Chapter 60: King’s Game (Conclusion) Part 1

Yun Xueqing looked at his face and vaguely felt that it was familiar. Only when the other party stated his name did he remember—this person seemed to be the last one on the Noble wealth rankings.

Originally, when Yun Xueqing and Fu Wuxuan made the list, Fu Mi should have been squeezed out. But somehow, the other had surpassed the rest and barely made it onto the Noble rankings, allowing him to participate in the King’s Game.

However, compared to this person’s status, Yun Xueqing cared more about the aura emanating from him.

Yun Xueqing couldn’t help but glance at Fu Mi a couple more times. He subconsciously looked at San Zhi as well, suppressing his strange expression, and ultimately said nothing.

Even though Yun Xueqing tried his best to mask the unnatural look on his face, Fu Wuxuan still keenly noticed the fluctuation in his emotions.

He followed Yun Xueqing’s gaze and landed on Fu Mi. Looking at the other’s innocent, babyish face, he stroked his chin thoughtfully.

Actually, among the survivors present, there weren’t just these five—more like five and a half.

When they returned to the Blue Castle, Li Yulin had surprisingly come back too. He knelt on the ground, as if he had lost his three souls and seven spirits, his eyes dull and numb.

Perhaps the real Li Yulin’s soul had already died, leaving behind only a walking empty shell.

Seeing the other’s face inevitably reminded Yun Xueqing of his dying entrustment.

He lowered his eyes slightly and placed a hand on Li Yulin’s shoulder. Without much hope, he softly called out, “Li Yulin?”

He hadn’t expected any reaction, but upon his touch, Li Yulin actually responded.

“Weird… Weird… Lord…”

Yun Xueqing’s pupils contracted slightly. He suppressed the urge to check if anyone around had noticed his actions and calmly crouched down, bringing his face closer to Li Yulin. In a lowered voice, he asked, “What did you just say?”

Li Yulin’s pupils remained unfocused, but his mouth mumbled, “Lord of the Weird… Twelfth month… Approaching… Approaching…”

The twelfth month? That was about half a year from now, right?

After fully hearing what Li Yulin said, Yun Xueqing’s heart sank.

His gaze sharpened as he stared at Li Yulin’s face.

However, that brief moment of returning to his senses seemed to be only for delivering this one message. After speaking, the last trace of vitality in him dissipated, and his entire body turned to dust, scattering into the air with the wind.

Caught off guard by the sudden change, Yun Xueqing instinctively retreated two steps.

Fu Wuxuan noticed his movement and walked over, asking in a low voice, “What happened?”

Yun Xueqing was about to speak when he noticed the gazes gathering around them. His eyes flickered slightly, and he only said, “I’ll tell you once we’re out.”

Jiang Yiyue overheard Yun Xueqing and Fu Wuxuan’s conversation and spoke up softly, “How are we supposed to get out?”

The attention of those around immediately shifted to her words, ignoring the earlier anomaly as they pondered ways to escape.

Fu Wuxuan raised two fingers and said in a ghostly tone, “Two guesses.”

He lowered one finger and pointed at the King, who sat calmly on the Pear Blossom Chair with his back to them. “First, kill the King.”

When they cleared the second layer of hell, they had killed off the two factions vying for power and then exited that world.

Jiang Yiyue looked somewhat confused. “But if that’s the case, doesn’t that mean we should even more so…” kill the competitors in this match.

She stopped midway, knowing she couldn’t say that out loud.

Everyone present had their own ulterior motives. One wrong move, and it could spark slaughter and mutual destruction.

Fu Wuxuan gave her a thoughtful glance but neither confirmed nor denied it. “Your guess is possible too, but if we start infighting and wear ourselves down first, we might fall right into Zhongse’s trap.”

At his side, Yun Xueqing suddenly interjected coldly, “Maybe we shouldn’t just look at the trial we just cleared, but consider all the trials we’ve been through.”

“You’ve all been talking in circles without getting anywhere,” San Zhi curled his lip and grinned wickedly. “Why not test it out?”

As soon as he finished speaking, he hurled a flying knife that struck the King on the back.

The King’s head tilted, and he fell silent.

Jiang Yiyue couldn’t quite believe it. “He’s dead just like that?”

Yet even after the King died, the door to the real world didn’t open.

She turned in shock, wanting to see San Zhi’s reaction.

