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Cao Qian silently watched the two of them from a corner and walked out behind Xing Ye when she saw Boy C take out the memory card. She didn’t say anything, staring at Xing Ye like a teacher assessing a student for a while before slowly opening her mouth. “Why did you get him to bury it? What if he’s a player?”

“It’d be even better if he was a player. The whole reason why I wanted it buried was to let other people see.” Xing Ye explained with satisfaction. “He was one of the five of us who entered the female dormitory the day before yesterday night and triggered a mission with the key character, Miss Human Head. Even if those two lackeys of mine aren’t players, they’d definitely be watched by other players. If they buried something in broad daylight, it’d probably be dug out again very soon.”

“You want to confuse the other players?”

“I want to lure out the last player.” Xing Ye said, “I specifically called Boy C out in front of all our classmates so that person could see.”

“You’re sure that the last player is in our class?”

“It’s possible. Don’t you think that the number of players in our grade is a little much? You, me, Wu Yu, and Ms. Li are all here. However, the mission involves areas from the whole school. All one thousand students and one hundred staff members could all be players- but then why are the number of players so concentrated here?”

Cao Qian frowned and pondered for a long time before reaching a conclusion. “Chance? Luck?”

“That’s right, it’s caused by the following fate players’ luck value.” Xing Ye explained, “Right now, we already know that Wu Yu, Ms. Li, and Di Kuang are all in the same group. Wu Yu and Ms. Li are both following fate players while we’re opposing fate players. At the start, you and I weren’t teammates yet. Two opposing fate solo players spawning in a room with a team of following fate players- say, isn’t that very unlucky?”

Cao Qian’s expression turned complicated when the following fate players' luck values were mentioned. “It really is unlucky.”

“With how lucky the following fate players are, everybody from their camp should’ve spawned together in the same class and would be able to recognize each other with a glance. Wouldn’t that be a natural occurrence?”

“That’s right!” Cao Qian strongly approved.

“From this, we can tell that Di Kuang is an opposing fate player because he was spawned in grade 12, a completely different grade from us. He was the only one out of his whole team to have not spawned here because his luck value was too low.”

Cao Qian continued to nod excitedly.

“Now we can also ascertain Mr. Deng really is a following fate player and doesn’t have any teammates. He spawned as a gym teacher for the first years, a grade which doesn’t have any players. As long as he doesn’t expose himself, there’s no way anybody would be able to discover him. That means his luck is also very good.”

Cao Qian strenuously pondered over Xing Ye’s words and tried to put it in her own words. “Three out of the seven players are opposing fate players. Two of them are solo players and spawned in the middle of a group of following fate players while the last of their companions spawned somewhere completely unrelated, meeting with Wu Yu the next day. There are four following fate players. One of them has no team, so they spawned in the safest location possible. Two of the remaining three are teamed up. Wait, but then why do you think the last one is Wu Yu’s classmate?”

“Because the number of players are too balanced.” Xing Ye said, “We already know that there’s four players in our class- two from the opposing fate camp and two from the following fate camp. But doesn’t that mean that the following fate camp wouldn’t really have an advantage? Even if they’re a group while we didn’t know each other, the numbers are still evenly matched. With their luck value, they should have an overwhelming advantage. That means that the last Following Fate player has to be in our grade and knew the other Following Fate players before they arrived in this world.”

Xing Ye let Cao Qian see the photos he secretly took of two other students using their phones. “When I first arrived in the game, instead of checking the mission on my phone, I first took note of who in our class was using their phone. There were altogether three people; you’re one of them, the other two being Guan Ling and Zhao Hong. The last player has to be one of them!

Cao Qian looked at the two photos. She didn’t even remember who they were.

When she had first entered the world, she was completely focused on checking out the game rules on her phone. She didn’t even think about paying attention to the other students. She was even delighted that the first of the seven legends was in the girls dormitories and planned to scout it out that night.

