TTGOL CH1

Chapter 1: The Trial Game of Life

“Player K27216, Tang Cuo, New Calendar April 1, 2019, 23:05, confirmed dead.”

“Failed to clear The Trial Game of Life.”

“Survival time: 24 years, 4 hours, 18 minutes, and 6 seconds. Rating: A. Initial character points obtained: -5.”

“Ding—Please receive your Survival Assessment Report.”

Amidst a hazy white fog, Tang Cuo listened to the male broadcast voice coming from nowhere, his face expressionless. He figured he should be dead. Five minutes ago, he had died on the street. Besides an unconscious drunk and a stray dog quietly waiting for him to grow completely cold, there was no one around. Yet, in the blink of an eye, he arrived here. The blood was still on him, but his wounds were gone, along with all his personal belongings.

Looking around, there was nothing but white fog. Visibility was only five meters around him.

“Ding—Please receive your Survival Assessment Report.” The broadcast voice didn’t sound like a robotic electronic tone; it was clear and clean, like a teenage boy.

As a private detective, even a third-rate one, Tang Cuo never lacked the ability to assess his current situation. So, he thought he might be dreaming, that everything in front of him was a near-death hallucination.

Besides, dead people don’t need reports.

“Ding—Please receive your Survival Assessment Report.” The voice continued to urge him, acting as if it would broadcast endlessly if Tang Cuo ignored it.

Tang Cuo simply sat down, as standing was getting a bit tiring. After a while, the broadcast finally changed its tune.

“Player K27216, passive survival, one warning given, 1 point deducted. Current character points: -6. Please receive your Survival Assessment Report immediately.”

As the voice fell, a book comparable in size to a massive English-Chinese dictionary smashed heavily in front of Tang Cuo. It had a pitch-black hardcover, with Tang Cuo’s name and player ID stamped in gold cursive lettering.

After Tang Cuo opened it and read a page, his face darkened. The book was densely packed with records of his life. One entry even read:

Tang Cuo, seven years old. At 9 PM on February 27, 2002, fought a vicious dog in Taijian Alley, Gusu District, Suzhou City. Frightened a passerby; 0.5 points deducted. Refused to get a rabies vaccine, 5 points deducted.

“Tsk.” Tang Cuo always knew he and dogs were inherently incompatible, but what was the deal with this idiotic point-deduction system? Refusing a rabies vaccine cost him 5 points, and he ended up being pinned down to get the shot anyway.

He flipped straight to the end and saw this broken report’s final evaluation of his short life: Insubordinate, passive and lazy, strives to be a heretic and boldly courts death. Advised to cherish life and live past twenty-five.

Tang Cuo’s face grew even darker. He slapped the book shut, not wanting to look at it for another second. But the moment he closed the book, the scene before his eyes suddenly changed.

A speck of golden light appeared in the white fog. Tang Cuo looked up and clearly saw its form—it was a golden bell the size of a baby’s fist.

The bell chimed, and the white fog surged.

“Ding—”

“If survival is a game, are you ready?”

“Please firmly remember the first rule of Yong Ye City: Survival is justice.”

“Wishing you a happy survival!”

As the voice faded, Tang Cuo’s vision suddenly went black, followed by a dizzying spin. The whole process lasted about five seconds. When his vision recovered, he found himself in a circular plaza surrounded by a densely packed crowd of at least a few thousand people.

There were men and women, old and young. The closest to Tang Cuo was a frail little girl in a hospital gown. She was bald and looked about eleven or twelve years old. At this moment, she was squatting on the ground, clutching her head tightly.

A little further away, there was a white-haired old man with a face full of deep wrinkles, a blood-soaked, neurotic middle-aged man constantly checking if his limbs were still attached, a displeased lady in a red dress, and so on.

The plaza was vast, paved with one-square-meter black stone slabs polished smooth on the surface. It was night, deep and dark, but the plaza was very bright because a giant golden bell floated directly above it. Inside the bell, there seemed to be a small sun, illuminating the place as bright as day.

A bell, a bell again. Tang Cuo inexplicably felt that this bell was the exact same one from the white fog space earlier.

Looking further out, forty-nine black stone pillars circled the plaza. These pillars were very strange—they were so thick it would take at least three people to hug one, and they were at least thirty meters tall. The shadows of the pillars converged in the center of the plaza, creating an immense sense of oppression.

It felt as if some deity was peering down from above, compressing one’s soul into a tiny space, making it continuously shrink and crawl until it became a speck of dust.

