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Chapter 9: The Colosseum of Darwinism
Wu You stared at Zhong Yirou and spoke after a few seconds, “Crow’s mouth.”
Zhong Yirou was choked by his words, “No, who could have thought it would happen so quickly?”
“It must be Yang Ming’s doing,” Wu You made a decisive judgment without hesitation. But soon, he furrowed his brow, feeling puzzled about the situation’s development, “However, you don’t even have any resources, so the duel is meaningless.”
An Wujiu’s face showed little emotion; he seemed more like a well-trained artificial intelligence compared to a human.
“In many cases, taking lives can be more meaningful than taking resources.”
An Wujiu contemplated the situation and thought there were three possibilities:
The simplest one is that Liu Chengwei’s black line is connected to himself.
The second possibility is more convoluted: Yang Ming is the one cursing him.
The last possibility is that no one has connected their black line to him, but someone simply hates him and wants to kill him.
Given the current situation, the third possibility seems more likely. If it were either of the first two, they would have acted when the system assigned the red and black lines and the rules of the duel. It’s improbable that they would wait until now if they knew that the object of their curse was An Wujiu.
Interestingly, the person who initiated the duel probably didn’t expect that they would be An Wujiu’s curse target.
When the rules were announced, the system had already randomly assigned each person’s red and black lines. When An Wujiu opened the game panel at that time, he saw that his red line was connected to the wanderer Lao Yu and his black line was connected to the robber Liu Chengwei.
This was a rather unremarkable red-black line combination. Even if the person he secretly loved was alive and the person he cursed was dead, achieving the best outcome would only give him 5 more points.
Fortunately, he still had a skill he could exchange.
Without this ability, it would be challenging to turn the tide.
The door to the training room was already wide open, and everyone was present. An Wujiu walked in, finding the room even larger than he had imagined. In the middle, four floating crimson lasers formed a large area, and four top lights shone down. The entire room had no other light sources, looking much like an enlarged boxing training ground.
There was a short pillar outside the area with a circular button on top.
Surprisingly, An Wujiu felt a sense of familiarity with this scene.
His teeth and hands trembled uncontrollably again.
Wu You stared at the duel threshold and asked, “Since we are calculating the total health bars and the one with fewer losses, why do we have to come to the duel threshold to fight?”
“Everyone else has to take sides too. It seems like the person with the highest health bars should win, but even if Shen Ti, with the highest bars, stands there, facing three or four people, their combined health bars would still be higher than his,” Zhong Yirou sneered, “Besides, if we only calculate without dueling, no one gets hurt, and the cost of the duel becomes low; it would be like deciding who can recruit more people. Only when we actually fight, get injured, and consume resources will everyone be cautious about taking sides.”
Liu Chengwei stood not far from the duel platform’s left side, seemingly prepared, with even his blind eye showing a fierce glint.
In terms of physique, An Wujiu was lean and slender, putting him at a weight disadvantage. However, in one-on-one melee combat, weight often provides an overwhelming advantage. Due to the lack of food and water, his energy bar was already starting to decrease while the opponent’s was still full.
Moreover, An Wujiu’s one hand was severely injured.
The holy sound appeared again.
“Earlier, I explained the rules of the duel. Once again, a reminder that the outcome of the duel for each player in this round will not depend on your own strength and skills but on the total number of health bars for both sides. The side with more health bars will be the winner of the duel. You can also choose to be a spectator. The side with fewer health bars will be the loser of the duel and will lose one health bar, while the winner’s will remain unchanged.”
“When the winner depletes one health bar from the loser, the duel will end.”
This is a confrontation where the strong become even stronger and the weak become even weaker. For An Wujiu, facing Liu Chengwei with 7 health bars, if no one stands by his side to increase the number of health bars for his team, it is an inevitable defeat.
“However, during the game, your sense of pain will be infinitely close to reality. Therefore, your skills and strength will determine the damage you inflict on each other in the game, and the damage is irreversible; you can only spend resources on pain relief and treatment. Rest assured, even if fatal methods like cutting throats are used to cause harm during the duel, it won’t be truly lethal. As long as there are remaining health bars and sufficient resources, you will not die in the game.”
Taking sides means participating in the duel in person, which will result in injuries. This setting only makes others more cautious in choosing sides, as nobody wants to consume their already limited medical supplies.
