Death Game: Starting as a Trickster, Pretending to Be a God

After Yue Zhenqiao issued his orders, all the dart masters gathered closely around him.

The dart masters quickly sat in a circle, their expressions ranging from stern to worried—none of them looked particularly optimistic.

This was only natural… encountering such a bizarre incident where colleagues mysteriously vanished, and even being unable to remember who the missing colleagues were, was an exceptionally dreadful experience even within the Prison Mountain Realm.

So, of course, they couldn’t be optimistic.

Yue Zhenqiao sat there and made slight adjustments to the seating arrangement of the dart masters around him.

”You two, sit closer together.”

”Wu San, you and the person next to you check your positions…”

”Everyone must pay close attention to the people beside you.”

Watching Yue Zhenqiao’s arrangements, Lin Yu couldn’t help but feel impressed.

”This Dart Head Yue, while his martial skills are just so-so, his experience in the jianghu is seasoned, and his leadership is quite good.”

After all, even when facing an unknown, invisible enemy and a terror whose patterns weren’t yet fully understood, Yue Zhenqiao was still striving to find ways to resist it all.

What he was doing was indeed the optimal solution based on the patterns summarized so far.

But unfortunately…

”These measures probably won’t stop people from continuing to disappear either.”

Lin Yu said softly.

Li Nian, beside him, heard Lin Yu’s words and asked curiously, ”Why do you say that, Sister Zhu Ming?”

”His method seems much better than that trio over there randomly pointing their weapons everywhere, doesn’t it?”

Hearing this, Lin Yu shook his head.

”It is better than theirs, but Dart Head Yue’s approach essentially places hope in human attention… However, human attention and memory are the most unreliable things. Moreover, the demon or whatever hidden in the shadows, the one causing these disappearances, is clearly adept at deceiving human senses and toying with human memory… Your class is ’Thief,’ so you should understand this better than I do.”

Li Nian nodded. ”That’s true… Those two men just now also vanished without a sound, and the people around them showed no signs of noticing at all.”

As she spoke, Li Nian grasped what Lin Yu meant.

After all, she had just personally demonstrated Lin Yu’s point—Squirtle hadn’t noticed his scroll being silently stolen, which was the perfect example.

Prompted by Lin Yu’s reminder, Li Nian could recall many similar examples of diverted attention… After all, even without relying on the abilities of the ’Death Game,’ she possessed exceptional talent in the art of ”stealing things.”

Of course, for Lin Yu, there was another reason he wasn’t optimistic about Yue Zhenqiao’s plan…

That was, he had already asked Old Zheng to watch everyone earlier… and it hadn’t been of much use.

Old Zheng’s spiritual energy coverage was far more reliable than ordinary people’s sight and hearing, yet all it could do was inform him the moment someone went missing.

It couldn’t prevent it, couldn’t track it, and couldn’t even capture how the disappearance process happened.

Lin Yu looked at Yue Zhenqiao again—the leader of the escort team was now staring intently at all his colleagues and subordinates around him, silently counting numbers under his breath.

Clearly, Yue Zhenqiao was continuously tallying the number of people around him.

However…

Lin Yu had issued a warning and alert the instant the last disappearance occurred, so theoretically, the next disappearance shouldn’t happen so quickly.

Furthermore, Lin Yu had a vague premonition…

The cause of these dart masters disappearing one after another didn’t seem to be some ”regular,” ”rule-based,” unconscious weirdness, nor was it a demon with very low intelligence.

In other words, these dart masters’ disappearances were definitely being actively manipulated behind the scenes by some existence, some being with a strong subjective will.

After all, if his deductions about ”those with sparser interpersonal relationships disappearing first” and ”players and natives being treated differently” were true…

Then it was highly likely that a mastermind behind the scenes was subjectively driving all this.

This meant that fellow at least possessed the intelligence to judge which dart masters were more isolated and to distinguish between players and natives, and could also use some method to secretly observe everything.

If this hypothesis held true, and based on this prerequisite, Lin Yu put himself in the shoes of this ”mastermind.”

”To be more radical, assuming this mastermind has already observed that Yue Zhenqiao and I have noticed something is wrong and are deducing and searching for patterns, and tentatively assuming its goal is to make us all disappear or die as much as possible…”

Lin Yu began to think from the ”mastermind’s” perspective.

”If it were me… even though there are still twenty-four dart masters, making them disappear two by two would still take twelve rounds to finish.”

”So, the best choice would be… the next third round of disappearances wouldn’t follow the pattern of the previous two. Instead, it would choose to break the deadlock and create greater chaos…”

”Even if it’s not the third round, it might be the fourth, fifth, or sixth… In short, it’s impossible to keep boiling the frog slowly with two at a time, letting us continuously search for patterns and try to find a flaw.”

Thinking this, Lin Yu looked toward the spot where the two men had disappeared earlier.

Thinking cruelly, a strategy of trading lives for time was actually beneficial for players like them.

So…

”Within the next half hour, a change is bound to occur.”

Lin Yu thought to himself.

He was just about to share his deduction with Li Nian when he heard a sound coming from outside through the stone house.

”Whoosh—”

”Boom!”

A sharp whistling sound was followed by a violent explosion.

Lin Yu’s expression changed slightly.

He had heard this sound before at Fuyuan Mountain—it was the escort team’s signal arrow.

He looked at Yue Zhenqiao and saw him stop counting, springing to his feet in an instant.

”That’s Old Liu’s signal arrow! Something’s happened at the wagons!”

”We need to go check immediately.”

Yue Zhenqiao stood up, turned around, and looked at the dart masters. ”Wu San, come with me… Wu Qi, you stay here and guard.”

Wu San nodded in agreement, but Wu Qi immediately spoke up.

”No, Dart Head, it’s currently noon, the hottest time of day. Going out is probably fraught with danger!”

”This Chen Family Fort is already strange enough. If you and Wu San go alone…”

Hearing this, Lin Yu stood up.

”Add me as well.”

As he spoke, Yue Zhenqiao looked at Lin Yu. ”Is the Female Warrior truly willing to assist?”

Seeing Lin Yu’s expression, which didn’t seem like a joke, Yue Zhenqiao clasped his fists.

”Thank you, Female Warrior, for your willingness to help! I, Yue, am endlessly grateful!”

Hearing this, Li Nian also stood up.

Lin Yu glanced at her and spoke before she could. ”You need to stay here—someone has to keep an eye on these guys and the employer.”

”I can’t take the employer and you out to brave the scorching sun and take risks… right?”

Hearing this, Li Nian reluctantly sat back down.

”Alright, you have a point,” Li Nian said, taking off a transparent, almost invisible soft garment from her person. ”But… take this with you.”