Chapter 40: Refund the Tickets! No Refund and I’ll Kill Your Whole Family!

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Most Weirds bullied the weak and feared the strong. Seeing this audience member dragged in for the public performance slide into a kneel so quickly, the temporary team leader from the Information Department standing next to Su Jianglou waved his hand, signaling that this one could go back.

The next second, another computer screen showed a somewhat stubborn audience member being dragged out.

The same process followed. Everyone split up to handle them, processing ten every five seconds on average.

Finally, a miraculous scene unfolded in the venue…

After the first group of trainees finished their dance performance, the lights on the stage and the big screen all lit up.

Perhaps to better appreciate the trainees’ anxious expressions during the audience voting period, all the trainees faced the audience with their backs to the big screen displaying the live vote counts.

To know how many votes they had gotten and whether they would be eliminated, the trainees could only judge based on the expressions of the audience below.

When the moment arrived, even the Four-Protect-One Team members who had been full of confidence before couldn’t help but feel a bit anxious.

Wang Xingxing sneaked a glance at Bureau Chief Lin, who was a few positions away from him, and thought this was even worse than standing under the guillotine himself.

Lately, as soon as he closed his eyes at night, his mind would involuntarily conjure up images of his sister and grandfather.

During his newbie player phase, he had accidentally lost a life in a dungeon. After coming out, he had even gone to a Bureau psychologist for hypnosis to forget his dungeon experiences.

He was an adult and still struggled like this. If they really failed to protect Bureau Chief Lin this time, he didn’t know what he would do.

With that thought, he couldn’t help but search the audience below for familiar faces.

Supervisor Su’s seat was near the front, and he spotted him easily.

Wang Xingxing looked at Supervisor Su sitting in the audience seats. If this weren’t a weird dungeon, most people would believe the teenager below was just an ordinary college student.

His expression was just too readable. From his apparent age, Wang Xingxing felt he was probably a bit older than Supervisor Su.

Supervisor Su’s eyes sparkled as he looked at the big screen, then swept over them one by one.

Wang Xingxing started to doubt if he had misread the meaning in the other’s eyes.

Because from Supervisor Su’s happy yet slightly nervous expression and gaze from start to finish, he felt that none of the nineteen people on stage might be eliminated.

But was that possible?

So, he had just been overthinking it…

Supervisor Su probably harbored no malice toward them, but the mood swings of a weird teenager couldn’t be gauged by normal logic.

As he thought this, Wang Xingxing noticed some unrest in the audience seats below.

The voting was nearing its end, and almost every audience member he could see wore an incredulous expression toward the stage.

Finally, a ding echoed through the entire stadium.

Voting closed.

At this point, all the trainees on stage noticed the angry expressions of the audience below.

Some audience members even stood up, hurling the event light signs they had received upon entry heavily onto the stage, shouting, “Black curtain!”

“A hand reached out and voted for me! This is unforgivable rigging!”

“Refund the tickets! No refund and I’ll kill your whole family!”

That shout was like the starting gun for the rest of the furious audience.

In an instant, all the audience members stirred restlessly, their questioning voices roaring like surging waves about to shatter the calm sea surface.

The mentors, holding the program team’s announcement fees, wanted to say something but put down their microphones awkwardly after a moment’s thought.

A polite way to say “bullying the weak and fearing the strong” was “judging the situation.”

With all the audience members dissatisfied with the voting results, speaking up now would incite public wrath.

The turn of events came too fast. By the time the trainees on stage realized the voting round had temporarily ended and they could turn to see the results, the next second, they all froze mid-turn.

Nineteen cylindrical bars representing each trainee’s vote count were identical in size, height, width, and shape, as if directly copy-pasted.

The screen showed 12 audience members had abstained.

The remaining nineteen trainees each received 52 votes.

The fairness was so perfect it made one suspect if those 12 abstentions were also manipulated by some invisible black hand.

Unlike the audience’s anger below, some trainees who knew their performance hadn’t been great that day felt their hearts skip a beat at such vote counts.

Only then did he feel his palms were drenched in sweat. When he spread his hand, his palm already bore several crescent-shaped marks from his short nails, blood seeping out.

“Does this mean none of us will be eliminated or punished, right?”

The audience below wouldn’t respond to his question, nor would the mentors.

But a trainee beside him answered, “Right. Rules are rules.”

Rules were traps for players, but also protections.

So, no matter how dissatisfied the audience was, the associate director who had been backstage had to walk to the center of the stage and forcefully suppress their discontent.

“Refund the tickets?” The associate director grabbed the microphone, his tone resolute. “Impossible!”

“My whole family totals 24,896 members. If you have the guts, come kill us all!”

Mushrooms thrived in the right environment—one grab and you had a handful.

“Security! Seal the venue! Let’s see who dares make trouble!”