An Wujiu’s wrist was still trembling, and the wound had been stitched up for only a few minutes, so it would surely split open if he made any big movements. He started to seriously calculate if the balance in his account was enough for Zhong Yirou to perform several surgeries.
Liu Chengwei had already entered the laser platform as required. Without the right to refuse, An Wujiu followed suit. The laser lines of the platform expanded upward and downward simultaneously, forming a closed crimson light wall around them, transforming the dim room into a strangely eerie one.
“Before the duel begins, you will be provided with randomly allocated weapons.”
In the middle of the duel threshold, a square blue holographic projection appeared, representing the two characters, each with a blank weapon slot below. Similar to a slot machine, the blank slot scrolled, and at a certain moment, it stopped, gradually revealing the weapons inside.
An Wujiu stared at the slowly ascending nail club in the blank slot. It was a decent weapon, but it ultimately moved up and disappeared.
The weapon slots stopped, and the final result showed a red cross for both An Wujiu and Liu Chengwei.
“There are no weapons for this duel.”
“Will any other characters join the duel? Please choose the camp you want to join and wager all the health bars on your character panel. You have one minute.”
This minute seemed particularly long, and the duel room fell terrifyingly silent. An Wujiu didn’t look at the audience stands; he fixed his gaze on Liu Chengwei’s injured eye, contemplating the subsequent strategy after losing the duel.
Time passed second by second, and no one made a choice.
Everyone chose to be spectators, which turned out to be the best possible outcome, as An Wujiu had anticipated.
“No one joins. An Wujiu’s health bars: 3, Liu Chengwei’s health bars: 7. The duel will start after a five-second countdown. Please prepare.”
The holographic projection instantly transformed into a massive and oppressive countdown number, from 5 to 1, making everyone unconsciously hold their breath.
“Now, it begins.”
Instantly, health bars appeared above both of them. An Wujiu only had three bars, and his muscles were still paralyzed, not yet recovered. But in just one or two seconds, a massive fist was already coming straight at his face with fierce momentum.
His reaction was instinctive; he didn’t even know why he could react so quickly.
Under his anticipation, the punch was dodged, smashing fiercely into the light screen of the duel threshold, causing a momentary burst of light particles before returning to normal. Liu Chengwei couldn’t believe An Wujiu’s evasion. In the real world, he was used to street fights and had countless experiences in one-on-one combat.
Yet every punch was evaded by An Wujiu.
Each evasion carried a swift wind.
His anger ignited his desire for victory. Liu Chengwei couldn’t bear the fact that his opponent hadn’t even attacked and could predict his moves so quickly, evading them directly.
“I’ll make you dodge!” Liu Chengwei roared, turning around and raising his fist, but in the next second, his arm swayed.
An Wujiu recognized his feint, but just as he moved his body, he suddenly felt something was wrong. His entire body’s muscles seemed frozen.
He couldn’t move.
Liu Chengwei raised his leg and kicked hard at An Wujiu’s abdomen. Before the pain could drown his body, he fell backward, leaning against the cold, hard light wall.
This won’t work.
He tried to counterattack, but the muscle spasms worsened, and even the flesh near his cheekbone twitched for no reason. During that half-second of distraction, his injured arm was stepped on by Liu Chengwei and rendered immobile.
Blood began to spread from under his feet. Liu Chengwei’s fists rained down on him. Although it was a duel without weapons, Liu Chengwei had metal exoskeletons on his knuckles, so attacking the already severely injured body was simply a foul.
The falling fists were like an unstoppable downpour, directly targeting vital areas.
“His health is dropping so fast…”
Liu Chengwei indeed had no mercy.
Wu You watched An Wujiu’s rapidly decreasing health bar above his head and stood still, unable to raise his hand.
He glanced sideways and saw Zhong Yirou frowning, her eyes fixed on An Wujiu on the duel threshold, seemingly sensing something unusual.
“He has post-traumatic stress disorder…” Zhong Yirou muttered to herself.
Wu You heard it and approached Zhong Yirou, “What did you say?”
Zhong Yirou glanced at him and lowered her voice, “Post-traumatic stress disorder. Before this, he always had slow reactions, an abnormal speech rate, and twitching and trembling hands. I initially thought it might be some psychological disorder, but his evasive movements just now showed trained reflexes. The moment he faces a duel, his muscles tense up, twitched, and his mental state deteriorates. It’s highly likely that he has experienced brutal wars” She paused, “or killings.”