But she saw that San Zhi, who had looked ruthless moments before, suddenly paled for an instant before thick black miasma poured from his body.

His Weird aura had gone out of control.

Realizing he could lose control and rampage at any moment, San Zhi distanced himself from the others.

It wasn’t out of concern for them, but fear that if he rampaged, they would band together and kill him.

With his remaining rationality, he forcibly suppressed his killing urge.

Weird aura overflowed from his body. For a moment, he couldn’t maintain his human form and nearly reverted to his true shape, but he barely held it back. He was like a tightly strung bowstring on the verge of snapping.

San Zhi worried that revealing his original form would lead to them ganging up on him. Likewise, Jiang Yiyue feared he would lose control—she couldn’t defeat this Weird and would be killed by him.

She asked anxiously, “What’s wrong with him?”

Fu Wuxuan looked at his state and explained lightly, “He killed the King without thinking it through. Committing an evil act in this castle naturally means bearing the punishment for evil acts.”

Polluters who committed evil accelerated their mutation and ultimately fell into becoming Weird.

But Weird were already Weird, so they couldn’t be punished with mutation. Instead, another method was used—stripping away their Weird nature.

Humans who lost their humanity fell into Weird.

Weird who lost their Weird nature lost everything, degenerating into mindless chaos bent only on slaughter.

San Zhi mobilized every bit of Weird Power in his body to frantically suppress it. He barely managed to say, “Hurry up and figure out how to get out of here. I can’t hold on much longer.”

Fu Wuxuan shook his head. Facing a Weird on the verge of rampaging, he showed no worry or fear—instead, he mocked San Zhi with ease. “Next time, use your brain before acting.”

San Zhi ignored his lesson, his smile turning eerie. “Getting out depends on gambling. I just lost the bet—no regrets.”

Fu Wuxuan gave him a light glance. “King’s Game: No regrets on bets?”

San Zhi replied smoothly, “King’s Game: No regrets on bets.”

Fu Wuxuan let out a muffled chuckle and ignored him, starting to search for clues.

Yun Xueqing followed suit, rummaging around the room.

The room was very empty, with few places to search. Everyone had been facing away from the King before and hadn’t seen his true appearance.

Now that the King was dead, they naturally walked around to face him.

Seeing his face, they were all somewhat surprised.

Jiang Yiyue exclaimed, “How is it just a skeleton?”

The King who had spoken to them was merely a snow-white skeleton seated on the Pear Blossom Chair, draped in a bright red cloak, wearing a noble crown, and issuing commands to them.

Yun Xueqing leaned closer to the skeleton and explained, “What we saw before was probably an illusion created by Zhongse using Oracle, making us see a phantom.”

Now that Zhongse was gone, and San Zhi had stabbed the phantom with a knife, it naturally shattered, revealing the true form.

Drawing nearer, he naturally saw what the King held in his hand—a book.

The cover was pure black, accented only by a single vertical white line, extremely plain, with three large gold-embossed characters in the center: Hell Changes.

Yun Xueqing didn’t know what this book called Hell Screen did. He was wondering whether to take it out when Fu Mi, who had been lurking among the crowd, suddenly stepped forward. Without any hesitation, he grabbed the skeleton and shook it three times, checking for anything else.

Fu Mi was petite, and the skeleton he held was even larger than him, yet he lifted it effortlessly.

But the skeleton was too big—even lifted, its legs dragged helplessly on the ground, looking somewhat pathetic.

He shook the skeleton but found no clues. Without a second thought, he tossed it casually to the ground and reached for the book it had held.

Fu Mi flipped open the book and glanced at the table of contents. He found the content perfectly normal—just an ordinary book.

With a sweet smile that made him look somewhat obedient, he said warmly to the group, “It’s just an ordinary novel, no Weird Power attached.”

He handed the book over, and Fu Wuxuan beside him took it. He flipped through the table of contents just like Fu Mi had, his gaze lingering on a certain line.

He followed the page number and read the content. Realizing there were no tricks, he suddenly understood and more or less figured out the way out.

The others had only glanced at the cover and had no ideas. Jiang Yiyue hesitated. “Should we read the whole book? It might have clues.”

After all, something held by the King seemed extremely important.

Fu Wuxuan suddenly spoke up. “I’ve read this book before.”

