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Chapter 2: The War of Intelligence and Prediction
“So it’s the character jiu 1咎 (A character in An Wujiu’s name) means blame..” The boy beside him finally spoke.
An Wujiu turned his face and caught a little expression of curiosity being satisfied on the other party’s overly indifferent face. His name was also floating, Wu You.
“Ah, I’m curious about this too.” The beauty on the right also spoke, with the words [Zhong Yirou] floating in front of her. She rested her chin on her palm, her nails tapping on her cheeks, “This name doesn’t resemble a pauper who will come to compete at all.”
She was wearing berry-colored lipstick, and her eyes were big and beautiful, “Your neck…” Zhong Yirou stretched out her finger and pointed at An Wujiu’s side neck as she moved closer, “Are these flowers tattooed?”
“Flowers?” An Wujiu lowered his head. Seeing that he couldn’t see it, Zhong Yirou spread out the palm of her left hand and put it in front of An Wujiu, with a small round mirror lying in her palm, “Here, this white one looks pretty good.”
From the mirror’s reflection, An Wujiu discovered a large cluster of flowers on his neck. The snow-white, thin border outlined a blooming shape, and the petals were complicated and layered, spreading from the left collarbone obliquely upward all the way to the back of his right ear.
But he didn’t seem to have these flowers in his memory.
“I don’t remember either.” An Wujiu put his fingers on them and rubbed his skin red, but he couldn’t get them off.
Was it really a tattoo?
“Chinese peony.” Wu You interrupted, but quickly added in a low voice, “It seems to be.”
Zhong Yirou was very surprised, “Chinese peony? Have you ever seen a Chinese peony? This ornamental flower is almost extinct now.”
In this world where the land and water were polluted, there was not much soil to grow food crops, let alone ornamental vegetation.
Wu You pursed his lips, “My mother…” He seemed to feel that he had said something wrong, so he stopped, and then explained perfunctorily, “My family has a collection…”
Zhong Yirou felt even more strange when she heard it, “What kind of rich and powerful family do you have?”
“Fake.” Wu You pressed the brim of his hat, and folded his hands on the table, “Artificial.”
“So that’s it.” The suspicion on Zhong Yirou’s face did not completely disappear. She put away her small mirror, observed the skin on An Wujiu’s neck again, and said to herself, “It doesn’t look like a tattoo… It doesn’t seem like artificial skin either.”
An Wujiu didn’t think much about the strange Chinese peony pattern on his body; after all, now that he had lost his memory, it was useless to think about it.
He lowered his head slightly and caught a glimpse of the opening on Zhong Yirou’s cheongsam, revealing the bandages on her leg. The skin on her left calf was different from other places. It should have been a whole piece of artificially grafted skin made of polysaccharide from shark cartilage, which was strangely smooth.
In addition, she carried a roll-shaped bag diagonally on her back. The index and middle fingers of both her hands had thin calluses, and there were slight cuts on the sides of the fingers. The slender shape could only be created with very sharp knives. Her nails were short and painted with red nail polish, and there was a little black thing on the end of her little finger.
Engin oil?
The voice sounded again, and An Wujiu stopped observing.
“This warm-up game is called The Golden Mean, and the rules are very simple.”
A holographic projection was projected on top of the desk, displaying eight screens with continuously rotating numbers.
“Among the 100 natural numbers from 1 to 100, each of you needs to choose one and write it on the handwriting screen in front of you with your finger.”
The rotation on the eight screens stopped, eight numbers appeared randomly, and immediately, a new number appeared above the eight display panels, “Sum these eight numbers and then divide by 8 to get an average value.”
“The one whose number will be closest to half of the true average will be the winner of the warm-up game. The winner will have an in-game advantage and the right to decide the format of the competition.”
“Everyone has five minutes to think and write down the answer.”
“Then the timer begins.”
A countdown number appeared on the round table, which instantly changed to 4 minutes and 59 seconds and continued to decrease. The noise that had stopped not long ago reappeared, cold sweat dripped from An Wujiu’s forehead, and his hand began to tremble again. He took his hand under the table and tried to hold it tightly, only to hear the strong man on the opposite side say, “Unexpectedly, Laozi2An arrogant way of saying ‘I’ has to do a math problem.”
An Wujiu stared at the strong man who had just spoken; his name was Liu Chengwei. He didn’t look young—at least thirty years old—but he was dressed like a gangster. There were many small pinholes on his arms, and both fists were covered with metal exoskeletons, but the material was average.
“Damn it, what Laozi hates the most is counting.” Liu Chengwei had an old scar on his face that slanted down from the middle of the brow bone to the cheekbone. His whole eye was injured, and the eyeball in the orbital bone was a little shrunken and gray.