But…
There’s another entirely different manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Listening to this, Wu You couldn’t help but feel both wary and sympathetic toward An Wujiu. He turned his head to look at the two people on the stage.
It was an unwinnable passive battle.
As if driven by muscle memory, An Wujiu tried to use his uninjured hand to block, but compared to the opponent’s fierce and relentless attacks that left no room to retaliate, his muscle spasms hindered him even more.
The most terrifying thing was that under Liu Chengwei’s relentless punches, An Wujiu seemed to experience hallucinations. He felt his blood flowing backward, and his violently pounding heart turned into a solid block, as if it was about to be ripped out of his throat. Memories of stabs to the waist, broken hands and legs, and the insertion of medical tubes kept flashing before his eyes. The pain in these hallucinations felt even more real and unbearable than reality.
“You wanna dodge? Let’s see how you dodge now!” Liu Chengwei forcefully pulled An Wujiu’s long hair backward, making him lift his head. He cruelly and smugly laughed, stood up, lifted An Wujiu, and grabbed his neck, facing Yang Ming.
“So, this is the fierce character you mentioned?” Liu Chengwei sneered, spat on the ground, and said, “I don’t think much of him.”
An Wujiu was engulfed by the continuous flashbacks, and his tense muscles rendered him unable to do anything. He could only watch helplessly as the last drop of health above his head was consumed by the man in front of him.
It’s over.
Now, he had only two health bars left, just like Yang Ming.
“The duel is over,” the holy sound declared the result emotionlessly, “Character “Robber” wins, loser “Intern” loses one health bar.”
“Both characters, please leave the duel threshold.”
Liu Chengwei obviously didn’t expect it to end so quickly; he even felt unsatisfied, as if it hadn’t been fulfilling enough. An Wujiu was marked as a game target by Yang Ming, described as a bug in this survival game, and defeating someone like that gave Liu Chengwei a sense of vanity he had never experienced before.
Staying alive in this game was nothing.
He wanted to become a dominant and controlling figure.
“If I had known one health bar wouldn’t last long, I would have tortured you slowly,” Liu Chengwei said as he threw An Wujiu to the ground, clapping his hands before leaving the duel threshold with his head held high.
An Wujiu lay on the ground, slowly wiping away the blood trickling down. He tried to control his abnormal muscles, pressing the ground with his less injured hand, and struggled to stand up.
Unsteadily and with a pale face, An Wujiu walked out of the duel threshold.
Despite the duel being far more uncomfortable than he had imagined, his plan had at least succeeded in the first step.
Inside the duel arena, no one spoke, just like at the beginning of the duel. However, everyone’s expressions had changed.
In the quiet room, the sound of applause could be heard.
It was Yang Ming.
With a smile on his face, Yang Ming clapped his hands and walked from the dark corner of the room to stand in front of An Wujiu, admiring his current defeated appearance with great satisfaction.
“An Wujiu, what did you experience after the last game?” Yang Ming raised an eyebrow, his slender eyes assessing An Wujiu. “Look at yourself now; you probably can’t go back to how you were before.”
Yang Ming always remembered how he had endured a ten-day nightmare after the last round, how he had bowed and begged An Wujiu like a dog, only to be pushed out by him. In the end, he survived by acting like a coward, killing someone, and stealing their points.
Now, the devil-like guy in front of him was claiming to have lost his memories and not remember anything.
He had been perfectly unscathed in the previous game but now pretended to be a critically injured and innocent weakling.
It was all An Wujiu’s deceptive lies.
“You said it yourself; the Holy Altar is a Colosseum of Darwinism, where the weak should die,” Yang Ming said, holding back his anger as he pinched An Wujiu’s chin.
“So, what about you now? Shouldn’t you follow your own creed and die?”
In an instant, An Wujiu felt something was very wrong.
A tremendous ringing in his ears prevented him from breaking free from the hallucinations.
On Yang Ming’s thin face, he saw the withered Siberian trees, strange ancient Western languages, bottles, and jars filled with organs and prosthetics soaking in the black market, and pristine and windowless circular laboratories like prisons.
And a strange blue sky on a giant display.
Fragments of all things bizarrely merged together, like some sort of sorcery or a virus in the program, entangled and confused within his mind, leaving only a trace of his rational voice.