Jiang Yiyue’s eyes lit up. “So does that mean…”

As if fulfilling her wish, Fu Wuxuan nodded steadily and introduced, “The title of this book isn’t actually Hell Screen. It’s a short story collection that includes Hell Screen, compiling twenty short stories.”

Jiang Yiyue nearly fainted upon hearing there were twenty short stories. “That many?”

They wouldn’t know when they’d finish—it would take until the year of the monkey and the month of the horse. They didn’t have time to waste even a little.

Thinking this, she subconsciously glanced at San Zhi beside her, who hadn’t spoken and was silently suppressing his Weird aura.

She grumbled inwardly— who knew if this guy would rampage in the next second.

As she worried, she heard Fu Wuxuan speak unhurriedly. “Among these twenty short stories, the most famous one is called Hell Screen, and the collection is named after it.”

Jiang Yiyue was a bit lost in the fog but roughly understood. Full of hope, she said, “So we only need to understand that one short story Hell Changes, without reading all twenty?”

“No, the key isn’t the Hell Screen story.” Fu Wuxuan flipped open the book and pointed to a line in the table of contents. “It should be this one.”

His fingertip was slender and his nail neatly rounded—clearly meticulously manicured, even while fleeing in the apocalypse.

Everyone looked at the short story he pointed to and hesitantly read out the title. “Spider Thread?”

Fu Wuxuan nodded, closed the book, and calmly recounted the story’s content.

The story of Spider Thread was simple. It told of a robber who committed countless evils in life. After death, his soul fell into hell, where he struggled desperately in the blood pond. The Buddha Sakyamuni, moved by the fact that the robber had once saved a spider in life, showed great mercy and gave him a chance, lowering a spider’s thread into hell. The robber climbed up the thread, hoping to escape hell.

But he noticed other sinners climbing up after him. Fearing the thread would break from the weight, he kicked down each one below him. As a result, the thread suddenly snapped, and the robber fell back into hell’s blood pond.

After hearing the story, everyone felt complex emotions. They realized it corresponded in certain ways.

They, who had been thrown into this small world for overusing Oracle, weren’t they just like robbers who had fallen into hell for their evil deeds?

The robber wanted to climb up and escape hell; they wanted to become King and leave this small world.

But the robber had a spider thread, while they had nothing.

Suppressing her complicated feelings, Jiang Yiyue asked softly, “Maybe it’s not necessarily the Spider Thread story—could be something else? After all, the book’s cover says Hell Changes. Maybe the clue is in Hell Changes.”

No one spoke, until Yun Xueqing suddenly said, “That white line on the cover is a spider thread.”

He didn’t use ambiguous language but stated affirmatively that the white line was a spider thread.

Fu Wuxuan didn’t bother explaining further and simply handed the book to Jiang Yiyue, as if to say, “If you don’t believe me, see for yourself.”

Jiang Yiyue hesitated for a moment, took the book, and flipped to the Hell Screen entry in the table of contents.

While the others discussed their ideas, she read the book.

Hell Screen was a bit long. She skimmed through it in ten minutes, her face showing bewilderment.

The story depicted several cruel characters, with the main theme opposing feudal oppression. There wasn’t the slightest clue about escaping.

Realizing her suspicion was wrong, Jiang Yiyue straightforwardly apologized. “Aside from Spider Thread, the other stories really don’t have any clues… Sorry for wasting time.”

She said sincerely to Fu Wuxuan, “You’re really amazing and so knowledgeable.”

Unknowingly, Jiang Yiyue imagined: This book wasn’t even that popular, yet he’d read it. Before the apocalypse, he must have been a literary youth!

As expected of Dong Jun!

Facing her praise, Fu Wuxuan showed no delight on his face and only said indifferently, “It’s nothing special.”

After all, the clues were laid out so plainly before them. He had merely analyzed them ahead of time.

If it had been anyone else, as long as they read the entire book, they would have known that the key clue was The Spider Thread, not Hell Changes.

He had only saved a bit of time and hadn’t done anything particularly remarkable.

While Jiang Yiyue read the book, the others each voiced their own guesses.

The baby-faced Fu Mi smiled and said, “In the story, the bandit didn’t want the others to escape, so he kicked them down, which instead cut off their only chance… So mutual slaughter is definitely not the way out.”

It was even possible that they needed to cooperate with each other to escape.

Everyone thought this made sense.

Fu Mi changed the subject. “However, the bandit had the spider thread to redeem him, but we haven’t yet discovered our own lifeline.”