Wu You was still playing with the Rubik’s Cube in his hand. He had his head lowered, and without raising his eyelids, he said, “Haven’t you even learned how to count?”
This was not pleasant to hear, and Liu Chengwei was immediately irritated by him, “Do you know how to speak, kid?” He looked at Wu You’s old clothes that didn’t fit well, “Do you think you look like someone who went to school?”
This world was completely operated by capital.
Capitalists, who account for nearly 90% of the world’s wealth, enjoy and waste excess resources, including education. The essence of class solidification was to master the cognitive abilities of the lower class, so the compulsory education system for all had long since disintegrated. Basic mathematics education was expensive, and a complete set of basic subject education discouraged many poor people, let alone physics, astronomy, or artificial intelligence.
Want to understand the nature of the world?
Just have money.
Wu You rolled his eyes, “At least I’m not illiterate.”
“That, sorry to interrupt everyone…” A dull-looking boy with freckles wearing a pair of glasses couldn’t help trying to persuade them, “Just guessing the numbers is not a difficult problem. Let’s not argue.”
The name floating in front of him was [Ueno Taisei], a Japanese. Looking at the shape of his mouth, he seemed to be speaking Japanese, but what An Wujiu heard was Chinese.
Ueno’s words did not calm Liu Chengwei’s anger, and the other party vented his anger on him instead, “A poor bastard like you who can’t even afford implantable glasses, what are you talking about?!”
“I…I’m sorry.” He swallowed again and pushed the old glasses that had been used for several years on the bridge of his nose in embarrassment.
“What he said is not wrong. It’s really not a difficult problem. Just now, that holy voice told us to compare the half of the average sum of all the numbers guessed by everyone.” Zhong Yirou smiled charmingly and pointed to the numbers on the table one by one, “You choose 10, you choose 20, and so on…” She turned her head to look at An Wujiu and pointed at him with her slender fingers, “It’s up to you; if you choose 80, with eight people, the final average will be 45. Then take half; that is, the person who chooses 22 and 23 will be the closest.”
After speaking, Zhong Yirou smiled, “It is not difficult to calculate, but who can guess which number each other will choose?”
“That’s right.” Yang Ming, the middle-aged man who had been targeting An Wujiu, said, “The warm-up game this time is also strange; it all depends on luck.”
An Wujiu stared at his face. The man could sometimes hide his tone when speaking, but he couldn’t hide the subtle expressions on his face well enough.
“What kind of work does Mr. Yang do?” Zhong Yirou turned the topic in an irrelevant direction with a smile, but it coincided with An Wujiu’s thoughts, “I noticed that you are wearing a tie and a shirt; compared to us, you look much more proper.”
Her tone was teasing and joking, and it really didn’t sound very serious.
This was an excellent observation point. An Wujiu silently looked at everyone in sight. Wu You didn’t react too much; he was still playing with the Rubik’s Cube. Liu Chengwei looked like he was watching a show, giving hints of interest to the beautiful woman. The elderly man held a pen as if he didn’t care too much about this sentence and was just thinking to himself. The freckled man with glasses looked at Zhong Yirou with a timid expression.
An Wujiu’s observing gaze fell on the face of the mechanical Guanyin directly opposite himself, but he found that the other person t was facing him directly, motionless, and seemed to be staring at himself.
The beauty opened her mouth to flatter, and Yang Ming, who was sitting opposite, straightened his tie knot subconsciously despite being cautious, saying, “It’s not an important job; it’s just an ordinary office worker.”
“Office workers are pretty good.” Zhong Yirou smiled brightly, “In our society if one wants to be an office worker, god knows how highly educated one has to be. There is so much competition.” She seemed to be feeling hot and deliberately unbuttoned the top button of her cheongsam, saying, “When I saw you, I felt like you were a white-collar worker, the kind…in the financial industry.”
An Wujiu stared at Yang Ming, his vigilance obviously lowering a bit. The corners of his mouth that had been tense all the time raised slightly, and his thin cheeks looked full and moist because of these few words of flattery, “It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s not so exaggerated.”
He didn’t deny Zhong Yirou’s guess.
Realizing this, An Wujiu tilted his head in thought, but when he came back to his senses, he found that the guy in the mask sitting directly opposite was staring at him.
Wu You next to him didn’t stop playing Rubik’s Cube and only muttered in a low voice, “Who will come to the Holy Altar if they do so well…”
Sitting on Wu You’s left was the elderly man with platinum-blond hair who had been silent all the time, looking haggard. He was at least sixty years old, but he had a solid physique. An Wujiu didn’t notice him until he spoke.
