Chapter 200: Tycoon Town (16)
After the five of them passed through the suddenly appearing door, all their weapons vanished. The door silently closed behind them, even the seam disappearing without a trace.
The eerie sobbing and sinister laughter from inside started up again, the sound made by that mountain-of-flesh monster from before.
Ji Ning exchanged a glance with the others. Everyone understood that the Tycoon game behind the door had refreshed into a brand new round.
Looking up again, the game board they had emerged from resembled an iron wall so tall its top was invisible, encircling the entire town.
The Clearance Condition was to escape Tycoon Town, but with walls this high, how were they supposed to get out?
Sheng Churan knocked on the wall, producing a dull, heavy thud that echoed back, oppressive and unsettling to the heart.
His gaze fixed only on Ji Ning as he asked her, "Should we head into the town first?"
That was the only option for now. Ji Ning nodded, and no one else had any objections.
The group of five headed towards the town. However, they hadn't gone far when a grown man walked towards them.
He had an ordinary face, messy hair, and was pulling a shabby cart covered with a plastic tarp.
None of that was particularly notable, yet his attire was strikingly lavish. He wore a branded jacket that didn't fit him well, an expensive watch on his wrist, and leather shoes that, while not gleaming, were clearly of superior quality.
Upon seeing Ji Ning and the others, the man was even more shocked than they were, stopping dead in his tracks, not daring to move another step.
In the brief moment of that encounter, the four-man team had already quickly divided tasks. Jiang Ting stepped forward to engage the man in conversation, while the rest protected Ji Ning and the No. 5 female player, who had already instinctively blended into their group, staying behind her.
"Brother, may I ask what this place is? How do we get out?" Jiang Ting probed the man vaguely while throwing out the question everyone cared about most, watching for the man's reaction.
After getting over his surprise, the man scratched his head and muttered, "This is my first time seeing one alive..." He then raised his voice to answer, "This is Ping'an Town. You can't get out."
Once the ice was broken, the wariness and resistance between them became less rigid. As the unfamiliarity gradually eased, they chatted more and more, and the man led the five of them deeper into the town.
Listening to the man explain the situation here, Ji Ning and the others exchanged subtle glances, their eyes flowing with unspoken understanding. Everyone knew this was no benevolent place.
Especially... Ji Ning lowered her eyes to look at the cart. There was dried blood under the plastic tarp. And the clothes the man wore were clearly not his own.
These things were likely connected to the Tycoon players.
From the man's account, everyone learned that Ping'an Town had become like this many years ago. The town's population had dwindled, and now only four people remained alive. They couldn't go anywhere and could only survive by scavenging items from the iron walls, taking whatever they could find.
As they talked, the group had already entered the town.
The houses everywhere were not only dilapidated but also empty, utterly devoid of human presence.
It was less a town and more a village, an extremely poor one at that, with houses built from packed earth and stone everywhere.
Although the man leading their way seemed rather simple and honest, the group remained fully vigilant, wary of any sudden, unexpected incident.
But the entire journey was eerily quiet. Not to mention danger, there wasn't even the rustle of wind or grass.
The man led the five to the most luxurious courtyard in town, where finally there was a hint of human sound.
Entering the main gate, there were one man and two women in the yard, all around the same age as their guide.
Seeing the five new faces that had appeared out of nowhere, the three people all wore expressions as if they'd seen a ghost.
One of the women put her hands on her hips and shouted, "Shitou! What is going on here?"
The guide, addressed as Shitou, let go of the cart, ran over to the three of them, and whispered with them for a long time.
Even sounds of argument could be heard drifting out.
While waiting for them to finish their discussion, the group looked around the courtyard, successively discovering several places with horrifying implications.
On the clothesline hung garments, among them a T-shirt and pants worn by a player from this instance...
Cylindrical cured meat legs hung under the eaves. Their cross-sections and thickness were unmistakably human legs...
This wasn't living off items scavenged from outside the iron walls; this was entirely thriving and supplementing their nutrition on the people playing the Tycoon game.
Ji Ning's eyelids twitched slightly, a chill running through her entire body.
She caught the glance exchanged between Qin Yanshu and Jiang Ting, then moved next to Sheng Churan, hooked her arm through his, and tugged his sleeve, whispering to him, "Watch for the right moment to act."
Sheng Churan gently stroked the back of Ji Ning's hand, signaling that he understood.
After the two men and two women finished their discussion, they finally relented enough to bring out chairs and stools for the five of them to sit on.
Everyone sat down to talk. If one overlooked the four locals' ill-fitting outfits, the atmosphere was actually quite amiable.
"You want to leave town?" The woman who seemed to be Shitou's wife was the first to ask.
It was still Jiang Ting who stepped forward to negotiate: "Yes, madam. Where can we leave from?"
The woman pursed her lips and said, "Didn't Shitou tell you? There's no way out. We've tried every method since we were small and never made it out, not even digging tunnels. Only you all have ever walked out from behind the iron wall."
"Big Brother Shitou said that many years ago, the town suddenly became like this? When was that? And what about the other townspeople? How did it end up with just the four of you?" Jiang Ting softened his tone as much as possible, yet his imposing manner remained.