She never thought there’d actually be somebody who would observe so much as soon as they entered the game. Did that mean she had been exposed the moment she looked down at her phone?

Cao Qian looked at Xing Ye with a complicated look on her face. She ran into situations where the other players’ identities were unknown before, but she had never seen a person who could find leads on people just based on their luck in the game. This new teammate of hers had already gone deep below the surface of the game rules.

He wasn’t somebody who just stuck to the game rules. If there was a chance, he would exploit and suppress them, creating his own rules.

Cao Qian opened her mouth, wanting to say things like, “How does your brain work?” “Is this really just your second game?” “Aren’t you too amazing?” but in the end, nothing could come out.

Xing Ye could see Cao Qian’s doubts and brought out his own points page to show Cao Qian. “I really am a new player with only 200 points. However, I hope you can trust and cooperate with me. Everything I do is for the sake of victory. You might think the 1000 points from killing Ms. Li is already enough of a profit, but losing isn’t my style. I want to win.”

We, the two players with the least points in the round, are facing four players in a group as well as one self proclaimed ‘novice player’ with unfathomable intentions. Do you want to create a miracle? Do you want to challenge the impossible?”

Cao Qian heard Xing Ye’s words and a long-forgotten feeling began to swell in her heart.

It was a feeling she had lost after growing up, strangled under life’s pressures. She had lost her will to fight.

“I do.” Cao Qian extended her hand to Xing Ye.

Xing Ye grasped it tightly. “Then trust me. Even if one day, I might run you through with a knife and kill you, you still have to trust me. It’ll all be to win.”

Cao Qian: “...”

Now that she relearned how to think, a thought suddenly popped into her head, which she directly asked: “You keep telling me to trust you. Don’t tell me that it’s because you’ve already thought of some plan that involves stabbing me dead?”

“Ahaha,” Xing Ye laughed awkwardly, “Good job, your intuition’s pretty good. However, it’s just a plan and it might not necessarily be used. After all, the more back up plans, the better.”

“Whatever then,” Cao Qian said, “It’s not like I have anything to lose.”

Xing Ye sensed that she definitely had a story behind her. However, their current relationship wasn’t close enough to talk about such things.

They were merely cooperating.

The two ran to a hidden spot and watched Boy C stealthily bury the memory card at noon. Half an hour later, a person walked in, glancing around as they dug up the memory card.

It was Guan Ling.

Xing Ye specifically called Boy C out when Wu Yu wasn’t there to lure out the last player.

What will we do? Cao Qian asked Xing Ye with her eyes.

Don’t rush in impulsively, Xing Ye shook his head at Cao Qian.

From the very beginning, he knew Mr. Deng and Di Kuang wouldn’t be easy opponents.    

The author has something to say:

Cao Qian: Huh? Why do I feel like I’ve joined some pyramid scheme? I just randomly agreed to throw my whole life in for someone.

_____

Kiki: Omg, Xing Ye’s brain reminds me of my classmate. He’s an absolute prodigy at math and chess, winning all kinds of math competitions and beating frigging international masters (just a level below grandmaster) in chess tournaments. Did I mention he’s in high school? Always intuitively comes up with his own easy method to solve hard ass math problems without any kind of tutoring or help. Mannn, their brains are just wired differently. Geniuses, whew.

By the way, I've decided to set up a ko-fi for charity for this novel! I feel bad taking kofis since I don't update this consistently and can't do sponsored chapters, but I also want something to motivate me to TL faster. I'm not sure if anybody would be interested, but here's what I was thinking:

• 100% of proceeds go to charity of my choice (I'll post receipts every end of month on ko-fi. I'm currently donating to the Namibia Ocean Conservatory (their animal rescues are amazing), but next month might be the Yemen Crisis and so on).
• When queue reaches $15, so 5 coffees, if circumstances allow it, I'll drop everything to finish a QR code chapter within that day and post it!