He woke up without knowing anything, and he hadn’t had a chance to save his mother.
Is he really going to die like this?
An Wujiu’s absent-mindedness made Yang Ming feel somewhat humiliated. He sneered, “You can pretend so convincingly and endure humiliation with such resilience..”
“Could it be that you really forgot everything?”
With blood oozing from the corner of An Wujiu’s injured mouth, he weakly said, “I really forgot. You can kill me if you want, but even if I die… you might not necessarily win in the end.”
“What did you say?” Yang Ming grabbed his collar and pulled him closer.
An Wujiu lowered his voice and whispered, “Mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind…”
Yang Ming fell silent for two seconds.
His heart struggled for a while. An Wujiu, who entered this round of the game, became reticent and spoke very little, but every word he uttered made Yang Ming uneasy.
Is he testing his determination to kill him?
Or has he already found a partner? Is he ready to take over directly after killing him? This game is not about physical strength; it’s about who can score the highest survival points, protect their secret crush, and eliminate the one he cursed. That’s the optimal solution.
Could it be that An Wujue has already found the person who can achieve the highest score under the optimal solution?
Who could it be? Zhong Yirou? Or Ueno, or Wu You?
He didn’t find the answer, and in his frustration, he forcefully pushed An Wujiu to the ground.
Although doubts had already arisen in his mind, he couldn’t let him off easily. At least he wanted to torment him.
“Or how about this,” Yang Ming squatted down in front of An Wujiu, staring at his face for a while before turning to the others with a smile. “Let’s test if he’s really lying.”
Ueno asked, “How do we test?”
“We’ll continue the duels. Anyway, An Wujiu only has two health bars. I don’t believe he can keep pretending when he’s about to die. Look at it this way, even if An Wujiu did lose his memories, you won’t lose anything. You’ll have one less dangerous competitor, and you’ll have more resources. It’s a profitable deal.”
The duel room was quiet, and no one opposed this cruel plan.
As Wu You was about to step forward, he was held back by Zhong Yirou beside him. She silently shook her head.
Liu Chengwei had clearly teamed up with Yang Ming, and perhaps others had also reached a cooperative agreement with him in secret. At this moment, if they, the ones with lower combat power, were to stand up, they would become new targets.
An Wujiu lay on the ground, his hair stuck to his face with blood. Due to the flashbacks of his memories, his senses became blurred, and he could barely hear Yang Ming’s insults.
“You must be very popular in the real world with this face,” Yang Ming’s withered hand tapped An Wujiu’s face lightly, not too heavily. “It’s a pity though. I heard that once brain death occurs, a person is completely dead. If you were turned into a vegetative or something, you could still be a well-behaved sexual plaything, don’t you think?”
At this point, Lao Yu interjected, “Yang Ming, you’ve gone too far.”
An Wujiu’s consciousness was gradually recovering, and he could hear their conversation.
“What? Do you sympathize with him? Why didn’t you stand up just now and pledge your health bars to him?” Yang Ming stood up. “I was just thinking about having you consume one of his remaining health bars…”
The situation changed too quickly.
The target was suddenly shifted to others, making Wu You feel uneasy. He whispered to Zhong Yi Rou, “Could Lao Yu be… Yang Ming’s cursed one?”
But Zhong Yi Rou shook her head without hesitation. After pausing for two to three seconds, she explained her reasoning, “It’s because Lao Yu stepped forward. Yang Ming wanted to test whether he would choose a side. Only those who are undecided will become his discarded pieces.”
Wu You observed her expression but said nothing.
Facing Yang Ming’s decision again, the others remained silent.
Even in the face of an opponent like An Wujiu with only two health bars left, no one wanted to enter the duel threshold with him. Even if they won, it would make them enemies. Yang Ming voluntarily chose someone to go up, making the others grateful.
“Wait a minute…” Yang Ming suddenly changed his tone.
“Since you’re so against it, then I’ll give you another chance to choose the side you want to go to. You won’t be needed for this round.”
His words seemed cautious, but they were hardly different from threats. After speaking, he looked towards a dark corner in the duel room.
“How about letting Shen Ti go up?”
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For every Ko-fi received for a perticular novel, I will release a new chapter!
ok i dont care what this guy suffered in the previous round, he is trash