Tang Cuo disliked this feeling very much.

The surroundings were still chaotic. Breakdowns, wailing, and increasingly unrestrained whispers kept coming from various directions, like ten thousand ducks quacking madly in his ear.

The lady in the red dress scoffed softly but didn’t offer any opinion. However, the old man who looked like he already had one foot in the grave came over to greet Tang Cuo.

“Young man, where are you from?” he asked.

Tang Cuo didn’t answer immediately. In his peripheral vision, a cluster of white light flashed, leaving behind a dazed, soaking-wet young man. He then looked at the old man and said, “Car accident.”

The old man was slightly stunned, then touched the wrinkles on his forehead as if trying to smooth them out, smiling helplessly. “It seems you’re a clear-headed person, much better off than the rest of us. I’m old and didn’t have many days left to live anyway. Living to this age is considered a natural death. But who knew I’d end up here right after closing my eyes?”

Saying this, he held up three fingers to Tang Cuo. “It’s been about three hours.”

He then carefully pointed at the others. “That little girl is pitiful. Cancer, couldn’t be saved. The one covered in blood has only been here for about half an hour and is still crazy; probably from a car accident too.”

They had all just died today.

As for that lady, the old man shook his head, apparently having failed to strike up a conversation. But as Tang Cuo looked over, the lady also looked back impatiently and said, “We’re all dead anyway, just waiting for the King of Hell to judge us. Reincarnate if we should, go to hell if we should. What’s there to chat about?”

The old man didn’t quite agree. The wrinkles on his forehead bunched up like dried tree bark again. “Which King of Hell collects people like this? From ancient times to the present, there has never been such a saying. It doesn’t align with the principles of our ancestors. Did you all hear that voice? Talking about some game—”

Before he could finish, he stopped abruptly because he finally noticed the Survival Assessment Report in Tang Cuo’s hands. His cloudy eyes filled with shock.

“You…” He even involuntarily used a respectful honorific.

The lady was also shocked. She had a copy of that report too, but she was young! Her nearly thirty years of life only took up the thickness of a textbook, and that was the result of her rebellious youth. She had seen the old man’s too; his long life was only slightly thicker than hers.

But what about this guy? He looked younger than her. What on earth did he do in his short twenty-odd years of life?

The two fell silent, temporarily unable to sort out their thoughts. The sudden silence made the car-accident man and the little girl in the hospital gown look over, so everyone fell silent together.

The atmosphere was a bit awkward.

Tang Cuo remained expressionless. He didn’t want to explain; he just wanted to hit someone. But right then, a loud, clear voice full of vigor suddenly intervened, instantly shattering the silent atmosphere.

“Mommy, ahhhhhhh!”

Not only was this voice sudden, but it was also exceptionally energetic, just like its owner—a teenage boy around sixteen or seventeen, wearing a green dinosaur onesie, his face rosy and full of spirit.

Everyone around turned to look at him in unison, a dense crowd of several dozen people. He instantly choked on his words. His tender, youthful face looked as if it had been splashed with multicolored paint, flashing with surprise, nervousness, fear, and joy, finally settling into a single phrase.

“Holy shit?” He blinked his eyes.

The old man rubbed his temples; old people couldn’t stand the noise; it gave them headaches. The others had mixed reactions; most turned their heads back and stopped paying attention. Only Tang Cuo remained unchanged from beginning to end.

The dinosaur boy chuckled sheepishly and rubbed his head, looking left and right, appearing a bit lost. The old man sighed and waved at him, and he immediately trotted over.

“Young man, where are you from?”

“The free shipping zone, the free shipping zone (Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region). I just said yesterday I was going on a trip, and I ended up traveling here. Pretty far, isn’t it?”

“How did you die?”

“Probably sudden death! Just died out of nowhere. Look, I’m still wearing my pajamas. Bought it on Taobao for 39.9, free shipping, coral fleece… Hey, I didn’t even make it to the hospital!”

“You died a pretty wrongful death.”

“I know, right!”

Tang Cuo crossed his arms, feeling as if he were listening to a stand-up comedy routine.

The old man introduced the two to each other. They were all newly dead people; making a few extra friends while away from home was never a bad idea. And in just this short while, a few more people had appeared in the plaza. The mounting panic and noise gathered together, and no one knew how long it would last.

Tang Cuo had never thought about what the world after death would look like. But what concerned him most wasn’t the existence of this world but the wording in the broadcast.

