice put in a serious voice: “We must inform you of this out of concern for the human rights of the alien. You have a right to know. And, please pay more attention to the odds of this ‘game’, you can develop all sorts of very interesting ways to play it, to your own benefit.”

Some are on the verge of collapse: “You’re trying to execute us in public! What do you take us for? Game animals?”

The announcing voice said coolly, “It can be interpreted that way.”

”Alters, by nature, are accidents in this world. Those we dispose of are the incompetent ones who can only cause some minor social unrest and trouble; those we leave behind are the ones who desire freedom and have the ability to do so. We will educate and experiment with the latter in the third stage and sign a contract to be used by the institution and society. This is the ‘Alien Culling and Streamlining Programme’. After this process, you will understand the value of freedom even more.”

The announcing voice collected the coldness in its voice and contained a courteous smile again: “In the end, there are only three surviving places. At that time, if more than three people survive, all will be uniformly injected with poison. Please, everyone, let’s fight for freedom.”

No sooner had the announcement stopped than the man with the dirty dreadlocks, who had been on the same bus as Chi Xiaochi and was the first to get off, violently cut his index finger with a stone.

He formed his hand into a gun and gave the bad-tempered girl, Ye Huan, a trembling “pop”.

In the next second, Ye Huan’s head was exploded into a rotten watermelon by a congealed, high-speed shot of blood beads.

The man with the dirty dreadlocks took a big breath and, without waiting for the others to come back to him, drew up his feet and ran towards a corner of the moor.

Instantly, everyone scattered in a bird and beast, all beginning to guard against the stranger at their sides.

Wei Shiliu subconsciously went to grab the nearest and weakest looking “little glasses”: “Hey, you move to the side a little ……”

But he grasped at straws.

He looked back and saw that ” Bai Anyi” had disappeared at some point.

Wei Shiliu whistled playfully and, without delay, turned around and ran in a different direction, refusing to stay in a place that could become a hell of a place at any moment.

As he ran, he wondered if Bai Anyi’s powers …… were instantaneous.

At this moment in time.

Chi Xiaochi is running deep and shallow through a forest fifty kilometres southeast of his starting point.

Name: Mobile Card (Intermediate)

Duration: ready to use

Number of pieces: 1

Quality: medium

Type: Single use item

Exchange points required: 10 remorse points

Introduction: Shunde coconut double-skinned milk made from fresh buffalo milk, only available 50km to the south-east.

…… It seems that when 009 wrote this Wen case, he may have been working on behalf of other systems near Shunde and was not able to eat the famous double-skinned milk in the area, so he couldn’t forget it.

As the man with the dirty dreadlocks cut his finger, Chi Xiaochi used a teleportation card, long clutched in the palm of his hand, to move from the truck.

The hot air, full of watery smell, surged through his lungs like it had substance, living as if it were in water.

While bound in his bondage suit, he didn’t have a great appreciation for the trashy skill of Bai Anyi, but running, he just felt like he was running in a swimming pool, heavy on his body, his arms and legs blocked, almost like running with dozens of sandbags on his back.

Lou Ying was distressed to see Chi Xiaochi panting and running and wanted to say something to ease his mind.

Is it the Jiao Qingguang, the watchdog behind all this, or the Lord GOD who transported him to this awful world line?

Lou Ying was racking her brain for an appropriate expression when she heard Chi Xiaochi curse simply and brutally, “Fuck you, a bunch of steel orphans.”

…… Lou Ying felt that it would be difficult for him to curse anything more than the precision of that one sentence, and chose to keep his mouth shut and just concentrate on regulating his breathing for him.

However, the original master’s powers were too powerful to be parsed and manipulated in a short period of time, so Lou Ying was unable to help him, and as the original master was a veteran tech nerd with limited physical abilities, Chi Xiaochi stood at a small pool after a short run, holding his knees to catch his breath.

Lou Ying did not ask Chi Xiaochi why he had to run to such a place, and Chi Xiaochi did not say.

The two men swallowed the unspoken words.

– “I’ll come to you.”

– “I knew that the you of this world would come to me.”

After only a short while, Chi Xiaochi’s clothes were sweating through.

He pulled the top half of his jumpsuit off, tied the sleeve in a knot around his waist and checked the dial on his right wrist again.

After panting for so long, his heart was still beating at one hundred and twenty and he was blacking out for a while.

He combed through his thoughts.

The difficulty with this world is that he’s now stuck in a place where he can’t break through and can’t press on with the scum mission subject.

Wanting the value of remorse, he had to find a way to be one of those three winners.

At the moment Chi Xiaochi doesn’t have a clue, so he’s going to look at the odds and cool off.

Unsurprisingly, the tapped screen had him currently ranked second from bottom in terms of odds, just above an eighteen year old girl.

Next to the big board of odds, there were actually small live chat screens with different languages scrolling colourfully and rapidly on them.

”It’s on!!! Exciting!!!”n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

”This is much more interesting than last time, it’s straight up killing.”

”Last time, they were so fussy, shouting slogans of love and peace, but to no avail. In the end, they were still polite on the surface but did it secretly?”

”The woman is dead?”

”Dead. Can’t you see the odds figures have cleared? Pity, quite a pretty female with a temper, I like it.”

”Yo, 17 caught up with 21!”

”Fuck, which area which area?”

”You can’t read it yourself.Zone C1!”

It seems that in the eyes of these bigoted anti-alien watchers, they are just game characters and a bunch of digital codes that don’t deserve to be called life at all.

Chi Xiaochi snickered and continued reading one by one.

He had planned to stay here and wait for Lou Ying of this world to come after him.

Among those people, unless there was someone who could do the double skill of locating and teleporting, it was not that easy to find him immediately and squeeze him.

It’s not a bad idea to check out these reviews while you’re at it.

Maybe there’ll be some other mess-loving one who will reveal which contestant’s powers are what ……

He was swiping through the comments when Lou Ying suddenly called out to him, “Xiaochi, back off.”

Chi Xiaochi immediately obeyed, putting down her watch and taking a step backwards, “Hmm?”

Lou Ying’s voice was rather odd: “…… look in the water.”

Chi Xiaochi was stunned, and when he looked down, he broke out in a white sweat.

…… He stood at the water’s edge, and Bai Anyi’s shadow was reflected in the small pool.

And at that moment, something living crawled out of Bai Anyi’s shadow.

The shadow of Bai Anyi, to be precise, crawls out of the water.

…… What’s even more surprising is that this shadow, who looks exactly like Bai Anyi, is wearing the lab coat he used to wear, with a pair of spotless gold-rimmed glasses, polite and courteous, S Wen is polite, the same beauty as Bai Anyi, yet his temperament is very different from Bai Anyi. She is both cold and flamboyant, with a certain smiling aloofness to her demeanour.

And this exact replica of Bai Anyi had just climbed ashore with a smirk and a single question, “…… You’re not my little white boy. Who are you?”

…… Chi Xiaochi has decided to retract his arrogant assessment that the original owner was “bland and uninteresting”.