“There are only three and a half minutes left in five minutes. Don’t you guys have to talk more about the game?” He has Western facial features, and his mouth seemed to be saying French, but like Ueno, they could hear Chinese directly.
His name was projected in front of him; it was the word [Lao Yu], and there was no foreign name.
“Talk about what?” Yang Ming’s tie was crooked, and he glanced at Lao Yu, “Could it be that you want us to report all the numbers to be filled in and write them down after you’ve calculated them?”
“Can you even do the calculation?” Liu Chengwei laughed.
Yang Ming’s expression looked very relaxed, and he clasped his hands on the table, “Actually, this is just a warm-up game. As long as the winner is not An Wujiu, it doesn’t matter who wins. As long as he gets the advantage of the game, we’re in danger.”
An Wujiu remained silent.
“I agree.” Liu Chengwei clenched his fist and suggested, “Why don’t we tie this kid up and prevent him from answering the questions, so as to ensure that he won’t get an advantage?”
The noise in his head became extremely serious.
Lao Yu hesitated, “Is…isn’t this a foul?”
Zhong Yirou raised her eyebrows, “The person who committed the foul will either die directly, like that guy just now or be pushed into the penalty stack①, you should be careful, very few people can come out of that ghostly place in a normal state. But…”
She shrugged, “If you can really eliminate a dangerous element directly, I have no problem.”
These competitors were brazenly discussing their “way of handling”, but An Wujiu didn’t pay attention as the beeping sound of a countdown appeared in his mind.
The last sound stopped, and after a moment of silence, a sharp and piercing noise made him lower his head involuntarily. The next second, he heard an unreal electronic, analog female voice. The content was incomplete, with only a few intermittent sentences.
[There’s still time…]
[Trust me, you’ll find all the memories. ]
[…You must survive and come to see me alive.]
[You need companions, never be alone.]
The sound stopped abruptly, like a terminated ECG monitor, leaving only the single sound of eternal rest.
Were these the last words his mother left behind?
Where were the memory chips?
An Wujiu supported his head with his hands, panting heavily, but that voice never appeared again.
On the back of his badly injured hand, a digital mark appeared, like a number — 99.
His amnesia was indeed man-made.
Wu You saw that something was wrong with him, “What’s wrong with you?”
“Leave him alone.” Yang Ming sneered, “He started acting again.”
He smiled and rolled up his shirt cuffs, “The game is about to start; it’s just luck anyway, so let’s just not worry about it.”
Is that so? An Wujiu raised his head.
This game was not about luck at all.
But intelligence.
Not only did he know this, but he believed that Yang Ming knew it too.
Just listening to the rules, this guessing game seemed to be about who could happen to be in the range of the average, but in essence, it was a war about intelligence and prediction.
If other parts of his memory system were not too biased, this game was born out of the “beauty contest game” model in economics ②.
The process of choosing an average number was like betting on the winner of a beauty pageant. The most important thing was not whether she was really the most beautiful in our own hearts, but whether she was the most beautiful in most people’s hearts. The bet was not on the game itself but on the psychology of the other contestants.
Under Zhong Yirou’s flattery attack, Yang Ming did not deny his identity in the financial industry and kept exaggerating the element of luck. He knew that the probability of this theory was at least 80%.
An Wujiu didn’t have much expression on his face, staring at the blank handwriting screen in front of him.
“The last 30 seconds, the countdown begins.”
“30—”
He was well aware of his current situation. If what Yang Ming said before was true, according to his description of the previous game, it seemed that he was not the type to fight alone. If this was the case, even if he could win the warm-up match and gain a certain advantage, he would become a target of public criticism in the official game. With such a serious injury, he might not last long.
“29——”
On the basis of the unknown competition format, he couldn’t guarantee that he would survive as a public target.
There was no benefit in showing your sharpness.
“28—”
It was hard to get rid of other people’s fears.
The best thing to do was to deflect fear.
The author has something to say:
① A stack is a data structure. A linear structure that inserts and deletes data at the same end. Push the data in first, and then pop it out.
②Keynesian beauty contest, also known as “Beauty Contest” was proposed by economist Keynes in “The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money”. “Professional investment can be compared to a competition held in a newspaper. A hundred photos were published in the newspaper, and the contestants are required to choose the six most beautiful among them, and whoever chooses a result similar to the average preference of all the contestants may win the prize. In this case, each contestant does not choose the one he thinks is the most beautiful but chooses the six that others think are the most beautiful. Use your intelligence to speculate on what is most beautiful in the eyes of ordinary people.”
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Thanks for the chapter. Really love this novel)