So despite his amiable tone, that woman, or rather, the female NPC, was still cowed by him. Her voice grew increasingly flustered: "Can't remember clearly. The other townspeople, maybe they went off to play the games. Only we couldn't get in."
The moment she spoke those words, Jiang Ting was the first to move, subduing the woman. Qin Yanshu and Sheng Churan immediately followed suit. Three against two, they quickly found ropes and tied up the two couples.
Ji Ning and Player No. 5 each grabbed a hoe and helped restrain the people.
Ji Ning knew why Jiang Ting had broken off negotiations based on a single sentence. Because that woman had told a lie. Or rather, she had let something slip.
First, how could an event as significant as a sky-high iron wall appearing around the town possibly be "unclear in memory"?
Second, from inside the town, there was no way to know what was behind the iron wall. Yet the woman had been able to say something like "the people who disappeared went to play games."
After tying up the four townspeople, under Jiang Ting's harsh interrogation, someone finally spilled the truth.
It turned out that fifteen years ago, a mysterious wealthy man had come to the impoverished Ping'an Town, saying he wanted to build the country's greatest gaming arena outside the town. After the town chief agreed, somehow, the gaming arena was completed overnight.
Subsequently, the town's residents began disappearing frequently, their corpses appearing outside the iron wall. So the townspeople said that these people had gone to play the rich man's game and died.
Because the gaming arena sealed off the town, after the town's supplies were used up and eaten, the townspeople had no choice but to turn to the corpses outside the iron wall.
It wasn't until today, fifteen years later, that these people saw anyone walk out alive from behind the iron wall for the first time.
They had no idea why only the four of them couldn't enter the game.
Over the long, boring years, they had no choice but to pair off into two couples, relying on each other to survive in the town.
"You're lying!" Ji Ning, who had been listening quietly the whole time, actually connecting many details, interrupted the scalding words spewed by the other man beside Shitou. "Who exactly agreed to build this gaming arena? Or rather, whose wish was this? Do you know that there are people trapped inside the game, forced to be monsters day after day? Who did the music box that can play 'Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star' belong to? Whose toy bear was it? Whose slingshot was it? Who used Chinese checkers' glass marbles as slingshot ammo? Was it you, Shitou? The reason those monsters lose their weak points when they see these items is because you are their weak point! Three women and one man in their thirties fifteen years ago—which one of you had a mother, and which had a father?"
"Ah!... Wuwuwuwu..." Under Ji Ning's interrogation, Shitou broke down, wailing loudly. He howled out words that were barely intelligible, "Don't force me... I regret it... I'll talk! I'll talk!"
"Shitou!" Shitou's wife roared angrily, but after shouting, she also burst into tears, crying like a fragile child.
The man who had just been talking desperately lifted his foot to kick Shitou, but Sheng Churan blocked him with a shovel and shoved a wad of rags into his mouth to gag him.
Seeing that her conjecture, used as a probe, actually worked, Ji Ning gasped in small, short breaths, as if having survived a calamity.
She waited for the townsfolk, their psychological defenses broken, to reveal the true truth.
This time, the secret of Tycoon Town was finally uncovered...
Long, long ago, Ping'an Town was a backward, impoverished, and remote place. The children growing up here deeply yearned for the affluent, fulfilling, wealthy life outside.
Until one day, a mysterious man came to town.
He told the children that as long as they signed a contract with him, this place would attract a continuous stream of rich people. Then, all their money, their fine clothes, jewelry, and high-end toys would belong to Ping'an Town. And all the poor wretches in town would disappear, allowing the children to enjoy a real big-city life.
The naive children signed the contract with the mysterious man without the slightest hesitation.
However, all of this was discovered by the parents of four of those children.
Out of love for their children, the parents took the children's place and became sacrifices to the devil, transforming into the monsters within the iron wall.
And those four children became the only people left alive in town. And because of their parents' protection, they could never enter that terrible hell—that devil-constructed hell that used children's fantasies to claim the lives of others.
The four children never knew it was their parents who had become the sacrifices in their stead, which was why they could survive.
They thought their parents, just like those poverty-stricken townsfolk, had simply disappeared out of greed for the game's thrills and monetary rewards.
All the benefits were enjoyed by the four of them, so none of them were willing to destroy this miraculous iron wall.
Until now, when the beautiful dream was shattered.
After finishing this account, the four now-grown children finally realized their mistake.
Shitou and his wife guided Ji Ning and Sheng Churan to find that black contract book.
The contract book could not be destroyed by any means. Only if the signatories felt regret could this power be revoked.
Sheng Churan placed the black contract before the four of them. They shed tears of repentance, calling out "Papa" and "Mama" from their mouths, saying no superfluous words.
Yet the formerly indestructible contract book shattered like burned ash and drifted into the air.
The sky-high iron wall encircling Ping'an Town—or rather, the grand Tycoon game board—also gradually dissipated and drifted into the distance like ash, until it vanished completely.
Ji Ning's eye sockets burned hot. At this moment, she also thought of her own father and mother. After she died, she wondered, were they doing okay?
Children are a parent's everything, yet sometimes, parents are not their children's everything.
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