The “24 years, 4 hours, 18 minutes, and 6 seconds” in the broadcast was the exact length of his short life. The time of death and the life events in the report all matched. If Yong Ye City really existed, it sounded like a true afterlife.

But “The Trial Game of Life”—where did the “game” part come from?

Tang Cuo suffered a violent death on the streets, so he failed to clear the game. Did that mean his 24 years of life were just a survival game? Was this just for him, or did it apply to everyone?

The experiences of the past half hour were too bizarre; even Tang Cuo couldn’t draw a conclusion. By this time, Chi Yan had tossed his initial nervousness and fear to the back of his mind and was crouching on the ground, comforting the little girl.

“Oh, right.” A flash of inspiration suddenly hit him. He grabbed the hood of his pajamas and pulled hard. With a ripping sound, he even tore a hole in the back.

The people nearby looked at him strangely, thinking he might have been scared stupid and lost his mind. But he was still grinning cheerfully. He offered the green dinosaur headpiece to the little girl. “Here, wear this. It’s quite cold at night.”

The little girl froze. Clutching her bald head, she forgot to take it for a moment. The others were the same; after their initial shock, they turned their heads away without a word. Some looked forlorn, some couldn’t bear to watch, some looked dejected, but some also seemed to find a sliver of comfort in Chi Yan’s action.

A small act of kindness was like a firefly in the dark night; it always made people feel a little better.

Time passed quietly.

Waiting was like a rusty, blunt knife, constantly grinding away at pitiful nerves.

“I can’t take it anymore! I want to leave this place! I can’t stay in this hellhole any longer! I want to go back, I want to go back… I want to go back!” A middle-aged woman with blood on her forehead suddenly went mad. She staggered, shoved through the dense crowd, and charged out of the plaza.

Tang Cuo narrowed his eyes. This wasn’t a normal space. Besides the area illuminated by the bell, everything else was eerily pitch black.

Disappearing along with the middle-aged woman were her footsteps as she ran out of the plaza. The moment she stepped out of the light, she seemed to be swallowed by the darkness, vanishing into thin air.

Everyone was terrified. Panic and worry filled their faces, but no one dared to follow and check. Just two or three minutes after the middle-aged woman disappeared, a bloodcurdling scream suddenly erupted from the thick darkness outside the plaza.

Like ghost claws scraping against a glass window.

It was as if everyone in the plaza had been grabbed by the throat; the atmosphere suddenly froze. The next moment, the familiar bell chime rang out, shattering the stagnation and making everyone’s heart skip a beat.

“Ding—”

“Real-time broadcast: The April 1, 2019 cohort, a total of 6,315 players have completed The Trial Game of Life. Overall Rating: F. Average Points: 13.”

“On such a beautiful night, the daily Yong Ye City Entry Ceremony is about to begin. Next, let us give a warm welcome to the great and kind Mr. Crow to deliver a speech!”

Before the voice could finish, a furious, exasperated voice suddenly cut in.

“No, today Mr. Crow doesn’t want to be kind at all! Mr. Crow is angry, very angry! You are truly the worst cohort I have ever led! The overall rating is actually an F! The average points are actually 13! Thirteen! What an unlucky number!”

Everyone looked up, searching for the source of the voice in doubt and fear. Soon, someone spotted a crow hopping madly in anger atop one of the eastern stone pillars.

“Each cohort is worse than the last, truly worse than the last! Living so terribly, yet you actually have the nerve to die! Let me see… car crash, drowning, hanging… Oh my god, there are even two who slit their wrists for love. Hey, you guys are really interesting.”

A young couple was called out in public, so frightened they immediately let go of their held hands.

“Mr. Crow is angry and wants to punish you. I can’t just let you swagger into Yong Ye City like this; that would be too unfair to the other hardworking players. Let me think, how should I punish you? Let me think carefully…” The crow paced back and forth, back and forth on the stone pillar, wings tucked behind its back. Every time it shook its head, it looked comical and ridiculous.

But no one could laugh.

The crow was comical, but the complexions of the vast majority of people present were even more comical.

“I got it!” The crow suddenly raised one of its wings high and happily announced, “Let’s play the Lucky Wheel!”

As the words fell, a massive wheel with a ten-meter radius materialized in thin air above the crow. The wheel was divided into seven fan-shaped sections of different colors and sizes, each containing different text. It was surrounded by a ring of colored lights, indistinguishable from the large prize wheels often seen in arcades.

