Players, Please Board the Train

The spinning pointer landed on Baseball Cap’s position. He, along with those behind him, instinctively jumped away from the pointer.

Xu Huo took two steps forward and suddenly said, ”Since I’m in the life-and-death game, you won’t try to steal my items, right?”

Brother Feng smiled without speaking, while the Tall Sturdy Camouflage Soldier wiped his gun and said, ”Our Brother Feng doesn’t even care about your items.”

”That’s good then.” Xu Huo quickly walked to the black circle at the base of the pointer. The moment he stepped inside, everything around him was once again swallowed by pure whiteness.

This time, floating before him was a slightly larger twenty-four-slot roulette wheel with black and white squares equally divided, a black pointer, and still the ten-minute countdown.

He didn’t rush to take out the Dual-color Magic Cube. Instead, he stood still three meters from the roulette wheel and raised his hand.

The distant roulette wheel instantly vaporized and disappeared, then condensed before his fingers, the countdown numbers suddenly magnified.

Yet Xu Huo didn’t spin the pointer. He simply waited as the time decreased.

For the first five minutes, he didn’t feel any discomfort. But when the countdown started with ”4,” the image of the Undertaker announcing the game rules suddenly surfaced in his mind. The six rules repeated over and over, followed by the scenes of those people exploding.

Everyone died from unknown forces that couldn’t be traced to their source, let alone defended against. Once the pointer landed on a black square, the outcome was certain death—no one could be saved.He only had ten minutes. If he gambled, maybe he could land on a white square...

His frown deepened, and Xu Huo’s gaze at the countdown grew increasingly agitated. When only three minutes remained, an almost transparent iron chain appeared in the space, one end wrapped around the roulette wheel, the other around his wrist, pulling his hand upward.

Illusion? Or the roulette wheel’s power?

Before his extended hand could touch the pointer, a sudden pain shot through his hand. He blinked, and the chain disappeared.

”Only a little over a minute left. He doesn’t actually think he can avoid spinning by waiting out the ten minutes, does he?” Outside, the Tall Sturdy Camouflage Soldier gave Painting Woman standing beside Xu Huo a malicious look. ”This is a space created by a high-level item. Even if you don’t want to spin, you won’t have a choice in the end.”

Painting Woman rolled her eyes and typed out a newly learned word on her phone: ”Dumbass!”

The Tall Sturdy Camouflage Soldier slammed the ground as he stood up, but just then Xu Huo reached out his hand for the third time. He immediately froze, watching as the white mark on Xu Huo’s hand disappeared!

”Failed.” Xu Huo’s eyes regained their clarity as he looked back at Brother Feng and his two companions. ”I landed on a black square.”

Brother Feng’s expression darkened for an instant. ”Why didn’t you use your item?”

”My item doesn’t work every time,” Xu Huo said simply before retreating to the side with Painting Woman.

Meanwhile, on the nearby roulette wheel, the crowd desperately tried to avoid the life-and-death game by staying away from the pointer. But after the pointer stopped, everyone in that particular square became either catatonic or frenzied—clearly, all of them had been simultaneously pulled into the life-and-death game.

What followed was a series of intermittent bloody explosions. The same scene played out on several other roulette wheels. On one particular wheel, people had hidden in squares away from the pointer, but were still randomly selected in the end.

Xu Huo glanced at the exploding squares on several roulette wheels, his eyes flickering with thought.

”Idiots,” Brother Feng sneered coldly before scanning the crowd again and randomly pointing at a woman holding a child. ”Next.”

”Ahem!” Baseball Cap cleared his throat. ”I’ll go this time.”

He had barely stepped forward when the Tall Sturdy Camouflage Soldier pushed him back. ”Who said you could play hero? Get lost.”

Baseball Cap wanted to argue, but swallowed his words when he saw the gun barrel pointed at him.

Over there, Brother Feng said, ”Better not waste survival opportunities. If you want to die, I can send you on your way.”

The selected woman tearfully handed her child to someone nearby, but was stopped by the Old Gentleman who had been following Xu Huo’s group. He proactively said to Brother Feng: ”As long as it’s not one of your so-called players, anyone else will do, right?”

Brother Feng nodded.

The Old Gentleman turned back to the woman and those trying to dissuade him. ”I’ve lived sixty or seventy years—that’s enough. My death wouldn’t be a pity. You young people need to live well. Only if you live will our country have hope, will our children have hope.”

After saying this, he straightened his clothes, took out his wife’s ring and put it on his finger, then walked calmly toward the spinning pointer and stepped directly into the circle.

Xu Huo asked him from outside, ”Old Gentleman, are you afraid of death?”

”Haha!” The Old Gentleman laughed heartily. ”When I was young, I served as a soldier! If I were afraid of death, I couldn’t have carried a gun!”

Xu Huo smiled slightly. ”Good luck.”

The pointer soon stopped, and the ten-minute countdown began. The Old Gentleman started describing what he saw: ”White everywhere... There’s a twenty-four-slot roulette wheel... White pointer... The wheel can still move, can’t hit it or touch it... I’m going to spin...”

At this moment, Xu Huo drew his dagger and walked up to him, taking his hand and carving two characters into his palm: Don’t spin.

Brother Feng narrowed his eyes at the sight but didn’t speak.

The countdown quickly approached its end. Although the Old Gentleman gestured that he had received the message, he still spun the pointer in the last ten seconds. Subsequently, a white mark appeared on the back of his hand.

Cheers of joy erupted from Baseball Cap and the others behind them. The Old Gentleman himself, emerging from the life-and-death game, seemed incredulous. ”I’m actually still alive!”

”I just wanted to take the chance—if I got lucky, maybe I could save one more person. I never thought I’d actually succeed!”

”Probably virtue has its reward,” Xu Huo said with a smile.

”The old man’s luck is really something!” the Tall Sturdy Camouflage Soldier muttered, but Brother Feng thought differently. He looked at Xu Huo, his gun aimed toward Painting Woman and Wang Chaoqing’s direction. ”Brother, you’ve figured something out, haven’t you? Don’t keep it to yourself. Speak up.”

”Just a speculation,” Xu Huo said. ”I believe this roulette wheel isn’t unsolvable. It seems like there’s only one option after entering the life-and-death game, but there’s actually a second one.”

”That is—not spinning the pointer.”

”Impossible,” Brother Feng stated categorically. ”Everyone who enters the life-and-death game must spin the pointer.”

”Are you one hundred percent certain, or are you saying that because you’ve never seen it happen?” Xu Huo countered. ”Items should all have usage limitations. An item that guarantees one hundred percent death with no possibility of survival doesn’t follow the patterns of items.”

”Some people can obtain survival opportunities,” Brother Feng said.

”Black and white squares each take half—fifty percent probability. How many people have you encountered so far who obtained survival opportunities? Not counting players.”

Brother Feng glanced at the Old Gentleman. ”Only him. The others were all players. Players can cheat using items.”

”This shows that for every individual, the probability of that fifty percent survival is actually extremely low,” Xu Huo said. ”And just now, the Old Gentleman actually could have chosen not to spin the pointer. He made his choice in a state of extreme clarity.”

”If that’s the case, why not try the second option—not spinning the pointer?”