The associate director appeared tough, but he was actually nervous. He, who had always been glad the director seemed dead, now somewhat missed the stronger director.

Fortunately, the next second after he released his aura to forcefully suppress the crowd, some rowdy audience members about to stand up were knocked out cold by black hands emerging from the darkness!

The fainted Weirds were kicked under the audience seats.

The vast stadium fell pin-drop silent.

Seeing the audience’s reaction, the associate director suddenly felt his body lighten like a feather.

He gazed drunkenly and greedily at the audience below, feeling this moment was the peak of his weird life. His already peak aura even surged higher.

He finally had a bit of the head director’s demeanor.

“The public performance continues. No trainees from the first group are eliminated. Step down.” The associate director lowered his voice, deep and authoritative. “Second group, come up.”

With his weird luck flowing smoothly and even the players cooperating, the first group’s trainees hurriedly lined up straight, eyes forward, and quickly stepped off stage.

The second group of trainees, sleeves flailing wildly, dashed onto the stage with thudding footsteps.

This dance’s accompaniment switched from cello to piano.

Under the elegant piano melody, every trainee on stage moved and expressed like a gender-swapped armless Venus, utterly captivating.

After the performance ended, the audience began voting as usual.

The smarter audience members, having learned their lesson, stared dead at their voting device screens.

Then… another black hand appeared out of thin air!

Information Department staff who had arrived from headquarters support straightened their clothes and calmly took the now-empty audience seats.

Final voting results: Eighteen trainees, ten abstentions, each trainee got 55 votes.

By now, sharper audience members realized this was a vote-rigging gang acting on their own.

Clearly, the arrogance of capital lay in ignoring the audience’s thoughts as long as they achieved their goals.

With the first two groups setting the precedent, the next three groups that took the stage produced the same results, no longer surprising the Weirds.

By the end of the public performance, half the trainees were supposed to be eliminated.

It was supposed to be the audience’s punishment feast.

The audience felt they had been the biggest fools of the century, with pent-up rage having nowhere to vent.

Unlike the Real World, where people occasionally had dark thoughts but overall yearned for positive, bright lives, ordinary weird residents in the Weird World were deeply influenced by the negative emotions radiating from powerful Weirds.

Many ordinary weird residents lived from birth under the radiation of powerful Weirds’ forces.

They were reflections and vessels of those powerful Weirds’ twisted emotions and obsessions.

Powerful Weirds tormented in pain couldn’t raise kind, happy little Weirds.

They could only bestow pain, distortion, greed, desire, arrogance, malice…

Until their followers took pain as pleasure.

After the public performance ended and the audience began dispersing, Su Ximu inadvertently saw one audience member with a twisted expression gnawing viciously on his own arm, eyes staring blankly at the now-empty stage.

He vaguely heard fuzzy words escape from between the other’s gnashing teeth, something like “looking forward to it” and “happy.”

But in a blink, the audience member stood up and hurried away.

In no time, most of the audience had left.

Su Ximu also stood and escorted “Big Brother” out of the stadium.

Standing outside the stadium, listening to “Big Brother’s” concerned words, Su Ximu hesitated before saying, “Big Brother, our program team will have a break next week. When we get home then, I have something important to tell you.”

“Um… it would be best if Second Brother and Third Brother are there too.”

Since it was something to tell him next week, Su Xuanxiao didn’t press and nodded. “Got it. I’ll notify them then.”

He then opened his wallet and gave him a stack of pocket money.

The public performance ended, and the program team staff and trainees all had to return to Bizarre Island.

But that night was a sleepless one for everyone.

Rao Fei tossed and turned, recalling every detail of the voting incident.

No trainees being eliminated was certainly happy news.

But it also indicated that unknown changes had occurred in this dungeon once again.

It was highly likely that a third-party weird group with even greater power had intervened in this Idol Draft Dungeon.

After much thought, Rao Fei went into the bathroom and pulled a super-thin phone-shaped weird item from his shoe sole, using a precious chance to contact the outside.

The public performance had ended near midnight, so this was a rare opportunity to stay up late.

He edited the anomalies from today, requested off-site analysis and support, and hit send.

Two hours later, he received Bureau Chief Zhao’s reply. Besides analysis and advice on his message, there was: 【Also, latest dungeon intel. Please check and discern carefully.】

Dungeon intel?

Rao Fei raised an eyebrow in the bathroom and opened the short two-page document.

He guessed it probably came from that Writer Weird again.

The Bureau got much of its dungeon info from Writer Weird.

That Weird was practically the Weird World’s biggest sieve.

Opening the document revealed a photo labeled: 【Weird 101 Dungeon BOSS】

Rao Fei stared at the photo, eyes widening.

He had seen this half-fish monster!

And more than once!