The broadcast voice sounded again: “Easter Egg Game triggered—Lucky Wheel. This phase of the Lucky Wheel will have four rounds. Players will receive punishments or rewards based on the wheel’s result. Survival is not easy; luck comes first. The game begins now!”

“Wait, how did it just start?!”

The plaza erupted in chaos. The crow looked down on it all; the more panicked everyone was, the happier it seemed. It fluttered its wings, hopping from one stone pillar to another, and then to yet another. With every flap of its wings, the wheel spun faster.

The psychedelic colored lights blurred into a trail, wrapping around everyone’s fate like a multi-colored halo.

Chi Yan huddled close to Tang Cuo, carefully tugging at his sleeve. “Ge, Tang-ge, did you see the punishments written on that wheel? What do they all mean?”

Tang Cuo didn’t answer.

But Chi Yan couldn’t stop talking. He had clearly seen that the large sections on the wheel said things like “Misfortune Thirteen Points,” “Ten Thousand Arrows Piercing the Heart,” and so on. None of them sounded good.

But reality often brings exactly what you fear most. With a ding, the wheel came to a sudden halt, its red pointer aimed squarely at the section Chi Yan had spotted—Misfortune Thirteen Points.

“Heehee!” The crow was overjoyed, its gaze sweeping across the crowd. “I hate 13. Thirteen is not a good number. I declare that all those with 13 points—you’re dead!”

In the next instant, screams erupted everywhere.

In one place, two places, three places—pitch-black holes appeared beneath people’s feet without warning, like giant beasts opening their maws to swallow them alive. In the blink of an eye, dozens of people vanished from sight.

Many people didn’t even see the swallowing process; they only saw those dark, bottomless holes gaping open, followed by bloodcurdling screams.

There were even some who managed to grab the edge of the hole in desperation. Hearing the screams echoing around them, their faces turned deathly pale. As they struggled to climb up, they frantically cried for help: “Save me! Save me quickly! Save me!”

Seeing this, the surrounding people reacted, some fast, some slow. The braver ones rushed forward to pull them up. But before they could even get close, the person began to scream, their expression terrified, even twisted.

“Who is pulling me?! Let me go! Help ahhhhhh—”

The rescuers instantly froze. The next second, the person seemed to be dragged down by something, their screams fading away at the speed of light, so far away that it echoed.

“Ahhhhhhh!” The timid had already started screaming. The demon of fear made them conjure up countless cruel and terrifying images in their minds. Sometimes, the unseen is the most terrifying.

Chi Yan also felt as if he had fallen into an ice cellar. His whole body stiffened, and he opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. Tang Cuo’s face was grave, his brows slightly furrowed, but there was no fear in his eyes. He only stared fixedly at the crow.

The crow was laughing. It started hopping from stone pillar to stone pillar again. Like a naughty, malicious child, it shook its head and said, “You are all too cowardly! Cowards cannot survive in Yong Ye City. Tell you what, let the great and kind Mr. Crow sing you a song! With a song, you won’t be afraid anymore!”

The wheel continued to spin. Amidst the ocean of screams, a song poured down.

“God, lambs, and the crow,
Playing happily on the cliff together.
They sang and danced,
Flowers bloomed from the stones.
God said, look,
It is my flower.
A lamb ate it,
Hurry up and die.
God, lambs, and the crow
There are no more flowers in the world.
One lamb falls off the cliff,
Two lambs fall off the cliff,
Three lambs fall off the cliff,
Four lambs fall off the cliff,
Five lambs fall off the cliff,
Six lambs fall off the cliff,
Seven lambs fall off the cliff,
All dead,
All dead.
The crow said,
Disobedient children are all dead!”

The song wasn’t long, but it was sung over and over again, never stopping. The cheerful tone coupled with the eerie lyrics made one’s soul tremble.

Then came the hysteria.

“What the hell is this place?!”

“What do we do? We’re all going to die; we’re going to die!”

“I’m scared…”

“Stop singing!”

“Stop singing!”

But the singing continued.

“A lamb ate it,
Hurry up and die.
A lamb ate it,
Hurry up and die…”

“Ding!” The wheel finally stopped again. The red pointer aimed at a small blue section marked -2. The crow looked up and shook its feathers with regret. “What a pity. Everyone’s points minus two.”

But it quickly cheered up again, tilting its head and saying, “It’s okay, we still have the next round!”

__

Author’s Note:

Song of God, Lambs, and the Crow.

Inspiration source: Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None.

Classic creepy nursery rhyme elements…

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